Mark Koslow’s Account of the Schuon Cult
Written
September 1991 fort cult members to help them get out
Typed by Rama Commaraswamy
Version
originale en anglais
Mark Koslow's Account of the Schuon
Cult
Written
September 1991 for cult members to help them get out
Typed
by Rama Coomaraswamy
DEDICATED
TO THE BLESSED VIRGIN - JULY-SEPT. 1991
I became a disciple of Frithjof Schuon or Shaykh
Isa Nurradin Achmed after a five year period of devotion to his books. As a
result of these books I spent short periods of time in Russian orthodox
monasteries, visited Red Indian reservations, exposed myself to Vedanta and
Tibetan Buddhism and considered for some years becoming an orthodox Christian
monk. I came into contact with Schuon through Huston Smith, moved to
Bloomington and became a Moslem on Schuon’s advice. I discontinued my
profession of as a repairer and restorer of oriental carpets when I moved to
Bloomington. Due to lack of rugwork, I became a handy man, house painter and
framemaker for the tariqa or spiritual brotherhood. I was initiated into
Schuon’s method 9 months after my arrival in Bloomington in June of 1989. My
relationship with Sa. Aminah, Schuon’s supposed third wife, began about the
time of my initiation in March of 1990.1 became "married” to her, or so we
thought, in July of 1990. Those who wish to know this story can read the
Afterword. I was given the fifth and sixth themes of meditation, the Alchemy
and the Primordial Dance, as well as the sexual alchemy in rapid succession,
all at this time. I studied painting with Schuon and painted 5
"icons" under his direction.
About Mr. Schuon: he purports to be a Moslem and
Sufi Shaykh and exponent of the Religio Perennis. He has written brilliantly on
metaphysics, is an artist and leader of the tariqa Mariamiah. He formerly lived
in Lausanne, Switzerland, but now lives in Bloomington, Indiana, where 50 to
100 followers adhere to him and his teachings. He has some 500-1000 followers
in European countries, Africa, America, South America, the near east and
Malaysia.This book assumes some knowledge of Schuon’s life, person, doctrine
and method.
Thejcp.ntents of this book represent my
disillusionment with Schuon and his tariqa. I once' believed he was a prophet,
an Avatara, and the equal or more of Solomon. I longecTto be closer to him and
Sa. Aminah brought me close to him so that, for a year I knew much of what he
said and did. This proximity led to a tragedy wherein Schuon and his fourth
wife destroyed my relationship with. Sa. Aminah. In a stroke I lost the woman I
loved and saw, at the same time the ' spiritual corruption and pathology of.Schuon.
Thus, I see now that my former i "innocent" devotion to Schuon
was an error, a sweet error, through which I willingly deceived myself. Many
who believe in Schuon now are deceived as I was. I know what it means to prefer
a beautiful lie to a hard truth.
The spiritual danger for one such as me is to fall
into self-pity or bitterness, and with God’s help I seek to avoid these excesses.
But it is a fact .that my knowledge of Schuon comes from proximity to him, from
both direct and indirect experience of his corruption, and this suffering is
not something subjective, but an objective fact, and constitutes for me a
truth, an evidence and even a proof of Schuon’s falsity and corruption.
Moreover, I have learned since leaving Schuon’s group how consistently Schuon
has despitefully abused others, and the suffering of these people corroborates
mine and leads finally to a picture of Schuon which is appalling and
undeniable.
There may be aspects of Schuon’s books that are
true, though globally they seem to me works of a universalist ambition. There
may be aspects of Schuon’s paintings that convey a certain beauty, but this
beauty seems to me more a seduction towards error than an theophany. Even
Schools "Primordial | gatherings" present a certain beauty or truth
despite the fact that they contain ‘ criminal acts. Thus many, wising to avoid
the hard truth, cling to the beautiful lie. Many others, out of complacency,
stubbornness, to preserve a reputation, to keep a false peace, to avoid having
to re-examine Schuon’s doctrine and method, or to avoid admitting the fact that
Schuon has betrayed us all; for these and other reasons many will eguivocate,
rationalize and relativize Schuon’s errors."Jfiere is a proud and defiant
belief that Schuon cannot be wrong, a belief advocated above all by Schuon
himself, since it is a belief inculcated by Schuon’s doctrine ano method; this
belief I have found to be resistant even to the most shocking and gross facts,
facts which cannot be denied.
Since I have left Schuon’s group I have learned
that for many selfinterest is more important than the truth.1 I do not blame
anyone for this, for human weakness is an inevitability. God is not the icy,
despising and judgmental embodiment of gnostic esoterism such as Schuon claims
He is. God is not an elitist who looks down from a mountain top of knowledge
upon a humanity that, apart from those who prostate themselves before Schuon,
is "profane" and disgusting. God is most present, not where man
exalts himself, but where he admits he might be wrong and led astray. God has a
compassionate concern for others and He can only help those who can admit they
may be wrong and who know that they need his help and ask for it. God is not
exalted by man’s knowledge of Him, and man should not think himself exalted by
his knowing of , God. Schuon condemned Sa. Aminah and I for what he called
"this damned religion of the heart." But love, compassion or charity
is precisely what Schuon lacks and one who lacks this is not a saint. May God
have mercy of: Frithjof Schuon therefore, and I pray for his soul and for all
those who defend his errors, equivocate, rationalize and seek the truth where
it cannot be found, god is an open door, not a closed one; and if Schuon in his
pride has closed a door upon God, God could not close a door upon him.
There are
two objections which have already been levelled against this account which I
would like to address. Firstly, it is said that I interpret too much. I would
say in regard to this that God alone is the Absolute Fact. All contingent facts
are subject to inevitable interpretation simply .by virtue of some facts being
chosen for presentation rather than others. It is thus entirely a question of
how the facts are presented and whether or not this presentation, which already
implies an interpretation, is true or not true. The history of modern science
goes to show that there are no facts without interpretations and moreover in
Schuon’s case we are not dealing with errors suceptible of scientific inquiry,
but rather with spiritual errors of an exceedingly subtle and complex nature.
Thus if I interpret and perhaps speak strongly, it is because I know what I know
of Schuon and I wish to say after Dante, beware, "all ye who enter
here." My purposeinjhis_book is to expose Schuon’s secrets much
like one lets a light shine4nto^caveTand my purposed this is to provoke an
inquiry into just who Ihis man really is. Moreover, I wish to help those who
are ambiguous about Schuon and hopefully prevent others from making the
mistakes I have made. Lastly, I wish to provoke a thorough examination of
Schuon’s personal doctrine and method in order that his errors might be
examined and God, who is the truth, might be served.
The ot|?er objection I would like to address is
the effort to discredit Sa. Aminah as s witness, this is an ad hominem
argument. I have confirmed most of the facts I learned from Sa. Aminah through
other sources, often Schuon’s other wives, and in some cases, Schuon himself.
For instance, I confirmed the way Schuon and Sa. Badriyah paint, and the Vision
of the Virgin, with Sa. Badriyah and Schuon himself. However this may be, Sa.
Aminah has been in a position to know more apput Schuon since 1974 than anyone
alive. Moreover, Sa. Aminah’s tragic failure to remove herself from the mental
tyranny of Schuon’s group has led her into unspeakable suffering, and thus it
seems to me unqentlemanly and ungenerous to question the reliability of her
witness when her suffering itself is a a witness against Schuon.
Lastly, I have tried to be as honest a witness as
possible. I wish to \ thank Dr. Rama Coomaraswamy and Dr. Wolfgang Smith for
whose spiritual and emotional help I am deeply grateful. God is the Truth, the
Way and the Life, and if what I say here is not the truth, then God have mercy
on me and show me the strait way.
I begin with a description of Schuon’s painting.
This may be . illogical, but I do so as they lead to an understanding of
Schuon’s misuse of the Virgin , his belief in his "deification" and
thence to the Primordial Gatherings •
The paintings of Schuon and his fourth wife
Sa. Badriyah are presented to the fuqara in hierarchical order. The classifications
are (1) - paintings which everyone may see; (2) restricted paintings which not
everyone ' may see; (3) esoteric or "tantric" paints which only the
elite or inner circle may see. Decisions about who may see what are made by
Schuon and Sa. Badriyah, and sometimes by other dignitaries, such as Sa. Aminah
who showed me many secret things before I became romantically involved with
her.
The point of bringing up these classifications is
that the paintings ।
exist on a scale of grades, a given painting being either more or less
"esoteric."! ’ The most esoteric paintings are those which picture
Schuon naked so that one I [ can see his sexual parts, especially those
paintings where his sexual parts are I the focus of the painting, these
paintings are highly guarded, and I do not have I any photos of them. I have
only a photo of the nude Schuon from which Sa. Badriyah made what she considers
her greatest painting. According to Sa. Aminah, Sa. Badriyah considers she
"was born in order to paint this painting" (in Sa. Badriyah’s words).
This painting pictures Schuon on his knees with his legs spread so that his
penis hangs free and is emphasized by a golden light behind it. Jf I
remember correctly his hands are in the mudra position for the jewel in the
~Heart of the lotus," the Buddhist formula for which in Sanskrit is OM
MANI PADME HUM. I think his eyes are closed.
The other category of the most esoteric paintings
are those derived from the Great Vision of 1965.1 will describe this vision
shortly Tpese paintings seek to give plastic expression to this vision. There
are many attempts to depict this vision. Sa. Aminah reported to me
conversations between Schuon and Sa. Badriyah in which they discussed the
difficulty of picturing this vision. The i problem Schuon and Sa. Badriyah
faced was how to depict a vision of sexual i union with the Virgin in a manner
which was both static and hierarchical. |
Another category of the most
esoteric paintings is that of the Pte- San-Win, the Buffalo Cow Woman of the
Sioux and Lallah Yogishwari, a naked Hindu saint, whose master told her to
"go from the outward to the Inward," and who said "therefore,
naked, I dance." This dancing naked is one of Sa Badriyah's primary
functions to perform for Schuon and his tariqa. She often dances.naked for
Schuon and Sa. Aminah in private. These dances are Hindu Balinese, and both South and North American
Indian. This should not be understood literally however, as Sa. Badriyah has no
training in these dances; they are entirely improvisational, always nude, and
statically erotic, if such a phrase is allowable.
I mention these dances because the position and
poses that occur in them bear a relation to Schuon’s and Sa. Badriyah’s
paintings. All of these paintings are taken from poses that Sa. Badriyah has made
in these dances, or which have occurred in nude photographs of her. The most
esoteric paintings of Laila and the Pte-San-Win are spread-legged with pubic
hair shaved, either kneeling or lying down. All these paintings constitute a
kind of spiritual-sexual gallery of Scnuon’s 4th wife, his
"mahashakti." Sa. Aminah told me many times I that, according to
Schuon, the sexual parts express the "heart,", and Schuon and I ‘ Sa.
Badriyah worship each other through the heart-sexual parts. The most > >
esoteric paintings make public this worship of each others sexual parts. The |
phrase "porno-esoterism" occurs to me, but perhaps such a phrase is
too I interpretive.
I mention all these things in view of describing
the Great Vision. But before I describe this vision, I must describe the manner
in which Schuon and Sa. Badriyah paint, since this is related to the Great
Vision.
Schuon does not like to look at
women who are near or past 1 menopause; a Shakti of the prophet must be young.
Thus Sa. Arnmah told me I < that when Sa. Badriyah came to Schuon, Schuon
lost all interest in her (i.e. Sa? Arnmah), and except for some attempts at
having sexual relations with both wives at once, he "hardly looked"
at Sa. Arnmah. Therefore, sometime after Sa. Badriyah came, the tradition began
of Sa. Arnmah spending one hour three days a week with Schuon and Sa. Badriyah
instead of her former 3 hours, 3 days a week alone with him.
After a certain amount time the practice developed
that when Sa. Arnmah would arrive at the apartment or house of Sa. Badriyah,
Sa. Badriyah would be naked, as she nearly always is, and they would get out a
blanket to be spread on the floor, take out Sa. Badriyah’s painjbpx and a
tripod easel. Sa. Badriyah would lie down naked with her legs spread on the floor.
She would be propped up on one elbow so that the other hand was free to paint.
Sa Aminah would lie on the couch or divan behirjd her, dressed. Schuon would
lie on the floor so that his head was on the tniqfi’of Sa. Badriyah and he
would spend the entire time looking at the vagina of Sa. Badriyah, even during
conversation or if Badriyah asked advice about what to do next on the painting
she was making. This is how Schuon and Badriyah paint their paintings, Schuon
telling her what to do while he looks at her vagina. More than once §a. Aminah
bitterly » complained that all she could see of her so-called husband was part
of one eye I and a mass of hair. The one eye was looking at the sexual
parts of what Sa Aminah called "his only wife and Shakti." At other times
Sa Aminah would deceive herself by trying to put a good face on the matter and
she would say that it was a great privilege to be the witness to the Prophet
with his Shakti. Once she even tried to maintain that she was very virtuous,
like Sa. Hamidah, who apparently can also suppress her sense of propriety,
because both of them can be "magnanimous" and watch their husband
make love to someone else.
It should be added that this manner of painting is
not restricted to < periods when Sa. Aminah is with them. Schuon thus spends
quite a lot of time ooking at this particular part of a woman's anatomy.
Before I speak of the Great Vision I should record
the visions of Sa. Badriyah as there is a close connection between them. What
follows are Sa Ammah’s description of these visions as I recorded them during a
phone conversation. There are other visions besides these, but I mention the
most _ important. "First she (Sa. Badriyah) dreamt she was married to the
Shaykh." This while she was married to another faqir. Then Sa. Badriyah
had another dream in which "a tall beautiful woman came floating towards
her - she followed her - it was the Virgin - who led her to a mountain - on top
of which was a castle - there were many old sages or prophets there - they said
to her - "our King is sick and you are needed fo console him." This
King was supposed to be Schuon. Lastly Sa. Badriyah had a waking vision where
as happened to Schuon "the name descended upon her". Sa. Aminah said
that "the name entered into her vagina from below and traveled up to her
heart. She heard the words "Isa, Isa" while f this happened."
From this point on, Sa. Amlnah told me, Sa. Badriyah couldnoi longer have
sexual relations with her husband, Barry Macdonald.^nd-feft^"' T "married
to the Divine Name." To Sa. Badriyah being married'tfaSaivine Name,; to
Schuon, and to God are the same thing.
If I may be allowed to make some observations
about this vision I would say the following. The only example I can think of
where God has entered a woman is when God, through the Angel Gabriel and the
Holy Spirit, visited the Virgin Mary at the Annunciation. This occurrence is
something which was without precedent and unrepeatable. That God, through His
Name, should enter into the vagina of a woman such as Sa. Badriyah, thereby
making her of the same stature as the Virgin Mary, is not an acceptable
possibility.
The issue of the union of the Virgin with the
Spirit of God was Christ Himself. The issue of the divine Name entering into
Sa. Badriyah is illustrated in a series of increasingly blasphemous paintings
which seek to make Schuon the equal of Christ. The other issue of Sa.
Badriyah’s union with the divine Name is her own rise to power as the most
important wife of Schuon and a demagogic leader of Schuon's sacred brotherhood.
Under these circumstances, how could such a vision possibly be true? Her
authority and power is such that she not only speaks with the authority of
Schuon, but even has and exercises the right of entering the home of the inner-circle
fuqura and rearranging their homes in accordance with her own ideas of how they
should be arranged - this also on the authority of Schuon.
Schuon’s.obsession, for such it must be called,
with the female ) sexual parts began quite'early in his life. I will write of
this shortly, but I noticed' today in his "great prophetic poem" to
which he refers to so often in the Memoirs, (privately distributed to
members of the tariqa) the line "Thou art that which in madness I long
contemplated." The name of this poem is "to the unknown
beloved." Indeed, who is this woman that he paints? It is certainly not
the Blessed Virgin.
The portraits of the shaykh, which Sa. Badriyah
had the idea to begin painting and which Schuon encouraged and advised and
corrected her about - (they were all painted in the poses described in the
section called "the / paintings") picture Schuon as a Prophet and
Avatara. That he would encourage j and oversee such a practice, and even allow
his disciples to offer personal prayers to him through these portraits,
indicates his vanity and narcissism. Another example of this is the
extraordinary number of photographs he allows to have taken of him. There is a
faqirah (female disciple) in Germany who claims to receive answers from Schuon
through prayers made to one of these nude . - portraits. (I forget her name).
Sa. Badriyah prays to a portrait of Schuon daily, j During one of her jealous
fits, of which there have been many, she took her portrait of him off the wall
because she didn’t wish to look at nim. Sa. Aminah | told me that the Shaykh
psychically knew that Sa. Badriyah had done this, and' reproached her for her
underestimation of him. Sa. Aminah said that Schuon psychically knows
everything Sa. Badriyah thinks and does.
About Sa. Badriyah’s jealous fits, I will mention
two stories. Mark Goren (S. Hatim), who lived next to sa. Badriyah, once picked
her up, looking somewhat crazed, walking along side a highway in the middle of
the night. Sa. Aminah confirmed this and said it was because she was jealous of
Schuon’s need to press himself against naked women, a practice he feels
compelled to do often. Another time, in April of this year, there was a small
completely naked ‘ primordial gathering and Sa. Badriyah was playing a small
drum with a drum ’ stick. Sa. Hind got too close and was too intimate with the
naked Schuon so Sa. Badriyah hit her over the head with the drumstick.
To continue with Schuon’s image
of himself - in December of January of 1990-91 Sa. Badriyah began, with
Schuon’s approval, to teach the majority of the fuqara (those in the inner
circle) the prayer poem which Sa. Hamidah and Sa. Aminah had recited for years.
This prayer says: j
"O Isa, son of Mary, on thee be peace, The
sun is for thy body a rainment, The presence of the All-Holy is a healing for
the wombs.
Thy body is a veil for the ever forgiving, and a
descent of mercy for mankind."
This poem, recited in Arabic, is interpreted
by.Schuon’s followers in the following manner: Schuon’s body, like Christ’s
body heaTs'people; also it identifies Schuon’s body with the highest Divine
Name, the All-Holy, as if Schuon were God.
In contrast to these sublimities, I recall one day
last August or September (1990) when Sa. Aminah came over on the day of her visit
with Scnuon. Whenever she came over after these visits and sne came over after
all of her visits, I would lie on the couch with her, and begin to ask her,
what did he say, what did Sa. Badriyah say, what were they painting and so on.
With all my questions, her descriptions would sometimes take up an hour. During
one of these times she told me (as I mentioned earlier) that.Sa. Badriyah
showed him some pictures she had taken of him. He, was wourtd'ed to the core by
the poor i appearance of his own image and in a fit'bf vanity he got asthma.
Both Sa. Badriyah and Sa. Aminah had to quickly comfort him, run their hands
over him and tell him how great and handsome he is, how majestic his body
looks, how he is a prophet and how grace or baraka pours out from his body.
This had to go on for a 1/2 hour or an hour. The extreme excess of his
reactions to these photographs is quite typical of him, and also typical is the
reaction of the two women, this is their primary function: to keep Schuon
constantly aware of his greatness and spiritual sublimity. I neglected to add
that Schuon threatened the two women who were comforting him with stopping the
primordial gatherings since he thought his body ugly and old, and that no would
wish to look at him. They had to talk him out of doing this.
