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Chara

93 From the Scientific to the Mystical

In the Works of Carl Rogers

by Michael Sivori

In the years before he died Rogers was excited to see that his findings in the science of psychotherapy were reflected in other fields such as chemistry and mathematics and with the emergence of Chaos theory. In other words, the fully functioning person is an open system—a principle in Chaos theory—interacting with their environment and integrating these new experiences to adapt, as they proceed. It could well have been that Rogers would have gone on to use open systems theory to begin to synthesize the scientific with the spiritual.

ARTWORK © HILMA AF KLINT COMPLIMENTS OF THE HILMA AF KLINT FOUNDATION

PHOTOGRAPHER ALBIN DAHSTROM, MODERNA MUSEET, STOCKHOLM

93 Sufism Within A Worldview Transformed by Science

by Mary Coelho

The Sufi mystics have left us many remarkable statements that seem impossible to believe in the contemporary mechanistic Western context. Ibn Arabi wrote in the voice of the beloved “I am nearer to you than yourself.” From the writings of Al-Hallaj we find “Between me and You, there is only me. Take away the me, so only You remain.”

These words are easily discredited and disregarded in our Western world in which mechanistic sciences have too often claimed full explanatory power of the nature of our world, thus discounting the possibility of dimensions of the world not accessible to that mode of knowing. As a consequence, these words just quoted are foreign to many people, as a sense of the sacred has been lost in much of the West. We have constructed a disenchanted, technological culture for ourselves that is a costly prison.

Sufism With a Worldview Transformed by Science Notes

ARTWORK © VELIRINA / BIGSTOCKPHOTOS.COM

93 Uncertainty Principle

by Dani Kopoulos

Another dream. This one with her head in a physics book. In the dream she is desperately trying to measure a very small thing. The thing is floating and inchoate, in front of her and then behind. She refers to her notes for instructions but when she looks up again it moves away. She pokes it and it disappears. She gives up trying to locate and record it. But as soon as she gives up observing, she’s overcome with the sense that it’s there after all. And that it’s looking at her.

When you try to observe and locate a Friend of God, he moves. But he’s there all along. Focus the microscope, bounce the photon and it’s another jump, a different momentum. The ultimate trickster, playing hide and seek between the human intellect and the human imagination.

PHOTO © JALAL SEPEHR

93 Observing From the Inside Out

by Ansuman Biswas

I quickly realized that Aristotle’s pithy aphorism that “Nature abhors a vacuum” holds just as true in art as it does in science. I was invisible and inactive. There was nothing to see. And yet I found that people flooded the nothingness with their own stories. Sometimes the less you do the more people see. Just as air rushes into a vacuum so people fill space with imagination. Many people perhaps imagined I would be found crumpled in a corner of the box when it was opened, an anguished skeleton. Others might have imagined I would flutter out on angelic wings with a beatific smile. Some told me that my incarceration threw into sharp relief the number of dinners they ate or TV shows they watched during that ten-day period in March, 1998. Even my own imagination played tricks on me.

93 Featured Poet

EVE POWERS is an award-winning poet whose work has
appeared in California Quarterly, Rockhurst Review, Purpose
Magazine, Sufi Journal, Third Wednesday Journal, Lalitamba,
Hawai’i Pacific Review, Atlanta Review, Archyopteryx: Th e
Newman Journal of Ideas, City Works Literary Journal, Kerf
Literary Journal, Whirlwind Review, and Muse Literary Journal.
Her fiction has been published in Writing Our Way Out
of the Dark, Scent of Cedars: Promising Writers of the Pacific
Northwest, A Cup of Comfort for Sisters, The Broken Plate Review,
and Slab Literary Journal. Her creative non-fiction has
appeared in Drash literary journal. She is listed in the Directory
of American Poets and Fiction Writers.

93 Featured Artist

BARRY UNDERWOOD received his Masters in Photography
from Cranbrook Academy of Art. His work is situated at
the intersection of land art, staged photography, and Minimalist
sculpture. He strives to foster awareness of environmental
change by engaging viewers in playful interactions,
offering a novel lens through which to consider the impact
of human action on our surroundings. Barry has been an
artist in residence at the Banff Center for the Arts and the
Center for Land Use Interpretation, among others. His
award-winning work has been exhibited, reviewed and collected
in a wide variety of contexts in the US and abroad.
barryunderwood.com

93 Truth Matters

A Discourse

by Alireza Nurbakhsh

In a time when fake news, climate change denial, and conspiracy theories loom large in our lives, it is important to remind ourselves that the driving force behind both our scientific enterprise and spiritual awakening has always been our search for the truth.

Truth matters not simply because we want to have an objectively correct view of the world and ourselves, but because a worldview based on falsehood will eventually lead to our demise. Truth also matters as the basis of scientific inquiry.

In Sufism, the aim is to experience the truth of the divine through love, not the falsehood of thoughts and actions that stem from the ego. The goal is to realize that we are part of the whole, to experience the Unity of Being without seeing ourselves as different and distinct from the whole. For the Sufis, the truth lies hidden within oneself and therefore the seeker of the truth is ultimately on a path of self-discovery.

ARTWORK © MICHAEL MAPES

Archives 92 – Winter Issue

EDITORS’ NOTE

Issue 92 of SUFI brings the reader right up against what is uncomfortable. Forget about politics: let’s talk about the weather. Too hot in cold months, too dry in wet ones, ferocious when it should be bleating like a lamb. READ MORE

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DISCOURSE

CLIMATE CHANGE: A CASE FOR CONTENTMENT
by Alireza Nurbakhsh

ARTICLES AND ESSAYS

THE SECRET KINGDOM IS EVERYWHERE
by Mark Nepo

SILENCE: THE QUAKER SACRAMENT
by J. Brent Bill

HEART OR RATIONAL SOUL?
AL-GHAZĀLĪ’S EARLY INSIGHTS INTO THE REASONS OF THE HEART
by M. Coetsee

THE SECRET OF BEING A MASTER
by D. Ghalandar

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INTERVIEWS

THE ROOTS of YOGA and THE DIVERSE
TRADITIONS of HINDU SPIRITUALITY
EDWIN BRYANT Interviewed by KOMAL MAJMUNDAR and JAWID MOJADDEDI
SPIRITUAL ACTIVISM
BRIDGING CONTEMPLATIVE LIFE AND ACTION: A CONVERSATION WITH ADAM BUCKO
interviewed by Safoura Nourbakhsh