Darvish Khan Writes

A friend of mine relates that Steve Edelman once asked Eruch Jessawala, “what was Baba’s (divine) mistake?”, to which he replied at once, “Sufism Reoriented”. This comes as no surprise given Eruch’s role as point man in addressing the twisted fate of SR with Ivy Duce appointing Jim Mackei as her alleged illumined successor in 1980.

Eruch famously rang the “Bell of Warning” in 1980, at Baba’s own order; Eruch relates that Baba “lifted” him out of his body while in Mandali Hall and into Baba’s incorporeal presence, and ordered him to ring the Bell of Warning.

So, the question is, what was Baba up to in “allowing” this mistake to happen in the first place? Any answer to this question is speculative of course, but Baba lovers- and others, are compelled by the enormity of the problem to seek answers.

Baba’s agreement to assist in writing the charter that served as the incorporation of SR was perhaps the single most enigmatic “work” of his advent. It can be contrasted to Baba’s assistance in the writing of Meher Center’s charter, which made it a non denominational Universal Spiritual Center which promotes the “direct” path to God, as opposed to a denominational and mediated path as an “indirect” path. Here is Baba’s statement on the matter:

http://www.meherlegacy.org/uploads/2/4/9/3/24931365/1952.july.20-baba_discourse_to_sufis.pdf 

Why would Baba grant a charter to a reoriented sufi lineage that at once confers on it the status of an indirect path? Isn’t there a colossal and baffling irony in this very act? Sufism, historically considered, is based on a personal relationship to saints and spiritual masters who derive their authority from the Prophet.

Baba’s own definition of Sufism, given in the context of discussing the Sufi Charter, states that only the relationship to the Prophet and Perfect Master properly defines sufism: see

Section 1 of the Sufi Charter, point #3

“By cherishing the fact that Sufism is mainly based on a definite acceptance of a God-Realized master and complete adherence to his guidance.”

and

From Notes On The Interview of Mrs. Duce, Miss Duce and Francis Brabazon at Myrtle Beach, 1952

“Sufism as understood by 99% of the people is not real Sufism. The terms sheikh, murshid, mureed are so lightly treated that real Sufism is lost sight of. As Jallaludin says- the only way to know Sufism is not by words or practices or discipline, but by becoming dust at the feet of the Master.”

Given that Baba felt so strongly about what defines “real” sufism, i.e. surrenderance to the Prophet/ Perfect Master, why would he agree to create an institutionalized sufi order based on the honorific status of its leadership? It makes no sense.

In fact, Francis Brabazon saw this at once. He had been conferred the status of sheikh in Inayat Khan’s sufi order, which he knew to be purely honorific- and not remotely approaching the status of a real murshid, which is itself infinitely removed from the status of a Perfect Master. He therefore declined to accept the leadership of an independent branch of Sufism Reoriented in Australia. Baba was enormously pleased with him.

To the contrary, Adi K. Irani has said that he discerned displeasure on Baba’s part when Ivy Duce accepted her role as murshida for America.

Baba did very clearly state that the Sufi Charter was to serve as a template for the reorientation of the principal religious “isms” as well. This alerts us at once to the symbolic nature of the work he was engaged in, i.e. the reorienting of all the world’s major religions to the singular reality of the Avatar/ Prophet and Perfect Master in defining religious and spiritual life.

According to both Eruch J. and Don Stevens, Baba told murshida Duce that her sufi order “would have an illumined murshid from time to time”. There is absolutely no evidence of any kind that Baba promised a continuous lineage of either murshids or Perfect Masters for the next 700 years. This assertion by murshida Duce is a complete fabrication. But SR has accepted this narrative as a founding truth.

Maybe the fate of SR is to serve as a cautionary tale of what happens when absolute honesty is sacrificed for a spiritual ambition that would have its cake and eat it too. Baba did, after all, condition his promise to help Ivy Duce in her honorific role as murshida upon “absolute honesty”.

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Sir Francis Bacon authored a  work called “The New Atlantis“, which was posthumously published in 1626. It is an utopian novel that describes an island where science and technocrats create a new world. The title refers to the myth of Atlantis as presented by Plato, which is the first historical reference to this ancient island-continent that sank itself through the abuse of energy some 10,000 years ago. In an account by Filis Fredrick, the final sinking of Atlantis was precipitated by a corrupt priestly class murdering the child-Avatar.

