The Psychohistorians

I wanted to write something about the Sufis. Contrary to some scholarship, they are not necessarily Islamic Mystics. Sufism predates Islam by at least 6,000 years. Sufism did take home in Islam during one phase of planetary human history. Islam, at one time, carried the evolutionary impulse. Mohamed, who channeled messages from the Archangel Gabriel, in communications called "korans" (recitations or readings) and which later became the Koran. The purpose of these transmissions, according to Mohamed, was to "unify the people of the book" (the Old Testament). He wanted to unify the Christians, the Jews, and some other tribal religions. The insight that he had was that both Judaism and Christianity believed in the principle of surrender to a higher power, following the guidance of such a being, and trusting this higher being to protect one, sustain one, and fulfill all our needs. His mission did not literally succeed, but he created Islam (from "Al Islam" meaning "the surrender") as a vehicle to carry his understanding of the spiritual life. In the early days of Islam, a follower of the Koran was called "Moslem," meaning one who had surrendered to the will of Allah. In the early days, the term "Moslem" also applied to people of other religions who surrendered to the Divine through their own religion. This showed that there was a literal level of surrender to the ethical commandments in the Koran and a deeper surrender to the intuitive wisdom coming from the Divine which transcended all religions. This meant that Islam was in some sense liberal and progressive in its early days, before Islamic fundamentalism gave a more dogmatic and literal interpretation.

The Sufis trace their lineage back to the "Dog Star" (Sirius) and the beings who inhabited that solar system. They have always had an understanding that spirituality and human evolution are related. Sufism is considered the living vital essence of real spirituality. It is "the yeast that leavens the whole bread" that Jesus spoke of. Like yeast, it is an active ingredient that produces real change. Without yeast, the bread cannot rise. Sufism has never been about any kind of belief system and merely becoming a believer or merely joining a specific religion like one joins a club. It is about opening up to "yeast" and letting its action transform the whole loaf. From this view, any religion is part of Sufism if it has "yeast" and to the degree that it has "yeast". When a religion does not transform and evolve human beings, then it is not part of Sufism anymore. Sometimes religions which carried the "yeast" but do not anymore are called "shells". This term is from how certain sea creatures make a sea shell around them, occasionally leave it behind, and make another shell around themselves. An empty shell is evidence that there was once something alive inside the shell, but it is no longer there.

There are four characteristics of a Sufi:

(1) Universal truth. A Sufi follows truth where ever he or she finds it. If there is truth in Christianity, then the Sufi will follow this truth. If there is truth in Judaism, then the Sufi will follow this truth. If there is truth in Islam, the Sufi will follow this truth. Whatever truth any religion teaches, a Sufi will acknowledge it and follow it. The Sufi tends to ignore the dogma, the cultural accumulations, and time bound religious elements that are obsolete in terms of growing humans further and deeper.

(2) Time, place, and need. A Sufi does not teach any predigested formula of truth. He or she sees that for different people of different times, locations, and cultures, what is needed to grow them will differ. Like a school where people pass from one grade to another, with some remedial lessons, and some special lessons for special interests, each person is taught from where they are so that they can move to the next step on their evolutionary journey. The lessons can be very different from each other. Chess can be used to teach symbolic logic, concentration, visualization, and sequencing steps of a plan over time. Then poetry can be used to teach the use of metaphor, sound, meter, rhyme, and emotional awareness. Then Hatha Yoga, Tai Chi, and martial arts can develop the neural network of the human body so that the higher moving center is activated and educated. The lessons can "feed the pre-existing strength of a person" or they can "develop neglected sides" depending on the path of least resistance to the most growth that is possible for the being.

