Darvish Khan Writes

Karma is what you’re born with, and this includes environment. How you play it is dharma. Dharma is the integrity with which you face karma, and how this works out is what life is all about.

Dharma is to be true to your karma: the sum total of all past thought, word and deed, as represented by past lives. You cannot help but be defined by the past and its consolidation in the present, but how you relate to it, how you honor it, is everything. Attitude is everything.

Karma renews itself endlessly, like a snake perpetually shedding its skin. Each moment is the expression of past karma and the creation of future karma. And what you pack into the suitcase of this life, is what you live out of the next life. Only the Now is creative. The past is dead and only becomes alive in the Now. Likewise, the future is predicated on the Now. Only the Now exists. Only attitude exists.

The Now is creative because it alone can witness, because it alone can be detached from the corpse of the past and its reanimation in the future. Only the Now is alive.

All this is why Remembrance is the key. What you remember in the Now transmutes the past to become the future, in the Now. Remembrance of the beloved manifests the beloved, and is the path to be with him or her forever, in the Now.

Print Friendly

The new film produced by Michael Moore, Planet Of The Humans, challenges how we think of going Green. Seriously, how do we get off fossil fuels? Do we have the slightest idea of what this involves and implies? Do we cut down forests to burn chipped wood as a biomass substitute for coal and gas? How is Green infrastructure built and maintained without fossil fuels? The answer is that it’s not. And then what? Discuss this on the smart phone and laptop full of rare metals gouged from the earth?

This film very dramatically makes the case that we are babies prattling about collective suicide. And that there is a whole lot of disaster capitalism promoting delusional solutions.

What will it take for citizenry to grok the crisis of sustainability? People do not realize that the entire basis of modern living is unsustainable. And this is the problem. We can’t go there. We can’t admit that the planet can not possibly continue to support a consumer based lifestyle for a fraction of the present world population, which is increasingly concentrated in mega cities of 10 million or more.

The modern city is entropic. And so are the suburbs. Both only exist because of fossil fuel- energy as concentrated capital, and which serves to destroy a living bond with Nature. There is no way for a modern city to go Green. There is no way for a world economy based on globalism to go Green. There is no way for any living arrangement to go Green except on a decentralized basis. Only local economies can establish a sustainable relationship with Nature, a relationship not based on relentless resource extraction and degradation, but on living in harmony with the land and one another.

Going Green is going cold turkey.

Print Friendly

My recommendation is to follow this guideline: eschew any book or source material that spells Hafez’s name with an i, as in Hafiz. Hafez properly rhymes with Fez, not with fizz. This is most important because correct pronunciation is essential. If an author or editor can’t pronounce Hafez’s name correctly, it’s probably trash. It suggests that abstraction rather than sensibility is uppermost. After all, poetry is all about sound and sensibility.

Print Friendly

A friend of mine relates that Steve Edelman once asked Eruch Jessawala, “what was Baba’s (divine) mistake?”, to which he replied at once, “Sufism Reoriented”. This comes as no surprise given Eruch’s role as point man in addressing the twisted fate of SR with Ivy Duce appointing Jim Mackei as her alleged illumined successor in 1980.

Eruch famously rang the “Bell of Warning” in 1980, at Baba’s own order; Eruch relates that Baba “lifted” him out of his body while in Mandali Hall and into Baba’s incorporeal presence, and ordered him to ring the Bell of Warning.

So, the question is, what was Baba up to in “allowing” this mistake to happen in the first place? Any answer to this question is speculative of course, but Baba lovers- and others, are compelled by the enormity of the problem to seek answers.

Baba’s agreement to assist in writing the charter that served as the incorporation of SR was perhaps the single most enigmatic “work” of his advent. It can be contrasted to Baba’s assistance in the writing of Meher Center’s charter, which made it a non denominational Universal Spiritual Center which promotes the “direct” path to God, as opposed to a denominational and mediated path as an “indirect” path. Here is Baba’s statement on the matter:

http://www.meherlegacy.org/uploads/2/4/9/3/24931365/1952.july.20-baba_discourse_to_sufis.pdf 

Why would Baba grant a charter to a reoriented sufi lineage that at once confers on it the status of an indirect path? Isn’t there a colossal and baffling irony in this very act? Sufism, historically considered, is based on a personal relationship to saints and spiritual masters who derive their authority from the Prophet.

Baba’s own definition of Sufism, given in the context of discussing the Sufi Charter, states that only the relationship to the Prophet and Perfect Master properly defines sufism: see

Section 1 of the Sufi Charter, point #3

“By cherishing the fact that Sufism is mainly based on a definite acceptance of a God-Realized master and complete adherence to his guidance.”

and

From Notes On The Interview of Mrs. Duce, Miss Duce and Francis Brabazon at Myrtle Beach, 1952

“Sufism as understood by 99% of the people is not real Sufism. The terms sheikh, murshid, mureed are so lightly treated that real Sufism is lost sight of. As Jallaludin says- the only way to know Sufism is not by words or practices or discipline, but by becoming dust at the feet of the Master.”

Given that Baba felt so strongly about what defines “real” sufism, i.e. surrenderance to the Prophet/ Perfect Master, why would he agree to create an institutionalized sufi order based on the honorific status of its leadership? It makes no sense.

In fact, Francis Brabazon saw this at once. He had been conferred the status of sheikh in Inayat Khan’s sufi order, which he knew to be purely honorific- and not remotely approaching the status of a real murshid, which is itself infinitely removed from the status of a Perfect Master. He therefore declined to accept the leadership of an independent branch of Sufism Reoriented in Australia. Baba was enormously pleased with him.

To the contrary, Adi K. Irani has said that he discerned displeasure on Baba’s part when Ivy Duce accepted her role as murshida for America.

Baba did very clearly state that the Sufi Charter was to serve as a template for the reorientation of the principal religious “isms” as well. This alerts us at once to the symbolic nature of the work he was engaged in, i.e. the reorienting of all the world’s major religions to the singular reality of the Avatar/ Prophet and Perfect Master in defining religious and spiritual life.

According to both Eruch J. and Don Stevens, Baba told murshida Duce that her sufi order “would have an illumined murshid from time to time”. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind that Baba promised a continuous lineage of either murshids or Perfect Masters for the next 700 years. This assertion by murshida Duce is a complete fabrication. But SR has accepted this narrative as a founding truth.

Maybe the fate of SR is to serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when absolute honesty is sacrificed for a spiritual ambition that would have its cake and eat it too. Baba did, after all, condition his promise to help Ivy Duce in her honorific role as murshida upon “absolute honesty”.

Print Friendly