Seeker After Truth

“The Path of Love is like a bridge of hair across a chasm of fire.”

Not long after Irina Tweedie met her Sufi Guru, he explained to her that “love is created or produced in the heart of the disciple by the yogic power of the guru.” This love-relationship is the essence of the spiritual process. But such love goes far beyond the consoling “good feeling” that we conventionally associate with the term. The Guru’s love is a fire that transforms the disciple, and his spiritual firelight reveals to the disciple all in him or her that is less than love. Such loving ignites in the disciple the urge to engage in a demanding spiritual struggle. As Irina Tweedie put it, “I… expected wonderful teachings; but what the Teacher mainly did was force me to face the darkness within myself, and it almost killed me.

TLM: Before you met your Guru, did you have any understanding of the Guru-disciple relationship?

TWEEDIE: Not really. I had studied Hindu scriptures, so theoretically I knew something about it but as we all know, things work out completely differently in life.

TLM: For you, then, the relationship was quite new and unexpected – maybe even a shock. Still, in your book, The Chasm of Fire, you mention you didn’t want to know the name of your Guru. According to Sufi tradition, the disciple never pronounces his Master’s name. You must have had an inkling of the profound nature of the relationship.

TWEEDIE: It was not quite so simple. I asked my friend to give me the Guru’s address, and as she began to write it down, I was suddenly terrified that she would tell me his name. I told her so. “Why?” she asked, and she smiled at me. I said I didn’t know. Superficially, I was afraid he was going to have some banal or very awful name. But deep down, I didn’t want him to have a name or a face at all. My friend looked at me and said, “Oh, that’s a sign.” “A sign of what?” I asked, and she only replied, “One day you will know.” the disciple never pronounces the name of the Guru and very often doesn’t remember the Guru’s face. This happened to me and confused me very much. I thought I was completely crazy.

But very often I dream of the feet of the Guru. I have memories of his feet from a previous incarnation, which he confirmed. Also, I saw his sandals in a dream years before I knew I was going to India. He wore an unusual kind of sandal. Those are all signs.

He didn’t like to be called Guru. We referred to him as Bhai Sahib, a Hindi expression that means “elder brother.” When I spoke to him I called him “sheikh,” which means “ruler.” He was a Master.

TLM: How would you characterize the moment when you first met your Master?

TWEEDIE: I was very confused. Something in me definitely stood to attention when I met him. I knew I was in the presence of a very great being, but I couldn’t analyze it. As soon as I met him, my mind became terribly confused. I didn’t know where I was.

Something very similar happened with Socrates. His disciples complained in their debates with him, “We are at a disadvantage!” because his mind was working and their minds were not working at all.

Suddenly everything goes and you know nothing.

But to answer your question properly, at the beginning I was full of doubts. I thought he was a juggler, a swindler. I knew he had powers, but I didn’t know what to make of them. It was a terribly confusing situation. He was constantly rude to me, while with other people he was friendly. Of course, this made me very angry. I had no idea what spiritual life is. Here in the West we have no idea.

TLM: So the first period was one of both profound attraction and disturbing doubt. Is that an apt description?

TWEEDIE: Yes. At one point, suffering the sordid surroundings and the ill-treatment he gave me, I decided to leave. I waited for the return of my friend, who was at a religious congress somewhere in Kashmir, because I thought I would be unfair to her if I just ran away. I wanted to tell her that I was going and that I didn’t know what this man was, but he was disturbing me too much. I intended to go back to London.

When my friend came and I told her my plans, she became very thoughtful. She said, “I will speak to the Guru.” Later in the evening, after talking to him, she told me, “Be careful. Opportunity will come only once in a lifetime. Maybe you will wait for many, many incarnations before you meet your Guru. Or perhaps you never will. Do not miss an opportunity.” That’s all she said. I replied, “No, I am going away. That’s all rubbish.”

But I woke up in the night, and I knew that I would never go away, because if I went away I would die. Life would lose its meaning. There was nothing else for me to do. So that was it. I knew I wouldn’t leave.

I told my friend about it, and she laughed. I told the Guru about it and he also laughed. And that was that.