(3) Telepathic connection to the Light Beings. A Sufi lives in love to serve the evolution, healing, and peace of whatever world they walk upon. They eventually realize that being a "lone ranger" is not enough. There needs to be some plan to heal the world and some group whose members can coordinate with each other, to build upon the efforts of each other, and make sure that the good intentions of each individual do not run cross purposes with the good intentions of other world servers. A Sufi links with the Light Beings. These are sentient beings who have gone before us and who have evolved to a very high level. This group has been called by different names by different religions. They are the Mahasangha of Buddhism, the Communion of Saints in Islam, Judaism, and Christianity, the Taoist Immortals, and the Hindu Avatars. These Light Beings operate within a living consensus of understanding about how the world is best served. They create a plan for the healing of this world, though the plan is updated as unexpected events happen. It is not a rigid plan set in concrete from the beginning of time, but a plan that is lovingly and intelligently adjusted as new factors emerge. These new factors can present new obstacles to the plan or can present new supports to the plan. There are some "intellectual Sufis" who have an understanding of the Sufi path, but who had not yet reached telepathic maturity and linked to the Mahasangha. They are, strictly speaking, not yet Sufis, but are candidates on the probationary path.

(4) The transmission of Baraka. In many advanced spiritual paths, there is some kind of initiation where an evolutionary energy is transfered from teacher to student. This transmission can be through a formal initiation into spiritual sect or it can be an informal initiation with no obvious rituals or props. The key element is whether or not a living transmission is given which quickens something inside the student who then feels a shift in his or her consciousness. Sometimes the energy is vital enough so that tingling sensations are run through the whole body. Sometimes a person will feel the radiance of unconditional love from the heart or the third eye will glow. If the person "nourishes the seed" then this baraka can carry them all the way through the entire evolutionary process. Jesus initiates his disciples to this level in the Gospel according to Saint John, chapter 20, verses 21 to 23, where Jesus says "peace be with you" to his disciples, and then breathes upon them "the holy breath" and communicates to the disciples the power to "forgive sin" (aka emotionally heal). This kind of breathing initiation is still done by certain Sufi masters to this very day. In scientific terms, this kind of breathing is "charged with energy". Sometimes this transmission is also done by "laying on of hands". The Buddha initiated his disciples by meditating in silence with them until they realized "anatta" (no self). He also initiated them through mantra, like when he chanted the Heart Sutra and called down the force of Avalochiteshvara, the Cosmic Bodhisattva (aka Archangel) of Compassion.

One way of understanding Sufism is through using an acrostic of its letters:

Science
Understanding
Faith
Intuition

Science in its purest form is knowledge that is intellectually grasped, logically structured, empirically verifiable, tested, and reliable. If we study nature through scientific means, both individually and collectively, then we will come to an understanding of life on Earth, evolution, and human potential. As we practice what we understand, then we will have faith in a reliable and living truth. This faith evolves into an intuitive and direct knowing about the nature of existence.

Sufism is not a theological system, but it has created many theological systems in order to fulfill the time, place, and need of different human tribes. The words used to express the living understanding changes according to time, place, and need. Since the earliest times, where the Sirian teachers transmitted the vital force to Shamans, who then passed on the living knowledge to future generations, there have been Sufi lineages. This is not merely memorized intellectual teachings, but the evolutionary force of baraka. When a shaman evolves himself or herself to a certain point, then they are able to transmit baraka to others. Sometimes a person will be "initiated by nature" like the Sufi Master Farid, though usually a person will have had at least some intellectual exposure to Sufi ideas before this happens. Since Sufi ideas are coded into most the sacred texts of most of the religions on this planet, almost everyone has some exposure to them. It may take, however, a "Sufi decoder ring" to extract the living knowledge from the dogmatic, cultural, and conditioned elements of a religion.

There is a phrase that goes, "Sufism begins where culture leaves off". What this means is that every human culture is designed to evolve a person up to a certain point. We are meant to grow into the highest person our respective cultures can create and then access the Sufi transmission to evolve from there.

Sufism is not a religion, though almost every religion has some Sufis within them. The Sufism, in serving a world during times where there are invasions and persecutions, divides itself into three groups. The first group will join the religion of the invader and work from within this religion. The second group will become a rebell force and oppose the orthodox religion. The third group will go completely underground and carry on the scientific methods that nourish the evolutionary force that have been handed down from teacher to student since the Sirians came here and taught them.

