Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan . . . was the head of the western branch of the Sufi movement. The Sufis seemed to have been originally an esoteric division of the Mohammedan or Muslim religion, but at least in the form that Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan represented the Sufi movement, it was an attempt to effect a religious marriage among the various religions . . . It was arranged to have established a sort of universal church which was placed in the hands of [Sarah] and myself.[1]
The Sufi movement was originally an esoteric division of Islam, but in the form that Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927) promoted—as Wolff notes above—it was an attempt to encourage a religious marriage among various religions.[2] Khan was a musician and spiritual teacher from India who in 1910 started “The Sufi Order in the West” (now called the “Sufi Order International”) after his father had died and his master directed him to “harmonize the East and the West with the harmony of [his] music.”[3] Thus, although Khan’s first trip to America that same year was as a “traveling musician,” he was also invited to lecture at a number of academic and religious venues across California. This included the Vedānta Society in San Francisco, where he met his first mureed or disciple, Ada Martin.[4] Khan gave her the name “Rabia” and, half a year later, granted her the title of murshida or teacher. This made Rabia Martin the main representative of Khan’s budding Sufi Order in America when he left for England, in the spring of 1912.
In 1913, Khan married Ora Ray Baker (1892-1955), an American whom he had met in New York. They moved from England via Russia to Suresnes, France (outside of Paris), but returned to England when the Germans declared war on the French.[5] In 1914, the Theosophical Society published his first book in English, A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty.[6] It introduces Khan as a “professor” of a Sufism that forms “the essence of all pure religions and philosophies,” merging eastern faith with western reason, in pursuit of “self-realization.”[7] The next year, the first issue of The Sufi magazine appeared. From 1917 to 1920, Khan gave lectures across the British Isles—hosted by the Theosophical Society—before moving his family back to France.
The Sufi Order during these years increasingly took on a theosophical cast, situating itself between religion and secularism—both accommodating and then assaulting post-Enlightenment modernity, particularly its materialism and rationalism.[8] And, like Theosophy, Kahn’s “neo-Sufism” began to show an ambiguous adherence to the positivist methods and theories of science, on the one hand, and the romanticist premises of—a heavily psychologized—religion, on the other, by “redirecting rational inquiry towards the inner depths of the modern subject.”[9] It did remain less cerebral and more practical than Theosophy, but, for many, that is what made it so appealing.[10]
After the Great War ended, the nature of the Sufi Order in the West gradually changed into a messianic movement. For many religious seekers in the West, the atrocities of the war hinted at the eschaton—the end of time, heralding the return of Christ, reconceived in Theosophy as the coming of the Maitreya. As Blavatsky successor Annie Besant (1847-1933) and her counselor Charles Webster Leadbeater (1854-1934) were professing that Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895-1986) was destined to become this “World-Teacher,” Khan, for some, already seemed to fit that role. As Zia Khan tells us, by 1922, the idea that his grandfather may be the prophet of the new age was widespread among his mureeds.[11]
In 1923, at the request of Rabia Martin, Khan returned to America for another tour, but this time as a full-fledged spiritual teacher. Already aboard the Pittsburg, he left no doubt about the purpose of his visit, namely, to foster brotherhood, after a time of strife.[12] Later, he added that America was not yet ready for his religious message in 1911-1912, but that the situation had changed and that “The World War was responsible for that. Not only is America now hungry for religion, the entire world is seeking the truth and the peace of God.”[13]
Khan was detained at Ellis Island, as the quota for Indians for that month had already been reached.[14] Fortunately for Khan, mureed Marya “Khushi” Cushing quickly came to the rescue. Kushi Cushing had become a disciple, the year before, after attending the first summer school in Suresnes. She had made the arrangements for Khan’s stay in New York and organized part of his lecture tour in other cities as well.[15] After Cushing had explained to the immigration authorities who he was, Khan was allowed to enter the country. He delivered a few talks in New York, Boston, Detroit and Chicago, before setting course for California, where he would spend most of his visit.