Many times I have seen Schuon pose for photographs
and one can see him breath deeply and endeavor to look severe and majestic. He
will not smile for photos because he says a smile is too personal and
individualistic. Schuon hardly ever smiles in any case. Sa. Aminah in all her
years with him said she only heard him laugh a few times. She also said that he
almost never smiles; One recalls a French proverb Schuon quotes: "a sad
saint is a sad excuse for a saint." She also said that he hates to look in
the mirror because he does not wish to know what his own expressions are as
such a thing would make him too aware of himself. I do not understand how a man
who throws a tantrum of wounded vanity over some nude photographs of himself,
and who clearly loves his own image, yet does not want to look at himself in a
mirror.
I recall however, an exception to this not wishing
to look at himself ' in a mirror. Sa. Aminah said that Schuon, when making
love, liked to put them in all sorts of positions so that he could observe
these positions in a mirror placed against a wall.
I will mention also another story that indicates
something of Schuon's opinion of himself. Sa. Aminah told me that sometime
during the late 1970’s Schuon was praying the Moslem prayers in the apartment
of Sa. Aminah and S. Abdul Ali in Fully, Switzerland. Scnuon got up in the
middle of the prayers to write something down, something she rarely saw him do.
Later on she found out that he had been praying to understand the nature of the
Prophet. He had a vision, while praying, of tne inner nature of the Prophet as
a constellation of six stars. These six stars were the six themes (purity,
spiritual activity, contentment, fervor, discernment, identity). He realized
the six themes were a ‘spiritual portrait of the Prophet" and the Prophet
was Schuon himself. As a result of this vision Schuon wrote the Mystery of
the Prophetic Substance. This essay, as is more or less true of all of
Schuon’s writings, is self-referential. I mention this story to indicated that
Schuon’s books and his method and person are not separate entities. What Schuon
is now, he has always been. I will have occasion to argue this point more than
once in the following pages. I apologize to the reader if this means I must
sometimes repeat myself, but so many people seem to think there are two
Schuon’s, the Schuon of the books and the Schuon who has temper tantrums and is
obsessed with female genitalia, that I must often return to this point.
This section may appear to be a digression, but to
understand both the Great Vision and the Primordial Gatherings properly one
must understand how Schuon views himself. His narcissism, in my opinion, is
unsurpassable and ? it is because of this that he feels he has a right to the
body of the Blessed Virgin ' as well as to the bodies of all the women in the
tariqa.
In Nov. or Dec. of last year, when Sa. Latifah was
away and Schuon was at Sa. Badriyah’s house, Sa. Aminah took me to see the
personal quarters of Schuon. She showed me an enormous clothes closet, full of
Tibetan I robes, Hindu Nehru jackets, Islamic clothes, American Indian clothes
and other j things of this kind. Tne traditional vestments of many
cultures were represented, | all tailored for Schuon.
In the bathroom there hung his
"primordial" costumes, that is the
costumes he has designed for himself, which are
both quasi-Hindu and quasi- Red Indian, and which display his chest and private
parts. This concern with clothes and in contrast, his own nudity, is a dialectical
metaphor Schuon uses ( both in his writing and paintings: Clothes
are exoterism and nudity is esoterism.
Given these facts, and given the cliche that
"clothes define the man," it should be clear that Schuon dresses
himself up in the vestments of all the world's religions: he is a Red Indian
chief; Hindu guru; Islamic Shaykh, Tibetan Llama, etc. Thus even if one looks
at the content of Schuon's clothes closet one sees that this man thinks himself
to be the nude primordial synthesis of all the world’s religions, which he
takes off or puts on like so many clothes.
When one goes further into Schuon’s private
quarters, behind his study, there are two small rooms, one of which has many
curtained shelves.-*;-- These shelves
house his art collection. There is a shelf of nude Hindu goddesses, another of
Tibetan goddesses and objects; a shelf with a Romanesque Christian Madonna and
child; a shelf of Japanese dolls, little samurai, gjeshas, and other Japanese
objects; and a closet full of American Indian artifacts. There is also a box of
photographs of Christian virgins.
As with Schuon’s clothes closet, his
"treasure room" tells us about Schuon as an artist. Here is a man who
believes himself to be the greatest painter in the world. (I once told him I
thought he was the greatest painter, and ne agreed.) Just as the nude Schuon is
himself pure esoterism and his closet is full of the apparel of exoterism, so
his treasure room is full of all the world’s art, of which is own art is the
quintessence and synthesis.
So likewise in regard to Schuon’s books; - Schuon
encourages the - idea that it is not necessary to concern oneself with books
other than his. (He ' has often said that one need read no other books than
his.) Even the. Koran andi the bible cannot be properly understood without the
aid of Schuon’s books. I once said to him in an interview that Plato was great
and Niffari was great, but that he was greater because he came after them and
he knows more. He agreed with this and said "that’s right," or "yes,
of course," or something of this kind.
I think I have made the point I wished to, but I
add some other comments here of related interest.
Schuon encourages the idea that he is, as it were,
outside of time, or as if fallen from heaven, like mistlet^ (there is a text
about this which invokes the Celtic idea that mistletoe falls from heaven • on
to oak trees - it doesn't of course; it is a parasite.) In any case, Schuon,
the Shaykh al-baraka,2 shaykh by grace, believes himself to be unique and as if
born full-formed from a heavenly void. However, despite this view, one could
show, and perhaps someone will one day show, that Schuon’s paintings, for
instance, like his poetry, are at least partially derived from the symbolist
movement in art and poetry which had a considerable influence upon Schuon’s
father, himself a poet. The symbolist movement encouraged a dreamy esoteric
nostalgia for the remote past and for what is foreign; the far east, India,
orientalism; Chinoiserie; Moslem harems; erotic sultry doe-eyed Hindu women
like gopis awaiting Krishna.
2 Schuon was refused maqqadamship. but claimed to
have received the right to be a shaykh by the direct intervention of
God - Hence Shaykh Al-Barrakah. .'
In any case, I raise this matter to point to some
of the influences that determined Schuon historically; why does Schuon see
himself at the summit of the world’s religions, the world’s art, the world's
castes and races? I can't propose to answer this question systematically, but
only to stimulate thought about it. I do not wish to provide definitive
interpretations of Schuon but only logical and suggestive ones.
Sa. Amlnah described this vision to me 3 or 4
times; only once did I write down some of what she said as she said it.
She said that "he (Schuon) needed femininity
because it was the perfect complement to his discrimination." She said
that Schuon told her "that when he came to a dead end, God sent him a
grace that had to do with the sexual parts of the Virgin. When he began to
receive graces of this kind he was quite surprised. She appeared inside of him
and touched him on the inside. There was something erotic about it. She
appeared inside of him. He didn’t see her. It was more than seeing her. He felt
her inside."
At other times Sa. Amlnah told me that it was as
if the Virgin descended down upon him, naked, and she comforted his misery by
consoling him with her sexual parts which she exposed to him inside of him,
comforting his heart. One must recall here that to Schuon the sexual parts are
the exteriorized heart.
There is another vision, sometimes called the
Christmas Vision, which is less directly sexual, but which conveys a similar
idea. The Great Vision above occurred in 1965 and this second vision happened
in 1985, on Christmas Eve, according to Sa. Latifa (his first wife), or
Catherine Schuon.
He heard on one side of him the Ave Maria
being sung, and on the other side Ya Maryamu alaiki salam ya Rahman, ya
Rahim, being sung. (This latter is now sung by hisj.qqara.) He was like a
child, as he often is in these visions. He felt the breasts'of the Virgin
touching his back. Her legs were spread and she straddled him from behind. He
put his hands on her thighs.
The fact that this
vision occurred on Christmas eve, the night before the Birth of Christ, and the
fact that the spread-legged position is like a birth-giving position, led him
to call the paintings of this vision The Birth Paintings. Catherine
Schuon told me that he did his first version of the birth paintings within a
few days of this vision's occurrence. ,
It is well known in the tariqa that Schuon
considers himself to be the Christ-child in these paintings. He also has said
that the viewer should identify himself with Christ in these paintings.
There are other visions Schuon has had which I will
record later, but they carry a similar message. Theymake it quite clear that
not only the Virgin Mary, but most of the greatest of the world’s goddesses,
consider Schuon to be worthy of their bodies and sexual embraces. Be this as it
may, it is important to realize that these visions do not represent primarily a
sexual fixation, but rather a spiritual perversion.
As Dr. Wolfgang Smith said, and Dr. Coomaraswamy
agreed, these visions represent not something authentic, but a spiritual
pathology. This pathology begins quite early with Schuon. One can trace this
tendency back to poems he wrote in the 1930's such as Krishna and Radha
and Bajadere (see Appendix at end). This second poem describes the
ecstasy of a Devadassee, a ’Hindu temple-prostitute, who dances wildly while
animals are being sacrificed, and whose breasts become so hot she must cool
herself in the Ganges. Perhaps more directly, Schuon’s association of the
Divine Name and a woman’s sexual i parts can be traced to this passage from his
Memoirs, where he describes the | spiritual rebirth he underwent after
the loss bThis first "great love" Madelaine. |
After Madelaine had married another and had a
child "there occurred what I had described at the end of my love song,
that prophetic poem which I had written shortly before the first meeting with
my friend, that is eleven years ago: (this was written Aug. 18,1943.) The
whole world turned into my friend (Madelaine). From these days onwards -1
began at that time to invoke the Name three times daily using the six themes of
meditation - it was as if I had entered the cosmic body of my friend; I was
within her as if within the womb*
Twenty years after this came the Great Vision
which logically brings this early tendency of Schuon’s to universalize his
romantic and sexual need into a full flowering. Madelaine is replaced by the
Blessed Virgin. The flighty, inconstant German girl whom he could never
possess, finally becomes his as the Virgin Mary Herself, who gives Herself
freely to Schuon, since such a prophet as Schuon deserves such a grace and
consolation.
The logical meaning of the Great Vision, since the
real Blessed Virgin gave her body to no man, but only to the Holy Spirit, is
that Schuon is the Holy Spirit, the Paraclete. Already at 17 or 18 years of age
Schuon writes in the memoirs:
“my whole aim should be to plant the flowering
branch of the individual soul. How great is the infinity of the individual
soul! The day will come when the Divine will call me 'Paraklelos.'"
Here one sees the pathology. Only Christ touched
the sexual parts I of the Blessed Virgin at birth, but Schuon has a right to
Her sexual parts because he also is "a manifestation of the Logos"
(Sa. Latitah said this) because he is the Paraclete, the Spirit of Truth
predicted by Christ in the Gospel of John.
Sa. Aminah told me many times that Schuon does hot
think of the Virgin as a mother, but as a Beloved. Sa. Hamidah (another wife,
see below) told me, in an interview, that the four wives of Schuon are only
pale reflections of his great love, the Blessed Virgin. She said all the wives
wish therefore to be more like the Virgin.
The sexual parts of the Blessed Virgin were a
birth canal to Christ, and by implication of the "Birth Paintings"
they are a source of at least spiritual rebirth to Schuon. But Christ could not
claim to have been consoled by Her sexual parts. The Virgin was Mother to
Christ and though she is sometimes called His Spouse or Bride, this refers to
their union after the Apoctostasis, and such a union is a spiritual mystery of
such sacredness that to claim to imitate it in this world can only be a
blasphemy and a travesty. Even if one wished to give Schuon the benefit of the
doubt and say he is an Avatara, an impossible claim, but even then, union with
the Virgin would be an impossibility in this world with a man of flesh and
blood, having all the Karmic imperfections of which the flesh is heir.
Having stated these personal opinions and
arguments, let me return to what I know of the facts. Sa. Aminah told me that
Schuon often compared her sexual parts to the Kaaba. She also said that the
vagina "seems I almost as important to him as the divine Name. He worships
it. He asked the ? Virgin in prayer if he could write about her sexual parts
and she said to him in a feminine voice full of intimacy, 'No, No.' It is not a
matter of the worship of just the physical shape or person; the sexual parts of
a woman are ananda, the gate of extinction and infinity, the Rahman. The penis
is also like the divine Name, he believes." She also said He is too old to
"any longer have any passion about it. He sees it as the heart." In
Schuon’s writing over the past ten years, one can trace a shift from emphasis
upon "legitimate pleasure" to "adoration" and this shift
corresponds to the onset of his impotency.
All this is confirmed by a recent article of
Schuon’s called The Veil of Isis. In this article (page 22), Schuon
says, "the nudity of Isis pertains to the heart, or to the Immanent Self;
instead of speaking of 'unveiling' another image could’be chosen and it could
be said that the Goddess takes the soul under her veil, ab intra', this
in Sufic terms is 'knowledge through Allah’ in which it is less the
intelligence which perceives God than God who perceives Himself in the
intelligence."
These quotations, which refer to the highest grace
possible to man, union with God, - when taken in context with the Great Vision,
with Schuon’s admiration with Sa. Badriyah's having received the Divine Name in
her vagina; in the context with the Vagina as Kaaba and Schuon’s ability to
contemplate the vagina for hours at a time - all of this indicates a profound
spiritual madness which mixes a claim to complete spiritual realization of a
prbhetic order with a psycho-sexual fascination with the female organ seen, as
the Zen Buddhists would say, as a "gateless gate." One must ask if
Schuon is an Avatara or a pseudo-spiritual psychopath and megalomaniac? Or, to
put this less drastically, it seems Schuon’s personal psychology has become
mixed with the most profound teachings to the extent that ne has identified
pure esoterism and spirituality as sucn with himself and his own psychic
potentialities.
There is one other aspect to these visions that
should be mentioned. On one of the completely naked so-called
"Byzantine" Icons, (Those painted by Sa. Badriyah in the last few
years), Schuon has had written lines from Shaykh Al-Alawi’s poem
"Layla." I don’t remember exactly which lines were used, but the poem
says "She (Layla) favored me and drew me to her, took me in, into her
precinct.... raised her cloak that hid her from me, made me marvel to
distraction she pressed me to her,
put her from me."
Shaykh Al-Alawi is here discussing a spiritual
state, not a sexual fascination with a given woman. The Sufis, Rumi, for
instance, have used the image of the Beloved as a spiritual metaphor. At one
point in Rumi he even says that woman is not just woman, she is the Creator.
Dante and Ibn Arabi both had experiences with saintly women who provided them
with a possibility of union . with God through a feminine Archetype. Schuon’s
Madelaine however is not I Beatrice but an inconstant German girl and his
Virgin is not the embodiment of I heavenly grace, but a kind of psychical
prostitute who comforts him sexually, and in fact, this is also what Schuon has
made of his wives.
For the last year I spent 4 to 10 hours a day with
one of these wives, and if Schuon were the prophet he claims to be her behavior
would have been very different. Thus Schuon has taken the poetic tradition of
the west which one sees in the Sona of Songs, in Dante, and in lower
forms in romantic and symbolist poets, and combined it with the Sufi concern to
see the image of the Beloved as the image of God. He has debased and corrupted
these traditions by imposing upon the most sacred of ail women, the Blessed
Virgin, his own bizarre and psycho-sexual fascinations.
A few last comments about these visions. Sa.
Badriyah, in a text called The Message of the Icons - (and this text, as
all that Sa. Badriyah thinks and does, has the approval of Schuon) - Sa
Badriyah says in this text that the Virgin offers her naked body not only to
Schuon^but also to us (i.e, the fuqara of the inner circles). Does the Blessed
virgin give her body to anyone who is a disciple of Schuon? One must ask who is
Schuon, and who is this Blessed Virgin that Schuon has the right to offer Her
body to others as if she were a prostitute? It seems to this writer monstrous
that Schuon should lower the Blessed Virgin to the point of having her use her
vulva to attract men to heaven, as if she need to use such methods.3
THE RELIGION OF THE SEXUAL PARTS
No doubt it is true, as the Koran says, that
"to God is the returning," but though there may be something normal
in a man who wishes to return to God, and even, in moderation, something normal
in a man who wishes to "return to the womb/’ or who loves God by loving
Him through his wife, but has not i Schuon made a religion of the Vagina and
Penis? No doubt there is something of God in femininity and masculinity, but
the characteristic masculine and feminine parts are not icons nor gods.
Again, I do not offer these comments in a
polemical spirit, but only to draw out their implications and raise questions.
3 There Is one matter I tailed to discuss in this
section. In the first edition of the Transcendent Unity of Religions, Schuon's
first book, there was a chapter which was suppressed In later editions called Of
the Christ Given Initiation. The last three paragraphs of this essay
explore the relation between the mouth that utters the divine name, the mouth
that 'I receives the Eucharist and the vagina that gave birth to Christ. I
refer the reader to these passages as yet further proof. q proof be
needed, of Schuon's pathology on this subject No doubt there are truths
expressed in his views on this subject and one can find such truths formulated,
especially In Hindu symbolism and cosmology concerning the Yoni or Vagina of
the Goddess being the counterpan of the Lingam of Shiva, but schuon's case Is
clearly not a case of cosmology or symbolism, but a case of metaphysical
metaphor having become a pathology.
I refer the reader to these passages also to show
that there are not two Schuons, the man who wrote the books and the man with a
spiritual pathology. The books reflect In the highest metaphysical language
both Schuon's Intellectual genius and his pathology. The corpus of Schuon seen
in conjunction with his visions, his memoirs, paintings, poems, and his
character, amount to a prodigious effort to Impose himself upon the world's
religions and In fact, to use the world's religions to glorify himself. This is
pride and Individualism, the like of which this author cannot recall having
ever seen elsewhere. Sa. Arntnah and Sidl Abdul All both told me of Schuon's
fascination with and his tendency to compare himself to Alexander, Ceaser and
Napoleon, is It going uflar tqjcall this man a megalomaniac and a paranoid?
Schuon is married to four women. His first wife,
Sa. Latifah (Catherine) was married according to the Christian rites./This to
please Sa. Latifah's parents though according to Sa. Latifah, Schuon could not
have cared less about this.) The other three by what is called "intrinsic
marriage" which ’ means that he simply declared them to be his wife.
His second wife is Sa. Hamida who is also married to Sidi Abdul Qayyum and from
whom she has never been divorced either legally or by Islamic practice.
According to Sa. Aminah, Sa. Hamida continued.to have sexual relations with her
husband , / intermittently after her "intrinsic marriage" to the
Shaykh. In addition, the I 1 i
U 0 Shaykh’s first wife had intimate relations
with SidivQayyum during a ten year; i \ period, again without any formal
divorce or marriage within the Islamic 1 / framework - these
relations coming to an end when Sidi Abdul Qayyum’s alcohglism„became too much
for her. The Shaykh is also "intrinsically married" to SaTAminah
while she remains married to Sidi Abdul Ali. When she first joined the Shaykh
she refused to accept the position of concubine and demanded that 1 of
wife and it was then that he "intrinsically" married her. His last or
fourth wife is Sa. Badriya, the "mahashakti." I shall discuss the
Shaykh’s relationship with Sa. Aminah in more detail later.
