Stories for a Living Future

In this episode I talk about death, a subject central to the life of a mystic. The Sufi says that we should “die before we die,” die to the ego, and its illusory sense of a separate self, and awake to the truth of our eternal nature. Lifetime after lifetime I have made this journey, from the mountains of Tibet to Zen monasteries, and finally to the green hills and coastal wetlands of California. Here I wait, watching the seasons change, until the door opens and I can fully pass into the vastness.

Transcript

Transkript in Deutsch

Finally I would like to share a little about death, which is so central to the life of a mystic. My purpose is not to present a detailed description of death, like the map of Bardo—the Tibetan states of existence intermediate between two lives on earth. But rather a reflection on how death has influenced my own life journey. Carl Jung writes that “in the secret hour of life’s midday death is born.” Death has been a friend and companion for many years, and recently, as more and more of my consciousness becomes absorbed, is a stronger and stronger presence. I often think that much of my consciousness has already transitioned, is already far in the inner worlds, and only a fraction of myself remains here. Its world of light and endless space surrounds me more and more.

The other day I read about someone who, through a strict regime of exercise and vitamins, is hoping to conquer aging, even death.¹ It made me smile, because many centuries ago, in the Upanishads, we were given simple, clear instructions of how to meditate and turn inward and realize the truth of our eternal nature.² In the Katha Upanishad, Yama, Lord of Death, tells the boy Nachiketas the secret of the undying Spirit and where man goes after death, how “He can be found in the heart. He that finds Him enters immortal life.”

There is a saying beloved of the Sufis, that we have to “die before we die.” That we have to die to the ego and its illusory sense of a separate self—its desires and attachments—before we die to this physical world. This “death” is called fana, annihilation, leading to the state of baqa, abiding in God. What is less understood is that through this “death” we begin to experience the eternal world of the soul or Self, and it is this dimension of pure love and light that is waiting for us when we finally pass over, when we “shuffle off this mortal coil.”

The experience of this world of love and light has been documented in near-death experiences, an unconditional, all-embracing love. Or a light emanating from a being of light, whose essence is brilliant light. What is not so recognized is that this love and light is the very nature of our soul. We are the being of love and light, just as our soul is the light at the end of the tunnel that others have experienced. The peace and bliss that can be experienced in this transition belongs to our divine nature, and is never separate from us, only we have forgotten, been veiled from our true nature. The Sufi who “dies before we die” is able to experience this transcendent dimension of the Self, or Atman, while still present in the physical world, when in deep meditation or even in waking consciousness.

Sadly our present rational consciousness has little understanding of this transcendent dimension of our own being, believing only in the tangible world of the senses or the mind.³ But this does not deny the existence of a world of light and love, only censors it from our consciousness. As a mystic I have been drawn into this light, have experienced this love, have glimpsed the worlds that are waiting on love’s further shore. The Sufi path comes from this inner reality, and draws us back, opens a door that for most is left closed.

There are many stories of what happens after we die. I remember at my father’s funeral, watching him watching his funeral. Then, in the graveyard, as his coffin was covered in earth, he vanished behind the clouds. Until then I had always thought that funerals were for those who were left behind, as a way to express their grief and loss. Now I know it is also for those who die—to help them become aware of their own death so that they do not wander too long in the world of shadows. So that their spirit becomes fully aware of their “death.” It is said that there are beings who help in this work, who show the departed person that their loved ones cannot hear or see them, that the physical world has been left behind.

Most souls quickly return to this world, drawn by the gravitational pull of the Earth into their next incarnation. Their ego has been left behind at the doorway to the other world, and they may remain there for a while before something within calls them back into the cycle of incarnation. Often they return as part of the same collective psyche as in their previous life, though they may be drawn to experience a different gender. The subtleties of karma and reincarnation may seem complex for the mind and the ego, but for the soul they are quite simple, as they belong to a pattern of resonance. A soul is drawn to where it belongs, where its journey, its evolution can continue.

At the end of life there is judgement, though not as we would understand it here, because there is no condemnation. Rather it is a review of lessons learned or unlearned. Near-death experiences describe a life review in which the whole life can flow before one, though there is no “good or bad” just an understanding, for example the realization that one had never learned to love oneself. There is a judgement, but it belongs to the soul and its dimension of what is absolute, what is unconditional. It leads to a quality of real responsibility for the life that has been lived and a teaching of how the soul can progress in its evolution. The values of the soul are so different to that of the ego, and so—rather than the transient values of money or status—it is often about love or kindness that is given or received.

