Many years ago, when I first started learning to be a Dances of Universal Peace teacher, I was handed a stack of papers to study. One of the papers was a photocopy of an old flyer from Hazrat Inayat Khan, the man who brought Sufism first to the West. There was a line in there that totally captured me. It was exciting because I knew that here was a truly enlightened being who was part of the thread that had brought the dances into being. He was bringing Sufism to the West. One of the goals of his order was a perfectly clear way of describing awakening and mysticism.
The third goal of his order was: To attain that perfection where mysticism remains no more a mystery, which relieves the disbeliever from ignorance and the believer from falling victim to hypocrisy.
This one line describes the whole issue humanity is going through right now, why we are in such chaos. We are burdened with the idea that mysticism is a mystery. This divides the world into disbelievers who are in ignorance, and believers who fall into hypocrisy.
The goal of western Sufism is to create a place where mysticism is no longer a mystery. That means everyone can access it freely, consciously. It’s not just an accidental state that comes over us. It’s not something that we have to work to attain. But knowing, through our own experience, that mysticism is no longer a mystery. We don’t have to believe it or disbelieve it, because we live it.
Mysticism is not a mystery; it is a natural part of yourself.
The second part of this line is important too, because as long as you think that mysticism is a mystery, you’re going to be looking for it somewhere. You’re going to feel that mystical experiences come and then they go away. You’re going to long for it.
Everyone longs for this mystical connection because it is the birthright of human beings. We all want it; we’ve all tasted it; we want to be there all the time. Believing that it is a mystery turns us in to seekers.
When we think it’s a mystery then it is not a normal thing of life. We hanker for it, and we can become confused and easily controlled. It’s not that human beings are evil or that we’re doing bad stuff; it’s just that we are being controlled by something that does not have our best interests in mind.
Let’s name a few of those things: like the capitalistic system, people in power, bureaucracy… all the things we hate but don’t know how to get rid of. We could go on and on with that list. But as long as we don’t know who we are, as long as we believe that mysticism is a mystery, we can be controlled and fooled. Even if we rebel we are still controlled by our ignorance. We rid of one horrible thing, and turn around an build another one with a different name.
If we don’t want to be controlled we’ll need to attain this place where mysticism is no longer a mystery, because this relieves the disbeliever from ignorance and relieves the believer from falling into hypocrisy.
When mysticism is a mystery the non-believer will easily be in ignorance. They will deny it even exists. We’ll say it’s’s just a myth. Only stupid people believe.
And they are right because belief turns people into hypocrites… if part of their belief is that the mystical is a mystery. How can you really believe in a thing that you think is not there? The non-believer knows this but is unable to see further than that.
The believer is no better off because it’s so easy to be captured by hypocrisy. That’s because the believer builds up impossible worlds that can never be attained.
If you believe in mysticism, if you believe that the mystical state exists, but you don’t experience it directly then half the world turns invisible. Everything becomes hypocrisy because we are living a lie. The believer, who doesn’t know who they are, has to tell lies to create an identity. Then this false identity has to be protected, and this is what becomes the ego.
So, the goal is to achieve this state where mysticism is no longer a mystery. Then the non-believer is relieved of ignorance, and the believer is relieved of hypocrisy. A very powerful and true statement.