"On my way to Morocco in 1965, when I was
suffering from asthma and feeling ill to the point of death - owing to causes
of a moral order - there occurred... the contact with the Blessed Virgin. This
had as its immediate result the almost irresistible urge to be naked like her
little child; from this even onwards I went naked as often as possible... A few
years later this mystery came upon me again, and it did so in connection with
the irresistible awareness that I am not a man like other men."
These passages from the essay Sacred Nudity
- a repressed part of the Memoirs, seems to contain in germ form
Schuon’s principle errors - implicitly identifying himself with Christ and
mixing his own desperate psychic > need of female sexual consolation with
the highest Female Intercessor, the heavenly Virgin. Pride and Passion; mixed
with the very highest metaphysics and then pandered as the pure esoterism of
the Prophet or the Religio Perennis.
Sa. Aminah said to me " the first time I saw
him naked I was aware ' his body had a radiance that could heal. This radiance
pame from the presence of God in him. When I married him he was often compelled
to take his clothes off because his body radiates the truth and he wished to
communicate it."
"He used to play ball in the pool of the
Qayumids (in Fully, Switzerland) in a gauze loincloth that hid nothing... In
restaurants he often opens his shirt so that his chest is visible."
Sa. Aminah also told me recently
that both she and the other wives) must keep a clos eve on
him in restaurants because he refuses to button his pants or zip his
fly--Decause he finds this too constraining - and the wives must , make sure
that his shirt, coat or scarves cover his lower area, lest he be j exposed in
public.’
This concern with his body and the attendant
desire to defy conventions, whatever spiritual associations it may have with
naked sanyassins in India, American Indians naked on mountain tops, Bali, and
Adam and Eve, is mixed with a narcissism and an individualism. The need to defy
conventions is the product of romantic individualism. Sa. Aminah said Schuon in
his 20's did things such as rudely tear his bread in half, rather than cut it
with a knife, when eating with people he thought too conventional, in order to
shock them with his behavior. This need to shock other people comes from an
individualistic pride, common in poets and art students, but not in saints.
Be this as it may, Schuon imposes nudity on his
wives - at least the last two, and at the same time, he uses his wives to defy
conventions by having them express the "primordial" in this manner.
Thus Sa. Badriyah is always naked both in her own house and whenever she goes
to dinner at any of the houses of perhaps 30 people who constitute the inner
circle of the tariqa, among them the Alids, the Thabitids, Qassimids, and
Munirids. I do not quite understand this need of Schuon’s to publicly display
the nudity of his wives. It seems to me to involve some need of power and
control. One indication of this was when I told Sa. Aminah that I loved her and
did not wish her to display her body in public, she was very moved and said
that it was the first time anyone had desired her for herself, and that this
made her very happy.
However this may be, given this background of the
Vision of the Virgin and the consequent need of Schuon’s to see himself as
greater than all men and by implication, a prophet or Avatara, one now can see
how the primordial gatherings developed. With these things in mind I will
describe the gatherings themselves, avoiding too much detail, knowing that when
others realize that these gatherings are perversions they will be described
more completely.
The gatherings, which in very restricted form of
small numbers of people, according to Sa. Aminah, go back as far as the 1950's.
There were small gatherings in Switzerland. They became more important when
Schuon came to America. Sa. Aminah showed me photographs of Schuon, Murray, the
Polits and others in "primordial costume" which were taken earlier in
the 1980's.
The primordial gatherings as they exist now combine
the Indian Days, so-called "commemorations of our affinity with the
Indians" with Schuon’s need of nudity, there are three categories of them:
(1)
Indian
days for visitors and those outside the inner circle where the women wear what
amount to American Indianized bikinis.
(2)
Gatherings
for the inner circle (perhaps 50-60 people) and "qualified’ visitors, in
these gatherings the women are all naked except for a very slight loin cloths,
which hide hardly anything. Otherwise they have Indian jewelry on and are bare
breasted. In these gatherings the imitation Sa. Badriyah does of the bringing
of the Sacred Pipe (Schuon says Sa. Badriyah is an Incarnation of Pte- San-Win
- Buffalo Cow woman) is performed completely naked. Another dance with Sa.
Badriyah and Sa. Suad Is also entirely naked.
Schuon wears an Indian war bonnet that descends to
the floor and an absurd costume which is a kind of combination loin-cloth and
leggings except that his genitals are not covered. It seems his pubic hair is
shaved or cut off.
(3)
The
3rd category of gatherings are only attended by the Thabitids, the Haggids,
Schuon and Badriyah and sometimes the Alids. There may be others added now such
as the Qassimids. These are completely naked and the dances are more
suggestive, Balinese or Hindu, and apparently there is more intimacy with
Schuon, though as he is now impotent it does not go very far. I should add some
of these dances are South American, performed in a bizarre South American
costume of parrot feathers.
There are many different dances, but only three
that Schuon seems to particularly enjoy. In the first of these with the large
drum in the background and the tariqa Indian singers (S. Ughbah, S. Qassim, S.
Hamdun, and S. Abdul Kafi) singing Indian songs; Schuon with genitals exposed, goes
intc the center of the Indian Lodge. The women circle around him clockwise,
shoulder to shoulder. From the center towards the periphery, Schuon goes up to
each woman in turn and gives them a kind of embrace, pressing his chest and
stomach against the breasts and abdomen of the women. In another dance he puts
his hands around their hips and backsides. In yet another dance, he sits on nis
bench to the side of a lodge and as the women circle the lodge, each woman as
she approaches a few feet from Schuon, directly in front of him, stops and does
a 360 degree turn, giving him an opportunity to look each woman up and down
back anc front.
There are other dances; both men and women’s war
dances, Fitzgerald’s eagle dance, Sa. Badriyah and Sa.'Latifah dancing, but as
far as Schuon is concerned, it is the contact with women that he loves. Once
when there was a first category of.gathering, where the .women are_covered, I
saw Schuon was quite bored. I asked Sa. Aminah about this and she said,
"he needs pure esoterism in order to live." Pure esoterism is naked
women.
The metaphysical concepts Schuon uses to justify
this practice I learned from questioning Sa. Aminah after her visits with him.
He invented these justifications after the gatherings were already established.
The Principle is: Atma (Schuon) becomes maya (the naked women) in order that
the naked women (maya) may become Schuon (Atma). Alternately, the center
becomes the periphery in order that the periphery may become the center.
"God becomes man in order that man could become God." The reader will
recognize these formulations as central to Schuon’s doctrine. The primordial
gatherings are thus the quintessential expression of the doctrine.
Quite clearly this is a rite, though Schuon
dissimulates this idea, since he doesn’t wish to be accused of syncretism.
However, all the elements of a rite are present. Schuon’s body is like the
Eucharist, the women are the receptive souls awaiting his naked body. Sa.
Aminah said he compares this dance of his to the dance of Krishna with the
Gopis (some Kangra miniatures picture this); to the Sun Dance - since the sun
dancers go in and out from the center; ana to the circumambulation of the
Kaaba. This means clearly that Schuon sees himself as equal to Krishna (an
avatara) to the Sun Dance Tree (who according to Black Elk, represents Wakan
Tanka) and to the Kaaba, the most sacred object in all of Islam. These
comparisons indicate the syncratic nature of the rite. Schuon has combined
three religions - firstly himself as Islamic Shaykh - Krishna, - Kaaba, joining
himself in an American Indian Dance, to naked women who are supposed to believe
he is the Atma: Islam- Red Indian - Hindu. Schuon explains: this is the
primordial religion; he is its only exalted exponent; in fact he himself IS
esoterism; he is the Religio Perennis. This, of course, is really a completely
new religion: Schuonism. As the Virgin blessed Schuon with her genitals and
healed him of his distress, so also Schuon blesses these women with his body,
healing them of all their illness. Since Schuon is both beyond the Law and
infallible, he cannot be questioned about all of this. The problem is that no
one is healed in this rite, because the rite manifests Schuon’s own sickness.
"Physician, heal thyself," said Christ.
There is another element of this rite I have not
mentioned: the men have to watch; and it must be born in mind that nearly all
these women are married to the men who are there. It is characteristic of
Schuon that he has a kind of castration complex about other men. Schuon is
hypersensitive about any male competition. It is not by mistake that both S.
Qaddur and S. Abdul Ali are both ineffectual men, and at the same time, the two
men who have the highest positions in the tariqa.
I hope it is not inappropriate to offer these
interpretations, but it seems to me they are imposed by the facts. Moreover, if
my interpretations are mistaken, at least I will have stimulated thought about
who and wnat Frithjof Schuon really is, and this is my purpose.
I once asked Sa. Aminah why Schuon only wishes to
"heal" the women at these gatherings, and not the men; she said that
he is a man and it would not be normal to embrace men. Yet, if his intention is
not sexual, as is claimed, then why not give the same grace to men, assuming of
course, men would want it. If a true gnostic, which Schuon claims to be, is
someone beyond gender, then why be partial to women in these gatherings? If he
is beyond concupiscence, as is also claimed, then his desire to heal others
should not be restricted to the female gender. It is restricted to the female
gender and therefore the motive is concupiscent.
Moreover, as Rama Coomaraswamy said, why did
Schuon only choose Krishna’s amorousness, if he would compare himself with
Krishna, and not also hold a mountain on his fingertip as Krishna did.
Moreover, if it were the Virgin that had appeared
to him, Schuon would not need 4 wives, nor need all the women at the
gatherings. How, one might ask, could he be satisfied with merely human wives
after the Blessed Virgin assuming that it was the Blessed Virgin?
Furthermore, one cannot reproduce Eden before the
fall in this world unless all men are realized. It is irresponsible to seek to
impose such a false Eden on fallen individuals, not to mention children^
who could scarcely understand being embraced by an 84 year old naked man.
I went to 4 or 5 of these gatherings, and watched
Schuon almost constantly, and he almost never takes his eyes off of the women’s
hips and breasts. To see Schuon at these gatherings it to see a naked 84 year
old man pressing himself against even 12 and 14 year old girls. Finally, these
gatherings must.be rejected because they are disgusting, criminal and
appalling. What he does.to these young girls constitutes corruption of minors,
child molestation and sexual abuse.
All this becomes even more abnormal when one knows
that
Schuon has all but abolished the magalis, that he
allows Moslems to drink beer, that almost no one keeps the fast at Hamadan,
etc. Schuon has abolished exoterism, orthodox form: he has become his own
religion, his own law.*
4
In February 1991, If my memory serves, shorty after Schuon began the more
complex form of primordial gathering, such s I described, he wrote an article
called the Liberating Passage. This article stated many Ideas I heard
discussed when Sa. Amhfnah would recount the conversations that occurred during
her visits. Thus, I was able to see directly how Schuon's Ideas get developed
into articles, and how the ideas In his articles relate to his life. Thus, the
notion that Schuon's books and articles are impersonal was belied. Scnuon’s
whole life, his books, his art, constitute A Play of Masks which is the
title of another recent article. Behind Schuon’s masks, and his masks are his
art, his books, his clothes, and even his nudity, there is no doubt a man witn
spiritual aspiration, but there is also a man who is enormously weak, even
sick. He is a man who needs innumerable masks In order to live, and unlike
other men, he is not content with a humble mask; it must be the mask of
greatness and not just greatness, but prophethood, not just prophethood, but to be god Himself. What do the masks
hide? Must Schuon pose himself in endless books, paintings and photographs
because his realization Is false?
In
any case, nearly the whole of this article entitled The Liberating Passage is
about Primordial
Gatherings.
The beginning of the essay defines what a rite Is, despite the fact that he
denies that the gatherings are rites. This denial is a diplomatic lie.
Elsewhere
in this essay he says that ‘the body Invites to adoration by Its theomorphic
form’ and that
‘sexuality
is that which bears witness to... the theomorphic form of the body,* that is,
normal sexuality. By this standard, the Primordial Gatherings are therefore
sexual, since the women and Schuon are involved in an adoration that tends
towards physical union without reaching It And then In an even more recent
essay, this commentary on Schuon's own Primordial Gatherings continues: he says
the believers are like gopis dancing around Krishna and uniting with him...,*
and the diefled man has the function of motionless mover.* and that the diefied
man *ls the Divine symbol.* And further that he is like the *Kaaba...* the
Sundance tree, the axis heaven earth* and then again, the dance of the gopis.’
These essays will no doubt be eventually published, so I wont quota them more
extensively, but they clearly demonstrate that Schuon see/jis himself as a
’God-man." I.e., an Avatara, that the Primordial Gatherings are rites, and
that their essential message is sexual, or sexuo-spiritual, or perhaps
'tantric.* (See Apendix II.)
TARA: Schuon was walking through an avenue of
trees carrying a
heavy rock, a tayumum, which represented to him
the Law with which he was burdened. He dropped this rock, thus unburdening
himself of the Law, which in Arabic is the Sharia. He came to a meadow. Across
the meadow, coming towards him, was Tara, the Tibetan-Nepalese goddess,
completely naked, and apparently without pubic hair. She came near to him and
said "je ne pense plus" - "I do not think anymore." The
"official version" ends here, but Sa. Aminah told me that Schuon told
her that at this point, having said she does not think, Tara took Schuon’s hand
and put his hand on her vagina. This vision reminds one of neo-zen wherein one
does not think, - one only is and since there is only being and not thinking,
anything is allowed.
This vision was taken by Schuon as permission by
God that
Schuon needed a third wife: Sa. Aminah being this
third wife. She was "married" to him in 1974. but as will be seen
later, there was no marriage.
Each wife is considered by Schuon to carry their
own divine
message. The message of Sa. Aminah is supposed to
be not thinking; being; existentiality. This "not thinking" Sa Aminah
is however, not someone I know:
which is to say that Schuon mythologizes even his
personal relationships, and even his wives become, as it were, "the masks
of God."
It is clear, as indicated earlier, that these
visions of Schuon's are not real but projections of his own psychic needs. In
1974 Schuon, according to Sa. Aminah was tired of the constant back-biting and
arguing between Sa. , Latifah and Sa. Hamidah, his first and second wives. She
told me that Schuon ! was "bored" with Sa. Hamidah, whom he had
"married" in 1965. She said that she, Sa. Aminah, never gave Schuon
any problems, always hid her faults, never asked for anything, and denied and
sacrificed herself completely. Her relationship with him was "all
obligations and no rights." She said that Sa. Latifah and Sa. Hamidah
exposed their problems and faults to Schuon and this made him ill. She told me
that the few times she manifested the slightest fault to Schuon, he got asthma,
or some other psycho-somatic malady. Sa. Aminah said "I was a peacemaker
between Schuon and his family." She said that she felt she was a sacred
prostitute, a "devadassi." She said that "He idealized me and I
had a tremendous obligation to hide my faults." She told me she never
loved him, but pretended to love him because he was so weak and helpless and
needed femininity to "go on with his mission."
She said "he loved my
light-heartedness, because Sa. Hamidah was so ponderous, mentalistic and
symbolic." In regard to his sexual life with Sa. Latifah, a matter about
which there is some dispute with others, Sa Aminah told me that Schuon thought
her cold and that he would "rather have'a cup of coffee" than be with
Sa. Latifah. However, both Sa. Badriyah and Sa. Aminah said that there were
sexual relations of a limited kind between the two. I record this C because
apparently many have been told that this first marriage was a "pure L
marriage" (i.e., one in which there were no sexual relations). Of Sa.
Hamidah*[I]
she said that Schuon found Sa. Hamidah’s love of the sexual position
Schuon calls Yab-Yum, "boring." Yab-Yum is Schuon's adaptation of a
Tibetan and tantric pose where the woman straddles the man’s midsection while
the man sits cross-legged.
When Sa. Aminah would come to see Schuon for her
"visit," she would be naked and would lie with him and he would say
"no Aristotle here." Thus Schuon did not want "to think
anymore" and the vision of Tara justified his psychic need of having yet
another wile.
To show again the expedient nature of Schuon’s
visions: I was told, after Schuon had been informed of my "marriage"
to Sa. Aminah, that the • women in the Tara vision was not Sa. Aminah after
all, but Sa. Badriyah, the fourth wife.
said, "I do not think anymore." Sa. M
however said that she was not sure her memory was correct.
PROPHETS: In Schuon’s first Khalwah, or spiritual
retreat, he had a vision of all the prophets including the Buddha.
PTE-SAN-WIN: This is the Buffalo Cow Woman of the
Sioux who
brought the sacred pipe to the Indians - Sa. Aminah
said "the Pte-san-win was in a Mihrab (of a mosque). She was naked and he
rose up with her, embracing, into the air." This vision is especially
telling as it mixes American Indian and Islamic elements, just as Schuon does.
It was observed by Dr. Coomaraswamy that in the traditional story of
Pte-san-win, the man who desired sexual union with her is reduced to ashes, i
I would observe here also that Schuon’s tendency
to mix forms,
especially Hindu, Islamic and American Indian, but
also Christian forms (in icons) is nearly always a matter of mixing sacred
traditional forms with some expression of his sexuality.
Sa. Kansa had a dream of Sa. Badriyah, as if she
were the Ptesan-win who came to earth, naked, on a white horse, bringing her
restoring "message” of sacred nudity to help the Indians. This dream of
Sa. Kansa is not without relation to Schuon’s fascination with the story of
Lady Godiva, who rode naked on a horse. Sa. Badriyah found a post-card of Lady
Godiva in a bookstore and Schuon made her go and buy all of them. Schuon
believes Sa. Badriyah is an incarnation of the Pte-san-win. Yesterday I spoke
with Mrs. Joseph Epes Brown and told her about Schuon’s abuse of the Red Indian
forms and rites, and / she agreed with me that the Indians would find Schuon’s
use of the Pte-san-win ' abusive and blasphemous. Mrs. Brown expressed the
opinion that Schuon must be sick in his mind.
KALI: This is recorded in Schuon’s memoirs; A man
like
Ramakrishna turned into a beautiful version of
Kali, naked, and embraced Schuon in some kind of sexual union and disappeared
into his chest. Sa. Aminah said that it is because of this vision that Schuon
says, many times each day, "Hari Om." She said he even says this in
restaurants next to the waiter, to the embarrassment of those present. This
Hindu mantra, Hari Om, is also written on the Laila Yogashvari paintings. In
the most "esoteric" of these, the mantra appears above the spread
legs of the goddess.
A few more details in regard to Schuon’s mixing of
forms:
1)
the
Islamic divine name is recited at the Primordial Gatherings to
the accompaniment of the Red Indian drum, the rite
in Islam is called the Hadra (dance), but the melody of the song is American
Indian, as are the costumes of the fuqara.
2)
The
Virgin Mary is painted as a Hindu Goddess, as the "Queen
of Sheeba" (the title of one painting’), as
Layla, the Islamic heroine and Sufi Beatrice. There is one painting, by Schuon
of the Virgin with tepees behind her.
3)
Schuon
used to smoke the Sacred Pipe in a ritual manner.
4)
He
has invented various tantric-sexual modes or ritual
invocations to be used while making love or used
naked with a man and woman, or a group of women which mix Islamic, Hindu and
Tibetan Buddhist elements.
There are three stories that Sa. Aminah told me
that I previously neglected to record. They are as follows:
Once,
when they were looking through one of these and were naked together, ( j tjey
came to a photo sequence in which a devil with a tail and a spear or pitchfork was attacking a nude woman. Schuon
got asthmatic on seeing this image; and threw out the magazine. He s^jcj they
should pray about it: they did. Schuon
then took the magazine out of the trasn, ripped out the offending pictures and
kept the rest to add to his collection of photos of nude women.