There have been two basic kinds of Sufi pure groups. These are "preservers" and "transmitters". The first keeps the knowledge of individual transformation alive for the sake of humankind. The second releases parts of this knowledge that people of a given time, place, and culture need in order to heal, grow, and flourish. For a long time, the Sarmoun community held this knowledge. Their symbol has been the bee and the beehive. They would collect the "nectar" of the teachings of every genuinely inspired spiritual and scientific teacher that has ever appeared in humankind and then bring it back to their hive. There hive was near Pemir in the Afghanistan Himalayas. It has since been abandoned, after having been there for thousands of years, when the Russian tanks ran across this area. Since then their hive has been a mobile location and has been the source and inspiration for the formation of other repositories. Teachers from the Sarmoun community have come and taught many people. Padmasambhava was said to have been taught in Surmang in a region called Oddiyana. Surmang is Sarmoun pronounced with the usual Tibetan guttaralization of the "n" sound. This means that Abhisheka and Baraka have the same science behind them.

Many of Esoteric Spiritual Lodges in Europe were inspired by the Sufi lineages of Baraka. There is a way of historically tracing the Sufi influence through history through all cultures. This historical analysis is hard to fully document, because it takes some direct familiarity with the force of baraka and the cloaks it takes through history in order to sort out the meaning of the events where Sufism is spreading itself through. One must be able to "separate the wheat from the chaff" or the shells from the living essence. Both can use very similar words, the shells will make the same words into dogma and help people stay stuck where they are. The Sufi transmission will generally keep changing the kinds of words, metaphors, and descriptors it uses, because the goal is not a dogmatic mind who wants intellectual certainty and the basis to condemn all rival opinions, but a liberated telepathic awakened mind which can feel the miracle of being alive in an endlessly changing universe that is always evolving itself even further. Many things that were Sufism at one time, end up even turning into its opposite. Like sea shells, something else sometimes starts to live in the empty shells the original creatures left behind in their growth. Sometimes, too, a shell is allowed to operate and is able to adequately represent some of the early methods and stages of the growth process. These shell groups are sometimes visited by Sufis in an effort to find those who are taking the information in the right way and who possibly can be initiated directly into the Sufi current. Many of the sects that have the name "Sufism" are really shells that have some real knowledge being handed down. If a person unlocks this knowledge, then he or she might attract or seek a teacher who can carry him or her further in evolutionary growth. The science of the Sufis can be summarized in "what actually works" to evolve people further. The methods are rapid enough so that a single scientific method, rightly applied, should produce significant evolutionary change in three years of "meditation" for at least 45 minutes per a day. The results may vary depending on how the student receives and uses the knowledge. There is a certain kind of humility, sensitivity, and commitment that allows one to attune to baraka and let it grow the person. A certain kind of selfishness, defensiveness, and arrogance makes a person unteachable except through the painful karmas that attract lessons in humility to him or her. Even these lessons will not work until a person has learned to "forgive".

The word "conspiracy" literally means "to breathe together" and originally refered to the living saints who used a pranayama meditation to evolve themselves. They are the original and positive loving conspiracy that is committed to healing this planet. They do not operate through brute force, violence, or intimidation. They do not call attention to themselves unless such attention serves some evolutionary necessity. They reveal themselves to others of their kind through a kind of code that is called "twilight language" which is the language of dreamtime and metaphor. It is through this twilight language that they could continue to evolve themselves and others without being picked up by the radar of orthodox religions bent on persecuting the "black sheep" of humankind (the ones that did not fit in and merely conform to whatever dogma and society they were in). Alchemy, the conversion of base metal to gold, was one such metaphorical system which had its main purpose to evolve a base ordinary human being (lead) into a radiant being (gold). Astrology was another. These metaphorical sciences had as their secondary intention the transmutation of actual lead into gold or forming birth charts to read the destiny of individuals.

