Spirit Matters March 2019 by International Sufi Movement in Australia

Contents Editorial

Message from the National Representative

A memory of Kabir by Zora

The Dream of Life by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Photos of Zane

Dreams & Revelations by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Dreams of Awakening by Nuria

How A Dream Changed My Life by Karim

Australian Sufi Retreat poster

Review by Carole Voss of The Witch as Teacher in Fairy Tales

Contacts

Photo credits: Royalty-free photos from pixabay.com & unsplash.com Cover: Photo by Jez Timms on Unsplash Page 7: Photo by Katarzyna Ostrowska on Unsplash Page 8: Photo by dMz on Pixabay Page 13: Image by ambroo on Pixabay Page 20: Image by manolofranco on Pixabay Page 24: Image by Momentmal on Pixabay Other images: Illustrations by Hannah Baek Wha (page 26)

Page 2 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Editorial On the day that I was to write this editorial I woke up unexpectedly in the very early hours with thoughts of Kabir. We were all very saddened by the recent passing of our Australian Sufi brother, and he remains in our thoughts. He and I shared a love of nature and of the sea, and I remember discussions with Kabir about the beauty of the Tasmanian countryside and the joys of sea kayaking. We are of the same generation, and he was only a few years younger than me. Sadly Kabir succumbed to the cancer that his body fought against for a number of years. I remember him fondly as a dear Sufi brother and mureed.

Nuria writes beautifully about attending Kabirâ&#x20AC;&#x2122;s funeral and performing the burial Page 3 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

service at his grave in her letter on the following pages. Zora has contributed a poignant memory of Kabir, and Zubin has contributed The Dream of Life from the Diwan of Inayat Khan to honour Kabir. Perhaps it was my subconscious mind processing something, or perhaps Kabir came to me in a dream but it is hard for me to know. Hazrat Inayat Khan has some very interesting things to say about dreams and an excerpt from Volume IV - Mental Purification and Healing is reproduced on page 10. I find the following quotes very inspiring: A dream shows the depths of life; through a dream we see things. Hazrat Inayat Khan goes on to talk about dreams of revelation: Revelation comes from within. It makes the heart self-revealing; it is just like a new birth of the soul. When one has come to this state, then everything and every being is living; a rock, a tree, the air, the sky, and the stars, all are living. He ends the discourse by saying: For compared with this great bliss which is revelation, all other treasures of the earth are nothing; they cannot be compared. Revelation is the magic lamp of Aladdin; once discovered it throws its light to the right and to the left, and all things become clear. The theme of this newsletter is Dreams of Awakening and Nuria and Karim have each kindly contributed very inspiring articles about dreams that have had a profound impact on their lives. Nuria’s article is on page 14 and Karim’s article is on page 16. Out of the darkness of grief there is hope, and we are very blessed to have new life in our Sufi community in Australia with the birth of Taaj and Andrew’s beautiful son Zane. Hamida and other members of the Sufi Movement in Sydney conducted a blessing ceremony to celebrate Zane’s birth. See the photos on page 9. I hope that you find this newsletter inspiring. Disclose to us Thy Divine Light, which is hidden in our souls, that we may know and understand life better. Yaqin

Page 4 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Beloved Sisters and Brothers Autumn 2019 Usually I love Summer – the sun, the sea, the beauty of nature, but this summer has been difficult and dark for many reasons. Many of you will have felt this as well I know. In addition we have had extreme weather patterns. We have had temperatures of 45°C one day and 19°C the next, we have had hail, and heavy rain as well. Then came the death of our beloved brother Kabir. He had been ill for quite some time. He had lived his life so courageously and progressed on his inner journey. I think he had a bucket list and he achieved many of the things on his list. His trip to Europe with his partner Louise only nine months ago. We knew that the cancer had finally spread but he continued to live the Sufi life and be with his family and partner Louise. In mid January he contacted me and wrote: ‘I would love nothing more than to be in attendance at Summer Retreat this year. However, my health has now reached a point whereby I’m uncertain of my health status week to week. I am very sorry I haven’t been in more regular contact since I informed you a couple of months ago how much my health had changed. The latest significant change is the cancer in the left lobe of my liver which has spread to a point whereby my appetite has just about completely gone and I have lost about 15kgs of weight. I was wondering if I could ask you and Azad to provide me with advice on how to best incorporate Sufism into my funeral service.’ So I sent Kabir the Universal Worship funeral service which Zubin had kindly prepared for me before she went to the Urs at the Dargah. Although Kabir could still read, he was too weak to respond. His family were with him around the clock and his sister read the Sufi prayers at his bedside. We had planned to send him a CD of wonderful Sufi music (Ocean of Remembrance – Sufi Improvisations and Zikrs) which Turkish Dervishes had made after a 40 day halvet or retreat - they were in a state of ecstasy when they made the music! On the Friday night at group, we played this music, meditated and thought of Kabir. It was a truly profound evening and I strongly felt that he had been there with us. The next morning as Azad made ready to post the CD, we received an email to say that he had passed away peacefully during the early hours of that morning. In planning the funeral with Louise (at her request), this evolved so that we performed the burial service at the graveside, and took part in the service at the chapel in the funeral home. His sister placed a picture of Murshid, his prayer sheet (the one we had printed on yellow parchment some years ago) and his tasbih, into the coffin. Rest in peace dear Kabir.