Wolff’s wife Sarah, who was an acquaintance of Cushing, met the Murshid shortly after his arrival in New York, and she traveled with his party on their westward trip. Wolff notes that he “met them at the Union Station in Los Angeles and quickly arranged to drive [the party] up to San Francisco.”[16] Wolff and his wife remained in San Francisco for about a month, listening to Khan’s lectures and occasionally meeting with him; the couple was then given the task of arranging for a series of lectures to be given by the Murshid in the Los Angeles area.[17]
As Wolff reports, the Los Angeles lectures were a success, but started without their speaker:
The necessary work of securing a hall and putting forth the advertising of the forthcoming lectures of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan was in due course accomplished. And then when the first day of meetings rolled around, which was a Sunday, it had been arranged that the Murshid would arrive by train at the Union Station well before meeting time. I went to the station to pick him up and his associate, but no Murshid appeared. Meanwhile we had, through advertising, a substantial audience gathered to hear him lecture. The question was what to do with no lecturer? I decided while driving back to the hall to undertake to give an extemporaneous impromptu lecture in his place, and this I did. How well I did, I do not know, but at any rate I managed to talk the most of an hour. At the close of the lecture, just as we were winding up, Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, Murshida, and a Mr. Connaughton from Santa Barbara arrived, somewhat flustered. I turned the audience over to him and he uttered a few words, and then the audience was dismissed—the other meetings being already noted in the advertising campaign. What had happened was this: they had been at Santa Barbara under the direction of Mr. Connaughton and they had missed the train. Mr. Connaughton then drove down the road at fifty miles an hour, when the speed limit was thirty-five, and thus was able to arrive at the time which they did.
Despite their start, Wolff continues,
. . . this series of lectures aroused a considerable interest. Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan was really a beautiful figure. He had been a musician, and when he lectured, you had the impression that it was a kind of music. You would not take away so much conceptual ideas as a music-like effect. The course of lectures and the subsidiary activity continued as provided.[18]
After the success of this series, it “was arranged to have established a sort of universal church which was placed in the hands of [Sarah] and myself”:
Sherifa and I carried on the work of the church. We secured a hall and did the necessary advertising. I gave the lectures and Sherifa took care of the more or less ritualistic portion. She also read a selection from each of the different religions that had been integrated by the Sufi movement.
It seemed like a promising start of a “Sufi” branch, particularly after their failure to revive a branch of the Temple tree; but, this effort too would prove to be a disappointment. Wolff explains:
This work continued for rather a brief time—just a matter of months—and then it became evident that it was impossible to work with Murshida, who was a very dominating character and really wanted only yes-men under her; and the result was that we severed our connection from this activity to be in charge of the Sufi work on the West Coast. So we withdrew from this work after a relatively brief period.[19]
Although their time working with the Sufi Order would was brief, it would have a lasting impact on the couple. For one, Khan conferred the title ‘Sherifa’ to Sarah during an initiation during this period, and she would use this appellation for the remainder of her life.[20] As for Wolff, in a memoir of his time with Khan he writes:
The writer considers it both an interesting and significant fact that with passage of time his contact with Murshid in 1923 had become much more than a lingering memory. There has been a growing sense of Presence . . . [of which the] most cherished memory of the writer is in an hour’s contact.[21]
Endnotes
[1] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Autobiographical Material: A Recollection of My Early Work with Sherifa” (Lone Pine, CA: July 6, 1978), audio recording.
[2] Wolff notes that the Murshid had related to him that the movement included Christianity, Judaism, Muslimism, Mazdaznanism, Hinduism, and southern Buddhism, but at the time it had not been extended to the inclusion of northern (Mahayana) Buddhism. Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Autobiographical Material: A Recollection of My Early Work with Sherifa” (Lone Pine, CA: July 6, 1978), audio recording.
[3] Zia Inayat Khan, A Hybrid Sufi Order at the Crossroads of Modernity: The Sufi Order and Sufi Movement of Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, published PhD dissertation ed. (Ann Arbor: ProQuest, 2006), 65.
[4] Ada Ginsberg (1871-1947), ibid., 72.
[5] Ibid., 82-3.
[6] Inayat Khan, A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty (London: The Theosophical Publishing Society, 1914).
[7] Ibid., 5 and 38, 3, 27
[8] Khan, A Hybrid Sufi Order, 109-112.
[9] Ibid., 99.
[10] “[I]f the promise of transcendence was the Theosophical Society’s greatest strength, its inability to fulfill the promise was its greatest weakness. The Society promoted ideas of spiritual evolution and ‘superphysical consciousness’ in elaborate theoretical terms, but offered little of substance in the form of practical instruction.” Ibid., 113.
[11] This defied the finality of Mohammed’s revelation. Khan had stressed this finality in his early years, but would later submit that only parts of the prophecy had been fulfilled by Mohammed, ibid., 151-162.
[12] Inayat Khan, “Untitled Talk aboard the “Pittsburg”,” in Complete Works of Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan: Lectures on Sufism 1923, Vol. I, ed. Munira van Voorst van Beest (The Hague: East-West Publications, 1989), 87. Khan goes on to declare that both the central theme of the United States Constitution as well as the intention underlying Lincoln’s reform was that of universal “brotherhood.”