During this time, transmitters are more important than preservers. This is because humanity is at an evolutionary junction. It is a kind of "sink or swim" growth point. Much knowledge is being released to assist humanity during this evolutionary phase. The harmonic convergence in 1987 was a Galactic Center to Sirius to Sol to Earth transmission and initiation. It awakened a wave of collective growth patterns that are are linking and harmonizing humans into "light colonies" that wish to appear on this planet. This wave will complete itself around 2012 with enough "critical mass" being generated to eventually shift humankind as a whole to a new level of functioning. The galactic time table that is part of a higher astrology was encoded into the Mayan calendar and the Buddhist Kalachakra teachings. Although some variation exists among scholars of the actual dates involved. The shift day is approximately December 23rd, 2010, with the next significant year being 2024, and then a 500 year process that will enter with world peace established in 2524. Another 500 years of evolution "under dharma" where all humans collectively aligned with the evolutionary process will complete this process. There is no real end point to this evolution, but the main markers are the emergence of Homo Telepathicus and then Homo Holographicus (light beings in light bodies). These dates are approximate and the prophecies around the events general and variable. No disasters have to mark this evolutionary process, though it is unlikely that humans will avoid all the possible disasters and dangers the will appear to challenge this evolutionary process. My advice is to take the adverse prophecies as warnings of possible and potential harm, with varying probabilities of happening depending on what humankind is doing with its present moment, and keep focused on the vision of hope that will eventually manifest after this evolutionary phase is over.

One of the interesting branches of Sufism has been what I call the "Science Fiction Circle". Several Sufi groups are encoding the higher knowledge into modern society. Some Sufis are creating children's stories with the knowledge encoded into metaphor, allegory, and parable (Snow White and the Seven Ego Types, Humpty Dumpty and the Wall of Indecision, Sleeping Dreaming Beauty and the Activating Animus Prince, Little Red Karma Attracting Riding Hood and the Victim, Perpetrator, and Rescuer Triangle, etc.) and shipping these books off to various libraries in various countries. Still others are taking Sufi ideas and letting them be verified by Universities and scientific studies so that various scientists, teachers, and students start thinking of humans as only a midpoint, rather than an endpoint of an evolutionary process. Some of these University groups show their connection to Sufism in an obvious way, by adapting some logo with Sufi symbolic elements included within them (Out of respect for the level of privacy that these groups want, I am not going to name any of the symbols that are being used or to name the groups using them, but if you are reading carefully, you can already spot at least one of the groups from what has already been said). As mentioned before, one third of the Sufic activity is out in the open and is sometimes called the "Open Secret".

The Science Fiction Circle is a group of Sufis who are creating a 21st century mythology that serves the function of the older mythologies of previous initiatory religions. A myth is a fictional story that serves as parable, allegory, and metaphor for energetic and psychological processes that are necessary phases of our future evolutionary unfoldment. There are several books worth reading in this context. SLAN by VanVogt is about the emergence of Homo Telepathicus. In one passage in the book, some scientists are studying the development of an ape child, a human child, and a slan child. The ape child actually develops more rapidly and quickly than the human child. This is because this animal is more hard wired instinctively and very quickly accesses the ancestral knowledge encoded in the DNA. But the ape child is eventually outstripped by the human child when the human child learns language, speech, eye/hand coordination, and hearing. The human child then learns from the human cultural transmission and goes way beyond the ape child. The slan child, originally the slowest of the three, eventually outstrips the other two when it develops telepathy and is able to directly feel wisdom as light pulses transmitted from mind to mind. In this small passage from the book is a series of metaphors that I found useful to orient our possible future processes. VanVogt himself was a genius who was able to learn rapidly. He endorsed General Semantics as a kind of mind training and had something called a "cortical thalamic pause" as a basic kind of rapid meditation method. In the book SLAN, as the story unfolds, there are found to be two kinds of slan, ones with tendrils and ones without tendrils, and even a third slan that is also tendril-less. The tendril-less slan are those who lost their telepathic abilities and simply ended up being smarter humans. The second tendril-less slan, like the tendrilled slan, kept their telepathic abilities, but adapted their outer form so that regular humans could not detect them by their tendrils. Two other books of his talk about applying General Semantics as a kind of meditation process and they are THE WORLD OF NULL-A and THE PLAYERS OF NULL-A. The main character Gilbert GoSeyn (go sane) is a metaphor for a learning process.

Another author Roger Zelazny encodes a lot of metaphors from the Qabalah and other esoteric sources into his story and later on book called THE DREAM MASTER. This is the most concise of his stories and the most densely packed with information. The Amber series goes into how to use a Tarot Deck as a meditation to develop telepathy, but the information is hidden within a story with a lot of sword dueling. The court cards are links to the Mahasangha and could be arranged to form a mandala similar to the Five Dhyani Buddha Mandala. The ten trumps are the elements and seasons, and also describe a 10 stage developmental process. The major arcana is an initiation temple with the Moon card describing evolution.