I know little of heaven and hell. Though I do know that there are places of great beauty and peace on the other side, and that some souls are taken there to rest and recover, particularly after a traumatic or difficult death. There are also places where there is little light, just as there are places in this world where there is cruelty and little kindness or care. Irina Tweedie lived in Naples after the war, and would describe an inner landscape similar to the poorest, most destitute parts of the city at that time. In these places, the buildings were close together allowing for only a little light, and there was always crying, and souls could not leave on their own. She experienced being tasked with going there and bringing out souls into different, less painful places.

Souls that have evolved further than a solely ego existence may have more choice on the other side. There are “schools,” especially spiritual schools, where teaching can be given, or one can learn about healing or other qualities of service. Then one can have the possibility of returning to this world with a greater understanding of how to be of service. While most return to work in this world, there are also other inner realms where help is needed, where spiritual work is undertaken.

The further one travels along the spiritual path, the more life and death are intertwined. The mystery for me has always been how life covers over so much of our true nature, which death reveals. On the other side is pure love and light, while in this world we are more often confronted by problems and the strange distortions of our psyche and ego. The saying of St. Paul, “For now we see through a glass, darkly; but then face to face: now I know in part; but then shall I know even as also I am known”⁴ resonates deeply, expressing how this world distorts what is true as if in a fairground mirror. Within the heart another reality is always present, but either physical death or the death of the ego are needed to take us here.

Lifetime after lifetime we are born into forgetfulness, and then we begin the work of remembrance—of finding the thread of our spiritual nature and relearning how to live it. Sufis do not specifically mention reincarnation, but this alone makes sense of the layers I found within myself, like geological strata, each life leaving its trace. I always knew that I had practiced for many lifetimes, often Buddhist or Taoist, as their teachings made sense without any need for study. Also, when my children were born, I realized that I had no imprint of being a parent as I had been a monk or hermit for many, many lifetimes.

At the same time, I have recognized those with whom I have a deep soul connection, an unexpected familiarity that was never present in my childhood. There are so many links across lifetimes—friends, companions, lovers—where one can feel a resonance that cannot be explained rationally. As the great Sufi Abu Sa’id ibn Abil Khayr said, “Souls recognize each other by smell, like horses.” Sometimes there are past karmas to be worked out, love and acceptance to be given. These relationships can also help us to remember, to reconnect, and to journey together. Spiritual groups may incarnate together, to help each other along the path, as well as forming a container for this work of the soul, to help bring a light into the world. The relationship with a spiritual teacher can also be “once and forever,” repeated lifetime after lifetime. Irina Tweedie describes an image of her teacher from a previous life:

I told him that there was a time when, somehow, he was for me like Surya, the Sun God. I had once a vision of a vast temple with white, red, and yellow columns, and long, dark, cool passages with stone floors. And there was someone who I knew was he, though he looked very different, and much younger. Then too, he was dressed in white, and I remembered clearly the sandals on his brown feet, how they looked, and I could describe them.⁵

Often when I first met a former student, I found myself back in the place of our last meeting—in a Zen monastery, a Buddhist temple in China, or high in the Tibetan mountains. I remember how we meditated together, the practices that were given.

I have also watched how my life has flowed across lifetimes. When I first awoke to spiritual life when I was sixteen, I felt I was back in a monastery, practicing Zen meditation. And since I was seven I had been in a boarding school only too similar to a Zen monastery, the differences being playing soccer rather than sweeping the courtyard, learning Latin rather than sitting in meditation, chanting declensions “amo, amas, amat”⁶ rather than chanting sutras, both places governed by the ringing of bells. Later there came memories of previous lives—many, many hours in meditation, prefiguring what has always been my greatest love in this life: sitting in silence. Interestingly I always remembered wearing black in Tibet, which seemed to conflict with the image of maroon-clad monks. But then I heard about the Drukpa Kargyu, who all wore black shamtabs (skirts) in Tibet. They just stopped in India as everyone else was wearing maroon and Drukpa Kargyus don’t like to stick out too much. They are a real yogi meditation practice lineage, very humble and unshowy, and rather secretive. They like being hidden and it is hard to find books on their lineage and practices, but they practice a Dzogchen meditation, and also Chöd practice which is done in charnel grounds, so it is associated with death.

The practitioner has to be trained in Maitri meditation, which is a meditation on love, where all the walls protecting the heart from feeling total, unconditional altruism are systematically torn down. The practice of Chöd means that the yogini or yogi meditates in such a way as to become—stage by ever deepening stage—absorbed into the whole process of surrendering and offering one’s body and self. This selfless offering only really occurs when the practitioner is finally absorbed into samadhi. Dzogchen and Chöd have deep similarities with the Sufi heart meditation I was drawn to practice in this life, a deep surrender through the heart, in which one is increasingly absorbed within, until finally one merges with the teacher and then into Absolute Truth.