Another story she told me is that when Schuon was
a young man at the textile design place where he worked in F^aris, he was taken
by some of his fellow workers to a place where all the waitresses were
completely nude. Sa. Aminah said that Schuon loved this place and this
experience.
This spring, thinking of Schuon’s birthday coming
up on June 18th, she asked me if I could call my friend Scott who works in a
bookstore in Berkeley California and ask him to find a book, preferably of Far
Eastern women, completely nude, but tasteful. She explained that Schuon’s taste
in this sort of thing (the word pornography is not one Sa Aminah would use, but
this is what it amounts to) is not considered as low, but rather as a matter of
seeing the Archetype in the form.
Another story of this kind I will record is that
Sa. Aminah told me Schuon was fascinated with the story in the Koran (Sura
27:44) where the Queen of Sheeba enters the Palace of Solomon. In this story
the Queen of Sheeba mistakes a highly polished floor for water and therefore
lifts her skirts to walk on it. Schuon said to Sa. Aminah that Solomon polished
these floors so that he'could see up between the legs of the Queen of Sheeba.
If one reads this passkey, one sees it has to do with the possible illusions
one can have in life, and thaith+nps mag not be as they seem. This
realization turned the Queen of Sheeba to IslamTSchuon's interpretation is
really very low. If Solomon was a wise man he would not need to resort to such
voyeurism.
One of Schuon's favorite jokes is based on the
similarity of sound between the French Saint and sein (meaning woman’s breast).
There is a french saying that there are so many saints in France (historically)
that one can choose whatever saint one likes. The parallel with sein is
obvious.
I conclude this
section by recording that Schuon has thousands of nude pictures, especially of
Sa. Badriyah, but also of his other wives. Moreover, Schuon’s delight in nude
photos of women is known in the inner circle. S. Abdul Latif had a
’’crush" on one of his employees at Perennial Designs and managed to talk
her into posing for nude photographs. These photos were given to Schuon. I will
speak more_of this later. The woman’s name was Shirley
SCHUON’S PSYCHOLOGICAL STATE AND HEALTH CONDITION
I refer the reader to Schuon’s Memoirs
on the subject of his 1 psychology because there it is clear that he has always
been prone to feeling] persecuted, misunderstood, bitter, suffering to the
point of death, and so on. | quote a few phrases almost at random:
"suffering grievously both in soul and body" (page 1). "I was
terribly misunderstood and oppressed... They wanted to make of me something I
hated and despised" (page 1). "I fell ill in body and soul, became
melancholy and bitter, and had difficulties with my breathing" (page 4).
"I reel through the town with bewildered senses: each step a murder, each
breath a cry, each glance a night" ({age 31). "hours of sudden
bitterness came, when I seem to myself a God on a treadmill" (page 33).
"I never knew where the frontier lay between my habitual and, inevitable
dissimulation and unaccustomed, yet spiritually necessary genuineness"
(page 50). This sentence is interesting since it points to Schuon’s tendency to
lie and dissimulate. This will ‘ be discussed later.
S. Badriyah, who used to be a masseuse at a health
resort, learned from a chiropractor in Bloomington by the name of Lucinda
Jordan, of a supposed psychic gift of healing in her hands. With this supposed
gift she claims to be able to feel any part of the body of Schuon and determine
his medical condition.
I gathered, over the course of a year, through Sa.
Aminah a picture of Schuon that leads me to believe that he has been
neurotically sick and constantly pampered, not just in old age, but throughout
most if not all of his life. Moreover, ne has always blamed his sickness on
others, or on "causes of a moral order" (page 1 of Sacred Nudity),
bad disciples, or the difficulty of being an Avatara in this profane age.
I cite a few examples: he recently was sick for an
entire day over a letter he got from S. Abu Bakr concerning whether or not
Ophelia in Shakespear’s Hamlet had a good fate after death.
Sa. Aminah once said to him that a woman who
worked with her in her office in Geneva (Switz.) was a kind of "profane
saint." This was said at the dinner table in Schuon’s house. Schuon turned
white as a sheet and left the room ill and asthmatic, telling Sa. Latifah to
speak to Sa. Aminah. Sa. Aminah was thereupon given a lecture on not saying
such absurd contradictory things as "profane saint" because
"such inconsistencies make Schuon sick." Scnuon was sick for quite a
while due to this.
My most personal experience of Schuon’s
psycho-physical illnesses is the following: Some months after I was informed
that I was not married to Sa. Aminah • it was Feb. or March, I was concerned
because the "permission" I had been given to be with her lacked a
sacramental, and hence a sacred basis. The effect of this was to make me feel
that my love for her was less profound, more trivial, or more sexual, without
the aspect of spiritual union. I was told that his recently acquired psychic
gift of intuiting people’s states and attitudes at a distance, especially that
of Sa. Badriyah, had been activated in regard to me. I was told he was worried
about my desire for sacramentalization" and "felt a pressure from my
relationship" with Sa Aminah. Moreover, I was told that "he felt
poisoned by my faults" and was indignant because of my ungratefulness and
that he was being "purified after being exposed to my faults" as well
as those of other people he was upset with. I was tola that he was violently
sick because of me and these other matters and had thrown up into the toilet
for most of the day. My supposed ungratefulness and other matters had caused
him to vomit bile. Sa. Aminah said that she didn't want to tell me this fac
because it was "disobliging to the Shaykh." She told me about the
vomiting only because of my persistent questioning.
"I was from the beginning a person different
from the others... I realized I am not a man like other men."
There are moreover many references in the Memoirs
to his feeling? he is going mad. And on another subject, one sees that Schuon’s
view of women is selfish and narcissistic as for instance when he says of
Madelaine (his first love) "I felt her faith in me would heal my
soul."
These quotes could be multiplied but I don’t wish
to be exhaustive. Schuon’s psychosomatic illnesses are an endless subject and
are closely related to his reclusiveness. He is, in fact, an extremely
delicate, weak, and neurotic j man, who falls ill at the slightest insult,
irregy^rity or impropriety. He uses his ; illness as a means of emotionally
blackmamng^bther people: therefore, he is ,1 constantly humored, pampered,
and babied, especially by his wives.
L A His house in the winter is kept at a constant
80 degrees since the slightest chill provokes his asthma. Sa. M. said that even
the thought that he might be chilled can cause him to have an asthma attack.
Sa. Aminah told me that during their visit to New York city to see museums that
the wives were exhausted trying to keep scarves and coats wrapped around him,
putting him in and out of taxis, keeping his very sensitive'nose covered. Sa.
M. said that Schuon is extremely difficult to travel with; that he is irritable
and complains.
He denies for himself all western medicine on the
grounds that the • prophet could not submit his sacred body to the indignities
of western medicine.
Sa. Aminah said that they keep secret Schuon’s
medical condition because the "enemies’’ of Schuon could profit from such
information by saying^ that the "primordial" and Indian"
dimensions of the tariqa could be blamed on j senility. It I may be allowed a
personal comment here, the problem lies, not in senility, but in his
psycho-pathology.
Dr. Coomaraswamy knows more about Schuon’s medical
condition than I do. He states that Schuon has had "transient ischemic
attacks." He constantly complains of a heavy head; cannot follow causal
arguments or tolerate hearing "lists of things,6 becomes
quickly pale, asthmatic and is prone to vomiting. I taye heard at least ten
times in the last year that he is in danger of having a sfrbfceT or has had or
will have a minor heart attack. He lies down a great deal of the time. Those
around him treat him with homeopathic medicines, even though they have
absolutely no training in this most dubious field of medicine.
It was only very recently that I understood what
actually happened on this occasion. What I now understand is this: Schuon’s
primary interest in Sa. Aminah was having power over her, that is, possessing
her, not as a man normally possesses his wife or the wife her husband, but
rather through a kind of psychic possession of her soul. My being told that Schuon
could psychically read my state of mind and that my ungratefulness caused his
vomiting were means, through a kind of blackmail, to get control of my
relationship with Sa. Aminah. He felt that he even had the right to control the
particulars of my sexual relationship with her and dictate what I could and
couldn’t do. What I could not understand then was why I should be grateful to
him when she had not come to me from him - rather she had come to me of herself
because Schuon had neglected her as a wife for four years. Why should I be
grateful to him for the loss of the woman I loved, when she herself, and not
him, had insisted that I possess her and insisted that we were married.’It's
only recently that I came to understand this twisted demand for gratefulness,
and that undeserved and unconditional gratefulness and mind control of all
kinds, political and pseudo-religious is characteristic of cults and
cult-leaders.
I should add that at this time he wrote a text
called Piety, Gratitude, Trust in which there was a message for me -
that I should be grateful for what I had and not mourn the loss of what I
didn’t have, and then a message for Sa. Aminah, that punishment is due to those
who commit an injustice and not to those who suffer from it. From this I learned
how cunning and indeed frighteningly clever this man can be. Moreover, I
learned how self-serving and narcissistic are his spiritual opinions and many
of his texts.s
Around this time, because of his having vomited, I
was more or less forced, or more exactly "encouraged" to write him a
letter of apology for being ungrateful. In this letter I was told to say that
my idealism regarding spiritual and romantic union was a "false mystical
idealism." I could not see how my desire for spiritual and sexual union
with Sa. Aminah who I had thought of as my wife, could be false mystical
idealism, when his own relationship with her for the last four years had
convinced her that she was no longer married to him. It seemed to me that he
was holding onto a wife for the sake of a principle, not for the sake of his
wife. What this principle was, and Is now, only slowly became apparent.
5 Ont story I forgot to mention, told to me by Sa.
M, Is this: Schuon and the Abdul Quyummlds were in Morocco In 1975. Sa. Amtnah
In Switzerland had gone to a doctor to explain to him about Schuon’s health and
made an appointment for Schuon to see the doctor. She had written to Sa.
Latifah a letter In Morocco telling her this. Schuon saw the letter and became
violently III at the thought of going to a doctor. Schuon became so sick he
said he might die. Sa. M. was astonished that a man claiming to be spiritual
would become so afraid of seeing a doctor (because seeing a doctor meant he
might die) that just the thought of this would make him so afraid that he
thought he might die of fear. This is neurotic, to say the least. A spiritual
man does not look on death in this way.
The principle at stake, in the words of Sa.
Badriyah, and confirmed by Sa. Hamidah is this: "the family of the
Bodhisattva is inviolate." Sa. Hamidah had said to me that the wives of
the prophet could not marry any other man, both during the prophet’s life and
after his death. Sa. Badriyah during one of her many intensely critical
demagogic sessions with Sa. Aminah said to her "you haven’t the right to
love anyone else but the Shaykh." Both Sa. Aminah and Sa. Hamidah said to
me that the Shaykh cites Sura 33 of the Koran in support of his right to demand
total loyalty from his wives. One passage from this surah that indicates this
is 33:53. No one can "marry his widows alter him (the prophet) at any
time. Truly such a thing is in God's sight an enormity."
The fact that he feels he has the right to demand
that "the wives of the prophet cannot remany’’ is yet another indication,
that he thinks of himself as a prophet, and not only this, but the equal of
Mohammed since the Koran specifies that only the prophet has such rights. This
chapter in the Koran also says that the prophet, unlike any other man, may neglect
or not neglect his wife as he chooses. Sa. Aminah very often said to me that
"a woman married to Schuon "has no rights, but only
obligations." Sa. Hamidah put this concept more mildly when she said to me
that the wives are "obligated to prefer him and his welfare to our
own." Sa. Aminah said that "a woman is there for him; he is not there
for them." Thus the wives take off and put on his shoes; they dress and
undress him; put on his coats and wrap him in scarves, comfort his ego, always indignant
over how he is maltreated by the modern world and by his disciples. Sa. Aminah
has explained to me how often Schuon doubts himself, and how she must tell him
he is a prophet and a great man, how good his body looks, and how wonderful he
looks naked; how he is an avatara; the greatest painter in the world; they even
lie to him about the small sale of his books so that he believes himself world
famous, his books selling widely. She said he is very much attached to the idea
of his own fame.
Schuon's comportment and his treatment of his
pampering wives has made me think of him as a kind of parody of a king - a sort
of decadent Abraham or Solomon, or again, a neo-Hindu sultan. Sometimes looking
at him I have thought of Louis XIV combined with Oscar Wilde or Charles Baudelaire.
She said that her sexual life with Schuon was one
sided and that except for a few times at the beginning, he never satisfied her.
One day, early in our relationship, she calculated that she had sexually
satisfied him with oral sex 3 times a week for 10-12 years, at least 1500
times. "All obligations, no rights." She said she felt she was his
"spiritual concubine."
She said "he is always feeling alone"
because no one is as high, spiritual and profound as he is. She said that
"he represents pure discrimination," and that because his
discrimination is prophetic, as he embodies the divine intellect, that he needs
femininity as a consolation. She said "he deseryes all the women that he
wants." She compared Sa. Badriyah to Abishagh the Shunnamite, the beautiful
naked young girl that was put into the bed of the prophet David in order to
warm him in nis old age. She said that any man should be willing, like Uriah
the Hittite, to sacrifice his wife, to give her as a gift to Schuon and be
willing if necessary, to die for him, as Uriah did, who she said,
"certainly went to heaven as a martyr."
Sa. Aminah said he is always doubting his
function, whether he is a! Shaykh or a good Shaykh, or whether his disciples
are worthy of all he gives i them. She said he always thinks a disciple will
turn against him and needs to be comforted that such and such a disciple loves
him. This is why so many letters of love or apology are always being written to
Schuon by the fuqara. It is made abundantly clear by Sa. Badriyah and others
that Schuon needs perpetual love and encouragement. Sa. Aminah said that there
have been many times when he has threatened.to dissolve the tariqa because of
unworthy disciples. Or, he threatens to take away the "grace" of the
Primordial Gatherings, because of some "histoire" or problem in the
tariqa. I think I already mentioned that Schuon threatened to take away the
Primordial Gatherings because he saw photos of himself and his vanity was
wounded. This use of threats; the threat of getting sick; the threat of making
him sick; the threat of withdrawing something if Schuon’s need for love and
adulation is not petted and coddled; all this is quite typical.
The wives have the primary function of sustaining
and bolstering his ever deflating ego. Sa. Aminah told me a story where she,
Schuon and Sa. Badriyah were at lunch with others and Sa. Aminah saw her cat
had gotten in a fight outside, and as her cat was a weak cat, she thought it
might die; but she was forbidden to save the cat by Sa. Badriyah on the grounds
that Schuon’s peaceful lunch was more important than the death of her cat.
Everything should be sacrificed for Schuon. 1 was once told that "you
should wish to die rather than do anything that would harm the Shaykh."
Examples of this attitude could be multiplied but perhaps the point has been
made: Schuon is a cult leader who demands for himself all rights while he
himself has no obligations except to radiate the extraordinary glory of his
presence.
There is about Schuon something of a vain Dandy,
rather like Baudelaire or Oscar Wilde, except that Schuoms dandyism adopts the
mask of prophethood, variously being the Great Chief, the Great Shaykh, King of
the Religions, and so on, where as Wilde or Baudelaire were only overdressed
poets. Sa. Aminah told me that Schuon often recites a French rhyme which in she
rendered in English as:
"The world is round I am the King, And I
don’t know why."
The rhyme, I think, fell on "roi, quoi,...
This poem is quintessential Schuon: feeling sorry for himself because he is such
a misunderstood Avatara.
In regard to Schuon’s vanity and dandyism, I
should perhaps record that there is a man in the tariqa named S. Isa, who is
indeed a powerful and impressive type, large strong, and perhaps also a bit of
a dandy. In any case, tnis man was not allowed to continue going to Primordial
Gatherings because Sa. Badriyah thought he was competing with Schuon. He wrote
a quasi-love letter to Sa. Badriyah in which he claimed a certain realization,
& la Schuon, regarding the sacredness of his body.
Sa. Aminah told me that Schuon has never been
happy with his
male friends because no one is as high as he is.
Leo Schaya, for instance, was > devoted to Schuon, but Schuon had no
affection for him. Even dead men, with the exception of perhaps Christ,
Mohammed, Shankara and Plato, cannot compete with Schuon. At one point Sidi
Abdul Quyyum told me that the Shaykh i al Akbar, the Greatest Shaykh in
history, was not Ibn A’rabi, but Frithjof Schuon. ,1 Sa. Aminah said that
"he prefers at the end of his life to be surrounded by women rather than
men." What he demands of women is nothing less than worship and sacrifice,
and he demands this even of other men’s wives. But this is my opinion. To
return to facts, Sa. Aminah showed me a letter by Sidi Qassim in which Sidi
Qassim said he felt himself to be an androgyne, half-woman-half- man, and that
therefore part of him could love Schuon as if he were a gopi. This letter was
accepted by Schuon as a ’’legitimate possibility." I thought it grotesque
and wondered if one must have breasts and hips to attract Schuon’s attention.
Someone recently asked me why Schuon needs to
press himself
against women in the Primordial Gatherings. I can
only speculate on this subject. It seems to resolve itself into a question of
power. As he says in a recent article, "divine virility is thrust upon
us." I remember an occasion where Sa. Marifah was involved in a tariqa
problem and Schuon and Sa. Badriyah thought her too legalistic. So Schuon, in a
primordial costume, unexpectedly pressed himself against her in order to press
home the point that she should be more existential. The effect was to give her
a "grace" - and the grace was submission to Schuon’s supremacy, since
he alone is infallible and his body is as it were the body of truth.
Sa. Badriyah once tried to tell me that Schuon is
without passion
and that his interest in women is purely
contemplative; but I knew already that I this was largely false because Sa.
Aminah told me he was extremely passionate ant that he always needed to be
satisfied when with her. Sa. Aminah said that \ Sa. Badriyah knows next to
nothing about how Schuon used to be sexually. She ' said that it is only in the
last 5 - 8 years that he has become impotent, due to old age. Schuon seems to
see women as a mercy and consolation for himself and as he has become older he
has needed this "mercy" more and more. Sa Aminah said Schuon used to
make her stand above him naked and then come down putting her breasts on his
face, while simultaneously saying "the Divine Feminine has descended upon
you."
Given his age, this pressing of himself against
many women satisfies what is left of his sexual need while, at the same time
making him feel powerful. I hope this is sufficient answer to the question of
why he needs to press himself against women. I should add however, for the sake
of completeness, that Schuon’s spiritual explanations of sexuality should be
considered in conjunction with these facts and observations about him, and not
apart from them, as only in this way can one see how Schuon’s strange
psychology and the world’s highest metaphysics are made an amalgam in Schuon
himself.
I have been asked to say something about the
frequency of divorce around Schuon. This is not something I know very much
about myself. However, following the
drama of defections from Schuon in 1987 and the departure of Sidi
-Junayd, there were six divorces in fairly quick succession: these were the
Thabitids, the Junayd’s; the Isaids; the Yaqinids; the Talhahids; the
Nuradinids. In many cases these divorces were nothing other than the switching
of wives. Thus for example, Sa. Badriyah left her husband to "marry"
the Shaykh, while her husband married the former wife of Sidi Junayd who was
carrying on a notorious affair with a 13.year.olcLflirl, the daughter of yet
another member of the tariqa. No doubt all these relations were complex, and I
record these divorces only to indicate the destablizing effect of the tariqa on
marriages. It is pertinent that there is a Hadith of Mohammed to the effect that
"God hates nothing more than divorce."