TLM: In the period of doubting, which can last for weeks, months, or even years, in the Sufi tradition is it lawful to test the Guru?

TWEEDIE: My Guru said, “You are quite entitled to test the Guru and test again and test again. But once you have decided that he is the right Guru for you, then you have to surrender.”

TLM: Did you find that even after you came to the point of surrender, you would still occasionally fall into moods of doubt about your Master?

TWEEDIE: Absolutely. When he told me to write the book, he emphasized, “Write down every doubt!” And I did.

TLM: Is doubt a peculiarly Western disease?

TWEEDIE: No, I don’t think so. Indian disciples also doubt, only differently. Their minds are different from ours.

TLM: Obviously, when you first met your Guru, you weren’t really prepared, just as most people are unprepared. What would a person have to do to be ready for this encounter?

TWEEDIE: I don’t think one can be prepared. Obviously, my Guru expected me. He told me, “You should have come before.” It is destiny. The relationship with the Teacher is from life to life. To quote him, “It is once and forever and there is no divorce.” To meet one’s Guru is a Grace from God. It is not an event one can accomplish.

TLM: Master Da Free John has said, “Those who belong to me were rendered to me before all time.”

TWEEDIE: Yes. It is once and forever.

TLM: How much of one’s spiritual progress is due to Grace, then, and how much is due to self-discipline and self-application to the spiritual process?

TWEEDIE: In this line of yoga, everything is due to Grace. He told us that there are two ways of reaching… I would hesitate to say Reality. I don’t know how far we reach. It is very difficult to say. But there are two ways of spiritual practice: one depends on yogic power, and the other depends on Divine Power. The yogic way requires much self-discipline, and you really do it with your own energy, your own discipline, your own powers. With Divine Power, you just surrender, and you get everything.

Bhai Sahib sometimes taught yantras, which are either prayers or geometrical signs associated with a kind of magic. Some yantras are used against diseases. He showed them to me and taught me how to use them. But I have never used them, because I have never received instructions to use them.

I don’t move without authorization. You see, I don’t want to come back here. I remain with the Guru. I am not going to create karmas. If I am not the doer, where is the karma? If I don’t receive instructions, if I don’t receive an order, I don’t move. People ask me for mantras, but I do not give mantras. I wait to receive orders. Sometimes people who come for the first time receive a mantra. Other people must sit for ten years and still have no mantra. I have nothing to do with it. All that I am, and this is the literal truth, is a caretaker of these premises. That’s all.
One day while I was in India, a pandit said to me, “Mrs. Tweedie, why don’t you ask to be his disciple? I have been initiated today.”

I said, “I don’t feel I should do it. He treats me like his disciple.” Later, I told the Guru about the incident. He just shook his head and said, “No, don’t ever ask about anything. How will you learn to become nothing if you are something, if you are a disciple?”

So we learn how to be nothing – nothing before life, nothing before people, and above all, nothing before the great nothingness which is the most absolute bliss. In the West, we think “nothing” is something awful. I disappear! I am extinguished! Yes, but how am I extinguished? It is absolute glory.

The first moment of deep meditation is the most confusing thing in the world. There is nothing upon nothing upon nothing. It is a very frightening experience of the mind. Now I would say it is the nothingness where everything is. It is the fullness where nothing exists. Those statements are absolutely correct, and they are identical.

TLM: For the Sufis, then, is the Guru necessary for the spiritual process?

TWEEDIE: Yes, because there are moments in life that require explanation. When you begin to have experiences of a deeper state of consciousness or in a different space, you need some explanation.

A person came to me one day at 7:00 in the morning, with his eyes popping. “I am crazy!” he said. “I experienced this and that in the night. I can’t go to work. I am absolutely crazy!” I invited him in and made him a cup of tea. It was quite an ordinary mystical experience. But the moments of absolute oneness can be very bewildering. You really think you are crazy.

TLM: Many people nowadays are interested in finding a Guru, and some people are naturally afraid of falling into the hands of a charlatan, just as you were. Do the Sufis speak of any signs by which one recognizes the true Guru?