Page 5 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Jaimie found us many years ago, at the group we used to run in St. Kilda. He came when he could and always had long talks over coffee afterwards. Then he came to one of our early winter retreats at Devaki’s beautiful house, he met Nawab at Summer school, and attended the retreat at the Dargah in India. After this retreat, where many participants visited the Taj Mahal, Agra or Jaipur, Kabir visited Varanasi and the burial Ghats on the Ganges. At that time I feel that he was already working on his own inner journey to unity with the One. I have a very strong feeling that he found what he was looking for and was ready to for the next part of his journey. Zora wrote a beautiful reminiscence of Kabir which also suggests this.

We are now preparing for our retreat with Pir Nawab and looking forward to an Awakening to Beauty. It is the 20th anniversary of Nawab’s first visit to Australia – the booklet and the teachings are very special, and I know it will be profound and very special. I am thirsty for what is to come. On the topic of spiritual dreams, I can only say that as a Jungian from way back, I have always followed my dreams and they have been pointers alone the way for me. Sometimes they have shown me things which I have missed in outer life. Myths and fairy tales are said to be the dreaming of a people, so we also take note of them and can be guided by them, as I have shown in my book. It is fascinating how deep spiritual truths can be found in ancient tales, such as the Epic of Gilgamesh which is over five thousand years old. This is the first story ever found, on tablets of stone. We can learn so much from these other tales and realms. With love and blessings, Nuria Page 6 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Ah dearest Kabir. I remember him so clearly at retreat as he listened to a discussion on the continuation of the soul after death. It was the only time I have ever heard this subject being explored in a group talk. I recall a vivid metaphor of travellers carrying a few treasured possessions, greeting one another briefly as they moved onto and off a cruise ship. All were holiday makers, either embarking or returning. Kabir was utterly still and attentively silent throughout the session. His eyes glistened. Later I asked him how these suppositions and possibilities had made him feel. He said, "Excited", and he nodded and smiled in that irrepressible way of his. Bon voyage dear Kabir. Our love goes with you.

Page 7 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

The Dream of Life. From the Diwan of Inayat Khan, contributed by Zubin

I hold that life is but a passing dream Out of shifting mists of Maya made, Our foolish hopes are children’s fantasies, Our sorrows but the shadows of a shade. And we, Earth’s children, strive with eager hate And jealousy to snatch the passing joys Of fame, and rank, and wealth, and power, and ease, As children quarrel over idle toys. What is this life that surges, but the fall And rise of waves in an unquiet sea! And is this worldly honour but a name To snare the feet of poor simplicity! Master and servant, friend and foe alike, God for His lordly pleasure doth engage As actors in the tragic Drama played In ever-changing scenes upon life’s stage. As shadows in the Theatre of Dreams Perform their part and pass into the night, So Man in life’s unending Masque appears And fades, to leave the curtain blank and white. He travels on but knows not where he fares, Nor whence he comes, nor where the journey ends; He greets his fellow travelers who pass Into the darkness, beckoning to their friends. Enslaved by his insatiable needs Man toils to still their tyrannous demands, Himself a serf, he strives in vain to rule, Life turns to dust and ashes in his hands. No pride of nationality is mine, Nor caste nor creed can tie me with its chain, No narrow fatherland can bind my heart, For me the pride of birth and rank is vain. No Heaven allures with unattained desire, No fair beloved is there for me to meet, No Saviour offers cleansing for my sin, No God bends down my ransomed soul to greet. No home have I, no friend, no name is mine, Nor man, nor God is kin to my soul, Over the Self, that formless, changeless dwells, No earthly limitations have control. Nor birth nor death can touch my spirit more, Nor love nor hate can bring me peace nor strife, The Self Within I have desired and found, And thus awakened from the Dream of Life. Page 8 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Zane Morris Letton 19-11-2018 On Sunday January 20th, the home of Andrew, Taaj Cynthia and Zane Letton was imbued with divine sanction as Sydney Sufi Movement members gathered to warmly welcome Zane Morris Letton into the world. Murshida Hamida conducted the blessing ceremony; embracing Zane into the heart-stream of Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan and the Sufi Movement. Community members magnetized the ceremony with their heartfelt blessings and the reading of carefully selected passages from the Gayan. The ceremony was followed by lots of giggles and smiles from Zane, cuddles, afternoon tea and fellowship.

Page 9 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Dreams & Revelations From Volume IV - Mental Purification and Healing By Hazrat Inayat Khan

Although dreams are something which is known to everybody, the study of them leads to the deeper side of life. For it is from the meaning of the dream that one begins to realize two things: that something is active when the body is asleep, and to the deep thinker this gives faith in the life hereafter. For the dream is the proof that when the body is not active, a person is active all the same, and seems to be no less active than in the physical body. If one detects any difference, it is a difference of time, for in dreams a man may pass from one land to another in a flash instead of taking a month. In no way is he hindered as on the physical plane. In dreams he flies. The facility of the plane of dreams is much greater. There is no difficulty in changing one's condition from illness to health, from failure to success, in one moment. People say it is only imagination, a working of the mind. But what is mind? Mind is that in which the world is reflected. Heaven and earth are accommodated in it. Is that a small thing? What is the physical body compared with the mind which is a world in itself? The physical body is only like a drop in the ocean. It is only because of ignorance that a man does not know the kingdom in himself. Why is he not conscious of it? Because he wishes to be able to hold something; only then does it exist for him. He does not wish to admit to himself the existence of sentiment: he says that it is of no account, there is nothing to it; and so of the dream, it is only imagination, it is nothing. But science and art spring from imagination, from the mind, not from a rock, not from the physical body. The source from which all knowledge comes is the mind, not an object. Mind means 'I'. It is the mind, which identifies; the body is an illusion. When the mind is depressed, we say, 'I am sad.' Not the body, but the mind was depressed; so the real identification is with the mind, not the body. When in a dream man is able to see himself, what does that show? That after what is called death, man is still not formless; that nothing is lost, but only that freedom is gained which was lost. The absence of this knowledge makes man afraid of losing this physical body, makes him have a horror of death. But what is death? Nothing but a sleep: a sleep of the body, which was a cloak. One can take it away and yet be living. Man will realize after all talk about death that he is alive, that he has not lost but gained. Man is in the physical world to learn, and the dream teaches that a law is working; that all that seems surprising, accidental, a sudden happening, was not sudden, not an accident. It seemed accidental because it was not connected with the conditions. Nothing happens which does not go through the mind. Man has turned his back to it; he is open only to manifestation. Did they not say in every country when the war came: we did not know? Yes, it was so for those who slept, but the awakened ones had seen the preparation. In all things we see this. Every accident, pleasant or unpleasant, is preceded by a long preparation. First it exists in the mind, then on the physical plane. Page 10 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

