Science, Culture and Integral Yoga

Here's a sample of Sufi teaching stories, from Indres Shah's book "The Way of the Sufi":

One day a man came to the great teacher Bahaudin. He asked for help in his problems, and guidance on the path of the Teaching.
Bahaudin told him to abandon spiritual studies, and to leave his court at once.

A kind hearted visitor began to remonstrate with Bahaudin.

"You shall have a demonstration." said the sage. At that moment a bird flew into the room, darting hither and thither, not knowing where to go in order to escape.
The Sufi waited until the bird settled near the only open window of the chamber, and then suddenly clapped his hands.
Alarmed, the bird flew straight through the opening of the window, to freedom.

"To him that sound must have been something of a shock, even an affront, do you not agree?" said Bahaudin. ... more »

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Thursday, February 1

Orientalism Revisited: Edward Said’s unfinished critique (Boston Review)

by ronjon on February 1, 2007 03:21PM (PST)

With the 1978 publication of Orientalism, Edward Said launched a critique of Western scholarship on the Middle East that still reverberates through academia and government. By characterizing Middle Eastern cultures as incapable of adapting to modern life, the early Orientalists, in Said’s view, hid their colonial, and indeed racist, biases. In the process, he suggested, Orientalists fooled themselves—and Westerners generally—into believing that their studies were undertaken with total neutrality. Said particularly attacked Bernard Lewis as the contemporary exemplar of this entrenched view. In a series of exchanges, Said argued that such scholarly bias contributed to the failure of the West to recognize Palestinians as a distinct people or to value Middle Eastern nations except for their oil. While Said did not live to see how Lewis’s views would influence the Bush administration’s policies in Iraq, the terms of his critique still divide scholars.

Despite decades of controversy, however, neither Said’s most recent supporters, such as Juan Cole and Rashid Khalidi, nor his most ardent critics, Raphael Patai and Daniel Pipes, have succeeded in subjecting Said’s concerns to a serious analysis that might address the central question: can scholarship on the Middle East ever be freed from its political context? ... more »

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