Dear Rafi Aamer & Family of
the Heart:
You are right indeed. The
eternal song of redemption and the immutable eternal truths that have
enabled humanity to evolve so highly as to think we are headed back to
godhead in our mystic journey through the pathways of ritual and
religion -- and the hymns and psalms that lead to salvation of sinner
and saint alike -- often get drowned in the negative static that
surrounds us.
It reminds me of Dr Khalid
Sohail's perpetual prayer, his dark, innermost fear that the noise of
the world may one day drown the very song that makes his heart sing; he
has expressed that sentiment to me personally on a couple of occasions,
and I have encountered the same idea in a couple of his earlier books.
You say it seems to you
that I "just want others to listen" to what I have to say, without the
need to interact. If that were true, I wouldn't have become such
an "interactive participant" of a seminar I did not attend.
Why would I do that?
Because the subject,
Mysteries of Mysticism, is as intriguing for me today as when I was a
kid, and as it probably is for the growing Family of the Heart.
As a teenager in the late
'Fifties, I read about Tibetan mysticism through the numerous writings
of T. (for Tuesday) Lobsang Rampa (for example, DOCTOR
FROM LHASA and THE THIRD EYE); I also read
the TIBETAN BOOK OF THE DEAD and
IMITATION OF CHRIST by Thomas a Kempis; and, since the early
'Sixties, I read everything I could find concerning the mysteries of
mysticism from the works of Paul Brunton (notably A
SEARCH IN SECRET EGYPT, followed by A SEARCH IN
SECRET INDIA, and, later, his classic, THE SECRET
PATH
and QUEST
FOR THE OVERSELF) to the classic works of G. I. Gurdjieff and
his pupil P. D. Ouspensky (IN
SEARCH OF THE MIRACULOUS), and
the two-volume set, THE DRAMATIC UNIVERSE, by J.
G. Bennett.
I read voraciously, as I
do even today, and gobbled up Evelyn Underhill's THE
CLOUD OF UNKNOWING when I was fairly young. I sought the same
truths in the sanctums of the Theosophical Society as I did in the inner
recesses of Rosicrucianism and Freemasonry. Madame H. P. Blavatsky's
THE SECRET DOCTRINE and ISIS
UNVEILED make much sense to me even today and I still come to a
subject like "mysteries of mysticism" with much reverence, enthusiasm
and curiosity. In other words, I haven't stopped learning.
I don't doubt your sincerity when you
say, "I am writing this because I truly
believe that you can contribute to this discussion with your ideas and
currently those ideas are being drowned in your hostility. The reasons
for that hostility are beyond me. I have the sense that you are
depriving us of your thoughts." Maybe I am, maybe not.
One reason people tune off from the
song of songs is the static in the high-domed pressure-cooker between
their own ears. In other words, people only hear what they know, so
how dare a dervish ride rough-shod into their midst to remind them what
they were talking about!
Rashid Mughal
___________________________________________________________