A dream shows the depths of life; through a dream we see things. Has every dream a meaning? Yes; only there are always people in a country who do not know its language, and so it is with minds. Some minds are not yet capable of expressing themselves, so the dreams are upside-down, a chaos. One sees a goat with the ears of an elephant. The mind wants to express itself. There is a meaning in what the child says, but it has not yet learned to speak, it has no words; it can only cry or make a sound; yet this has a meaning. So it is with dreams which are not expressed correctly. There is nothing without meaning; it is our lack of understanding of its meaning that keeps us in darkness. But what about the quite meaningless dreams one sometimes has? They are due to the condition of the mind. If the condition of the mind is not harmonious, if its rhythm is not regular, then the dream is so mixed up that one cannot read it. It is just like a letter written in the dark, when a person could not see what he was writing. But all the same it is a written letter, it has an idea behind it. Even if the very person who wrote it in the dark room is not able to read it, it still remains a letter. When man cannot understand the meaning of his dream it is not that his dream has no significance; it only means that his own letter has become so confused that he cannot read it himself. One may say, how can the mind learn to express itself ? It has to become itself. Often the mind is disturbed, inharmonious, and restless. When a person is drunk he wants to say yes, and he says no. So is the expression of the mind in a dream. It is a marvelous thing to study the science of dreams. How wonderful that the dream of a poet should be poetical, of a musician harmonious. Why is this? Because their mind is trained. Their mind has become individual. Their mind expresses itself in their own realm. Sometimes one marvels at the dreams one hears experienced by poetic souls; one sees the sequence from the first act till the last, and that every little action has a certain meaning. More interesting still is the symbolical dream: to see the meaning behind it. It is wonderful to think that a simple dream comes to a simple person, but when the person is confused then the dream is confused. And in the straight dream, in the dream with fear, with joy, with grief, one can see what a person is. Then the dream does not seem a dream; it is as real as life on the physical plane. But is this life not a dream? Are the eyes not closed? The king has forgotten his palace. We say, 'Oh, it is only adream, it is nothing.' But this dream can show our whole past life; this dream can be tomorrow. It is only on the physical plane that it is a dream; it is made a dream by the condition in which the mind is. We say, 'Yes, but when we awake we find a house; that, therefore, is reality. If we dream of a palace, we find no palace.' This is true and not true. The palaces which are built in that world are as much our own, are really much more our own. When the body dies, these remain; they will always be there. If it was a dream of pleasure, the pleasure will come. If it was a dream of light, of love, then all is there. It is a treasure you can depend upon; death cannot take it away. It gives a glimpse of that idea of which the Page 11 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Bible says, 'Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also.' We can find glimpses of it too when we compare dreams with the wakeful state. Whatever we hold, the longer we have held it the more firmly it is established; then we create a world to live in. This is the secret of the whole of life. But how can words explain this? Another form of dream is the vision. Therein a person sees clearly what will happen, or what has happened perhaps many years ago. It is like a flash. When does one get this? When the heart is focused to the divine mind. For all is there like a moving picture. There was a poet of Persia, Firdausi, who was asked by the king to write the history of the country. The king promised him a gold coin for every verse. Firdausi went into the solitude and wrote down the traditions of centuries: characters, lives, deeds, he saw it all as a play and he wrote of it in verse. When he returned to the court, the king was most impressed; he thought it wonderful. But there are always many in the world who will reject such things. The truth is only accepted by the few. At the court he was much criticized and many showed scepticism. It went so far that they told the king that it was all Firdausi's imagination. It hurt him terribly. He took the one who had spoken most against him and held his hand upon his head, and said to him, 'Now, close your eyes and look.' And what this man saw was like a moving picture and he exclaimed, 'I have seen!' But the poet's heart was wounded and he would not accept the gold coins. What was the message given by the great ones, by the prophets and masters, by Rama, by Krishna? It was not imagination. It was that record which can be found by diving deep, that prophecy given to the world as a lesson, living in the world, like a scripture. It is direct communion given by all masters. A vision is more clear in the sleeping state than in the wakeful state. The reason is that when a person is asleep he lives in a world of his own, but when a person is awake he is only partly in that world and mostly in the outer world. Every phenomenon needs accommodation. It is not only the sound which is audible, but also the ears make it possible to hear the sound. The mind is the accommodation to receive the impressions, just as the ears are the accommodation to receive the sound. That is why a natural state of sleep is like a profound concentration, like a deep meditation; and that is why everything that comes as a dream has significance. Lastly there is another step forward, and that is revelation. It needs a certain amount of spiritual progress to believe that there is such a thing as revelation. Life is revealing, nature is revealing, and so is God; that is why God is called Khuda in Persian, which means self-revealing. All science and art, and all culture known to man have come originally, and still come, by revelation. In other words a person does not only learn by studying, but he also draws knowledge from humanity. A child not only inherits his father's or his ancestors' qualities but also the qualities of his nation, of his race, so that one can say that man inherits the qualities of the entire human race. If one realized profoundly, that storehouse of knowledge, which exists behind the veil, which covers it, one would find that one has a right to this heritage. This gives one a key, a key to understand the secret of life: that knowledge is not only gained from outside but also Page 12 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

from within. Thus one may call knowledge that one learns from outer life learning, but knowledge that one draws from within may be called revelation.