However, I do have personal knowledge of the
effort of Schuon and Sa. Badriyah to undermine my relationship with Sa. Aminah.
Sa. Aminah also told me that a psychologist was hired to prove to Sa. Malika
that her husband was paranoid and what strategies she could use to get rid of
him. Also, Sa. Aminah told me that Sa. Kansa, among others, were consciously
trying to draw S. Al Bashir’s wife into the primordial dimension, in the hopes
of either drawing Sidi Al Bashir in as well, or contributing to the
destabilizing of their marriage. I was told more than once of the desire to
expel Sidi Al Bashir from the tariqa because of his resistance, but I will
speak of this later.
I should mention also that Schuon had some kind of
sexual relationship or interest in the wife of Sidi Ibrahim, such that she
suffered from this her whole life, and also I was told by the wife of another
well known faqir that Schuon made sexual overtures to her when she was married
to someone else. In this case there was a divorce that is ascribable to Schuon
himself, but I cannot mention who this is as she wishes to remain anonymous.
The tariqa, and specifically Sidi Junayd were instrumental in the divorce of
Sidi Safwan, though again there were other factors.
There are a few other stories about Schuon and his
trivialization of marriage. Sa. Aminah told me Schuon tried hard to stop Leo
Schaya’s second marriage, but failed.
Another story is this: S. Abdul Latif, who owns
Perennial Designs, a store in Bloomington, had a "crush" on an
employee named Shirly W, and he took nude photos of her and in some of these
photos Shirly appears nude with Abdul Latif's wife and his daughter Tamara.
These pictures were given to Schuon as a gift, and Sa. Badriyah used them as
models for her recent paintings of nude American Indian Goddesses. Schuon
wanted the girl to enter the tariqa and Sa. Badriyah suggested that S. Siraj be
deployed to attempt to date and marry the girl. Sa. Badriyah’s reasoning for
this was that Schuon could see her naked at the gatherings. Sa. Aminah didn’t
agree with this proposal but unfortunately, not because the sacrament of
marriage would thereby be trivialized to feed Schuon’s need of nude women, but
because she didn’t like S. Siraj. I found out from Shirly W recently that S.
Siraj never approached her. But the tact such an action was contemplated shows
the expediency of Schuon’s mentality; the trivialization of marriage, - and the
double-standards that exist ' around schuon, reflect his idea that all
marriages are expandable except his j own.
Though it may be somewhat out of place, I should
add here that Tamara, the daughter of the Latifids, who I think is 18, has
danced completely naked for Schuon during "musical evenings" held at
her parents house. Her parents allow and encourage this. I know this from Sa.
Aminah, who witnessed these events.
Schuon told Sa. Aminah that he prefers American
Indian marriages, which he believes, wrongly, in fact, are freely dissolved and
joined. Usually the clan system in tribes makes divorce relatively rare.
However this may be, it is typical of Schuon to show dislike of formal
religious rules, especially those which hinder his own freedom, just as it is
difficult for him to keep his clothes on. But any religious rule that serves
his expediency he holds to firmly, thus his own marriages can never be
dissolved, even in the next world.
Sa. Aminah told me, and I heard something similar
from Sidi Abdul Ali, that Schuon has said that 3.4 of the world’s population
should be killed because they are profane. I should add here that nearly
everyone outside the tariqa is called "profane."
When Dr. Wolfgang Smith visited Bloomington some
time ago, he was rather shocked when he was told not to "bother talking
to" an individual who had asked to speak to him, and who was not in the
inner circle, because "he was not worthy of wasting one's time on."
Sa. Latifah said to me during an interview that
Schuon would have > killed all of the people in the so-called
"Mafia" (those who separated from the tariga
in 1986-88), but that he couldn't do this because he lives in the west. Sa.
Latifah said that if he lived in an Islamic country a hundred years ago, the
Sultan would have killed all these people for him. Of tne worst of these
people, from the Bloomington point of view, Sidi Abdul Wahid, Sa. Latifah said
that she wished she could slit his throat.
I heard from Sa. Mardiah that Sidi Abdul Ali has
recently said that I should be killed. I record this not because I think it
likely to happen, but because Sidi Abdul Ali is a man whom I cared for deeply,
whom I took for walks because I felt sorry for him, whom I talked to because I
thought he was lonely, and whose writing I encouraged, and for whom I found many
books to help him with his studies. What is astonishing in Schuon’s cult is the
treacherous speed with which they turn against, vilify, ana threaten those who
offer the slightest criticism. Someone said to me recently that one of the
signs of a cult is that it encourages a suppressing of doubts rather than
addressing such doubts with compassion and understanding. Another sign is this
siege mentality that is rather paranoid, where one vilifies, slanders,
pronounces insane and even desires the death of someone for whom, a week
before, one professed fondness or even love.
Another sign of a cult is the use of threats, such
as saying that someone will go to hell, or deserves such and such a punishment.
Schuon is a master at this kind of threat-psychology. Many times I saw Sa.
Aminah threatened with damnation until she proved her conformity. She was never
allowed to defend herself for not feeling married to Schuon and when she tried,
she was told that self-defense was pride.
Another characteristic of Schuon’s cult, or rather
of Schuon’s own mentality is for him to say that so and so contracted such and
such a disease because he betrayed Schuon: some examples are as follows:
1)
Joseph
Epes Brown has Alzhiemer’s disease because.it is a disease^ofjhe brain; a
disease which Schuon said Dr. Brown deserved because he betrayed Schuon. The
reason why he betrayed Schuon that I’ve heard in Bloomington are that Mr. Brown
was ambitious in the academic world; too mentalistic; not spiritual enough; led
astray by his ’’bohemian” wife; didn't give Schuon credit from Mr. Brown's
book, The Sacred Pipe, which he transcribed from Black Elk.
I talked with Mrs. Brown last week and she thought
Schuon’s ' supposition that Mr. Brown has a brain disease (in fact, he does not
have Alzhiemer’s) as a divine punishment is cruel and malicious, as indeed it
is. She also denied that Schuon was in any way responsible for The Sacred
Pipe. I told her of the syncratic Primordial Gatherings and the Vision of
the Virgin and she said her husband, if he were well, would be furious at such
abuses. She said that the Indian rites continue legitimately among the Indians,
and that I needn’t worry that Schuon’s travesties of the Indian rites and his
books might eventually have a corrupting influence on the Indians.
2)
Returning
to the subject at hand: Schuon has said that Victor Danner died of cancer
because of his having betrayed Schuon through pride and ambition. I will refer
to this again later.
3)
Schuon
has said that Ramakrishna died of cancer because of; his mistake in making
Vivekananda his successor.
4)
Sri
Ramana Maharishi got cancer in his arm because of his effort to make his
question "Who am I? into an initiatic method was false, because the
Maharishi’s realization was personal and couldn’t be disseminated. Also the
Maharishi was wrong to have an excessive regard for the souls of animals - his
pet cow for instance.
5)
Sa.
Aminah told me that Leo Shaya’s wife believed her husband died of a heart
attack because of Schuon’s merciless criticism of Schaya’s last / book. I add
here, without any judgement, but only to record, that I’ve heard from < two
informed sources that Schuon slept with Schaya’s wife while Schya was in ; the
same room. (Sa. Aminah and another independent member of the tariqa > said
this.)
If I may express my own opinion in regard to these
facts; it is God and not Schuon who alone has the right to say why someone has
died in one way rather than another, and it is for God, not Schuon, to say what
will be the posthumous state of any given individual. Schuon has said "I
am not responsible for what happens to someone who does not listen to me"
as if God had stationed himself next to Schuon’s right hand ready to lop of the
head of anyone who did not consider every word of Schuon equal to those of Christ!
It should be observed here that Schuon in his most
recent essays, but also throughout his works, has been much concerned with
determining the spiritual meaning of "Castes and Races." In his
recent works he has above all been concerned with defining himself as the
"Superior Man," the "C)%fied Man," the "Universal
Man," and an "Avatara". I asked a question of him through Sa.
Arninah concerning his being an Avatara and he said he is npt Just a minor or
major Avatara, but a new category that has never existed before. He represents
pure metaphysics, the primordial religion, the quintessence of all the
religions. He is, moreover, in his own estimation, a hamsa (a Hindu term); one
beyond caste. He subscribes to his own version of the late 19th century
theories of race and physiognomy. He claims to be able to read a soul on the
basis of physiognomy. These theories of physiognomy he has combined with the
Hindu theory of castes, and through this he judges people. Sa. Aminah said that
a preponderance of his talk is on this subject, so much so that she was bored
with it. She said that his judgements of people are often so bitter and damning
that she would not repeat them. I have heard her repeat things he has said such
as that S. Ughbah is a wimp and a worm, Sidi Hatim a low Vaisha (merchant
caste), S. Abdul Latif is a Vaisha and a Jew besides and Jews are opportunistic
social climbers, and so forth. One would like to know how much theories of
caste and race entertained in Germany during the 1920's and 30's influenced
Schuon.
One sees Schuon's tendency to despise others in
many places of the Memoirs. I offer one example:
One has a merciless eye for the animal like
somnambulistic subjection of prattlers, who talk everything into water and fill
up the world with their dull buzzing, babbling, stupidity. Already in my youth
I was logical and timeless, like a drawn knife."
One doesn't know who Schuon is referring to here,
but since 3/4 of the world’s inhabitants deserve to be killed, this must be
nearly everyone. This sentence contains spite, hatred and pride. The Spirit is
not a "drawn knife." As Christ said, "Who soever exalteth
himself shall be abased."
I should observe here that Schuon's theory of
castes and races is
not without relation to the European racist
theories which were common at the turn of the last century and which found a
degenerate form in Hitler’s Master Race. Schuon’s theory of the caste-race
determines his judgements of people, both in and outside the tariqa, where
people are mercilessly classified according to the Hindu theory: priestly type,
warrior type; merchant type; manual laborer, casteless "chandala" -
or according to the gnostic categories as pneumatic, psychic, and hylic.
Schuon’s theories of race and caste constitute the
practical application of his anthropology, and his anthropology defines both
the political hierarchy of the tariqa which places Schuon at the top, and a
theory of history which defines history as leading up to Schuon.
I cannot possibly describe here how Schuon’s
theories of caste and race, combined with his creation of a "new
civilization" (as he calls his tariqa) combined with his politics and
anthropology result in mind control, social manipulation and demagoguery.
Suffice it to hope that those who have suffered under the demagoguery of Sidi
Junayd or Sa. Badriyah will know what I am speaking of.
In what follows I will try to reflect, as
faithfully as I can, the opinions I have heard expressed regarding various
individuals. These opinions are in most cases Schuon’s or originate with Schuon,
since a great deal of his conversation is taken up with talk about people. Many
have noticed the pettiness and back-biting of the Bloomington community, but it
should be that stressed ~- through the medium of his "wives," Schuon
is constantly "applying his discernment" as these "wives"
would express it. Schuon’s "discernment" is above all critical and
derogatory. The opinions I will now relate are not my own but those of Schuon
and his inner circle.
i .SIDI
HOSSIEN: Sidi Abdul Ali said that Sidi Hossien is too Islamic, I 5 an
"average Sufi," a derogatory term in Schuon’s usage (Schuon refers to
Ibn A’rabi derogatorily as an "average sufi.") Sidi Abdul All said
that Sidi Hossien is not capable of assimilating the pure esoterism of the
religio perennis, as is proved by the bad arrangement of Schuon’s Selected
Writings (too much emphasis on Islam) and oy the fact that Sidi Hossien
opposed the publication of the proposed art book of Schuon’s paintings on the
grounds that they involved too much nudity).
I have heard every person whom I
have seen come from Sidi Hossien to visit Schuon criticized for being
unprepared for Schuon’s esoterism or unqualified. Sidi Hossien is always blamed
for this. Sa. Aminah said that the only reason Schuon does not close the tariqa
to Sidi Hossien is because Sidi Hossein ; is a powerful influence both in the
academic and Islamic worlds.
Sidi Hossien is considered guilty of pride and
ambition. The tariqa claims to have proof (from a woman in Arizona wno was with
Sidi Hossien, but separated from him to return to Schuon’s group) that Sidi
Hossien desires to be Schuon’s successor.
Sidi Hossien is considered to be trying to ride on
Schuon’s coattails, deriving his own fame from Schuon’s. Sidi Qassim said that
just as Sidi Hossien tried to proselytize for the Shah of Iran, so he now seeks
to proclaim Schuon’s fame to exalt himself.
Sa. Aminah said that Schuon considers that the
invocation has not reached Sidi Hossein’s heart and that therefore Sidi
Hosseinjs knowledge of God is all in his head. When Sidi Hossien comes.to
Bloomington, Sa. Aminah told me that Schuon tried his best to avoid having to
see him. He is considered / "boring" - all he talks about is books
and publications. Someone said that it is no wonder he had to have a pacemaker
put in his heart since he is so ambitious and excessively busy. . 9
SIDI QADDUFt: Sa. Aminah said many times that Sidi
Qaddur was being considered for Khalifah, (the head) to succeed Schuon after
Schuon's death. This however was in question because Sidi Abdul Haqq and Sa.
Badriyah thought ill of the fact that Sidi Qaddur was so passive towards his
wife and could not bring himself to divorce heq something they attempted to
encourage. Sidi Qaddur’s wife, Sa. Halimah is considered infantile and to have
caused many unnecessary problems in the tariqa. She is not invited to the
Primordial Gatherings.
Sa. Aminah told me of Sidi Qaddur’s homosexual
tendencies, but noted that they were under control. His absentmindedness,
clumsiness and weakness in matters of doctrine are well known in the tariqa. He
is obedient and unquestioning to all the wives. So much so that Dr.
Coomaraswamy referred to him as a sy -c ophant. This is perhaps why he is
considered as a candidate to be the next neao of the tariqa. He is also one of
the individuals who "interrogates" those who are thought to have
deviated from obedience to the tariqa - interrogations which are so similar to
those used by the KGB that in fact he and those who engage in such activities
are familiarly referred to as the tariqa’s KGB. Sa. Aminah referred to him as a
saint, and at another time said, "he is probably a saint," but it
should be clear by now that these terms are used by Schuon and those around him
as merely conveniences.
Sidi Qaddur’s elaborate visions of the Blessed
Virgin are carbon copies of Schuon’s paintings and are of necessity just
a^fajse as those of Schuon. Indeed, those in the inner circle seem to be prone
to having visions. Schuon himself said "heaven is not prolix" and
these visions are certainly prolix. One must wonder at the nature of this
psychic mythomania around Schuon that produces such bizarre and elaborate
imagery in his followers.
One thing Sa. Aminah told me about Schuon that I
found most i astonishing was this: he said that Sa. Halimah’s vagina is so
small because her i mentality is infantile, having the mind of a 12-13 year
old. I do not know how i Schuon knows about the size of her vagina. I have
heard many stories about this ’ infantilism, but there is no reason to record
them. This one comment of Schuon's j shows well enough Schuon’s derogatory and
demeaning intelligence.
I should add that my personal experience of Sidi
Qaddur has generally been good.
SIDI ABU BAKR: The opinion of Sidi Abu Bakr held
in Bloomington, while somewhat better than that of Sidi Hossien, is also not
very high. Sidi Abu Bakr is considered pedantic and stubborn. He is accused of
not being ruthless or decisive enough, defending people who question Schuon and
therefore of being too soft. Like Sidi Hossien, he is too Islamic. Schuon
thought, that Abu Bakr’s book of poetry was "worthless." Schuon has
said that his book on the life of Mohammed is redundant and unnecessary.
Mr. Murray, Schuon's highest dignitary, has been writing a refutation of Sidi
Abu Bakr's last book, Symbol and Archetype. The only book of his that
the Schuon likes is the one about Shaykh Al Alawi.
Sa. Armnah said that Schuon hates Sidi Abu Bakr’s
sentimentality. She said that she once talked with Sidi Abu Bakr’s wife who
bitterly complained of having had to pray behind him for the last 40 years
because he is so sentimental. I rather doubt this story but it is typical of
the backbiting that is standard fare in Bloomington.
Last August (1990) I was able to have two
interviews with Sidi Abu Bakr when he was in Bloomington for his yearly visit
which usually lasts about a month. Sa. Aminah told me that I was the only
person in the "inner circle" who desired to speak with him and who
had done so for any length of time or in any depth. Sidi Abu Bakr has always
stayed in the home or Sidi Abdul Qayyum when he came to see Schuon, but this
year Sa. Hamidah did not wish to have him in her house and he was told to stay
somewhere else. Sa. Hamida said this was because
har-htrsband was not well, but this was not the reason, rather the inner circle
tends to despise him. Sidi Abu Bakr did not seem to be aware that he was being
rejected ano insulted, and this is of course to his credit. During his visit
last August, Schuon saw him only for a single lunch, or so I was told. Sa.
Aminah tola me that Schuon bragged of having avoided further contact with him.
My own opinion of Sidi Abu Bakr is that he
represents what is best of England. There is something in him that recalls the
Ancient English and Irish mystics of Celtic times; something of Shakespeare or
of John Scotus Erigena. His book on Mohammed moved me deeply and I like his
book of poetry. He strikes one instantly as a saintly man full of faith, which
is something one cannot say of Schuon. His assimilation of Sufism seems
profound. The conversations I have had with him are among the best I have haain
my entire life.
SIDI HASAN (GAI EATON): He is thought to have
completely betrayed Schuon and therefore to be spiritually worthless. It is
typical of the community in Bloomington that anything short of Guru Bhakti or
unadulterated adulation of Schuon is a betrayal. This attitude comes from
Schuon himself. I do not know Gai Eaton personally.
SIDI ABDUL QAYYUM: Schuon has called Sidi Abdul
Qayyum a
"madman." (Sidi Qayyum
told me this himself.) According to Sa. Aminah, Sidi Abdul Qayyum has had a 10
to 12 year affair with Sa. Latifah. Sa. Aminah said , that it was regularly
consummated because Sa. Hamidah tpld her that Sidi Abdul Qayyum regularly did
his grand ablution (done after intercourse) after he came home from his visit
to Sa. Latifah. Sa. Latifah eventually rejected him because of his alcoholism.
Sa. Aminah told me that Schuon had said to her that he had defined exactly what
Sidi Abdul Qayyum and Sa. Latifah could do sexually. < There could be no
mixing of sexual fluids and no sexual penetration.
Sidi Abdul Qayyum is a lonely and isolated man.
All the dignitaries of the tariqa hierarchy tell visitors and new comers that
they should beware of Sidi Abdul Qayyum because he is an alcoholic, a man with
a bad character, and a person who doesn’t understand Schuon. I have rarely met
anyone who is more, loyal to Schuon despite all he knows about him.
He was Schuon’s chauffeur for 20 years and he
would be valuable as a source of information about the psychology of Schuon.
For myself, I did not find him either a leader or especially competent. Rather
he is essentially a kind and gentle man who follows others.
