The Individual Development |
Most Western seekers these days
are confused more than ever by their hopes for a world-changing mass
spiritual awakening. They
like the idea in the book, The Celestine Prophecy, that if a large enough “critical
mass” of spiritual hopefuls become collectively
aroused emotionally about their spirituality, it will suddenly change
the World and bring about a new Golden Age. Unfortunately,
we have to inform you that there will be no sudden mass evolution or “Great
Spiritual Awakening”. Those
who think like that are fools in a land of fools. There is not and cannot be some sort of
sudden mass mechanical “evolution” of unconscious humanity. Evolution is the result only of a
very tiny minority of human beings struggling as consciously awakening
private individuals or in secret little groups working with fully conscious “Ultra-Terrestrials”,
as it were. Many people today are finding
out things that for many centuries have been aspects of secret knowledge. One of the secrets has been the truth
of a variety of occult, spiritual and religious lineages, transmissions
and traditions of unusual personal development. Unfortunately,
all such things (whatever their relative value in the past for certain
people during certain eras) have become anachronistic and mostly inappropriate
for, say, modern Europeans. Almost all the “ways” have
become seriously contaminated by the local beliefs and rituals in which
they have been historically embedded. This
has become virtually as true for most of our Islamic Dervish Orders
as for other occult persuasions. Yet
the Wise among Us are aware of these problems and have taken steps
of renewal in the West that other traditions have not wanted to take. We
can do this because we have always worked more with certain principles
of the human development rather than with local emotional identifications
with religion and culture. Our
Path, for instance, does not try to convert Westerners to Fundamentalist
Islam. Nor will you find Us trying
to purvey exotic Eastern culture-thrills to bedazzled Western emotional
seekers. Those who wish
to seduce the Westerners through Public Group Zikr-chanting, for instance,
are not generally
of Our Way. Our emphasis
is on the Private Personal Zikr performed secretly, inwardly in the
Spirit and Life-energy of the individual practitioner. Even
in a special, temporary group exercise, our emphasis is on Silent Communion
of the Zikr as a telepathic tune-up, which can be more easily experienced
than explained. Most seekers, whether Western
or even Eastern, cannot have a developmental action or occultly operational
circumstance or arrangement overtly shown or demonstrated to them because
it would only promote a wrong assessment or involvement on the part
of the seeker. Premature
entry into something is far worse for the seeker than non-entry. You should make a big effort to understand
why you need to be told this in the light of the truth of the illusion
of mass awakening. The
craving for social belonging is still too strong within you. Only
the prepared individual can be brought into a situation with other
prepared individuals. Such
a jam,
a gathering, has nothing to do with social expansion hopes. What happens to most seekers,
Western or even Eastern, is that their belief becomes something more
rigid than a temporarily useful mental instrument. It
becomes an egoistic dogma for always feeling “right” through
identification with a collective identity. Such
people are truly lost. They
pursue the commitments of prejudice. Their
learning system is effectively blocked. And they will remain lost until they have
learned what belief is really for, which includes the concept of “Faith”. And do not believe that you yourself are
free from this problem. If
you think you are free from all unproductive and progress-blocking belief, you should look
deeply into yourself as to what causes you to have such an assumption
about yourself. Many Westerners,
for instance, who speak English as their native tongue believe
that only people who think in English are “universal” and “unprejudiced” because
the New World Order is taking over the World through English and Anglo-American
pseudo-democracy with their schizophrenic Technological Christianity
or whatever it is supposed to be. There
is the growing and prevailing common assumption in the West that a
kind of New Age Scientific Mysticism is the “ Haji Bektash once
said, “To whomever has sense, a sign
is enough. For the heedless,
a thousand explanations are not enough.” Certain kinds of explanations,
such as in this particular article, may be registered in your mind
on a certain level, but they will have to wait there as inoperative
until your actual heedlessness is removed. The
main cause of this heedlessness is the unconscious and automatic reactional character
of your nafs, your conditioned physical
self. We will stop here today so that
you will have time to assimilate the teaching and learn to rise beyond
your compulsive, conditioned nature of ignorant unalertness. |