Dust At His Feet

Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee

The relationship with a spiritual teacher is one of the great esoteric secrets of humanity. Each pilgrim along the path makes his or her own journey in which the essence of this relationship is slowly uncovered as we make our way home. On my own journey this story had an unusual dynamic in that I never knew my sheikh in physical form. I came to know him through the presence of Irina Tweedie who brought his Sufi tradition from India to the West after he died in 1966. When I was nineteen I met Mrs Tweedie and immediately felt myself in the presence of something I had been missing all my life. In her blue eyes I knew that she knew, that she had access to what is real. Sitting, meditating in her small room beside the railway tracks in North London my life had meaning. For many years I thought that she was my teacher, until she explained that I belonged to her sheikh, Bhai Sahib, and that when I first came to the group she had been told by him in meditation to leave me alone. He would look after me.

I was trained by my sheikh in the ancient way of trial and love, in which the disciple becomes "less than the dust at the feet of the sheikh." There was a period of two years when I was twenty when he did not let me sleep for more than three hours a night, destroying my patterns of resistance and spiritual arrogance with the simple method of exhaustion. Then, one summer afternoon, in the most intense few hours of my life I was confronted by the deepest suffering of my whole being, until in a moment of revelation he made me conscious on the level of the soul. Gradually, over the following years, I became aware of the depths of my belonging to him, and the knowing that I am here to serve him, that I have been trained to do his bidding. He guided me with kindness and severity. Once, when my children were young and I was continually tidying the house after them, his voice gently came to me, "You don't have to keep tidying up!" While on another occasion, when I was suffering intensely from kundalini, Mrs. Tweedie asked Bhai Sahib if he could help me. His response was simply, "He can bear it."

My relationship with my sheikh is one of total subservience and love, a recognition that nothing matters in this world except to do his work and to please him. When I first met Mrs Tweedie and felt his invisible presence I knew with a knowing that had no outer logic that I had to do whatever I was told. I came to realize how this stamp of inner authority belongs to a spiritual training in which the disciple places himself completely in the hands of his sheikh. Through this commitment we are also given the sustenance that we need. When I was thirty-six and was sent to America to lecture on Sufism, although I had never lectured before, in a vision I was given the simple message, "The grace of your guru is in your heart. This is all you need to know."

I came to know him as an inner presence, someone I could turn to in meditation and prayer, whose help would be present when I needed it most. And yet often over the years he seemed to leave me alone, to struggle with my difficulties and make mistakes. I have experienced the devastation of emptiness and desolation when this connection was veiled, and the anguish I have felt when I displeased him, when I felt that I failed my sheikh. But I have come to know that this relationship is the one thread of love that this world cannot break, because it is made of a different substance that is stronger than all the difficulties of this world. It belongs to the ancient secret of love and devotion, a belonging so primal that it is before creation. It is part of the substance of the soul and gives meaning to every moment of every day.

Held by this thread of love, this connection from heart to heart, I was given a love that is so complete that every cell of the body was fulfilled and I knew the bliss of the soul. I was taken from the world of duality back to the oneness of the heart, and further, into the dimensions of non-being, the emptiness that is the real home of the mystic. I was shown the infinite inner spaces where love is born, and a quality of consciousness that belongs to light upon light. In the ancient tradition, I was destroyed and remade, so that I could be of service to my sheikh and the Beloved. When I first came to the path I was an arrogant nineteen-year old who had a few experiences in meditation and thought he knew something about spiritual life. But unknowingly I was taken in hand by a great master who taught me humility and the simplicity of real service. He opened my heart and awoke me to a realization of the oneness of life that is all around us. And he guided me, with humor, patience and love, knowing my faults and accepting me.

Through this relationship I have also come to know the real power that belongs to God and those who are in service to God. In our outer life we often seem surrounded by power dynamics, played out in the family or the workplace. We also see the corruptive power dynamics on the world stage. But in the relationship with a real teacher, one who is merged into the Absolute, who is one with God, there is a power of a completely different magnitude, a power that belongs to the Creator and not the creation. This is a power that wants nothing for itself but just is. It has been hidden from the world for many centuries. When I experience this power inwardly, in the presence of my sheikh, my whole being trembles and bows down. When people talk of power dynamics with spiritual teachers something in me laughs, because they have never known what real spiritual power is. The disciple does not argue or doubt before such pure energy. The only response is awe.

Each of us can tell many stories about our relationship with our teacher. Some of these are painful, humiliating, or humorous. There are also all the dramas of projection, in which we cover the real nature of this soul relationship with the patterns of conditioning, with the images and fantasies of our personality. We try to place our teacher within the sphere of our own psyche, often creating difficulties through which we suffer and hopefully learn. And then there are the most precious moments, when through the grace of the guru we are given an awareness of the nature of the divine, within ourselves and within life, when we glimpse the wonder of what is real.

Because I never knew my sheikh in physical form I escaped many of the dramas of projection that I see others suffer through. I never tried to limit his love with the demands of my personal psyche, my need for love, acceptance, or patterns of rejection. Yet I can also see how this drama of projection is part of the uncovering of the soul, part of the way we come closer to the real love that is in the core of our being. We come to recognize that the teacher's love for us was complete at the beginning, was the one truth in a world of illusion. A true teacher allows the disciple to create all the dramas they desire, to follow the paths of their imagining, knowing that the real love that is given from heart to heart will make itself known despite all the obstacles the disciple may place in its path.

This love is a bond of belonging that we bring into the world. After all of the difficulties, perseverance and joy that belong to the path, this belonging remains, an axis of truth that is not an abstract idea but a lived reality. The beginning of the path is an awakening to this inner core of love, and the journey makes it real in this world, until you come to realize how it is always present. Over the years I discovered my relationship with my sheikh as a quality of belonging that is total and absolute, in which I would give everything again and again. And it is also a quality of pure freedom in which one bows down only before God.

My sheikh said that the only real love in this world is between teacher and disciple. All other forms of love are an illusion. The love between teacher and disciple is stamped with the name of God, the same name that is written into the heart of the disciple. We are given this love at the beginning of the journey. Without it there could be no path, no stages of the journey, no awakening. This love uncovers what is real within our heart and takes us beyond the world of appearances into the courtyard of our sheikh. Here we discover the sweet fragrance that was always present, the fragrance of a soul that belongs to God. And, in the words of a Persian poem, if people ask "why are you so fragrant?"

I am a dust people tread upon,
But I partake of the fragrance of the courtyard of a Saint.
.... And it is all due to His Lotus feet.

© 2003 The Golden Sufi Center