How about Making Chopra an “honorary sufi sheik?”
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Fascinating idea. But I have a better idea. How about making Deepak Chopra (or the Dalai Lama for that matter) “honorary sufi sheik(s)?” … LOL …
Seems that’s where science/mysticism related work is headed these days anyway with syncretized faith systems and mushy one-world, new-world-order, new age religion. That’s why it makes better sense to have your leadership on social justice issues and humanitarian-spirituality come from a Gandhi or a King. They just don’t carry the same sort of silly mumbo-jumbo or New Age-style baggage with them as much as these others.
So where’s a far left-leaning, anti-Establishment, secularist to go in an enlightened revolution of buddha-led progressives? Not far I guess; which is why you don’t put “enlightened” revolutionaries in charge of left-liberal movements.
It’s a shame, but I think we’re condemned to multiple-leader movements on the Left and in terms of our progressive activism. The Chomskys, Vidals – they provide the intellectual heft of the total movement. Hedges, the activist- journalistic angle, and for spirituality: an MLK.
A (Coordinated) Movement-of-movements. That’s where we need to go to take on the Establishment.
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http://darwiniana.com/2012/12/12/making-chomsky-an-honorary-sufi-sheik-your-move-i-am-not-a-sufi-myself/
12.12.12
Making Chomsky an honorary sufi sheik? Your move. I am not a sufi myself
Posted in General at 12:28 pm by nemo
http://darwiniana.com/2012/12/11/a-communist-sufism/
The idea of a communist sufism would demand real leadership from someone qualified to do that in an exotic and original way, navigating the dangerous shoals of two complex cultural complexes. I cannot do that myself, becaue I am not a sufi, and am unwelcome in sufi circles. A pity, I know more about sufism than most sufis. But real sufism is quite rare, although, never having been in an Islamic country, I can’t say for sure. Go and read The Gurdjieff Con, and you will see why I won’t be promoting communist sufism any time soon. At the same time, it is possible and right to do that anyway, as a discussion. It is totally unfair for sufism to be hijacked by reactionaries, witness the fascist echoes in Gurdjieff et al.
Making Chomsky an honorary sufi sheik? Terrible idea, no? Uh-oh. But go ahead, and try it. Great. You might destroy Chomsky in the process. The idea was pressed on me by various people who dislike me but like my idea, not wanting me to have anything to do with. Thanks alot. I suggested making Zizek a sufi, half humorously. But it is a dangerous business. My point perhaps was that sufis have deeply penetrated the cultures in that South European zone. Keep in mind these people are not theists, and would get in trouble forthwith in that culture (as would sufis, who tend to hide behind orthodoxy). As for being a sheik, Chomsky has no knowledge of sufism, nor do most sufis.
Go look at Avatar: the scifi people have rediscovered something sufis appear to know, in a way that they hide deeply. Soul creation, so-called. It has nothing to do with the technology nonsense in the movie. These statements are confusing, because almost all humans on this planet have already experienced some form of soul-creation. Maybe a few holdouts in the Borneo highlands (but they could be more advanced than we are). But the sufi version is mysterious, the lore of the completed man, and constitutes real sufism. I have no real place in any of that. Any sufi sheik needs a deep knowledge to work with people, and it is even harder with non-Moslems. Is the question hopeless? I fear Islamic sufis would peddle a fake to western communists and have a good laugh.
My point was that there is absolutely no reason why sufism can’t be a radicalism in motion, even along the lines of marxism. Marxism has been denounced by reactionary sufis, but they have no grounds for such an attitude. As I have noted, original buddhism was a revolutionary movement, though not in the sense we use the term now. But marxism is unnecesary cast in the form of atheism and materialism, which throws religionists out of whack. It has nothing to do necessarily with the economic critique of Marx.
Leftists might forget about ‘sufism’ and simply work with Moslems and sufis. At the right moment the sufi epiphany might come.