Revelation comes from within. It makes the heart self-revealing; it is just like a new birth of the soul. When one has come to this state, then everything and every being is living; a rock, a tree, the air, the sky, and the stars, all are living. Then a person begins to communicate with all things and all beings. Wherever his glance falls, on nature, on characters, he reads their history; he sees their future. Every person he meets, before he has spoken one word with him he begins to communicate with his soul. Before he has asked any question, the soul begins to tell its own history. Every person and every object stand before him as an open book. Then there no longer exists in him that continual 'why' one finds so often in people. 'Why' no longer exists, for he finds the answer to every question in himself. And as long as that answer is not created, in spite of all the learning of this world that is taught to man, that continual 'why' will exist. Again one may ask, how does one arrive at this revelation? And the answer is that there is nothing in the whole of the universe, which is not to be found in man if he only cares to discover it. But if he will not find it out no one will give it to him, for truth is not learned; truth is discovered. It is with this belief that sages of the East went into the solitude and sat meditating in order to give that revelation an opportunity to arise. No doubt as life is at present there is hardly time for a man to go into the solitude. But that does not mean that man should remain ignorant of the best that is within himself. For compared with this great bliss which is revelation, all other treasures of the earth are nothing; they cannot be compared. Revelation is the magic lamp of Aladdin; once discovered it throws its light to the right and to the left, and all things become clear. Page 13 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Dreams of Awakening By Nuria Dreams have always been important for humanity – as far back as ancient times. In the oldest story ever found, The Epic of Gilgamesh, dreams and their interpretation were of paramount importance. The symbols which the psyche uses in dreams, have to be understood, as dreams do not use the same narrative as we do in our everyday world. Jung has asserted that there are at least two types of dreams – those ordinary dreams which are memories of the mind, sorting and storing the events of the day. Then there are, what Jung calls ‘big’ or archetypal dreams. These are the ones which should be heeded. These are the dreams that we remember on awakening, and we are told that these dreams should not be shared just integrated. Just having and remembering them is enough and we really should not interpret but understand them at a very deep level. Dreams are very much part of our understanding of the spiritual journey and often reflect, aspects of a process which we have somehow missed. My understanding of the elements for instance, has come from dreams as well as from practice. The elements are really archetypes which become part of our life and understanding. In one of my dreams, I was in a land which was totally alien to me, and I did not know where I was or where I was going. Then I found myself in an old bus winding its way up a hill. Near the bottom was a row of old houses very higgledypiggledy and painted yellow. This was the element ‘Earth’ as in the material world. Next, I was on top of the hill looking into deep clear fresh water, which was right under my nose - literally. In the water was a forest of green seaweed; the Water element. From here on my right I could see far distant, on a clear bright day. I did not see the sun as such, so the Fire element was just there. The sky was vast and a beautiful pale blue, it felt like I could breathe easily – this was the Air element. Beyond, far below and distant was the calm ocean and a strip of beach. As I gazed at the ocean (symbolising the unconscious mind, the collective unconscious, (we are all drops in the ocean of the unconscious), an arm like a serpent reached out to me from the depths of the ocean, elongating itself so that it touched my hand. I felt such love and connectedness from this magical touch. It is interesting that this dream shows Earth and Water as being of this world, with Fire and Air being beyond, outside time and space. To this day when I do the element breaths, I relive this dream and see its colours. For me it is interesting that water is at the top of the hill, and the rest of the elements are beyond this, already in another realm. It was another dream, more recently, which showed me the ‘Ether’ element, which, for me, was silvery – the colour of starlight. So beautiful. The structure of the inner realm is beautifully described in the story of the Fairy of the

Page 14 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Dawn. The ‘world’ can be seen as an onion, with the realm of consciousness and the material manifestation being the outer layer of the onion. From here, the hero must first journey to the very edge of his father’s empire. This is the realm of the Heart in Sufism and it is vast. Once the hero journeys from the human realm, he journeys ever deeper towards the Centre, where he finds himself in inner space – outside of time and space. These realms have been described as the Astral plane, the realm of the Jinns, the Angelic realms (from Cherubim to Seraphim), and the Archangels, with at its Centre, the Throne of God, which is surrounded by Archangels. The Throne of God could well be the Divine Presence, the place of Unity. In my most recent dream, I was shown the structure of my own inner realm from the aspect of my inner ‘teachers’, remembering that all parts or beings in a dream are parts of oneself, the dreamer. There was the ‘priest’-like figure in long pale blue robes with a tall conical hat. On his robe was a slim light red cross on the front. He was a contemplative and Zen Master and was the man who had married Azad and I. His robe was the colour of the sky in my earlier dream – the colour of contemplation, the colour of the great deep and feminine principle of the waters; It is also the colour of the Great Mother – the Queen of Heaven. The red of the cross symbolises the element of fire, but also of the sun and of love. Murshid has a lot t o say about the symbolism of the cross in the Gathas. Before me was the dark figure of a man who had been terribly wounded and betrayed in life. I realised that he epitomised the archetype of the ‘Wounded Healer’. Only the wounded can heal. And finally, in my hand was a spring onion, split open, so that I could see the inside which the layers like the onion did not have, but where the inside was finely mashed up to a lush green colour. Green - the sacred colour of verdant life, with no layers or boundaries. Spring signifying a new beginning – a life after ‘death’. I have taken this to mean that out of all suffering, we come to know and experience the sacred inner realm and once there, the boundaries and layers disappear into a sacred Unity. These dreams have allowed me to experience and understand what we have been taught and in remembering these experiences, we relive and dive ever deeper into the inner realms. Since Kabir’s illness and death we have worked with several of Nawab’s blogs ‘About Life after Death’ in our group. We have been profoundly moved by this process. Nawab’s blog is a valuable aid to our understanding of what we need on our spiritual journey. Page 15 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