[13] Inayat Khan, “Article from The World,” in Complete Works of Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan: Lectures on Sufism 1923, Vol. I, ed. Munira van Voorst van Beest (The Hague: East-West Publications, 1989), 91.
[14] Munira van Voorst van Beest, “Preface,” in Complete Works of Pir-O-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan: Lectures on Sufism 1923, Vol. I, ed. Munira van Voorst van Beest (The Hague: East-West Publications, 1989), xi. The “Emergency Immigration Act” of 1921 had imposed strict quotas on the admittance of people from outside the United States.
[15] Ibid., xi-xii; biographical notes on 426.
[16] Merrell-Wolff, “A Recollection of My Early Work,” 1. Wolff and his wife are listed in the Volume 1 of the Complete Works (on p. 442) as follows:
Wolff, Mr. and Mrs.—American followers of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan from Los Angeles, U .S .A., who in 1923 drove Pir-o-Murshid by car from Los Angeles to San Francisco, p. xii, xiv cf. Biography of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, (London, 1979), pp. 169, 173.
The date that the couple drove the Murshid to San Francisco was March 19 or 20, 1923 (p. xii).
[17] These lectures took place in in May 1923, as noted by van Voorst van Beest: “a program of six lectures had been well organized and publicized by Mr. And Mrs. Wolff. The program for the lectures, some of which were given at the Ambassador Hotel is in the archives (see Appendix C), but no other records have been found” (ibid., p. xiv). As program for the lectures is part of the Wolff Archive.
[18] Merrell-Wolff, “A Recollection of My Early Work,” 1-2. Wolff also notes that
during this course of lectures, there was one small incident that revealed a good deal about the character of the Murshid. One evening after the lecture, one of those who lingered around because of his superior interest and invited us, that is, Murshid, Murshida, Sherifa, and myself to take a bite at a nearby eating place. We accepted, and as we walked down the road to the place and arrived at it, our guide noted that it did not appear very impressive and was little hesitant. He asked Murshid if it would be all right for him to enter there and Murshid made this answer, “Where humanity goes, there I go. (ibid., 2)
As Dave Vliegenthart observes, there are recurrent themes in Khan’s 1923 American lectures:
Reading over their transcripts . . . there are clear recurrent themes.
Briefly, Khan tells us there are many religions, but one truth. The truth is that the divine resides inside our hearts. But he can only point to it, for thoughts cannot think it, and words cannot speak it. It is ineffable. Sadly, many—including most Americans—are ignorant of the fact that the macrocosm is mirrored in the microcosm. Sufism reminds us of (this) reality again. Its reminder is neither eastern or western—it is both. After all, Sufism is almost as old as consciousness itself. It is not a religion, then, but the essence of all religions—“with no distinction of caste, creed, race, nation or religion.” And all religions urge us to forget our ego self, to realize our true self.
The key here is that Khan felt that people tend to confuse worldly knowledge and divine wisdom. Like Emerson’s Coleridgean reading of reason and understanding in Kant, Kahn separated understanding from comprehension, intellect from intelligence. One refers to “that faculty of knowing, saturated with the impressions of names and forms which it has collected” and the other to “that faculty . . . which is capable of knowing all that is to be known.” Intellectuals get lost in the names and forms of metaphysics, which (mis)leads them to think they understand everything, when they do not yet comprehend anything. They know the world, without knowing themselves. Only by “stilling” or “fasting” the mind can one come to know both, without merely acquiring more knowledge. This is why meditation is “more important than any and all intellectual study.”
According to Khan, meditation entails “the suppression of all conscious personal thought and feeling” in order to reach a state of unity. Reminiscent of mesmeric magnetism and New Thought stoicism, he claims meditation increases the “vital electricity” that “recharges the mind,” which is “the cure for all troubles,” because without thought there can be no pain. What is more, “[it] is not only the way to healing, it is the key to all things.”
Dave Vliegenthart, The Secular Religion of Franklin Merrell-Wolff: An Intellectual History of Contemporary Anti-Intellectualism In America (Leiden/Boston: Brill, 2018), 101-2.
[19] Merrell-Wolff, “A Recollection of My Early Work,” 2.
[20] ‘Sherifa’ is a variant of Sharifa, which is an Arabic title meaning “noble” or “high-born.”
[21] Franklin Merrell-Wolff, “Memories of Inayat Khan.”