LORD VALENTINE'S CASTLE by Robert Silverberg is, to me, a hidden manual on how to develop telepathy. It seems to have information encoded about the author's own learning process. If his book DYING INSIDE is autobiographical, he seems to have had some trouble in its early stages. But when he gets some teachings and training on how to develop this side of humankind, then he is able to write about a prince who lets messages from dreamtime guide him to an island where he can be trained further. The messages a dim and symbolic at first, and it only slowly dawns that there is an element inside the dreams that is not merely subjective imagination and wish fulfillment, and then to trust this element to guide him. The book itself has many paragraphs of the landscape of the world where the events are happening. The descriptions, if read a certain way, require the reader to do a lot of visualization which helps them eventually lucid dream and develop telepathy.

It is interesting that both VanVogt and Silverberg use the story device of having the hero find himself in another body. In the case of GoSeyn, he is aware of the brain reactions of the previous body owner and learns to reprogram the brain with the mind. In the case of Prince Valentine, he has the extra handicap of having forgotten who he is, having been placed under a spell of amnesia. Homo Telepathicus does have the experience of past lifetimes in other bodies and needing to remember, in stages, the deeper identity. The idea that we are princes and princesses is a good metaphor for the nobility of our potential evolutionary state and of our deeper present identity.

THE MIND PARASITES by Colin Wilson is a story about some humans that are waking up to Homo Telepathicus, but encounter the "mind parasites", which are psychological states like depression, a kind of sleep walking, and where we muddle through, being drained of emotional energy that we need to grow ourselves further. There is a kind of active intelligence which seems to interfere with our evolution. One tradition calls this force "the dweller on threshold", since we only meet this resisting force when we try to consciously evolve. Many advanced traditions talk about this force, sometimes as Mara, Iblis, or Satan, sometimes as "the death urge", sometimes as "our personal law", sometimes as "Chief Feature", or as, in this book, "the mind parasites". It is ultimately something alien to our true nature which has infected us and which can be released. But because it has an active intelligence, it will try to reclaim us. This book goes into how to combat this force and become free of it. Every advanced tradition has a name for it, or many names for it. They also describe a process of overcoming it, moving through a space sometimes called "Chapel Perilous", "the Bardo", "the Halls of Amenti", and "Purgatorio". During this time, there is a process of purification or "kenosis" (a Christian mystical Greek term for "emptying the self of self"). The key to freedom is to "die before you die" (Sufi), "to die and yet not to perish" (Taoist), or to "realize no self" (Buddhist).

Another book, THE FOUNDATION TRILOGY by Asimov, is interesting in regard to the spiritual future history of this world. It does not seem to be written by the Sufi Science Fiction circle, but it seems to be inspired by the Sufi emanation, the morphogenetic field of evolutionary spiritual wisdom that is permeating the planet. It seems that many sensitive authors can tap into this field and draw inspiration. What I like about the book is that the group called "the Psychohistorians" form a "second foundation". The first foundation is ordinary science and scientific knowledge. The second foundation is a higher kind of psychological knowledge. The Psychohistorians are all telepathic and have developed mental powers to a great extent, including the ability to temporarily control the minds of ordinary Homo Sapiens. This second foundation is guiding the evolution of the first foundation. They are able to predict various probable futures and influence humankind at various critical junctures in its time journey. There is someone called "the Mule" who is an evolutionary mutant and causes humanity to move down an unpredicted time juncture to an unknown future. This Mule is also telepathic and very powerful. He is able to make humans do his bidding very easily and make them imagine that they have always been his devoted followers. He describes looking into the minds of humans and seeing all kinds of dials and dialing them to make changes in their consciousness in order for them to be loyal and devoted to him. He rapidly overcomes many forces fighting for their freedom. The Psychohistorians do not seem to do much to stop him. But eventually one of them does mental battle with him and beats him. The Psychohistorian imprints the thought for the Mule to stop conquering everyone, to retire, and leave evolution alone.

