Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: The Ancient Path of The Mystic
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee, Ph.D. is a Sufi teacher in the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiyya Sufi Order. Born in London in 1953, he has followed the Naqshbandi Sufi path since he was nineteen. In 1991 he became the successor of Irina Tweedie, who brought this particular Indian branch of Sufism to the West and is the author of Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master. He then moved to Northern California and founded The Golden Sufi Center.
He has authored a series of books that give a detailed exploration of the stages of spiritual and psychological transformation experienced on the Sufi path, with a particular focus on the use of dreamwork as inner guidance on the journey. Since 2000 the focus of his writing and teaching has been on spiritual responsibility in our present time of transition, the awakening global consciousness of oneness, and spiritual ecology (www.workingwithoneness.org). He has contributed to several other books, was featured in the TV series Global Spirit, and was interviewed by Oprah Winfrey as a part of her Super Soul Sunday series.
The book, For Love of the Real is regarded as a completion of over twenty-five years of his writing and teaching, as it draws together many of the threads of his work which began with his 1993 book The Bond with the Beloved. Together with its publication, we thought it could be helpful to summarize the different areas of his work, all of which are woven together in this final volume: Areas of Work.
His most recent book is Including the Earth in our Prayers, which links together his work in the emerging field of Spiritual Ecology, the need for a spiritual response to our present ecological crisis, with the practice of Spiritual Activism.
An Interview with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: The Ancient Path of The Mystic
OMTimes: It is an honor and pleasure to have you with us; Can you tell us how you started on the Mystical Path of Sufism. Was it a specific situation?
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: When I was sixteen, I was awakened spiritually in the most unexpected way by reading a simple Zen Koan, “the wild geese do not intend to cast their reflection, the water has no mind to receive their image.” This saying opened a door I did not even know existed, and instead of the grey world of my boarding school, I found myself in a place of color and light and laughter, sunlight sparkling off the waters of the nearby river. As a result, I started to meditate, sitting present in emptiness, and began to have inner experiences of a reality beyond the mind.
I practiced Zen meditation on my own for the next couple of years but realized in order to go deeper, I needed to find a teacher. I met various teachers, for example, Krishnamurti, who gave me gave me a very powerful experience of a space of pure freedom beyond the mind, but no way to really live that experience. Then, one evening, I was invited by friends to a spiritual lecture and found myself sitting behind an old woman with her white hair tied up in a bun. After the talk, I was introduced. She gave me one look with her piercing blue eyes, and I had the physical experience of becoming a piece of dust on the floor. I had no idea what it meant. I had no idea what was happening. Only years later did I read the Sufi saying that the disciple has to become less than the dust at the feet of the teacher. This is the ancient process of the annihilation of the ego, the loss of the small self so that one can realize the true Self.
The old woman was Irina Tweedie, who had recently returned from India where she had been trained by a Sufi master. I started attending the small meditation group in her room beside the train tracks in North London. I had found the place where I belonged.
OMTimes: What is Sufism, and how is Sufism is connected to Islam?
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: Sufism is the mysticism of the heart, a way back to God through the mystery of divine love. There are two schools of thought. One says that Sufism is the mystical heart of Islam and that in order to be a Sufi, you need to be a Muslim. The other school of thought, to which my teacher and I belong, says that Sufism is older than Islam. It is the ancient wisdom of the heart. But it flourished under Islam where it gained its name. Sufism developed into different paths or tariqas, with different spiritual practices to make the journey back to God. For example, the Mevlevi path founded by Rumi uses music and dance, while my own Naqshbandi path practices a silent meditation and a silent dhikr (repetition of the name of God).
One great Sufi said, “Sufism was at first heartache, only later it became something to write about.” I feel that certain souls are attracted to having a love affair with the Divine—they need this quality of love to realize the Truth that is present within the heart. They often become Sufis and are attracted to the path and practices that best suit their heart, their spiritual nature; for example, some souls need music, while for others, silence is best.
OMTimes: In Practicing a Mystical Path that is not necessarily associated with any Religion, how can one feel authentic to oneself?
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: A mystical path takes one inward to the “root of the root of oneself,” where one discovers one’s true nature, which for the Sufi is a state of union with God, or the Beloved, as the Sufi describes the Divine. Lover and Beloved are united in the oneness of divine love. In this experience, one discovers one’s complete authentic self, and then learns to live from this divine core of one’s being in daily life, as expressed in the saying, “Outwardly to be with the people, inwardly to be with God.” It is a deepening sense of divine presence and oneness that is alive within one’s heart and daily life.
This journey to love can include religion and yet is also beyond any constriction of form. The great Sufi, Ibn ‘Arabi, wrote about the divine unity that is the foundation of life. And he also spoke about love, and following the path of love that embraces all the apparent divisions of humanity:
My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, and a temple for idols and the pilgrim’s Kaa‘ba, and the tables of the Torah and the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Love’s camels take, that is my religion and my faith.
With simple and powerful imagery, this man the Sufis call the Greatest Sheikh speaks of a space that knows no boundaries but belongs to love. For the mystic, for the lover, everywhere is a place of devotion, a place of meeting our Beloved. This world—with its myriad forms, light, and darkness, sadness and joy—is a sacred space, a place where love reveals its secrets, where divine oneness comes to meet us. All around us is an unending revelation, the wind whispering the secrets of love, messages from our heart’s Beloved.
OMTimes: Would you say that there is a common ground to all the Spiritual and Mystical Practices, as an “Atlas of Ancient Wisdom”?
Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee: “Truth is one. Learned men call it by different names,” the Rig Veda, one of Vedanta’s earliest texts, declared thousands of years ago.
In the core of every human being, there are simple, essential truths that can be experienced through any mystical path. The most basic truth is oneness, what the Sufis call the unity of being. All of creation—all the plants and animals and oceans and peoples—are a living expression of divine oneness. We are one. Another simple mystical truth is the love that is our essential nature, and also the essential nature of everything that exists. All of creation is an outpouring of divine love, and the mystical path is a way to experience this truth within the heart. Within our spiritual heart, what the Sufis call “the heart of hearts,” we can have a direct experience of the love and oneness that belongs to the divine nature of everything. In this experience, this unio mystica we lose our sense of a separate self, it is dissolved in love “like sugar in water.” This is the shoreless sea of divine love, the ocean to which the drop of our individual self returns.
Continue to Page 2 of the interview with Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee
