36 - Old Wine in New Bottles

We think and feel differently today to the way our ancestors did in many areas, not only owing to the advances in technology, communications or science, but in terms of our philosophy of life, of our sensitivity to dissonance in music, and unrealism in art. We have moved quite a few steps in areas unexplored and even shunned by our ancestors. In no way could we build a cathedral like Notre Dame of Paris or Chartres or Cologne, nor would the ornate structure of Milano Cathedral or the filigree niceties of the more stylized Indian music tally with our sense of clear lines and functionality.

If we care to take an analytic look at the evolution of architecture, we will realize that the new emerges as of necessity out of the old, like organic life out of the inorganic. The new Coventry Cathedral was planned so that the ruins of the outdated cathedral are still in view, somewhat organically integrated. In an effort to bridge the old and the new, in Ted van Leer's and others' compositions, medieval folkloric tunes lead into the rock and roll style, spanning centuries with ease. Composers demure at the thought of composing anything of the caliber and maturity of J.S. Bach, yet Stravinsky in the Symphony of Psalms brought something of the mettle of the masters of the past through, monumentally.

Yet in the areas of spirituality, particularly religion, most of our cultures are medieval in their thinking and jaded in their emotions. For the sake of clarity, let us at least get a basic confusion out of the way; spirituality must not be confused with religion, nor necessarily, religion with spirituality. At best, religion is institutionalized spirituality, sclerosed into dogmas, rituals, partisan allegiances and the establishment's power game.

If the major areas of our cultures can be updated, cannot spirituality be updated by extricating itself from its religious underpinnings? Of course! And what is more, this is what we are about. Pir-o-Murshid's ideas were challenging to the established thinking in his time; the full implications of their relevance only come into perspective in our time. When asked what I would do when I was grown up, he said, "He will spread the message to the intellectual audiences of the future." That was the language of the time. Today we would say that the awareness of people in the 80's interested in spirituality requires an updating in keeping with the thinking of our time. This is precisely the material of my brainstorming. Since Pir-o-Murshid's time, humans have landed on the moon. We can think of Planet Earth objectively as zoomed upon from outer space, instead of thinking of outer space as seen from the Planet. Science has provided mystics with several paradigms which serve as practical models to represent experiences that mystics could not explain before; the holistic paradigm, inverted space, new vistas in psychology which fascinated Pir-o-Murshid.

Sometimes we are saying what our predecessors were saying but in a new context, which means that implications with regard to our present way of living and thinking need to be woven into the picture. Being out of context reeks of an anachronism. Recently, Coleman Barks presented a rendering of Mevlana Jelal-ed-Din Rumi's poetry, which is to say the least, unsettlingly challenging and uproariously provoking. Would Jelal-ed-Din have thought this way if he had lived in our time? There is no way of knowing. Yet somehow, just like our bodies are those of our ancestors, converged and mutated, so with our minds. Our minds are their minds that have moved with the time. The Bible is appreciated by some in a modernized version.

Pir-o-Murshid lived much closer to our time. Could his words bear the trauma of Coleman's packing? How would Ulm Cathedral look if one replaced some of its naves by modern modular units? How would Pir-o- Murshid's thoughts be rendered in our modern jargon? What ideas would be catalyzed by those thoughts in an innovative and inventive way? Instead of saying, "The mind of God", one would say, "The mind of the universe", as I have been coining it. Instead of saying "Divine emotion", one would say "Emotion in its cosmic or transcendental dimension." Instead of saying, "Our divine inheritance", one would say, "The transcendent dimensions of the person looked upon as the whole person", that is, by virtue of the holistic paradigm or wholistic paradigm of our time. Instead of "spirit, one would say, "Energy in its subtlest form, operating as a catalyst." Instead of saying, "Make God a reality", one would say, "Actuate the resourcefulness programmed into your psyche, which is cosmic and impersonal." Instead of saying, "The hand of God or the divine intention", one would say, "The software of the universe." Quite frankly, I prefer Pir-o-Murshid's own words, although the above renderings sound very much like the way I speak and think. He said, "If it is not the coin of the day, let it be rendered an antique." There is room in our day and age for Notre Dames, for plainsong and square dancing and Bach and Schumann without doing what Kosmos did to Bach's three part "Invention in Solaris." But there is also room for "Solaris" too. So there is room for Murshid's original words, and also Pir Vilayat's rendering.

It is not just a matter of linguistics; there is a shift in values in our time. For example, today we are wary that there may well be a touch of masochism in saintlihood or sadism in mastery. Predictably, Pir-o-Murshid had pointed out that the act of the policeman punishing the boys who had beaten up a dervish was better than that of the dervish inviting them to beat him for his foibles. Murshid said that mastery was not desirousless nor checking or frustrating impulses, but harnessing them. He wondered whether the rishis in the Himalayas would have the philanthropic dispositions of many American businessmen and that he wanted to show how one could bring spirituality into life in the world. There is no doubt that his thoughts were clearly novel as compared with the traditional spiritualists. Yet the thoughts and beings of the Hindu rishis and Christ and the Sufis found a new life in Pir-o-Murshid in their relevance to modern life in the world; so his thoughts live and blossom in us.