This scene in the book is interesting, because it shows how the Sufis tend to interact with ordinary political power. It shows that sometimes mutants gain power that belongs to a higher evolution and coopt it to serve a lower evolutionary state and ambition. The Psychohistorians balance the situation with a minimum intervention in history. They do not use external weopons, but the higher powers that their evolution has given them. They respect the free choice of all sentient beings and do not "mind control" unless absolutely necessary, with the least number of people, and for as short a period as possible. In this case, only one person who was the focus of the whole alternate event time line. This conforms to the four conditions that a Bodhisattva/Dakini (world server) must conform to in order to use power to kill or control someone. (1) If the being in question, by persistence in their activity, will create hellish bad karma for themselves and is better off for their own sake stopped, (2) the being in question is bringing in much pain into the lives that would be less if he or she were not doing this (the karma is not coming from alternate pathways after he or she is gone or at least not as intensely), (3) the Bodhisattva/Dakini has no personal issue or negative feeling about this person, and (4) the method of control or killing must be through a mantra (not ordinary weopons).

The issue is resolved beyond appearances, too, because the Mule is allowed to live and rule (thus preventing another from taking his place and continuing to do more harm). The energy of the situation is shifted for the better and the Mule eventually fades from history. There was a Sufi master who attended Genghis Khan who may have been an inspiration for this story. This master saved several cities and villages from destruction by advising Genghis Khan to spare them (contrary to his "scorched earth" policy). This story and others is found in an excellent book called THE MASTERS OF WISDOM by John Bennett in a chapter called "1,000 Years of Love" where a one thousand year slice of hidden history is shared. One of the stories in this chapter has to do with a massive war between two big factions was going to happen the next morning. Had this war played out, a great many deaths would have happened for a long time. A Sufi master with two of his most advanced students, came to the center of the battlefield in the morning, much to the surprise of the two warring factions. They concentrated and the once sunny day was filled with massive dark clouds with intense thunderheads. Soon a powerful storm with intense thunder and lightning raged across the battlefield. The two armies fled in terror from the battlefield and never resumed their fighting.

Not all battles and problems can be stopped. Some are called "merited karma" in Buddhism or what I like to call "karma locks". This is where the accumulation of forces is so strong that the karma must manifest and play out. No intervention can stop it after a certain point in the process. When this happens, sometimes Sufis are taking certain people out of the villages that are going to be affected, hiding them in safe places until the karma wind blows over, and then having these people reseed their cultures so that they can grow on course again. They favor poets, philosophers, scientists, artists, herbalists, advanced farmers, and skilled crafts people. These people carry a special energy for their societies, infusing it with the "yeast" that allows the culture to flourish.

Besides books, there are some Science Fiction movies and TV series that are spiritually inspired. One of them was called THE TOMORROW PEOPLE. Although essentially a children's sci fi show, the plot line is interesting in that a small group of humans have awakened to the next evolution and are developing various psychic powers as a result. They can sense when some human is making the shift and starting to become one of them. They rush to meet such ripes individuals and to initiate them. Another group wants to stop the awakening process and to prevent humankind from evolving through these individuals. Once again, the theme of an adverse force trying to block this process, and a group who feels it is important that the ripe individual become telepathically linked with the others. The initiation one of them gives a ripe individual is very beautiful. "Imagine your mind is like a fist and now OPEN THE FIST". When the ripe person does this, the other being infuses the person with baraka, a telepathic flooding of knowledge, energy, and connectedness to the Mahasangha.

I could present several decodings of various sci fi stories, plots, TV shows, and books, but I think the above examples are sufficient to get a basic idea. I will add one more that the Starship Enterprise is a metaphor for the human body, with Kirk being the instinctive center, Scotty being the moving center, Spock being the intellectual center, and Bones being the emotional center. These are the four major centers in the early inner work, with a higher functioning of the intellectual, emotional, and sex centers possible after these basic centers are developed to a certain point.

There is also the work of Doris Lessing, especially in her books, MEMOIRS OF SURVIVOR, THE FOUR GATED CITY, and SHIKASTA. She is a Sufi student and wrote these books after studying Sufi parables. The first book is her most condensed writing about the transformation process. The second one is about 600 pages long and is describes the transformation process of Martha Quest (the last name having an obvious symbolism). The character awakens to telepathy through dreams. The last book is about the fall to lesser consciousness that happened at one time and how it complicated the healing and evolution of this planet.