How A Dream Changed My Life By Karim

Editor's note: This is an abridged version of the original article. I would encourage you to read the original article in its entirety to savour the full meaning. Please contact Karim for the complete version.

“In the beginning…” (Witnessing the Presence) The “Word” Almost forty years ago now, I had a ‘dream/experience’. This dream/experience, unlike any other before it, carried its own ‘veracity’, needing nothing outside of it to confirm its authenticity. So obvious were its antecedents that one was left in no-doubt as to its truth. It begat a lifelong change of direction and introduced a new ‘purposiveness’ to life itself. There was a before and; there was an after. Such life-changing ‘dreams/experiences’ I prefer to refer to (after the late Professor Henri Corbin) as ‘Imaginal-Realm’ events, not in the usually understood meaning given today to the work of the imagination, implying not-real or fantasy, but, indeed, just the opposite: that of the ultimately Real. Given this proviso, then, these kinds of ‘happenings’ form part of an Intermediate realm whereby the divine, through the aegis of the human ‘Imaginative faculty’, speaks to us, to our ‘consciousness’, through symbols and stories that convey something to our lives that we cannot do without. These symbols and stories may be very clear in and of themselves, but may still take years, even decades to work their way through to our day-to-day conscious awareness’s, if they ever do. However, for the most part, the changes that follow, or flow-on from these gifts from the divine being, have already changed us such that we can never go back to a ‘pre’ state, but must forever find ways and means to accommodate ourselves to this changed inner ‘landscape’. The impacts of some of these ‘experiences’ are similar to what are known today as ‘NDE’s’ (‘near-death experiences’) although they do not require us to be, in some fashion, traumatically thrown into beyond-consciousness states to comprehend this ‘otherness’ that I am speaking of here. We can reach them through altered states of consciousness within the here-and-now. Recently I read the following in relation to ‘spiritual dreams’ and their interpretation, by the late American Les Hixon Nur al Jerrahi: ‘…The imagery of spiritual dreams can be disturbing, shocking, confusing, unclear, or even totally obscure. The inspired interpretation must fit the dream as a key fits the lock for which it was designed. The door of awareness of the dervish dreamer opens when that key is turned by the careful hand that pours the Wine of Love into the empty glass of the surrendered heart, filling it to the brim, or even over the brim…’ With these thoughts in mind, let’s return to these dreams thus spoken of above. Page 16 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

What then is one to do given this claimed ‘lock and key’ conundrum? Although, in truth, and it took me more than half (my current) lifetime to discover this fact, such ‘locked dreams’ seem always to come complete with the necessary ‘keys’ to unlock them. Indeed this ‘unlocking’ is part and parcel of the changes that have already occurred on our inner-plane and it only really awaits for us to ‘see’ this fact at the level of our everyday consciousness. For some, this may take a very, very, long time! However these ‘dreams’ are purposeful by their very nature, not some mere random event, but given to help us travel on our own unique ‘path of return’. It behoves us then to work on and with them. To the ‘dream’ then:

Dream – early 1980 “In the beginning…” I was lying on a bed, flat on my back. My (then) wife lay next to me to my right. We were staying overnight in my eldest brother’s house in Adelaide. I found myself to be awake and, as was my then habit, I was alert and watching my mind. Suddenly I found myself, my conscious mind, to be outside the physical body, observing it lying flat on the bed. As I watched this body I was suddenly aware that another body – this one seemingly composed of light – was beginning to lift out of the physical body. It appeared to be an exact replica of the physical one, however, as this change occurred the observing mind/consciousness was now back inside this new body of light. It felt ‘light’ in every sense of the word, in the sense of illumination and in the sense of lightness and (perhaps most of all) in the sense of freedom this transmitted to the conscious awareness that was now part of it. I was now only aware of this transfer of ‘consciousness’ from the one dense physical body to its counterpart light body just prior to this moving away from the one in the other. The next thing that I can recall becoming aware of was that there was an understanding being transmitted to me that everything in creation was linked to everything else, and that nothing was left out of this ‘connectedness’. Simultaneously I was given a word that described this connectedness. Indeed, was this connectedness. The word and that described by or through it were one and the same thing. At this point (what I later described as) the egoconsciousness (re)entered the picture, excitedly ‘saying’: this is new knowledge! Nobody knows this. The Indians are wrong in their assertions that the Universe is based on ‘Vibration’! That’s not it! I must tell people this! ...etc., etc., etc..! Instantly the mind, by now very excited, ‘fell’ back into the physical body. On this re-entry, however, this ‘falling’ from the beautiful ‘body of light’, with its sense of lightness, illumination, and – perhaps above all - freedom, all were exchanged for the immediately increasing ‘darkness’ and the sense of heaviness of the physical body. But – over and above this feeling of being dropped back into the dark prison of the physical body/mind was the need to stabilise this mind which was by this stage spinning wildly out of control. I recalled later that this felt like a stage show I had once seen whereby a Chinese conjurer Page 17 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