Bacon was referring to America as the new Atlantis. He was mad about the possibility of science, specifically the power of induction based on careful observation, to account for the laws of nature, and thereby create a new and ideal world. Bacon played a leading role in establishing the first English colonies in Virginia and the Carolinas.

America as a political experiment became devoted to exceptionally grand thinking about creating a completely new form of government in which sovereignty would lie with The People. In this quaint imagining, representative government referred exclusively to white male gentry who possessed the right to buy and sell Africans as slaves  and exterminate native Americans as soulless savages. Such was the beginning of the “New Atlantis”.

But according to Edgar Cayce, this was precisely the problem that brought about Atlantis’ demise:

“Cayce blamed the final destruction of Atlantis and the disintegration of their culture on greed and lust. According to Cayce, two rival parties fought for control of the Atlanteans in its final days. The Children of the Law of One wanted to return to a spiritual stewardship of the land based on natural laws. The other group, the Sons of Belial, wanted to exploit natural resources for material gain.”

“The chief focus of their conflict was a third class of dull, half-awake sub-humans used by the Sons of Belial for slave labor. The Children of the Law of One wanted to enlighten these sub–beings by raising their consciousness; the Sons of Belial wanted to keep them in ignorance and exploit them for their own gain.”

Essentially, the problem of Atlantis and the problem of America is the one and the same: the rise of a technocracy and ruling elites promoting empire in opposition to spiritual progressives over the disposition of a slave/ exploited worker class.

According to both Manly P. Hall and Edgar Cayce, the Americas were populated by Atlanteans in waves of emigration as a consequence of the protracted sinking of Atlantis. This refers to Native Americans, particularly certain tribal groupings, perhaps especially the Maya, Iroquois, Navajo and Hopi, the Sioux, the Cherokee and other tribes. Pharonic culture in ancient Egypt was also established by Atlanteans. Filis Fredrick states that she remembers a past life fleeing the final Atlantean catastrophe and arriving with other spiritual elites on the Carolina coast, near present day Myrtle Beach.

America is the New Atlantis, the New World promising both the possibility of democracy by the people and for the people on the basis of technological innovation, or the reprise of Atlantean misuse of energy, natural resources and the exploitation of a slave/ worker class and its ultimate destruction.

White evangelical Christians claim that God has appointed America a special destiny to rule the world in a Pax Americana that denies global warming and the problem of sustainability. They are fully supportive of Zionism which seeks to establish a white and Jewish settler colonialism through ethnic cleansing and genocide and to perpetuate endless war in the Middle East to secure the interests of empire.

Avatar Meher Baba has confirmed that America has a special destiny to guide the world spiritually- if it can overcome its longstanding abuse and misuse of energy. Baba has given the organization Sufism Reoriented a charter and mandate to represent love for God in his name- but only on the basis of absolute honesty on its part, which has already been called into question. 

Filis Fredrick has also stated that Akhenaten, the great spiritual iconoclast of ancient Egypt and a minor incarnation of the Avatar, was murdered by a rival high priest serving the status quo; she identified this high priest as the occult usurper of Sufism Reoriented, Jim Mackie.

What will be the destiny of the New Atlantis? How will the dark karmas that represent its past and inform its future play out? How will abusive technology and priestly lineages warp the divine destiny of America? Will the New Atlantis survive?

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Fascism, American style, means imploding corporatism and militarism. It is the fervent support of exceptionalism based on the subversion of the Constitution and the Bill of Rights. It is a bipartisan project, enabled by corporate media, to completely sabotage the American experiment.

The three branches of government have been subverted by corporate greed, military hubris and Orwellian religious nationalism, all of which comes into its sharpest focus in a foreign policy that promotes empire, endless war and the denial of global warming as its most important agenda.

America has no greater enemy than it its own fascist exceptionalism which is defended vigorously by the Presidency, Congress, the Supreme Court and Big Media.

Osama Bin Laden’s lasting victory has been to enshrine Islamophobia, on the one hand, and the pledge of eternal support for Zionism, on the other hand, as daggers in the heart of American democracy and world peace. American foreign policy has gone completely berserk in the raging against enemies largely contrived by its own actions, and in the support of murderous settler colonialism.