TWEEDIE: You do not find the Guru. The Guru finds you! It is a test. To go to India or any other place to seek the Guru is to begin at the wrong end of the stick. Your relationship with the Guru is an act of Grace from God and, above all, karma with the Guru. Only one human being in the whole world can subject you, a free human being, to what the Guru must subject his disciples to without incurring that karma himself. There is a time when the Guru must gag the disciple’s will for the disciple’s sake, and that is a very, very difficult moment. So the Guru must be infinitely pure and must not seek any advantage for himself – neither money nor prestige.

TLM: In your book, you describe a moment when you discovered the Guru as a Presence that was with you all the time. Did your understanding of who the Guru was change over time?

TWEEDIE: Yes. Let me answer this question by relating what happened after his death. I was extremely disappointed. I felt betrayed by his death. He took everything away from me. I was completely bereft.

Then one day the Guru came back. It was so sacred. It was so intimate, I didn’t even feel like writing it down though I was keeping a diary. It was a rainy night, either in September or October. I was in a deep state of meditation, and suddenly I could reach to him. He was just there. It was he as he was in life but the experience was intensely terrifying. I was all clenched up before him. From then on I knew that what he had taught me during his life was only preparation.

Three weeks before he died he said to me, “Training? Nonsense! This is only a preparation.” I was furious. I thought, “All this labor is preparation?” But after he died, the real training began in a different space of the mind on a different level of being. And of course it continues.

At the beginning, I could reach him only in meditation. But what I will tell you now is extremely esoteric. The goal of this yoga is to reach a guided life, a life that is guided by the higher Self, who is the Guru. I could reach him in deep meditation, and he was like a father to me: I would just ask, and he would respond. If I had a problem I needed only to ask for help. I would enter into meditation in the night, and I would receive a beautiful answer. Everything went marvelously well. I was very happy.

But then something very strange happened. At first, I didn’t even notice it. That was the extraordinary part of it – that I didn’t even notice it. There grew to be less and less of him and more and more of simply knowing. Consequently, there was less and less duality. By some incredible miracle, my mind, now used to that connection to the Guru, accepted it as part of the teaching and not as the knowledge from the mind itself. So I couldn’t be proud of it. It was wonderful at the beginning I didn’t notice how it worked. It was so natural, so much a part of me. It was just there.

It has gone on like that for quite a few years. There is no Guru. There is not me. I just know. The mind recognizes that the help is not from the mind. I know that it is the Guru and inwardly bow to him, but really there is no Guru. There is nothing. The states of oneness with the Beloved are unbelievable! You flow out without ever diminishing. The relationship with the Master? I don’t know. There is no Master. And everything is the Master.

In this particular school of yoga, very little is imparted on the level of the mind. He told us, “If I teach you, it is like book knowledge. You may forget it. I give you experiences.” Our meditation is to go beyond the mind. The mind goes. The mind is thrown away into the Universal Mind. And it is not there. It has gone home. Every practitioner knows that he or she has no mind. One is only allowed to keep a little bit of Universal Mind in one’s aura for the sake of incarnation. That is all.

All those who follow this particular life meet in the night, in dreams. Rumi said, “The prisoner is not in his cell; the king is not in his palace. The soul in the night is free.” We are together with the Guru. After several years, the devotee will know it. Suddenly, he will know something we did in the night. I think this is the only line of yoga where that is done deliberately. The Guru is with us in the night, and he will unite our souls with his soul.

TLM: Obviously, in esoteric traditions like yours, the relationship between Guru and disciple depends on the Guru giving of his own essence to his disciple. Master Da Free John speaks of Spiritual Transmission. What is the place of that in your lineage?

TWEEDIE: It is called “Tawadje.” It is a direct transmission. We work from heart to heart and from mind to mind. It is a direct impression. The knowledge is infused, or rather reflected, into the heart of the disciple. The Absolute reflects Itself into the Creator, and the Creator is reflected into the universe. Everything in the universe works by reflection. My heart now at this moment reflects upon your heart. You heart reflects upon my heart. Every lecturer knows that it is the audience who draws the lecture out of one. So I reflect upon the audience, and the audience reflects upon me. Accordingly, I am either a good speaker or a bad speaker. It is absolutely magical how that works.