had kept a number of plates spinning at the same time on top of bamboo poles. Such was the stater of my returning mind! Of course, once this had settled down somewhat, through the excitement that was (as noted above) also present, there began the desperate efforts to reclaim the word that I knew with total certainty I had known. Nothing else concerning the remembrance of the whole experience had disappeared from my consciousness, only this, and this made all the difference! I knew it wasn’t ‘vibration,’ that was now clear. I attempted to look up in Webster’s the semantic origins, those subtle nuances of meaning between ‘Vibration’ and ‘oscillation’ (which I now felt was closer in meaning) but in reality I knew this wasn’t ‘it’ either. Soon, however, came the vague recollection of the words of a Gospel from my childhood exposure to ‘Religious Knowledge’ (“‘Molly’ Morgan, I would like to belatedly thank you for your perseverance”!). It was: “In the beginning was the Word....” Although I did not at that time posses a Bible I quickly acquired one and almost as quickly found John (the Fourth Gospel): Indeed, his opening salvo: ‘In the beginning was the Word, and the Word was with God, and the Word was God…’ [best read in the King James version, not the revised editions which replace Word with ‘Logos’].

Unfolding the Enfolded Order (and its many twists and turns) Many twists and turns were to occur, many more ‘experiences’ and much ‘water under the bridge’ before the next steps were made in this ‘unfolding’ of the event described in a form that could be recognised by myself beyond this initial ‘awakening’. This gradual unfolding continued often bubbling just below the surface of things over all the ensuing years. What David Bohm (the physicist and friend of Jiddu Krishnamurti) has described as ‘the enfolded’ or ‘the implicate order’, would reappear again and again and again, ‘unfolding’ throughout the nearly forty intervening years of my life, each time showing its skirts in new and sometimes exciting ways, some simple, others much more complex. One of these unfolding ‘precipitating events,’ as an example, came to me in the form of a story I came across, that of a tale told to the young Laurens Van de Post. Because of the power of its invocation, and its effect on me it is worth presenting in full (though its full implications for me I will leave for the reader to ‘open’ for themselves). It goes like this: “Once upon a time…a hunter of the first people went to a place of reeds and flowers and birds singing by deep water. He knelt down to fill his calabash with drinking water, and as he did so was startled to see, in the still glass of the shining surface before him, the reflection of an enormous white bird that he had never seen before. Astonished, he looked up, but the bird had already vanished over the black tops

Page 18 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

of a dense forest – ‘the forest of the night’. From that moment his heart was filled with a restless longing to capture the bird. Leaving his cattle, his wife, his children and his people, he went deep into the forest looking for the bird, and out into the great world beyond. Yet everywhere he found nothing but rumour of the bird. At last, when he was a very old man and near his end, he was told that he would find the bird on a great white mountain in the heart of Africa, far north of his own home. He found the mountain and started climbing it. He climbed for days, until, one night-fall, he found himself on the edge of the white cap of the mountain. And still there was no sign of the bird. He realised his end was near. Feeling he had failed, he threw himself down like a little child, crying: ‘Oh! My mother! Oh!’ Then a voice answered him and said: ‘Look! Oh! Look!’ He looked up and saw, in the red sky of a dying African day, a white feather falling slowly down towards him. He held out his hand and grasped it. With the feather in his hand, he died content as night fell. ‘But what sort of bird was it, old father?’ we asked the shepherd. We often asked it; but always he would shake his head and say: ‘I do not know its name; no-one knows its name. It was a great white bird, and one feather of it in the hand of a man was enough; one feather of it on the head of a chief brought happiness to all his people.’…” (From a story told to Laurens Van de Post in childhood by an old Hottentot servant; from his book: The Heart of the Hunter, Hogarth Press, 1961, pp199-200)

This is also the story of my own personal journey, my story, the one I am telling now. Although I, of course, recognised some of this at the time I came across Van de Post’s beautiful rendition of this archetypal portrayal of what the Sufi likes to style ‘the Journey of Return’, much more of this lay in the future and was not available to me in its fullness at the time of its initial presentation.

The Coorong Dream In 2009, almost 30 years after the first dream quoted above, I had another significant dream/experience that I have only, in the last few days, recognised was/is deeply and profoundly connected to the first. Because it, too, had a profound impact on the subsequent shape my life was to take over the following years, it needs to be retold here for the subsequent sections to begin to tie all these disparate threads together. I was travelling from NSW, where my second wife and I were living in the little New England town of Uralla, just south of Armidale on the Northern Tablelands, to South Australia, where one of my sons, his wife, and some of our grandchildren lived. For this trip I was travelling alone (Dana, my wife, being unable to get the time-off to go with me). I decided on impulse to drive via the South Australian coastal dunes area known as ‘The Coorong’, and - although this involved quite a detour from my normal route, and was some 150 or so kilometres South-East of Adelaide – it was one of my special places, a place I had loved ever since visiting it some 30 or so years previously when I had first arrived in Australia from England in the mid-1970’s. A lonely and wind Page 19 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