SIDI ABDUL HAQQ (JESUS GARCIA): This individual
has been off and on selected to be the HeHfa. He currently lives in Louisville,
Ky., with his wife. He had taken some completely nude pictures of his
adolescent daughters, aged 14-15 and the roll of film had been developed in a
public store. The store called the police as mandated by law when they
saw the pictures and the parents were arrested for childhood pornography. They
managed to escape conviction on the grounds that in Spain people normally take
pictures of their pubescent daughters. Sidi Abdul Haqq is or was the Maqqadam for
Spain.
SA. ZAINAB: This is Sidi Ibrahim’s wife. Sa. X.
told me that Schuon was in love with her and "treated her as a
goddess" but then suddenly "dropped her." Sa. Zainab suffered
from this all her life. This is all I know of her story.
SIDI ABDUL JABBAR: When I first moved to
Bloomington there were tariqa volleyball games at the house of Sidi Hossien
Perry (the son of Sidi Abdul Qayyum and a member of the tariqa). Dr. Danner
(Sidi Abdul Jabbar) would sometimes drive by and there would be a litany of mean
and spiteful comments made about him.6 Sidi Jabbar’s story is a complex one and
I can’t treat of all its details here. For many years he functioned as Schuon’s
official representative (maqqadam) in Bloomington and was responsible for
bringing many individuals into the tariqa who are still there. I have spoken with
his wife twice recently and what is clear, is that when Schuon moved to
Bloomington he
wanted Sidi Abdul Jabbar out of the way and that no matter how just Schuon's
reasons may have been, the treatment Abdul Jabbar received from Schuon himself,
and all the other fuqara that he had brought into the tariqa, was at best petty
and mean. For reasons that are hard to explain, Sidi Abdul Jabbar remained
loyal to Schuon and maintained, as many do, that there are "two ! Schuons":
the one that wrote the books and used to be a good man, and the senile,
sex-obsessed older Schuon.
6 Some South American visitors who were Invited to
play and who didn't know the game, wished to play soccer. They were told that
Volleyball was a more sacred game because it was played with the hands rather
than witn the feet.
Whatever happened that made Schuon take away Sidi
AbdulJabbar’s position as maqqadam and Niab, there is no question but that Sidi
Abdul Jabbar had many good qualities and died as a pious Moslem. Therefore, the
refusal of all those in Schuon’s circle to go to his funeral and the gloating
happiness of those in Bloomington when he died is nothing short of monstrous.
As already indicated, Sa. Aminah said Schuon was glad he died and felt that his
cancer was a divine punishment for his betrayal of Schuon. I personally
witnessed the heartless meanness of the people in Bloomington with regard to
Sidi Abdul Jabbar at the time of his death.
Sidi Abdul Jabbar’s wife told me that she spoke
with Sidi Alawi bendr Merad, the current
leader of the Al-Alawi tariqa from which Schuon ' supposedly derives his
initiatic filiation as Shaykh. She said "Sidi Alawi said that his Shaykh,
Abba ben Tunes remembers that when Schuon was in Algeria, he approached Tunes
and asked to be made a maqqadam and Shaykh. Tunes went to Al-Alawi who was on
his death bed, and conveyed Schuon’s request to him. Shaykh Al-Alawi said no,
Schuon could not have permission for this."
Others have
investigated this and it appears clear from at least
three sources that Schuon received the initiation
from Al-Alawi, but asked and | was refused permission to become a teacher
(Maqqadam or Shaykh). He j v subsequently reports in his Memoirs
that he received the grace to become a Shaykh directly from God. He describes
himself in his Memoirs as a "Shaykh al- j Baraka." This is
supported by the fact that in certain texts of Schuon's he criticizes both the
hereditary and succession modes of becoming a Shaykh. He holds that the "Shaykh
al-Baraka", the Shaykh made Shaykh by grace, (as is his status) is the
highest possibility. Now it seems to me that if the issue had not been brought
up to Shaykh Al-Alawi, it is possible that God might intervene to ; make
a given individual a Shaykh directly. But once such a function has been refused
through normal channels, it seems unlikely that God would then go around the
normal channel and do this directly. Rather He would send Shaykh Al-Alawi or
his successor a "dream" in which he would instruct him to make Schuon
a Shaykh.
Dr. Nasr has said in
regard to this issue that anyone who has received the initiation may himself
initiate others and points to the fact that Mohammed appointed no maqqadams or
shaykhs. This seems plausible but it does not change the fact that Schuon
apparently has lied about his investiture as Maqqadam. There is nothing unusual
in Schuon lying as I show elsewhere in this book. It is clear in any case that
Dr. Nasr is right concerning the "legal" possibility that Schuon can
give initiations. But one must also conclude that such initiations are not
valid because of Schuon, but because of God, since any initiate may do
such'. ON such legal questions, I defer to those more competent than myself.
However, in regard to the subject of Schuon being a spiritual master, I would
say that it is absolutely out of the questipn/vMy reasons are not
legal but spiritual. He is not a Shaykh-al-barrakah as he claims because all
the evidence of his life, doctrine and method point to the presumption of
setting himself up as an Avatara. This cannot be admitted, to say the least.
Moreover, the visions of the so-called Virgin are false, and thus the tariqa is
not Mariamiah and the Primordial Gatherings are nothing but syncratistic
parodies.
Given these facts, and I cannot but believe that
these conclusions are facts, one must conclude that at the very least, the
upper reaches of Schuon's method, that is to say the sixth and seventh themes,
the Alchemy and the "tantric" dimensions, reflect deviant innovations
on Schuon’s part. Schuon's belief in his own divinity, the divinity of his
body, and thus his "adoption" by the Virgin and the primordial
gatherings all indicate a deviation that is not only legal and criminal, but
also spiritual. This perforce brings into question both his doctrine and his
method, as well as indicating that he could not possibly be a valid spiritual
master. One does not need to prove that Schuon has falsely 1 claimed to belong
to the silsalah or lineage going back to Muhammed. One I needs only to see that
on the evidence of Schuon's abuses, that "the tree is known by its
fruits," and one need not concern oneself with the roots therefore. I can
only express the hope that someone one day will trace and explicate these
errors more completely. I would only indicate that given the upper reaches of
Schuon’s method have led Schuon himself into real errors, that it is likely
that the themes n general, while containing aspects that are truth, as they
imitate the Buddhist paramitas, nevertheless contain aspects that are false. I
say this because I am convinced that Schuon’s understanding of the virtues
which the themes, claim to represent, is colored by his psychology. The third
theme, for instance, that of Beauty and Peace, is colored by Schuon's own
inordinate need of consolation through femininity, the spiritual
"state" that is the third theme is pictured in his "Icons"
of the Virgin. For myself, knowing what I know of Schuon’s Virgins, I cannot
but see a certain perfume of error in his formulations regarding this theme,
but I do not make the mistake thereby of casting aspersion on Beauty and Peace
in themselves. I reject Schuon’s method because I do not wish to be always
having to mentally separate Schuon’s pathology from my spiritual practices. But
ail of this is my opinion and I leave others to decide for themselves. I only
add here that a woman who left Schuon's group said, in regard to Schuon's
person and method, that she does not want "schuon’s esoteric "French
pastry" but wants her religion to be simple "like bread."
There is a "dream book" compiled by Sa.
Hamidah and Sa. Aminah i which preports to record the many dreams of fuqura
relating to the function of the Shaykh (Schuon). But having myself seen how
Schuon and his group hypocritically use dreams and visions to create a tariqa mythology,
and having myself had "sacred dreams" involving Schuon, I cannot
accept tnis "dream book" as having any authenticity or of providing
evidence for his status as a Shaykh. y ‘too uhSchuyn-j X knau) f
refj-echeif.
I record all this to point to the fact that Schuon
has very likely lied about his investiture as Shaykh. The question of whether
he is still a valid Shaykh al-Baraka I leave to those more competent
than myself such as Sidi i Hossien Nasr to decide. This also makes me have
doubts about the validity and j efficacy of his initiations. Sa.-Mariam tells
me that she knows of two Shaykns in I other tariqas who do not think his
initiations are valid. This is as it were a legal V question and I do
not feel qualified to say just what the truth is. However, spiritually, Schuon
could not possibly be a spiritual master simply because the visions of the
Virgin are pathological and the Primordial Gatherings syncratistic parodies.
This however is my opinion and I leave other to decide for themselves.
CATHERINE SCHUON (Sa. Latifah): Six months ago
(i.e., four months before leaving the tariqa) I told Mrs Schuon that I knew of
her affair with Sidi Abdul Qayyum. She did not deny it. She told me further
that when Schuon asked her to marry him, she was in love with a faqir who Sa.
Aminah told me was Sidi Fath-ad-din who in 1949 was in Lausanne with Schuon
discussing the material had collected from Black Elk. Schuon’s comment about
his marriage to , Catherine is interesting: he says, speaking of why he married
her that "the ' thought that someone else might marry her was intolerable
to me." (Pg. 147 of i Memoirs.) Here again, as I indicated in the
section entitled Marriage and Prophecy, Schuon’s main concern with women
is possession and power. The same concern is indicated by Schuon’s need to
minutely control the behavior of i his adulterous wives, even to the point of
dictating specific sexual instructions, asi he did with me and Sidi Abdul
Qayyum.
SA. HAMIDAH (The wife of Sidi Abdul Qayyum): I do
not remember the details of how Schuon came to "marry" his second
wife, except that I recall that it had some relation to the Great Vision of
1965, the same year Schuon took Sa. Hamidah. I recall that there were other
"signs" and readings from the Koran, but I do not remember them.
However Sa. Aminah a number of times discussed
with me how Sa | Hamida had wanted to please Schuon by offering him her
daughter, who Sa. * Aminah described as "the Shaykh’s type." Sa.
Aminah told me Schuon was in I love with this daughter and the young lady
confirmed this when I spoke to her recently. She once asked Schuon "what
do I represent for you?" and he
answered "you are the only woman I have loved
along with Sa. Hamidah and Sa. Aminah." It is well known in the tariqa
that Schuon tried to seduce this girl, perhaps in exaggerated forms. However,
whatl know of Schuon’s sexuality from ’< Sa. Aminah is that Schuon is not a
Don Juan type; rather, he considers himself a prophet like Solomon or Krishna,
whom all women should wish to worship, and in trying to seduce this young lady,
he tried to give her the extraordinary grace of his body in hopes that she
would be his fourth wife. This accords with all that Sa. Aminah told me.
However, the young lady said that she was repelled by the idea of an incestuous
relationship with an old man she regarded as ner father.
Schuon blamed Sa. Hamidah for the failure of these
attempts since he himself could not possibly be blamed for anything. Sa. M.
(the young lady in question) married a Moroccan named Mulay Rashid. This
marriage resulted in two children.
After some years the marriage began to break up,
and Mulay Rachid, having learned many of Schuon’s sexual secrets, threatened to
expose Schuon if there was a divorce. The "dignitaries" of the tariqa
met and decided that Sa. M. must return to Mulay Rashid to protect Schuon’s
reputation, thus, Sa. M. had to sacrifice herself for Schuon; but she could no
longer live with her former husband. During the subsequent divorce action in
Bloomington, Mulay Rashid wanted custody of the children and once again
threatened to expose Schuon. Once again Sa. M. was asked to sacrifice - this
time her children - to preserve Schuon’s reputation. Complete custody of the
two children was given to Mulay Rashid. About a year ago, the son of Sa. M.,
still in Malay Rashid’s custody, committed suicide. According to Sa. Aminah,
Schuon blamed Sa. M. and her mother for this, saying it was God’s punishment of
her for her refusal to become his fourth wife. It is my opinion that it is
quite monstrous of Schuon to blame Sa. M. for the death of a son when she had
already sacrificed so much to prevent anyone knowing of Schuon’s promiscuous
nature. Sa. M.’s mother was certainly wrong to encourage Sa. M. becoming
Schuon’s fourth wife, but it is clear that Schuon himself wanted this, and thus
all the trouble came from Schuon’s own overweening self-interestedness. Sa. M.
is a victim and so is her son , and may God give peace to his young soul. Sa.
M. left Bloomington and the tariqa after this.
There are other aspects to this story I shall
leave out, but I will mention one detail. In 1975 Sa. Hamidah and Sa. Aminah
were exploring sexual possibilities with Schuon, whereby Schuon would make love
to the two of them while invoking. Sa. Hamidah asked Sa. M. to take
pictures of the three of them during these acts. Sa. M. did not want to do this
and circumstances made it possible for her to avoid doing so. Schuon himself
accordingly took pictures of Sa. Hamidah and Sa. Aminah naked and breast to
breast, one of which I possess.
SIDI JUNAYD: Having only met Sidi Junayd once, all
my knowledge of him comes from Sa. Aminah and Sidi Salim, the step-father of
Jasmine Gaetani, the 13-14 year old girl (now 17-18) with whom Sidi Junayd had
relations even though he was married to someone else.
Sa. Aminah told me that Sidi Junayd had a history
of pedophilia, and that there were two young girls he had pursued before
seducing Jasmine. I do not recall the details of these stories, but to the best
of my memory, they both occurred in Bloomington.
Sidi Junayd (about the age of 40) was married to
Sa. Batinah and was in the habit of taking young children out on boat or
camping trips. He became particularly attracted to the 13 year old Jasmine in
1986 or 87. Sa. Aminah said that Junayd was bored with his wife, and towards
the climax of this entire affair would sometimes physically beat Sa. Batinah.
Sidi Junayd's involvement with Jasmine became known early on to Schuon and
Schuon gave his permission for Junayd to pursue it providing he was discrete
and that he did not take the girl’s virginity until she was of age. Schuon did
this despite the fact that the girl’s mother appealed to Schuon to put an end
to the affair. Sa. Aminah and others also warned him not to have intercourse
with the girl. Schuon however did give his approval to the restricted sexual
relations with the girl. Sidi Junayd did not obey the two conditions Schuon had
laid down, namely not to have intercourse and to be discrete. Sidi Junayd was
seen with the child more than once in a boat on Lake Monroe by other fuqara. He
would also, according to Sidi Salim, appear at the Gaetani house to the
discomfort and embarrassment of Jasmine's parents. The girl Jasmine would
manage to slip out and be with Sidi Junayd in clear cut disobedience to her
mother. Schuon still did not end the relationship with Jasmine and allowed it
to continue for many months, despite complaints of her parents and other
fuqara, because at that time Sidi Junayd was the leading muqqadam of
Bloomington and Schuon’s right hand man. Also, at the time, Schuon did not wish
to have the hierarchy of the tariqa discredited because this period was the
period when many dissenting voices were complaining about S. Junayd's
"reign of terror” in Bloomington. As always, one must "protect the
hierarchy."
(Sidi Junayd has also reputed to have had various
visions. At one time he felt the movie Star Wars was a metaphysical
presentation of the forces of good and evil, and "encouraged" all the
fuqura to see it and its sequels.)
Sidi Junayd had a great deal of power because of
his closeness to Schuon and often used it in a most destructive manner as in
the case of Sidi Safwan which resulted in the break up of his marriage and the
need to commit his wife for psychiatric care. Sa. Aminah and Sa. Latifah both
told me that Schuon fully approved of Sidi-Junayd’s autocratic and rather
tyrannical methods and that Schuon would be harder and tougher himself if he
lived in an earlier age when greater "rigor," justice and "holy
anger" could be freely exercised. From all that I’ve heard, I do not
believe Schuon had any moral objections to Junayd’s
statutory rape of Jasmine; as
esoterism is "amoral" and the essential element in i SchuonTs
amorality is discretion or secrecy. Junayd's fault was to be indiscreet. I am
familiar with this doctrine by direct experience as I was allowed sexual
permission with Schuon’s supposed wife, Sa. Aminah until I announced to Sa.
Suad that I had been married to Sa. Aminah, at which time the boom was lowered
upon me. (See The Problem of Qualification in Logic and Transcendence
for Schuon’s doctrine of intrinsic morality.) My telling Sa. Suad constituted a
breach against esoterism, and esoterism and Schuon are one and the same thing
in practice. In other words my "sin^was to announce that I had been
married, so I thought, to Sa. Aminah, and this was "disobliging to the
Shaykh." So likewise, Schuon did not stop Sidi Junayd from continuing his
sexual relations with a 13-14 year old girl until his indiscretions become so
well known that Schuon was obliged to adopt a moral attitude. Schuon only did
this) and only disposed of Sidi Junayd when his own reputation began to be /
implicated in the scandal. At this point, two years ago, Sa. Aminah, who had been
working herself for some two years to get rid of Sidi Junayd, threatened him
with the legal charge of statutory rape if he (S. Junayd) did not leave the
state. Accordingly, Sidi Junayd left for San Diego, California where he is
living with yet another faqir and studying homeopathic medicine and
acupuncture. (He and this other faqir have subsequently split up.) I should add
that it the > observation of this writer that Sa. Latifah was in love with
S. Junayd. I do not know if it was mutual. Sa. Latifah told me that the tariqa
gave Junayd upwards of a …It should be added that Sidi Junayd moved there with
the expectation that he would be able to marry Jasmine when she turned 18. But,
Sa. Kansa and others "worked on" Jasmine and talked her out of
marrying Sidi Junayd. For this, Sa. Badriyah rewarded Jasmine with permission
to come to the Primordial Gatherings (she is 18), and I hear she was recently
given a car. I mention these last details to show how the women in the tariqa
such as Sa. Kansa manipulate and scheme, and how the tariqa gives rewards to
those who conform.
I should also add that Sa. Aminah
acted as "house psychologist" in this and other situations despite
lack of any real training, and that she had this function in the tariqa by
permission of Schuon. Sa. Aminah diagnosed Sidi Junayd as having some form of
psychopathic narcissistic infantilism, like his sister Sa. Halimah, but I don’t
remember the exact term. She also diagnosed Sidi Sirai as having some
personality disorder. She said Sidi Nuraddin has paranoid tendencies as does
Sa. Kamila, his sister. Sidi Abdul Wahid is a paranoiac, which she explained is
much worse than paranoia pure and simple. I know very little about this subject
and offer these diagnoses to indicate how willing the tariqa is to employ arm
chair psychology to label and stigmatize individuals, since all of the people
mentioned above have either left Schuon’s group, or Schuon group would like
them to leave. One knows that this sort of )
psychological blacklisting was common in Russia
under communist rule, as well as in other tyrannical institutions, either
cultic, religious or political. On this matter as on others I defer to Dr.
Coomaraswamy who originally suggested to me that the credibility of the diagnostic
skills of the tariqa are questionable at best. (As previously noted, the
members of the inner circle of the tariqa are very suspicious of modern
medicine and tend to rely on homeopathic forms of treatment. In fact, several
of the inner circle practice homeopathy even though their training is limited
to what they have read in a few books.)
Schuon has written a whole article on holy
childhood (Reflections on Naivete in Light on the Ancient Worlds)
and often mentions the subject in other articles. But unlike Christ, who loved
actual children, the only chi(d Schuon has shown evidence of loving is the
child in himself. I was told by Sa. Aminah both when she showed me his
childlike cartoons and his toybox, that this aspect of Schuon is the most
esoteric part of him, but that no one should know about it since it would take
away from his dignity.
