Dear Abdul Mutaal & Family of the Heart:

You have observed, quite erroneously I think, that my incriminating remark -- that "names [such as Ibn Arabi and like] . . . have imprisoned the minds of countless others in the vortex of their own mysteries far removed from the simple practice of mysticism" -- puts responsibility of the mental imprisonment on the shoulders of those guides and scholars and not on that feeble mind itself who cannot fathom the true nature of their labours.

The human mind is already conditioned into slavery. This act of being colonized by the ideas of others stems from the fact that all human beings generally, and religious people in particular, are products of their own conditioning. Having said that, it follows that you and I are looking at the merits of mysticism as a means of escape from the matrix in which we are imprisoned.

We beautify our prisons by collecting around ourselves some paraphernalia from the junk heap of history that we can identify with, thinking our salvation lies in borrowing from the past to project ourselves into a future of which we have no knowledge except through parroting what others before us have said. The stories about God sitting on His Throne surrounded by prophets and dead losses of humanity are all baloney.

No one knows anything about the conditions prevailing around the Source of Life. 

Ignorance is the reality of the human condition today; that was the reality of the human condition at the so-called dawn of enlightenment, if ever there was a day like that. We are still caught, you and I and everyone else, in the clutches of ignorance from which each one of us seeks redemption. We seek that redemption by following in the footsteps of legendary names because we don't really wish to invest the time to inquire and seek either because we are lazy, or because we are so used to someone giving us the answers to the problems of life and living on a silver plate. The mullahs do a good job, I think.

You say, "This attitude [meaning this attitude on my part] implies that those teachers were dishonest and deceitful people, intending to misguide people into their 'vortex'." I never implied these people had a 'vortex' in which they ensnared people. I meant people get wrapped up in the vortex, which is really a product of nature that drives our conditioned minds.

As to my contention that "the dark side of spirituality . . . envelops so many lost souls into its vibrant vortex, whether the movement that drags such souls is headed by a conniving adept such as Bhagwan Shree Rajneesh or by others such as Ibn Arabi or Sirhindi" let me say that you probably expect me to pay lip service to the demented logic that whereas Rajneesh is bad, Ibn Arabi and Sirhindi are good if only because they are Islamic names that we can identify with.

Please name me one person today who became elevated to the level of mystic by any of these dead names, including all the names of the 130,000 prophets that our so-called God sent down to straighten us. That makes God the greatest failure in the universe! 

The point I am making is that each one of us can attain the ultimate freedom and the bliss we seek for and by ourselves -- yes, only for and by ourselves and not by parroting what others have said, as we witness in the mess created by the circus of religion in the past five thousand years.

You say, "Synthesis and extrapolation of these two ideas as propounded by Rashid, will lead us to discounting our common humanity’s entire cultural, intellectual, and spiritual heritage. And that is why I have reacted the way I have." My answer is simple. It is the easiest thing to react. This action and reaction is the root cause of the violence we see all around us, from the political wrangling in the Middle East to the pillow fights in the bedrooms of modern, so-called civilized, people who parrot what the Koran says, or what some Sai Baba says, and so on. 

I contend that the "cultural, intellectual and spiritual heritage" that you mention is the paraphernalia, the baggage, that we carry in our heads and hearts; it is this bundle of conditioning that prevents us from perceiving the truth and which compels us to kill all the kafirs and declare jihad against non-Muslims because they stand in the way on our high road to heaven.

Love is an essential part of mysticism. It breeds in us compassion for all forms of life on planet earth. This love is a spontaneous byproduct of enlightenment, not something that a scientist or engineer can "synthesize and extrapolate" into the elixir of life that will ensure our immortality in the journey back to godhead.

The spirit of rebellion against our established heritage is therefore necessary; it is the impetus that acknowledges change and accepts it as the only constant in our chaotic universe.

I don't know if all this makes any sense.

Rashid Mughal

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