-swept coastal dunes and wetlands National Park that fringes the Great Southern Ocean for more than 150 kilometres, it’s appeal to me lay precisely in this ‘aloneness’, in the potential for the solitude and silence that it proffered. The evening that I arrived there, after putting up my tent, lighting a fire and cooking my dinner, I sat alone in the flickering darkness, next to the fire, drinking a bottle of red wine, and watching as the constellations and blanket of stars that constitute the Milky Way sparkled into view in the great velvety blackness overhead. From a distance out across the great dunes, one could hear the faint thunder of the waves of the Southern Ocean as they ended their own long journey from the deep cold southland of Antarctica, breaking on the long stretches of the Coorong’s beach. A fine evening indeed, I retired early and slept well. At some point I ‘awoke’ into an incredible ‘dream state,’ sometime prior to the early light of dawn. This is that ‘dream’:

I and a companion were standing in the desert looking at a yellow sandstone castle or temple. Large wide stone steps led up to the large entrance. To the left, a cobbled ramp led up to one side of this building. In front of me to my right side strode one of the most beautiful human beings I have ever seen; a black Nubian dressed in a flowing dark green silk robe was also walking towards this structure. He looked at me and inclined his head slightly to me, smiling slightly as he did so, and pointing, waving slightly his right index finger towards the structure. I moved forward, and – as I did so - I noticed a woman on all fours crawling up the stone ramp to my left. The thought crossed my mind that she was practicing some sort of asceticism, and I said to myself something to the effect of, “thank God, I’ve done all that and I don’t have to go through that anymore!”

Page 20 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

I moved forward and upwards on the wide stone staircase. At the top, just inside the entrance to this grand stone edifice there was a rectangular stone ‘tablet’ on which was an inscription in English. Around the inside walls of the courtyard of this fine building were a series of large oval stone tablets high up on all the walls of the quadrangle, each with an identical inscription in dark green Arabic script. I proceeded to read the rectangular stone tablet in front of me and was shocked to glean from it that, “ …the English Church was an abomination…” I moved into the courtyard to accost a young woman also dressed in a green silk gown, this one of a slightly lighter shade than that worn by the man seen previously. There were other men and women nearby, similarly dressed. I was moved to speak with her and said that I was outraged to read the inscription on the first of the tablets (the rectangular one at the entrance) which was there for all to see and was, in my view, a lie. I said so and also something to the effect that I bet the other tablets with the Arabic inscription on them were not negative! She conveyed to me that I should watch her closely, and then proceeded to bare her left breast (right from my perspective) and begin to rub and tap on it. I must confess to some slight feelings of lust initially. However, as I watched as asked, I could see through the breast as it were, to its inside, where a creamy white substance appeared. As I watched in fascinated attention now, there began to manifest, to appear on her flesh in green Arabic script, an embossed replica of the inscription present on all the oval stone tablets adorning the walls, also in green. Finished she asked me to touch the flesh, her flesh, to feel the word thus embossed there. Then she asked me what it (the inscription/demonstration) meant, or reminded me of. Thinking for a moment only (all the others standing around were clearly also fixated too, listing for my response) I responded. It reminded me, I said, of something an old man in India had said to me [in relation to what a clairvoyant had told me during an impromptu reading (prior to that trip), that the name of the person I must travel to India to see (J Krishnamurti) was written on my forehead in neon letters (I had not told her anything that could have led her to this conclusion, nor had I ever met her before this event). This old Indian man, a devotee of Shri Ramakrishna, on hearing from me this same story, had said,] “In India we have a saying. That which is written on your forehead can never be removed”. It was as if I had failed the most elementary of tests and all the bystanders turned away. The Dream is over. I am now wide awake and clearly stunned (blissed-out would perhaps describe it better) by the dream and its contents, which I proceeded to write down almost as soon as I was up and about my day. I wrote and wrote, long into the morning, and only stopped when, taking a mobile-phone call from my son, he asked me when I would be arriving in Adelaide! I quickly packed up my tent and all the accoutrements that go with camping in the Bush, and, reluctantly now, headed for Adelaide, the spell broken.

Page 21 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Who was the man in dark green silk robe that I had seen first of all? I felt immediately that this was Dul Nun, the Nubian, often considered one of the first Sufis whom many consider to be identical with the Green man spoken of in the Qur’an who is also often conflated with Khidr, the so-called guide of the Sufis, and the protagonist of Moses in the Qur’an. What of those ‘others’ that attended to my meeting with the young woman, indeed, the young woman herself, who were they? The “Inhabitants of Heaven” are often spoken of in the Qur’an as being “dressed in green silk robes”. Were these people, then, “Inhabitants of Heaven”? What of the oval stone tablets? What was the Arabic word thus inscribed on them? And who or what did the oblong stone tablet refer to as “an abomination”? Why was the building incomplete, without its roof? All these questions and more would haunt me for many years to come. Like the first dream, however, it was always clear that this dream too was both important and specifically crafted for me. The ‘unlocking’, such as it has been, has taken a further almost 10 years. Is it now complete, and how does this dream help in solving the outstanding ‘mysteries’ left in my heart/consciousness by the first one? Where is the key?

