Darvish Khan Writes

Ivy Duce was confirmed by Meher Baba in 1952 as the murshida of Sufism Reoriented, an order derived from Inayat Khan’s Sufi Movement in America. He told her that he would help her and her students spiritually on the basis of her absolute honesty, as she was not spiritually illumined.

In the discussions between Ivy Duce and Don Stevens with Baba on the subject of succession, Ivy came to believe that Baba had promised her that there would be a continuous lineage of saints or Perfect Masters guiding Sufism Reoriented for 700 years, i.e. until Baba as the Prophet/ Avatar once again returns.

This point has been refuted by Don Stevens who was in a unique position to know the facts about this contentious issue. He was in fact the primary liaison between murshida Duce and Baba, and has gone on record as saying that Baba pointedly disabused murshida Duce on this subject; Don relates that Baba said Sufism Reoriented would be blessed with a real murshid(a) “from time to time”, and that this would be entirely Baba’s business. This point has been confirmed by Baba’s secretary, Eruch Jessawala.

Don Stevens resigned from Sufism Reoriented in the early ’70’s because of Murshida Duce’s chronic dishonesty. (Don relates that Terry Duce, Ivy Duce’s husband, once drew him aside and cautioned him, “my wife is an habitual liar”.)

The question arises, how and why did Ivy Duce get so carried away with spiritual pretension? The idea that the sufi order which had been entrusted to her would be guided by genuine saints or Masters for 700 years is a spectacular assertion. In the annals of spiritual tradition, there has never been such an example.

At best, a spiritual lineage (as a public and recognizable institutional lineage) of genuine saints and or Masters  might last for one or two hundred years. The Tibetan lineage of Marpa, Milarepa and Gampopa  comes to mind. This lineage continued as the Kagyu lineage, but not with an unbroken lineage of Perfect Masters or saints leading the order. The Sikh lineage of Guru Nanak lasted for two hundred years, assuming that they were all bona fide saints or Masters. The lineage of Moinuddin Chishti is a celebrated lineage, but it did not last as an institutional lineage of genuine saints and Masters for much more than a hundred and fifty or so years.

Please mark my point: genuine spiritual succession continues forever, but not as an identifiable public and institutional lineage. The succession of Perfect Masters and saints is always assured as a transmission, but not at all necessarily within a given institutional context. The Spirit blows where it wills.

The great problem with Sufism Reoriented’s assertion is that it maintains that Baba promised a continuous, public and institutional spiritual lineage of 700 years. This reminds one of the Catholic Church, which is based on a priestly hierarchy.

Why would Sufism Reoriented get confused on the difference between  priestly and spiritual lineages? Well, if murshida Duce had left the problem of succession to Baba, it would have remained a spiritual issue. However, she decided to resolve this problem herself, and not having the spiritual status to properly address it, she appointed an occultist, Jim Mackie, as a presumed saint and successor. This consigned her sufi order to become something like the Catholic Church with its exalted priestly lineage . The proof of this is the newly completed Sanctuary of Sufism Reoriented in Walnut Creek which is built to last 700 years as the seat of this new Papacy.

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This election cycle has thrown confused America into bold relief like never before. The cool face of Neoliberalism is being vigorously challenged, but most still don’t know what the problem is all about. Obama’s suave eight years will give way to something pretty much the same- Hillary’s agenda, or something quite different- a vicious dog on the snarling Right or the barking alarm of the prescient Left. The time of Populist outrage has arrived.

If Obama himself could not articulate and address the politics of rage against the utter macho venality of the American political experiment aggravated by the singular problem of Big Carbon and  global warming/ climate change, then a polarized electorate will try to do so. But the interesting point is the near utter refusal by almost all politicians to precisely acknowledge the problem.

Big Carbon- the global and systemic dependency on fossil fuel, is lumbering and gorging like a Wooly Mammoth with no tomorrow. The Beast must die, and be replaced by a Green future. This is an inevitability; what remains to be seen is how long it takes for this to become a matter of public policy endorsed by the electorate. The subject must become an urgent and informed discussion on the national and regional levels and result in a united will to implement creative solutions. We need to drastically and collectively change our lifestyle.

What’s important to understand is that Neoliberalism is powered by Big Carbon; Neoliberalism is Corporatist State economics, i.e. an Oligarchy, or if you prefer, an Oilagarchy. It is the very opposite of what E.F. Schumacher advocates in “Small Is Beautiful: A Study of Economics As If People Mattered”. Neoliberalism is political economy run by corporations dedicated to Big Carbon. This trend gathered speed in the ’80’s under Reagan and then Bush, who started the movement to bust unions, gathered force and direction under Clinton with the repeal of Glass-Steagall (deregulation of speculative banking) and the passage of NAFTA (kick the small shopkeeper and farmer in the face), grew like a monstrous weed with Shrubby Bush’s military/ corporate invasion of Iraq and has continued with Obama’s Republican-Light politics of national surveillance, Drone Wars, TRP, etc. Hillary has repeatedly stated that she will continue this Neoliberal legacy if elected.