Schuon’s toy-box is in his "treasure
room" and is full of stuffed animals which he sometimes plays with. He
also has collections of marbles and other objects that a celestial child might
have (little golden daggers, clear marbles, dolls, etc.,) The collection of toy
animals is spread out across the table in the kitchen to greet him for
breakfast (I do not remember if perhaps this is done only on Christmas or his
birthday.)
In contrast, Schuon is opposed in no uncertain
terms to the fuqara having children. Sa. Aminah said that the only reason Schuon
did'noL consummate his marriage with Sa. Latifah was his fear of having
children. The "Second and Third wives had operations to obviate
this problem. Sa. Kansa had children, but Schuon was opposed~to'this, and often
says it was a mistake. Sa. Kansa was recently reproached because her four year
old girl waved to Schuon when Schuon passed by in a car (he sits in the back
seat like a King with Sa. Badriyah driving in the front.) Sa. kansa was told to
reproach her child for treating Schuon with insufficient dignity.
The reasons why Schuon states he does not want the
fuqara to have children are because the are too expensive, the profane world is
too profane, educational systems are awful, and they distract parents from the
spiritual life. As a result of his attitude many fuqura who would have liked to
have had children refrained from doing so. A young woman close to Sa. Latifah
who married a tariqa member was encouraged and agreed to have her tubes tied
prior to the marriage. This couple has since suffered greatly because of this.
They have also left the tariqa and must accept the fact that their marriage
will be without children.
While some of Schuon’s cartoons are quite
humorous, they are nevertheless strange in that he always pictures himself as a
3 feet tall, fat, square man with a beret on, and always seen from behind. The
other people in the cartoons are more or less normal sized.
In the visions of the Virgin, Schuon is nearly
always a child, which indicates the infantile narcissism of these visions,
since the visions are simultaneously sexual. I should add here that I am not a
psychologist and I do not understand this need of Schuon’s to see himself as
the Christ-child, while at the same time he sexualizes the Blessed Virgin.
I once asked Sa. Aminah why Schuon made love to
her for ten years, but didn't satisfy her. She only satisfied him, and always
orally. She said < ne preferred this, found intercourse boring” with Sa.
Hamidah, and, on another \ occasion said "he didn’t know what to do with a
woman." But all species "know i what to do" in this
circumstance. One can only conclude that Schuon’s childish, selfish and narcissistic
attitude towards sexuality corresponds to his psychology/ What this psychology
is I can’t explain. Someone I mentioned these facts to observed that the two
primary functions oft woman’s bodies, childbirth and intercourse, were of
little or no interest to Schuon, and moreover that the almost exclusive
emphasis on oral satisfaction is itself infantile.
Someone else observed that the absence of pubic
hair on Schuon’s pictures of the Virgin make the virgin look like a little girl
before puberty. Schuon’s own explanation of this fact is that the pubic hair
represents the fall or the veil and that the vagina is the essence and
therefore he prefers the removal of the hair. (Sa. Aminah always had to shave
her private parts for him.)
I do not interpret the above facts, but only
record them as a part of the spiritual pathology I do not understand.
It must be observed however that the consequence
of Schuon’s psychology was first to allow Sidi Junayd a sexual relationship
with a 13 year old girl and then to sexually abuse three girls, the two
daughters of the Haqqids, the daughter of the Idrisids and to contribute to the
corruption of a minor, namely the 14 year old son of the Kamalids, who
witnesses the Primordial Gatherings. Jasmine I believe has also been molested
by Schuon, as I witnessed her at the Primordial Gatherings, but I do not
remember seeing the act itself.
Schuon’s tendency to a narcissistic infantilism
led to those crimes without my being able to define exactly how. In any case,
when Christ said "suffer the little children to come unto me and forbid
them not, for of such is the kingdom of heaven," he certainly did not mean
taking possession of the bodies of young girls. If I may be allowed here a
personal opinion; one absolutely cannot suffer such hypocrisy as this and one
is obliged to speak out against it.
Lastly, in Schuon's essay Reflections on
Naivete he explores
among other things the difference between Naivete
and holy childhood and cleverness, ingeniousness, hypocrisy, deceit and
subterfuge. Now, I record here, my own opinion, which I believe to be factual,
that nowhere in my life have I encountered so much subterfuge, lying, cunning
ingeniousness, deceit and hypocrisy as in Schuon and his inner circle of
fuqura. Schuon’s crime is a crime against childhood, against the Christ-child,
as well as against the Blessed Virgin; and this double crime can only be
interpreted as constituting the sin against the Holy Ghost.7
Also in this section on children I should include
a few things about
Sa. Kansa. I have been told that she has her
children, a 4 year old girl and a 2 year old boy, pray to a painting of Schuon
with his penis exposed. Moreover, Sa. kansa's house is full of paintings with
vaginas and penises exposed. Sa. Aminah told me Sa. Kansa does not love her
husband, but is "completely in love with the Shaykh." She loves
"primordiality" and is a confidant of Sa. Badriyah. She is another
one who is supposed to be a "saint."
SA. SUAD: Sa. Suad told Sa. Aminah in an interview
that she
dreamed that Schuon put his tongue in her mouth.
From thenceforth she could sing like an American Indian. Thereupon Sa. Suad was
made leader of the Red Indian singing group that sings during Primordial
Gatherings. Along with Sa. Badriyah and S. Kamaladin, she was made an
"Indian dignitary" which effectively replaced the "Moslem
dignitaries."
Sa. Badriyah, prone to jealousy as she is, had
gone too far in having so many women take their clothes off for Schuon and
thus, according to sa. Aminah, asked of Schuon that she be kissed at the
Primordial Gatherings, and that she alone be kissed. This I witnessed at one
gathering. Subsequently, I saw Schuon kiss Sa. Suad as well, when Sa. Suad's
husband was not present. I found this strange, since it implied a special
election. Subsequently I often Sa. - Suad's car at Sa. Badriyah’s house when I
knew Schuon to be there. I asked Sa. Aminah if Sa. Suad had become a
"shakti” of Schuon’s. She said that she wouldn't be surprised, though she
didn't think Schuon would marry another. Sa. Aminah made it clear many women
have been naked to please Schuon, or perform services for him. Her response to
my questions made it clear that nothing would surprise her that Schuon might
do.
7 I should like
to add that Sa. M. said that when Schuon saw her children, her daughter stroked
Schuon's beard, but her son was not as Interested • thus Schuon said that her
son must have committed suicide because he didn't believe in | Schuon, whereas
her daughter must be a saint The obvious inference: who Hatters Schuon is good,
who does not is I bad, and Schuon makes such judgements even with childrenl
I add that S. Qassim, Sa. Suad's husband, was
extremely jealous of Schuon and therefore threatened and depressed. Sa. Aminah
said ne should sacrifice his wife to Schuon as Uriah sacrificed Bathsheeba.
I say all this without judgement, only recording
what I’ve seen or heard, and not knowing exactly what Sa. Suad’s relation is
with Schuon.
SA. BADRIYAH: Sa. Aminah described to me an
enormous painting Sa. Badriyah did in art school which was of a nearly life
size figure of a naked woman running. The entire painting was fire-red. This
seemed to me to represent Sa. Badriyah herself: ambitious, frantically active,
merciless like fire, and interested in power.
Schuon says she is a pneumatic, a saint, an
avataric woman, an incarnation of the Pte-san-win, having something of the
nature of the Blessed Virgin, and a better painter than he is, and this is not
nothing, since he once agreed with me when I said he was the greatest painter
in the world. Such at one time was my will to believe in him. May God show me
always the difference between the true and the illusory.
From the beginning, that is, from the time of my
first visit to Bloomington, I did not like Sa. Badriyah’s paintings. I found
them crude, too directly sexual, and above all too narcissistic, while at the
same time sync ophatic to Schuon. When one has seen the hundred, indeed
thousands of nude photographs of her, one realizes that she really only paints
herself; the paintings I’ve seen her do - and it was my task to frame them -1
framed most of them - style even the Blessed Virgin in her own image. The
paintings of Sa. Badriyah - and it must be remembered that they are suggested,
organized and corrected by Schuon when they paint in the posture I have
described - the paintings of the two of them are psycho-spiritual narcissistic
fantasies of their own divinity. They have made all the world's religions and
all the world's great art a kind of theater wherein they play out the drama of
their egos.
In this theater of masks which Schuon has created,
Sa. Badriyah is the Buffalo Cow woman bringing the sacred pipe and Schuon is
the great Indian chief who receives it; or Schuon is the Christ-child and Sa.
Badriyah is the Blessed Virgin; or Schuon is a cute little lion cub laying at
the feet of Sa. Badriyah impersonating the female Hindu saint Laila; or again
Schuon is the sacred letter Om floating above the spread-legged Lalla-Badriyah;
or again Schuon is Shiva as a swan who floats across the waters to a naked
goddess- Badriyah, naked on the shore. Likewise, in the Primordial Gatherings,
Sa. Badriyah is the star, the Warrioress, the Bringer of the sacred pipe; and
in other dances Sa. Badriyah plays the part of a Hindu goddess or a South
American. Princess with a headdress made up of bird feathers. Or again, a
Balinese or Hindu temple prostitute. Sa. Aminah said that in these 3rd level
Primordial Gatherings that Sa. Badriyah’s love of Schuon "pours from every
pore of her
naked body." But one must ask, what strange
perversion is this that requires Schuon to make his sexual interests public,
which needs an audience? Even when Sa. Badriyah paints her pictures with Schuon
lying on her naked thigh looking at her private parts, Sa. Aminah must be a
witness. Sa. Aminah would say that she did not feel married to Schuon, she felt
like a witness. But why does Schuon need a witness; as if God could not be God
unless someone watched him. Sa. M. observed that Schuon needs constant
adulation and must constantly don new masks because there is a crying
insecurity and emptiness in the core of the man.
I spoke with Sa. Badriyah’s mother to inform her
of her daughter’s real activities and in hopes that her mother might be able to
apply pressure that would stop the increasing decadence of Schuon’s group. Her
mother confirmed that Sa. Badriyah had worked as a masseuse in a place called
"Shangri-la" in Florida. She could not confirm that Sharlyn (Fer
birth name) had a message parlor in Bloomington: she didn’t know. She said that
Sharlyn was not naked all the time as a child which is the story Sharlyn
herself has spread around. She said that she has thought for many years that
Sharlyn is a lesbian, or at least bisexual. Her mother was not surprised at
anything I told her, ahdTdidn’t keep very much back.
I myself thought that Sa. Badriyah’s relationship
with Sa. Aminah had something lesbian about it, at least for Sa. Badriyah. Sa. Aminah’s
relationship with Sa. Badriyah began when Schuon became bored with Sa. Aminah,
and, I believe, vice versa. Sa. Aminah told me many times that she was glad
that Sa. Badriyah replaced her. Sa. Aminah deliberately and consciously trained
Sa. Badriyah to be Schuon’s fourth wife, ran with her naked in streams, taught
her how to pacify Schuon’s tantrums, fulfill his fantasies as well as how to
assume the power and responsibilities that went along with being Schuon’s wife.
When Sa. Badriyah first came Schuon would attempt to make love to both of them
at once, but Sa. Badriyah’s "marriage" to Schuon was never
consummated because by this time Schuon was impotent. Sa. Badriyah told me once
that,^he was like a nVnVrith Schuon. But I heard from both Sa. Aminah and Sa.
Badriyah’s mother that Sa. Badriyah is frigid in any case. I repeat this only because
it may help someone to situate Sa. Badriyah’s psychology.
The reason I thought Sa. Badriyah’s regard of Sa.
Aminah was lesbian was that her reaction to finding out about my
"marriage" to Sa. Aminah was violent and vindictive, as if she had
been personally betrayed. Sa. Badriyah had developed a whole mythology of her
and Sa. Aminah as sister-wives. At the same time, Sa. Badriyah is a violently
jealous person and she wished to eliminate her competition. She said to me one
day, and I can never forget it because it is so demagogic and draconian -
"Sa. Aminah is in revolt against the Shaykh; she is guilty of pride, and
she must be broken." This is the cultic mentality in a nutshell. Sa.
Aminah asked Sa. Badriyah if she said this, and she denied saying it. All this
seemed to me worthy of a Caeser Borgia: a diplomatic tyrant and opportunist
knows how and when to lie.
There is much that could be said about Sa.
Badriyah and I think I have recorded the important facts. I notice that I can
write about many aspects of Schuon and his community without bitterness, but I
spent hundreds of hours trying to comfort and passify Sa. Aminah in the process
of Sharlyn’s efforts to "break” her. I am bitter about this and so I will
write no more about Sharlyn Romaine. I wish my account to be impartial and
truthful, without any bitterness or anger. Therefore, may God help me to
forgive and forget and pass on to other things.
I could continue and write more about Schuon and
his tendency to use and despise people, to dissimulate, manipulate and control
others, but perhaps enough nas been said. I have tried my best to write in view
of the truth, and not to exaggerate or falsify. I am aware that God and the
Blessed Virgin are the witness of wnat I say and how I say it.
I was asked to write about this subject, this
occurred in December . of 1990 if I remember correctly. Sa. Badriyah’s new
house designed by Schuon I had been finished for some months and Sa. Badriyah
had put up tepees in her back yard. Schuon spent 6 hours a day at this
house. There are several hundred yards of woods that separate Sa. Badriyah’s
house from the next house which Belonged to Mr. Bellis. Mr. Bellis disliked the
tepees and the sound of Indian drums and put up no trespassing signs on the
border of his and Sa. Badriyah’s property. Schuon saw these signs first and
flew into a rage, got sick, and responded in the usual manner. Sidi Kamaladin
and the Arqamids were called in to save the day and they bought out Mr. Bellis,
offering him a very healthy sum . to move out. The war between the United
States and Iraq had just broken out, and Schuon took the No Trespassing signs
and the war as signs that he must drop the Islamic form. I record what Sa. Aminah
reported to me as to what he said at this time.
"He said fundamentalist Islam has forced him
against it because of its exoterism. He said he would go to Indian days, but
not magalis (Islamic gatherings for prayer), because the tariqa could not
associate itself with exoteric Islam and therefore we turn to the primordial
tradition of the American Indians because it is innocent." What is strange
about this is that the magalis is not an exoteric form, but rather is Sufic.
Sidi Abdul Ali told me that Schuon was happy to
forbid magalis for a year because he was bored with Islam and Primordial
Gatherings corresponded to his real "nature."
I was told that one should continue saying Islamic
rites (prayers), but only in private. From all I heard from Sa. Aminan and
others, Schuon had abandoned Islam and had forged rites, rites which he speaks
of in a general way in his recent writings, and these rites are the Primordial
Gatherings wherein Schuon is worshipped as a naked Avatara.
I was also told by Sa. Aminah and Sidi Abdul Ali
that the elimination of the magalis and the encouragement of the Indian-Hindu
"dimensions" were actions taken also in hopes that discontented or
"unassimilable fuqara" might be outraged by these acts and leave the
tariqa. The people mentioned in this respect were the Karimids, the Marwarids,
the fuqara at Lotus Arts, the Bashirids, the Jarhalids and others I can't
remember. This was said to me in a conversation where Sidi Abdul Ali also
expressed the hope that Sidi Hossien Nasr would break away from the tariqa.
I must insist however that Schuon made all the
decisions not because he was senile, but because nudism, pressing himself
against nude women, syncratic rites, primordiality - all of this - is his
"real nature," and has been so all along. This is why he took the no
trespassing signs as a liberation; he was finally free of Islam.
I do not believe in seeing providential signs in
such things, but if one must see these no trespassing signs as a divine
message, then they meant exactly the opposite of how Schuon interpreted them.
They meant that if Schuon continued to betray traditional spiritual forms and
continued to encourage his own self-divinization, he would trespass, that is;
it would be a sin against heaven for which he would be accountable.
Not being a psychologist, I can make few
judgements on this subject: but I will record various facts and observations.
As we noted earlier, the Memoirs often
refer to Schuon feeling persecuted and threatened by various people or
situations. There is, moreover, the fact of his reclusiveness, and his
veritable obsession with secrecy combined with a tendency to lie and
dissimulate.,Moreover, as I hope I have sufficiently recorded, there is a
tendency to blackwash anyone who he feels has betrayed him, such as Sidi Abdul
Jabbar, Sidi Fath-ad-din, Sa. M. and others. Lastly, there is an enormous need
to be constantly adored, praised, petted, told he is great, a prophet and so
on. And in conjunction with this, falling ill, throwing up or 1 becoming
asthmatic if he hears something said against him.
In regard to using his sickness as a formof
emotional blackmail, a subject I spoke of earlier, I offer another story. Sa.
Jamila-Nur was asked to gather information on Sidi Junayd who had offended so
many of the second level tariqa members with his autocratic rule in the name of
Schuon. She did this, but in the process developed doubts about Schuon himself.
Sa. Aminah told the Shaykh the morning of Sa. Jamila-Nur’s interview*taould be
difficult (i.e., that he wouldn’t like what sne had to say). He became
violently ill and reproached Sa. Aminah for ruining the entire day since he
would have to worry until the afternoon when Sa. Jamila-Nur’s interview was to
take place. Sa. Aminah said that Schuon looked at Sa. Aminah at the time of the
interview as if he hated her. Two months ago (before I left) I asked Sa.
Badriyah about this and she said that Schuon’s look of hatred had been
explained by Schuon himself as being the look of a great prophet, because
Schuon saw the nature of the revolt against Junayd as being also against him,
and as a rejection of his prophetic nature. Sa Jamila- Nur was severely
criticized for this report and the facts she presented were rejected by Schuon.
As a result of this interview Sa. Jamila-Nur left the tariqa.
When one considers this in conjunction with other
facts, such as the fact that Schuon is often worrying that such and such a
disciple may turn against him, then one concludes, or rather, this writer
concludes, Schuon has a persecution mania or at least sees himself as a misunderstood
martyr.
I would add here that in Schuon’s article To
Have a Center he speaks of Nietzsche in mixed terms, mostly negative, but
what he says of him positively is of interest. He says that Nietzsche’s Zarathustra
is "the violent reaction of a profound soul against a mediocre and
paralyzing cultural environment.” In the Memoirs Schuon speaks of
himself in the same terms. Like Nietzsche, Schuon is a conservative romantic,
longing after a lost Aristoi, or Aristocracy, elitist, concerned with questions
of race, despising others and exalting himself. Schuon is like the last
expression of the German Strum and Drang movement; he is full of a bitter
wounded pride, full of "holy anger" and thunder and lightning, ready
to spew the lukewarm masses out of his mouth. One sees in Schuon a Teutonic
tendency to a kind of totalism, a tendency one sees in Hegel, Nietzsche,
Wagner, Goetne and Kant and in degenerate form in Hitler. Schuon’s total all
inclusive esoterism reminds one of Wagner’s effort to make opera a total art
form. I offer this thesis for reflection.
But to return to Nietzsche, Schuon makes a
religion of greatness; Schuon compares himself with Alexander, Ceaser, the
Paraclete, the Prophet, Shankara, Plato, Niffari, and Napoleon. I should add
that there are more differences than similarities between Nietzsche and Schuon,
but among the similarities one must mention not only the tendency of both of
them to see themselves as great Genius-martyrs (Nietzsche's Ecce Homo,
Dionysius the crucified) but also the tendency to psycho-somatic illness.
