The guru is our inner wisdom, our fundamental clarity of mind, as the Dalai Lama puts it. In The Mind of the Guru Rajiv Mehrotra brings together twenty contemporary sages and masters who have illumined this reality in their interaction with millions of followers. He elicits from them their deepest concerns and beliefs and the different ways in which they have helped people find a way to happiness.
Ranged here are gurus as diverse as Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who attempts to bridge the experience of contemplatives and the findings of physicists, biologists and psychologists, and B.K.S. Iyengar, who brought yoga from the world of the esoteric to the drawing room of whoever wanted to practice it.
Pir Vilayat recounts his life in chronological order, beginning with his earliest memories of his family, on up to his present-day (as of 1986) work and vision for The Message and humanity. Interview by Qahira Qalbi.
The Sufi path, says Pir Vilayat, is one of merging our individual existence with the divine reality. The dancing of Sufis is an expression of the dynamic shifting equilibriums of life, striving, from moment to moment, toward higher states of being. As we come to understand our true being, we realize that we partake of the divine rapture. Choirs of angels sing within us and we know ourselves as beings of radiant light whose boundaries extend to infinity.
In Part Two, Pir Vilayat focuses on the details of Sufi meditation practices which lead to inner self-awareness, unfurling the potential being and divine realization. He discusses exercises that allow our consciousness to become one with nature and to share the awareness of other human beings.
The Sufi path, says Pir Vilayat, is one of merging our individual existence with the divine reality. The dancing of Sufis is an expression of the dynamic shifting equilibriums of life, striving, from moment to moment, toward higher states of being. As we come to understand our true being, we realize that we partake of the divine rapture. Choirs of angels sing within us and we know ourselves as beings of radiant light whose boundaries extend to infinity.
In Part Two, Pir Vilayat focuses on the details of Sufi meditation practices which lead to inner self-awareness, unfurling the potential being and divine realization. He discusses exercises that allow our consciousness to become one with nature and to share the awareness of other human beings.