Bhai Sahib once went me to London and ordered me to speak about Sufism. I knew nothing about Sufism. Later, I discovered that whatever I said, it was Sufism. He had forbidden me to read anything about Sufism. But he had also ordered me to work for the Theosophical Society, where I had to review books on Sufism. As it was my duty to the Theosophical Society, I kept reading the books. So I began to read Sufi metaphysics. To my surprise, I discovered that he was absolutely, completely traditional. Every word he said was completely within the Sufi tradition – not the littlest speck to the right, not the littlest speck to the left. It was incredible. And whatever I said – whether I lectured about St. Paul or the Lord’s Prayer or a book – it was always Sufism.

The traditions speak of knowledge that is not learned but that is reflected into the tranquil mind of a yogi. When I discovered that, I thought, “Well, I don’t think my mind is particularly tranquil.” But after five and a half years, I suppose it was tranquil enough that he was able to transmit something through me.

TLM: Testing is part of any traditional practice. The Guru always tests the disciple. In your book, you have described many different tests and periods of testing. What is the right attitude of the devotee in those moments of doubt and discomfort and other so-called negative states of mind?

TWEEDIE: Bhai Sahib used one expression: “Be like a cat in front of a mouse hole,” full of infinite attention and infinitely relaxed. But it is such a difficult task that I never succeeded.

The most terrible tests and problems I faced involved the kundalini. They involved sexual experiences, which I had to control. These had nothing to do with the Guru. They were experiences of sex without any subject. The kundalini was just power, energy, upset, absolute terror. The energy is difficult for the human form to bear.

The relationship with God is an intense, spiritually sexual experience. However, the sexual energy is used not for orgasm but for ecstasy very similar to orgasm. The focus is in the throat chakra. Paintings of all the saints in ecstasy show them with their heads rolled back.

TLM: Sometimes even the facial expression is very close to sexual delight.

TWEEDIE: One doesn’t know how long it lasts. In the mornings when I come around, I am surprised to the utmost each time that I am still alive. The body is stiff and curved completely backwards.

TLM: In the spiritual process, all the emotions are obviously stirred up. You just mentioned the experience of sexual desiring. In your book, you also related an incident in which you beat a mouse to a pulp in an outburst of anger. How did your Guru explain this?

TWEEDIE: This sudden anger is one of the symptoms of kundalini. At that moment, I realized with horror that I could have killed a human being. But when I talked to Bhai Sahib about it, he very calmly said, “Oh yes, those things do occur.” When the kundalini awakens, one can have the most terrible moments of irrational anger. One goes beyond it, of course. Later on, the symptoms are different.

TLM: The person deals with the higher chakras?

TWEEDIE: Yes. That’s right. 

TLM: Your Guru often threw you very deliberately into utter despair. In fact, that seems to have been his “method” with you. He had you sit outside in the rain and so on. You obviously are not using the same method with your students. Why not?

TWEEDIE: I am not the Guru. I am his devotee, and I hope to remain so the rest of my life.
The relationship to the Guru is one of absolute awe. Though I am not the Master, there are people in the world who cannot speak to me, who are afraid of me.

 TLM: When people come to you, do they enter through you into a direct relationship with the Guru?

TWEEDIE: Yes. He is with us; the energy is here. We have direct access to him. Anybody here can ask for help. We do not pray to our Guru; we speak to him with our hearts. You pray only to God, but to the Master you speak in your heart.

TLM: You make a distinction in your language between disciples and devotees.

TWEEDIE: Yes. Disciples come for knowledge. Devotees come for the love of the Guru. I am quoting him. Really, one should be a devotee, not a disciple. You shouldn’t come because you want something. You should come because you want to give your love.

TLM: Yet, the love in the heart of the devotee is really given by Grace.

TWEEDIE: Yes. It is given by Grace. Rabia, the great Sufi woman, said it beautifully: a man once came to her and asked, “If I repent of all my sins and look toward God, will God look toward me?” “Oh no,” she said, “He must first look at you. Otherwise, you will never be able to look at Him.”