Life and death are not separate, but part of a tapestry woven over centuries, each lifetime adding a different thread or color, a deeper resonance. When life is lived solely from the ego, after death the ego is dissolved, its memories forgotten, though some lessons remain to be repeated, relearned. But if the soul is fully engaged, then the spiritual qualities, even memories remain, to reawake in one’s present life, or to be like a scent one follows. The soul’s qualities are very different to the defined world of the ego and mind, and do not belong to time. They transcend the divisions of life and death.

Though this can also carry a burden, when each life is not lived for the first time. In recent years I have felt tired, exhausted from thirty years of teaching. But the dream of a friend gave it a slightly different perspective, one that made me smile:

“I can see you a very, very, very long time ago as a young Buddhist monk (maybe between 16 and 18) somewhere in the mountains, walking on a path in beautiful nature. You look so pure and innocent, and I know you made this Buddhist promise, that you would always be in service for the sake of the whole and of humanity until the end of your incarnations. You were completely committed to that, and it felt you were just at the beginning of this task, kind of enthusiastic and so innocent.

Then I can see you today, you look like you are now. You are old and so very tired, and you are in a dark space, yourself are dark, and there is so much suffering in you and around you. Most of it is the suffering of all humanity and creation during all the lifetimes, and there are also little parts of your own suffering as a human being from your lifetime(s). It is such a heavy burden, and you nearly cannot carry it anymore, it weighs you so much and it is so very painful. I am somehow present in the whole situation, and I am asking what to do. But there is no answer. But then suddenly I hear a voice starting to sing, it is the most beautiful voice I ever heard, it could be a voice from a monk—but it also could be many voices from a whole choir. The singing is so, so very special, it could come from this world, from a completely other world, or from all worlds—it is so very pure, clear, and it seems to permeate everything.”

Lifetime after lifetime spiritual work continues, in different times and places, the essential work of sweeping—cleaning the courtyard of the heart and the heart of the world. The commitments made lifetimes ago continue. And it is all contained within the song of the soul, a music that flows through everything, though rarely heard.

What I am trying to tell is a story of the soul that includes life and death, just as it embraces light and darkness. Sadly in our present culture we are too caught in the constructs of the ego and the mind to recognize this vaster landscape. We see our individual life as separate, rather than just one grain of sand in a mandala, full of hidden meanings, and yet, like the Tibetan sand mandala which is finally swept up, impermanent, part of a dream which finally dissolves.

Death may be described as “the great unknown” but it is just another stage on the journey of the soul, who has been born so many times and died so many times. It is a doorway we walk through again and again, until finally, one lifetime, there is an opening to a world beyond even the world of light and love—an opening into another dimension which is not caught in the gravitational pull of the Earth and its patterns of reincarnation. Here one can be finally dissolved into the Greater Light, and all semblance of existence is lost. Or one can continue on the journey into other dimensions, as a Sufi master says, “travelling from loci to loci in a glorious body of light.”⁷

The Sufi path I have followed for over fifty years has a particularly fluid relationship between the worlds. Just before he died, Irina Tweedie’s teacher, Radha Mohan Lal, said to her, “Spiritual training, I haven’t even begun.” She was devastated. She had given away everything, her savings, her own self. Then, months later while she was on retreat at the Gandhi ashram in the Himalayas, one night in meditation she encountered him, no longer a human being but a center of power on the inner planes, and the work began.

This is called an Uwaysi connection, a connection with a teacher who is no longer present in their physical body, and it has been central to my own journey. When I first sat with her it was his presence that was like an invisible scent in her room, and then, three years later, one traumatic Summer evening, he awoke me on the plane of the Self, triggering a complete shift in consciousness that changed my life. Afterwards I was able to contact him in dreams and meditation, and later in waking consciousness. He guided me along the path, and when I was sent to teach in America, he gave me a simple vision: “The help of the guru is in your heart, that is all you need to know.”

I remember one of the first seminars I gave. It was in a trailer in a parking lot in San Francisco, at the “New Age Expo,” full of strange booths, like a Psychic Safari. It seemed an unlikely place to talk about the path, but suddenly as I was speaking his presence filled the trailer. His energy, his grace gave me the proof that the work would continue, even in the most unlikely of places.

Many years later I found the presence of other masters of this path in my prayers, supporting me through difficult years. His teacher, Abdul Ghani Khan, helped to heal my battered spiritual body after I finished teaching, and he always came with a quality of divine beauty, mirroring the beauty he had in this world. As Lilian Silburn describes: “He radiated kindness, his voice was sweet and melodious … and possessed a strange charm. He was of great beauty in his youth and retained this great beauty even when he was eighty-six years old.”⁸ I always know when he is inwardly present because of this combination of love and beauty. Other masters also came to me, including the great master who was the founder of our path, Abdul Khaliq al-Ghujduvani, whose presence inspired awe. Mostly these great beings were just a silent presence, but their love and support held me. They helped to create a bridge between this world and the endless expanses of light where my journey had taken me.