And this includes not just the War Machine, but the domestic Spy Machine. The collective defense and surveillance budget, including health care costs for veterans and separately budgeted projects such as the revival of the nuclear arms race is way, way more than a trillion dollars per annum. Most of this money goes directly into corporate pockets and investors’ bank accounts, i.e. into the pockets of the 1%, who rule America.

American fascism is the implosion of neoliberalism on the basis of trauma and fear, and has secured its death grip on American democracy by redefining freedom of speech and the separation of church and state as the right of corporatists to buy elections and the right of demagoguery to define anti Zionism as anti-Semitism and thereby indemnify Israel for institutionalized Apartheid and war crimes.

How did America ever come to buy this fascist swill?

America is itself a settler colonial project based on genocide and slavery, and we obviously have not had enough of rage, cruelty and violence. And so we have continued to rationalize that craven history in perpetuating racism and economic slavery on much of the world.

But we are so clever: we call it the War on Terror.

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Alan Cohen’s initial remarks suggested a response to Alisa Genovese’s recent address to the Circle of Friends on the subject of the Meher Baba Center of Northern California’s reprise in 2015 of the 1980 Bell Of Warning. Such was not the case. Alan had nothing to say about the mandali’s collective objection to Ivy Duce appointing Jim Macky (rhymes with quacky) as her “divinely sanctioned” successor.

Instead, Alan in superb avuncular rambling weaved a pastiche of inaccuracies about any number of subjects. Here is a list of some of them:

He adduces Jim Macky’s and Carol Conner’s endorsement of the Byramangala Baba Center as work significant to Meher Baba; Baba in fact shut down this project and disavowed it. Eruch Jessawala, as well, admonished the Bangalore group to not revive this project, which has been falsely marketed as a “Universal Baba Center”.

Alan gets confused about the distinction Baba himself made between direct and indirect paths and relationship to Meher Baba:

http://www.meherlegacy.org/uploads/2/4/9/3/24931365/1952.july.20-baba_discourse_to_sufis.pdf 

These two paths are not the same, and never will be! SR is an indirect path, that is it is mediated by an interlocutor; the direct path is based on only an unmediated and personal relationship with the Beloved.

Alan gets confused about Bhau confirming Carol Conner’s spiritual status: Bhau was never in a position to confirm Carol Conner’s spiritual status. Bhau himself became a guru in his last days to the consternation of many astute Baba lovers. (But not to his many sycophants.)

Alan gets confused about Adi K. Irani endorsing Jim Macky as a real murshid; Adi, in fact, thought Macky was as fragrant as kaka.

Alan gets confused about what Don Stevens has to say about Ivy Duce’s confused telling of what Baba promised her, etc. This is an especially glaring distortion of historical fact as Don Stevens was Ivy’s primary go-between with Baba on all matters pertaining to SR’s charter.

In fact, all the mandali alive in 1980 when the Bell of Warning was rung by Eruch J., thought Jim Macky was as fragrant as kaka.

All the gold medal philanthropy in the world can not save Sufism re-Reoriented from deviating from the path of absolute honesty and obedience to the Prophet of our time.

In fact, the path SR has taken is a path of power and self aggrandizement through  philanthropy and choral productions draped in religious garb for public acceptance. The image of St. Francis has been coopted for this purpose.  Alan in fact acknowledges this institutional modus operandi in referencing the difficultly SR had in obtaining the building permits to build a largely underground (out of sight) sanctuary in Walnut Creek, Ca: SR is in fact for tax purposes a church, the house Carol Conner lives in is a parsonage, Baba has become a “world teacher” and SR devotes huge amounts of time and resources to promote itself as engaged in Christian charity. All this is a power play for institutional acceptance.

There are obviously very few Baba lovers alive and willing to counter the lies and distortions perpetrated by spokespeople for Sufism re-Reoriented.  That the Circle of Friends has swallowed hook, line and sinker the narrative presented by this ersatz sufi order is amazing.

No one is questioning that reoriented sufis love Meher Baba. The problem is the lack of honesty in acknowledging the tragic history of this so called sufi Baba group. This is particularly the problem of leadership in this group which has guzzled the kool aid with gusto. And this includes Alan Cohen.

Even the Circle of Friends is not honest in its declared impartiality on the hosting of these events. They have removed video content and comments on this controversy and have blocked known and supposed critics from posting to its Facebook page. Most unfortunately, COF has abused the memory of the mandali in ringing the Bell of Warning.

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