The great problem in addressing Big Carbon, Big Brother and Big Fist- Neoliberalism in short, is that it is a massive lumbering Animal not ready to die; it is the Big Elephant in the room nobody wants to talk about.

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I was born in Trieste, Italy. The hour I was born, according to my older brother Lewis, a US warship, the USS Renegade, shot off its cannons in my honor due to the fact that my father was the US Consul General. (King Farouk’s royal yacht was accidentally hit and sank.) I, myself, have no memory of this. But the assertion is not improbable on the basis that, not too long before, my father had entertained the first female Secretary of State, Claire Booth Luce, and my mother had impressed her with her southern (Mississippian) cooking: my mother was an outstanding chef.

I was a happy baby. My mother relates that I would wake in wee hours and silently smile in my crib. My nanny, Nantalia, who would later complain that the TV was watching her, would admonish my mother to not fret about my meditative habits, and let me be. I grew up to love cannelloni.

The family then moved to the imperial city of Washington, DC, where my shoplifting days began.  I was not more than five years old, when one day, I went to the supermarket with my mother. I was wearing baby galoshes, as it was raining, and in the check out counter I discovered the candy franchise; stack and stack of candy and chocolate! I slyly slipped delectables into my galoshes, and proceeded home. And when we arrived, oblivious of my stealth, I pulled off my galoshes to spill contraband all over the floor before my outraged mother. O my God, this was horrible. My very first and brutal interrogation began. We then went straightaway back to Chevy Chase Lakes where I had to apologize to the manager for my thievery.  I was crying and crying. This was a cataclysmic humiliation. I had to swear to never ever do this again.

We then moved back to Italy, to Rome. We lived on Niccolo Piccolo Minni St., which had a commanding view of St. Peter’s Basilica. We lived in the shade of the Vatican. I would often wave at the pope. I remember the Pieta; what happened I wondered that it came to this. The piazzas at Christmas were a miracle; so many colored lights. I was at a Catholic school, Marymount, when I came home one day with the conviction that God would give me whatever I really wanted. The nuns had told me this. That night, I prayed for a White Horse to be stabled in our villa. I woke up, opened the french doors on my balcony, surveyed the garden, and there was no White Horse. I was crushed. This memory was buried.

We moved back to Washington, the imperial and decadent city of jingoistic stammer, and at age nine or ten  I vowed to never take a job for which I had to wear a suit and tie. I have never broken this, my most enduring vow. In fact, I became a tradesman, a tile and stone setter. (But my vow to curtail shoplifting suffered setbacks.)

I was thirteen when in 1969 we moved to Bad Godesberg, Germany. I discovered fussball and bicycles- a white Peugeot  10 speed bicycle. I was liberated. Germany has no minimum drinking age limit, and Chuck and I would cycle to the bars and order Steinhagers, three at a time,  and then take the ferry across the Rhein to explore ruined castles. Thus began my German Romantic Period.

Back to decadent Washington and the eternal fog of the State Department where my father was sent to pasture for having annoyed Tricky Dick, now the President,  years before when he was Vice President under Eisenhower on an airplane when a stewardess, with a stage whisper, said, “guess who’s on the plane”, and her colleague replied- “the Vice-President!”; whereupon my father jumped out of his seat and exclaimed, “I want to get off, I want to get off!” This was my father’s greatest act of political courage in his distinguished career as a diplomat, and it sank him utterly.

I was shipped off to Quaker boarding school where I was to learn about silence. As it happened, I heard of Meher Baba at this time, on a weekend trip to Cambridge where I had an interview for admission to Harvard, where my brother was a senior- a 6th generation family Harvard attendee, when a Baba card was put into my hands by one of his friends, and which with great blessing ruined my life. Very quickly, nothing else really mattered.

I went on to attend Vassar College on the basis of the rumor that Jane Fonda had said that if the women of Vassar were to stretch out on the lawn head to toe, they would be laid all over. I was dismissed for poor grades and went on to Meherabad, India for the first time in January, 1976.

It was on Mehera’s porch that I heard that Baba is the “White Horse Avatar”, and a cascade of memories overwhelmed me. My most fervent childhood prayer was realized. I was nineteen years old. I had found my spiritual home.

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