Resolutions So, how, after all these years, does the foregoing bring me closer to answering the questions raised in relation to the ‘Dream/Experiences’ that I believe have changed my life? And in what way do these experiences (where we do not have access to some ‘other’ who will unlock the meaning inherent in these states of being) present us with the keys to do so? Recall the first dream aftermath. The giving of words of the Gospel of John’s, thus: ‘In the beginning was the Word…’ Recall also that - in the second dream – the oval Stone Tablets contained an inscription, each the same as the other, each the same as that which the young woman in green silk robes had shown me, as she tapped and rubbed her bare breast, showing how the ‘Word’ emerged from within her heart embossed on her flesh… urging me to “See it, touch it! Of what does it remind you?” What of this looking, this tapping and rubbing then? Recall: “Knock, and the door [of the heart – the inner] will open unto you…”, and the task of the Sufi: The Sufi must cleanse the rust from the mirror of the heart (rubbing) if they are to know, to see, to come in touch with, that which is reflected thereupon. And recall also: ‘…And the Word was made flesh, and dwelt among us… Page 22 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

And the light shineth in darkness and the darkness comprehended it not…’ [I apologise to those committed Christians for my paraphrasing of some of John’s words] And what of the rectangular stone tablet that I took such offence at, positioned as it was so prominently at the head of the steps inside the entrance of the Stone building/be it a castle of a temple? What of it, and why such offence? It, like the Lyche-Gate before it, appears to me now, in this newly revealed light, to represent all that I now know myself to be in my more reflective moments. All my pretentions. All my failings. All my errors of omission, the commissions, the faults that one tries to hide from another in this world…there for all to see, writ large, with nowhere to hide from them! Me! The ‘English Church” – this abomination is …ME. Yes. The truth of the matter is that all of it is me, the good, the bad, and – of course – the ugly. It is this that I wished to put the lie to, to have hidden from view. But, in the long run, all will be seen. Just as surely as the young woman had ‘manifested’ on her breast that which was inscribed on the oval stone tablets, that which was truly her, I was the one ‘responsible’ for what had appeared to me in the dream experience as ‘a lie’ on the rectangular stone tablet. Positioned for all to see (as indeed at the end of our own journeys all will be exposed to the gaze of the One who knows all). Nothing derivative will be permitted to obfuscate the truth from view. Only that which is truly us, that which is written on our hearts, truly lasts, and is worth all the effort. That is always how it has been. And, in the long run, it is right that it be so. Better to know this before we die, whilst we still have the chance to do something about it all. Nothing derivative will be allowed at the end of things, when we stand naked before the One who knows all. Thus the wheel has turned full circle. The knowledge thus given through living, through the dreams playing out in everyday life has been shown to be worth the journeying, the time it has taken to find all this out. And I am happy that I have been given the chance to – to some extent –make amends for the mistakes, the follies, the deliberate subterfuges, that have also been part of all this journeying, for - in the final analysis – who can ask for more than this?

Epilogue A few months ago, I went with my wife to Adelaide where she had a specialist appointment. We were running early, something very unusual for us as my wife had misread the time of her appointment and – by the time we found out – we were already on our way! Taking the opportunity to enjoy the extra time we had we dropped in to a coffee shop in East Adelaide, and then a second hand bookshop nearby. Not sure that I wanted anything and having little money to spend, I picked up a yellow jacketed hardback book written by Laurens Van Der Post in his later years, ‘About Blady’, a late autobiographical piece. Whilst purchasing the book, I talked to the bookseller about the story of the white feather and the hunter. Later I found my way to the Adelaide Parklands where I found a lovely place to sit and read in the sun. The story was Page 23 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

fascinating and opened many questions about life and its meanderings. At one point, looking up from reading a particularly poignant piece with tears in my eyes (really gratitude for the book, the day, and life more generally) I spotted something on the grass just 10 or 15 meters away. I got up and walked over, bent down and retrieved … a large white feather. After collecting Dana we headed back to the coffee shop to wait for our daughter and have some lunch with her. I decided to drop in to the bookshop, and speak to the bookseller I had spoken to earlier. I asked her if she recalled our earlier conversation. She assured me she did. I then told her the story of what had happened since I had seen her a couple of hours before. Then I produced the book and drew out the feather. She hugged herself and said she had “gone all goose-bumpy”.

A fitting end to this story? Almost. What of the roof of the building in the ‘Coorong Dream/experience’? Why was it missing? Some things are best left unsaid, perhaps, and, like all good stories, the end sometimes cannot happen until all the participants have been fully dealt with. My end is not yet, so the building is not complete. How will it end? Like the old shepherd said to Laurens Van Der Post when they pressed him further in relation to his story with: “…‘But what sort of bird was it, old father?’ we asked the shepherd. We often asked it; but always he would shake his head and say: ‘I do not know its name; no-one knows its name. It was a great white bird, and one feather of it in the hand of a man was enough; one feather of it on the head of a chief brought happiness to all his people.’…” I conclude that my story is not yet over, my building work not yet complete. I will happily tell you if this changes!

Page 24 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019

Review by Carole Voss of The Witch as Teacher in Fairy Tales www.goodreads.com

This beautiful treasure “The Witch as Teacher in Fairy Tales” by Nuria Daly seems sprung from the heart of wisdom herself. Importantly it is a lovely resource for lovers of Baba Yaga, The Frog Princess and The Fairy of the Dawn! The author explores many hidden mysteries embedded in these stories and others that reach into the language of the region of the heart. It’s a responsible and serious fusion of Ancient folk cultures, Esoteric mysticism, Alchemy, Sufism and Jungian psychology with an endearing and uplifting perspective about the Witch Archetype. Importantly there is a prompt in understanding the subtle differences and yet unique spiritual journey for women. I highly recommend this book to anyone who is on the soul’s journey, story tellers who would like the opportunity to gain greater depth into the stories they may tell and anyone who studies about or feels an intimate connection to the mysterious divine feminine.

Page 26 Spirit Matters Volume 23 Issue 1 March 2019