Three years ago now, almost to the day, I began to Blog “Tracks in a Pathless Land”, a personal encounter with Truth based on my own experience of it through tracing the hidden pathways, places, and byways of the mystics journey through ‘time’ and ‘space’. My Blog page opens with this quote (for those who have not been there):
‘Did you know that the word for mystic path in Sufism – tariqah – means the path in the desert that the Bedouin takes to travel from oasis to oasis? Obviously, such a path is not clearly marked like a highway and isn’t even a visible road. But it is there to those who know!’
(From ‘Perfume of the Desert: Inspirations from Sufi wisdom, Andrew Harvey and Eric Hanut, pxiv, Quest Books, 1999).
It’s been thirty years since Dana and I began seeking (through Sufism) for these ‘Tracks’, knowing they were there for those who looked closely enough. But what is it, this ‘looking’ when it is for something which, to all intents and purposes, isn’t there? Ibn ‘Arabi, meeting Yahya (John the Baptist) on his famous ‘Night Journey’ (mirroring that of the Prophet), asked him the same question (for he hadn’t seen Yahya on his own path to the station of Aaron, the brother of Moses):
I didn’t see you on my path: Is there some other path there?
[To which Yahya responds] “Each person has a path, that no one else but he travels”.
Then where are they, these different paths? [Yahya responds],
“They come to be through the travelling itself!”
(From, Ibn ‘Arabi’s Spiritual Ascension, Meccan Revelations, Vol 1, p223, Ed. Chodkiewicz, M. Pir Press, N.Y., 2005).
Yahya was very clear. Everyone walks their own unique ‘path’ into being, thus justifying Krishnamurti’s “Truth [in so far as we can know it] is a Pathless Land, [and] no-one can take you there.” Why then do we find so many saying, “I know”, “I know”, “I know”? if they indeed do, and some do, then where are they, these Tracks of those that went before? Ibn ‘Arabi, knowing that all such ‘paths’ are utterly unique, coming into and going out of being [at least as far as in the physical world is concerned] went on to say elsewhere that everyone must walk in the footsteps of the Prophet Muhammed. As always, where one encounters such blatant contradictions in Sufi/mystic thought, there is a simple enough answer for those who know the ‘how to’ of looking with the eyes of the heart, rather than with the physical eyes alone. But here is the rub. One must walk the walk, not as an intellectual exercise alone, but through living this apparent dichotomy into being by the very act of walking on the path, with knowing, with trust, and with conviction, that there is something to learn. Then – in the very act of walking, moment to moment, day by day – this dichotomy is resolved. How else can one know Truth but through living it into being?
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I began my Blog in order to offer such ‘Truth’ as I have experienced it to those who may find themselves in a position of confusion because of the recent explosion in the ‘publication’ of blatant falsehoods and obfuscations that seem to have taken the place of reasoned discourse in both the organs of governments worldwide and in those media outlets likewise. Even the most trusted of organised religious paths seem to have fallen into disrepute through the madness of much of the fundamentalist movements and through the exposure of the hidden sexual abuse of those most vulnerable to them in their ‘care’. It was never my intention to ‘publicise’ my own encounters with the ‘Other’ – although some may choose to see it otherwise – this I cannot help. Sometimes it becomes clear that there are times that must transcend secrecy surrounding these things, for – when evil struts the world – if those who know otherwise don’t speak up, who will?
Tracks in a Pathless Land 