There comes a time on the journey when becoming lost, dissolved in nonbeing, is so liberating there is no desire to return to the limited world of the ego and senses—when the inner experiences are so powerful that one wants to remain forever in their light and love. At this stage one has to be careful, and it is important to be under the guidance of a teacher who is also present in the inner worlds, to stop one completely dissolving in the light, and turn one’s attention back to this outer world. This drama has been central to my own journey. In fact, in early years Irina Tweedie said that her teacher had told her that I was not given certain experiences because I had a death wish, a deep longing to return to the formless world that surrounds us.

In recent years my attention and presence has been drawn more fully within. As much as is possible I live a life of seclusion and prayer. Desires have long fallen away and I understand less and less of life’s dramas and difficulties. What calls me are these inner expanses, knowing that I will soon be able to travel freely into the beyond of the beyond, without any need to return. The other day I had an experience of being taken into the presence of the masters and then walking towards an open door. Passing through I found myself in limitless space, where I could stretch to the stars. There was a feeling of complete freedom, no longer being confined in the constrictions of this physical world.

Death has become a friend and a destination. I hold its presence like a loadstone within the soul, this knowing of a further journey, a sense of an inner destination and vastness that is waiting. At this time I have fulfilled all that the outer world has demanded. Years ago I was given a cup on which was written, “God put me on earth to accomplish a certain number of things. Right now I am so far behind I will never die.” Interestingly it was the only item that was stolen from our house over the years when we had over a hundred people visiting every week for meditation and dreamwork. But now I know that I have done what has been asked. I am no longer driven through the days but am in a waystation, watching the seasons of this world change as I wait to leave.

Life and death, love and light, lifetime following lifetime, the sound of bells ringing for meditation. There are the cycles of nature which I daily watch, the “V” of geese flying south high in the sky reminding me of Autumn, the quails and their chicks in the garden telling me of Spring. But the cycles of the soul are different, speaking of silence and surrender, each time a different quality to be lived. Many lifetimes spent in seclusion, a hermit in his hut beside a stream, or meditating high in the mountains, sometimes sitting with just a few disciples. This lifetime I hope to have completed the circle with the joy and stress of family life, of watching a child being born, its light coming into the world, enjoying the simple pleasures of playgrounds and swings. It is so easy to get caught in the distortions of this world, particularly at this present time, hard to stay true to one’s essential heartbeat. I hope that I have learned the lessons of my own soul, so that I can depart with an empty page.

I do sense that the work of the masters that began so long ago is completed, and soon their light, their memory will fade. These great spiritual beings have been for me an inner support, their presence helps me to live in a world that seems increasingly alien. But everything has its cycle, the in-breath following the out-breath. We live in the time of the Great Dying, the Sixth Mass Extinction of Species when even the sacred nature of creation has been forgotten. But we will not begin to understand what this means for decades, even centuries. Will there be a judgement? Will we finally begin to take real responsibility for the Earth, our common home? And how will we learn how to live in this time of Bardo—the liminal space between eras? The signs are all around us, but few bother or are able to read them.

We do not know what are the rituals when an era dies. Nor do we understand the patterns of rebirth, the songs that are needed to welcome what will be reborn. Instead we try to prolong a dying civilization, even as it destroys the ecosystem, starves our soul. We are surrounded by a light we cannot see, by an all-embracing love few know. Maybe accepting death can teach us about life and the cycles of regeneration. Everything dies and waits to be reborn. What matters is to be aware of the moment, that space between the in-breath and the out-breath. For an individual in every breath there is a moment of bliss when the soul returns to its own plane. For an era it is a moment when magic can be reborn, when miracles can happen. But only if we are present—otherwise we will remain in this growing wasteland.

In the evening of my own life, I am walking in both worlds—life and death. As I have mentioned many times, there are seeds around me waiting for the future. They will germinate in the darkness. They have their own cycle stretching across centuries. And so I live, waiting as the tide rises and falls outside my window, waiting as Summer comes and the days become warmer. I have just planted the tomato seedlings, wondering whether I will be here to harvest them as I have in previous late Summer days. Or will other dimensions beyond life and death have finally called me back to where I feel I really belong—where this Earth is just one amongst a myriad of worlds held in a consciousness of unimaginable beauty and power.

©2024 The Golden Sufi Center, www.goldensufi.org