What I wish to draw attention to here is firstly
Schuon’s tendency to? paranoia, and second that this paranoia is extended onto
the entire tariqa. All of i the people who left the tariqa in 1986-87
were vilified, called paranoid, crazy, demonic, diabolic or damned, as if
spirituality did not exist outside of Schuon's I group, or as if it were insane
or diabolic to have doubts concerning Schuon’s strange behavior, his claim of
infallibility, his mixing of forms, or his unorthodox marriages.
However this may be, the various books I've read
on cults indicate that this tendency to vilify defectors, deny any doubts or
refuse to answer legitimate questions, and reduce thinking to black/white;
them/us alternatives, and to declare those who defect as damned to hell is
typical of cults.
For instance, in the Rajneesh cult which was
broken up in Oregon in 1985, the people in the cult who had committed many
injustices and crimes against defectors as well as local "outsiders’'
"refused to admit their own exploitiveness" and their "own
contempt for their neighbors." (Cf, Chapter 9, Caught in a Double Bind, in
The Golden Guru, James S. Gordon, 1987). Even after murders had been
committed and many people harmed, the Rajneesh members considered themselves as
innocent and thought that "the Oregonians and the US Government are in a
conspiracy against us." The author of the above book describes this
process of denial and projection as typical of this cult in particular, and one
knows it is typical of cults and oppressive governments in general. In Schuon's
group there is an assumption that Schuon has free licence; that as he is
enlightened he can accomplish any action unquestioned; that since he is
infallible, if anyone questions him ne is insane or paranoid. If Schuon’s
behavior seems bizarre or insane, this is because the way of prophets and ,
Avatars is a kind of "crazy wisdom" beyond the normal ken of men and
women j to understand. There is no truth but the master, and he is infallible
and beyond ‘ the law; only proximity to the master has any value and those who
deny the master are in a conspiracy against the truth and will go to hell. In
the end one must sacrifice the truth in favor of the divinity of Schuon’s
personality and in making this sacrifice any real spiritual life is lost; for
the spiritual life can never be a cult of personality; but only a search for
the truth.
Lastly I should add that this process of denial
and projection is also characteristic of paranoid patients. I should further
add that since I left Schuon’s group, I’ve heard that Schuon and his associates
have said I am afflicted with various psychotic illness including paranoia, a
fact which I cannot affirm or deny i since I am not a psychologist and
my purpose is neither to psychoanalyze myself or Schuon’s group, but to explain
tendencies and report what I know. I should add that it is also being put out
by Bloomington that I am a pariah, a chandala (Hindu outcast), a drug addict,
and that I spent a year in prison. I will only respond to two of these
calumnies: I do not take drugs, but I was one of the only people in Bloomington
who could not stand the taste of alcohol (Schuon drinks sherry and brandy if I
remember correctly) and I have never been in prison.
I should perhaps add here a few more observations
on this subject, in order to add more force to the argument that Schuon’s group
is not a true spiritual order, but a cult led by a false master.
Thus, when perhaps 10 defections from the tariqa
took place in V? 1986-88, the people who left were called the
"Mafia," a paranoid designation if ' ever there was one. This group,
in a series of letters by Schuon to Sidi Abu Bakr and Sidi Hossien Nasr, were
accused of a "conspiracy" against Schuon. The
„ idea of writing these letters was Sa. Aminah’s,
and Schuon agreed and wrote ’ them. It should be added that Sidi Abdul Wahid,
supposed to be the group's s r f vG ) reader leader, was called
"paranoiac," a diagnosis made by Sa. Aminah, who ( $ V* has no
training in psychology. Moreover, Sa. Aminah had a ten year affair with this
man, but she admitted this to no one, proceeded as if she never loved him, and
vilified and branded the man she had once loved.
I have been told from various sources that Sa. Aminah
and the tariqa in general are proceeding in a similar fashion in regard to
me.;fhas been said that I am paranoic, mentally ill and sex obsessed. I do not
wish', as I said earlier, to discuss my own psychological status.
The dynamic of denial-projection which is
characteristic of cults,.
. especially when they are exposed, is very much
in evidence in Schuon’s group Jf' since they began to be exposed. They have
lied under oath and even accused ' the man who has been investigating them of
being a "witch-hunter." When I was in Bloomincfto testify to the
Grand Jury about tariqa activities, I was told by one of Schuon’s
"profane" neighbors that Michael Fitzgerald was shooting a rifle in
his backyard. When asked why he was doing this, he said, according to this same
neighbor, "because my life is in danger." Fitzgerald is a sort of
"survivalist" j who has even built a food-storage bomb shelter in his
backyard against the day i of Amageddon. I suppose that he believed me to be
such a threat that he // needed rifle practice.
I don’t wish to defend my
innocence against these accusations, but for the sake of truth I also record
the tollowing. Sa. Aminah, after having "diagnosed" Sidi Abdul Wahid
as paranoic, feared for many years that he would kill her. She has said similar
things about me since I left. I do not blame Sa. Aminah for such craziness;
rather, it is clear to me how Schuon’s corruption and paranoia spreads to those
around him. May God help her.
Schuon is "infallible." Thus he rejects
any reasonably well founded question about his actions, doubt or reproach -
this is The denial phase of paranoia - and then, anyone who questions him is
vilified, blackened and damned - this is the projection phase. Thus, since I’ve
criticized Schuon and his visions of the Virgin ano questioned his spiritual
validity, I am paranoid and sex ' obsessed - despite the fact that it not me
who practices rifle shooting, nor I who claim to have had sexual contact with
the Virgin as well as with some 40 to 50 other women.
I should add, on the subject of Schuon’s paranoia,
that he has built a very bizarre series of fences - ‘one of them 15 to 20 feet
high - around Sa. Badriyah’s house, to prevent anyone seeing into her property.
Even the "profane" neighbor mentioned earlier said these structures
were paranoid.
What is characteristic in all of this is a them
verses us attitude which is the exact opposite of charity and the love of
neighbor. Sa. Aminah was condemned for her need of love ana affection on the
grounds that the "mafia" also wanted love, humanity and kindness from
Schuon. Here again one sees Schuon's pathology; only the cult of Schuon’s
personality matters everything । else is
"sentimental," "profane," or "diabolic." On a
vastly smaller scale, one sees ' analogies with Russia under the government of
Joseph Stalin.
In what I write here the exactness of my quotes
can be questioned.
I have a hundred pages or more of notes taken down
primarily from Sa. Aminah, « but also from comments of Sa. Badriyah and Sa.
Hamida, three of Schuon’s | "wives.” I wrote these notes mostly during
phone conversations, and as I don’t 1 know shorthand my notes are
fragmented or in some cases paraphrases of what । - was-said. They are
however as accurate as I could make them. Sa. Aminah saw \ : some of
these notes and said that they were very "dangerous and should be
burnt." She also said that she thought they were inaccurate in.some cases.
But 1 the reason she thought this and is something hard to. explain
to those "outside" the inner circle, is that those immediately around
Schuon are trained by him to protect his reputation at all costs. Mistakes
Schuon makes are always blamed on someone else. Anyone who questions Schuon,
even obliquely, is immediately suspected of "trying to destroy the
hierarchy." This is why Sa. Aminah questioned my notes. Strictly speaking,
only that which is positive that is said I about Schuon is true; whatever is
questionable about him is by definition false’ She once told me, for instance,
that "even when hejgs, he tells the truth." And to support this claim
she told me a story about when she first became sexually 11. involved with
Schuon. After a time Schuon’s second wife began to suspect him " / * of
being involved with another woman. She asked Schuon if he was sleeping with Sa.
Aminah and Schuon said no. Sa. Hamidah then stormed downstairs and announced to
Sa. Latifa (wife No. 1) that the Shaykh had lied.She went home and
opened the Koran, a practice all the people in Bloomington indulge in (this is
a kind of superstitious practice by means of which the Koran is used as an
"oracle") and she read "that is Jesus, Son of Mary, the Word of
Truth, him in, I whom they doubt." From this Sa. Hamidah deduced that
Schuon is like Christ, son of Mary, and that if he lie^he tells the truth. Some
time later, Sa. Aminah was told by Schuon to tell Sa. Hamidah she had become
the third wife. Schuon t himself never does anything that would put him in the
slightest conflict, since this j
would make him sick. The people around him all
lie, deceive, dissimulate and manipulate in order to protect Schuon. It should
TJ5T be thought that Schuon is himself unaware of this, the contrary is true,
he is a master at lying "diplomacy." I would say, if asked,
and merely as a matter of fact, without bitterness, that Schuon is a whited .
s-epu’/chr-e >
There are many examples of this sort of lying
diplomacy. For instance, many authors in the tariqa write books and it often happens
that Schuon tells these men, such as Sidi Abu Bakr that the books are
wonderful, only then to turn around and tell his wives that the books are
worthless. This is sometimes called "corrective diplomacy." Another
example is when a woman in the community lost respect for Sa. Ammah, she was
told that Sa. Aminah was a saint, despite the fact that Sa. Aminah was
considered to have committed adultery. This lie was called
"corrective."
The reason I bring up this
subject of lying diplomacy, perhaps more accurately called disinformation
campaigns, is the following: I learned from someone who is still connected with
the tariqa, and whose defection is not open, that the tariqa dignitaries have
put out the following disinformation: They have said that I fell in love with
Sa. Aminah after kindness showed to me by her and that I gave her flowers and
wrote her love poems, and that my love became so •, excessive that Schuon was
obliged to put an end to it. This whole story is false, i The reason it
has been fabricated is twofold: one, to make Sa. Aminah appear as a loyal wife
of Schuon, and two, to make Schuon look powerful and decisive. At the same time
it places the blame for my defection on me. ;
I had not planned to write a great deal about my
relationship with Sa. Aminah, but I see that I am obliged to do so for sake of
truth. I will try to be brief.
Having read Schuon’s books, and believing him to
be a true spiritual master, I moved to Bloomington and entered Islam. I had
been living in Bloomington for some nine months, painting houses, performing
odd jobs, when the subject of my initiation into the tariqa came up. The Alids
- Sa. Aminah was married to Sidi Abdul Ali (who are “divorced" by Schuon
but legally married) asked me to paint their house in view of knowing me
better. This house painting, as I only worked 2 days a week there, went on for
a few months. I often had lunch or dinner with them and they were long meals
with much talk. Sa. Aminah * already began showing me favor, giving me things,
and teaching me about Schuon. I saw she was very lonely. Finally I was
initiated and the painting of the house was finished. A few months passed and
then both Sa. Aminah and Sidi I Qaddur asked me to help Sidi Siraj, a faqir who
I was frjenjjly yvith and who was ' suffering from various psychological
problems. It was beyohg my capacity to help him and one night he was violent
with me. Wanting nothing to do with I violence I ended my friendship
with him. Sa. Aminah felt responsible for this debacle since she had asked me
to help him, and she began to call me often, and then more often. Before long
we were talking almost on a daily basis.
Finally, as I had once had the
abbess of a Russian Orthodox convent as a spiritual Mother in California, I
asked her if she would be my spiritual Mother. She said no, she didn't wish to
be anyone’s spiritual Mother, but that she would be my friend. I asked her if
this was proper, (I knew she was one of Schuon’s wives) as Schuon had said in a
text men and women under such circumstances could not be friends. She said my
problem is that I’ve spent too much of my life alone, like a hermit, and I
needed to be more personal with others, beginning . . , with her. Add. me 4.
Finally I sensed she had fallen
in love with me and over the next 3- 4 weeks I wrote 30 pages about al! my
doubts concerning what she was doing. She later burned all these notes because
she thought them dangerous. I asked her, if we had this friendship, then could
she ask Schuon’s permission for it. She said no, because he was too old to be
able to explain it to him, and that she is no longer married to Schuon. She
explained that only Sa. Badriyah was the "real wife and shakti" of
Schuon. She explained to me the nature of intrinsic morality as it is defined
in Schuon’s article The Problem of Qualifications, that if something
leads towards God and harms no one, and our friendship could harm no one, then
it was good. (All this, providing no one knew about it.) I was frightened, but
at that time I thought her my spiritual superior, so I agreed to the
friendship. After some days she called and said that she needed comforting and
could she visit my apartment. She said "you don’t have to make love to me
but could we just lie together for a while." I first said no, but the next
day said yes, and I was now falling in love with her, but afraid to admit it
because I wasn’t > sure at this point if she was married or not to Schuon. She
came over with the j expected result and within the first two days was teaching
me the "tantric" techniques of spiritual sexual union developed by
Schuon as well as telling me about his visions, Primordial Gatherings and so
on. Except for perhaps 6-7 days, I have seen her from 3 to 10 hours a day for
the last year.
After a week or two she told me
that we must be married. She defined this as "intrinsic marriage"
which she explained as follows: "An intrinsic marriage is a marriage that
is not necessarily civil, but which is made by two people freely in view of God
and the spiritual life. The condition is that there be a love
between the two partners that leads them towards God." j
Thus we made permanent vows to
each other, recited the Surat ul- Asr as a marriage vow daily. Every day we
prayed to the Virgin, invoked together, and loved one another in secret. Her
health improved and we were very happy and suited each other well. i
r
I had regular doubts about this from the
beginning. During one of \ the first few days she told me her body was full of
the "substance of the Shaykh" | (meaning Schuon’s semen) and that she
had come to give me her body and this / < substance; that it was a gift and
a blessing for me from Schuon himself - who was too old to see me himself. But
that our union would be blessed by him from heaven.
Some time later, when I again
raised objections or doubts - that if she weren’t married to Schuon then why
must the relationship be secret - she said that I was extremely ungrateful to
doubt her, since she offers me a knowledge of Schuon that no man can possess
except me. She said this to me many times over the ensuing months. She said
many times, "you know more about the Shaykh than any man in the
world." She would reproach me for not trusting her and for having
doubts, claiming I had a personality disorder not to trust her.
• Aslam
accused of having initiated this entire affair, I offer in the appendix a
letter from her in which she confirms the facts that I am presenting about our
relationship. To go on,
Then in August, I had to find a new place to live
and was looking for a house to rent, but she insisted on buying one. I objected
to this, but at last gave in. I found a house and, S. Arninah bought the house
for me (in my name), depositing a bag of $70,000.00 in gold which she laid on
the table of the Realtors. She really bought this house for me so we could have
a place to meet in secret, and so I wouldn't have to work so hard and we could
devote ourselves to the spiritual life together.
I again raised doubts periodically. One day she
took off Schuon’s ring and performed a ceremony wherein she looked up to heaven
and said that the Blessed Virgin Herself knows she is not married to Schuon,
and she put the ring back on her finger and said the ring was mine.
Finally, my doubts became more persistent and
regular, and by December she finally consented to write Schuon letters asking
to be married to me. I found this odd that we should have to ask for something
that I thought already accomplished. I include at the end of this book in an
appendix a copy of her letter, as well as my first letter which says we are
already married, and my second draft that shows how she made me change the
letter into asking permission for what I already thought I had.
I do not wish to seem to be blaming SA. AMTNAH.
for any of this. If there is blame, it belongs to Schuon because this notion
"intrinsic marriage" in fact is the idea that justified his marrying
the last three wives. Therefore, before I go on with Schuon’s and Sa.
Badriyah’s reaction to the letters I have mentioned, [must first describe
Schuon’s marriages.
After Schuon "took" Sa. Aminah, which
was always her way of putting it, and had had sexual relations with her for
some time, she told him she did not wish to be a concubine. He said that if she
did not wish this then they could be married. She said she would like a ring.
He said she could have one which meant she had to go and buy it herself. She
did so and this was all there was to it. There was no ceremony and no
witnesses. Substantially the same thing happened with Sa. Hamidan and Sa.
Badriyah. Such marriages, I know, have no validity from the traditional point
of view. Schuon gave out that these were Islamic marriages, but this was
another lie since Islamic marriages require witnesses, an Imam, a guardian to
give the woman to the groftm, and various other conditions which were
unfulfilled. As always, Schuon adapts traditions to his own purposes and
convenience.
Schuon then told Sa. Aminah that she was
intrinsically divorced from Sidi Abdul Ali. At another point she told me she
was Islamically divorced from Sidi Abdul Ali. In either case there was no
proceeding undergone - only the word of Schuon. Here again, the divorce was
meaningless. Then Schuon told SA. AMTNAH. that she should continue having
sexual relations with Sidi Abdul Ali at the same time as she was sleeping with
Schuon. Schuon claimed to do this as a "mercy," but the real reason
was that Schuon could then seem magnanimous to Sidi Abdul Ali at the same time
as he forced S. A. to sleep with two men at the same time, thereby dominating
her sexual life, a domination which gave him control over her psyche. Moreover,
by having SA. AMTNAH. live with Sidi Abdul Ali, he absolved himself of
responsibility over her, at the same time as he covered himself lest someone
accuse him of polygamy which is a legal crime in Europe and America. Sa.
Hamidah was also made to continue to have sexual relations with Sidi Abdul
Qayyum after Schuon took her as his "wife."
To continue with our story: Schuon’s reaction to
the letters we gave him was extremely violent. I heard that he screamed and
pounded his fists. SA. AMTNAH. was told at first she was married to Schuon; she
had no right not to be married to Schuon, that "the family of the
Bodhisattva is inviolate" and that she is "the first woman in all of
human history to betray a prophet."
It is of interest that Schuon has said that he
thought the ideal marital relationship was that of the American Indians who
joined and parted from their wives based entirely on their feelings. This was,
he says, the primordial manner of marriage. 1 do not know if this is in
fact-the case, but clearly he doesn't apply this principle to his own
situation or my supposed marriage.
1 was told that I had been betrayed and misled by
SA. AMTNAH.; that her sin was very grave. I was told that the relationship
should be ended immediately, and that Schuon said that if he were me he would
cut the relationship off as if with a sword.
I spent day or two crying and stricken in a manner
I have only experienced in grief for tne death of a loved one. I loved SA.
AMINAH., thought myself married to her, and planned to spend the rest of my life
with her. SA. AMİNAH. pled for mercy and was told that there was no mercy
without truth, and the truth is that she was married to Schuon whether she
liked it or not, and not to be married to him would mean damnation for her. I
was worried because I had done something against the Shaykh without knowing it,
and this made me so unhappy I wished to die, and I was told that Schuon said,
that it would "be good if I died, if I knew I had done something against
him." (These are Schuon’s words.)
For one day I actually tried to do what Schuon had
asked me to do and separate from SA. AMİNAH., out it was impossible for both of
us. The love between us was oood and led towards God and Schuon had not treated
SA. AMİNAH. as a wife for the last 3-4 years, since Sa. Badriyah’s coming. We
let Schuon know that such a separation would kill us, and he then said that we
would be permitted to continue together in what he called a "mystical
friendship" which was on the line between the "absolute law and the
relative law" - the absolute law forbids adultery and adultery consists of
sexual penetration and the mixing of sexual fluids, and therefore we could do
everything but these two things. I was then told that this decision was binding
on us for the rest of our lives. I asked 4 or 5 times over the next month if it
was certain that this permission was permanent, and each time Schuon said yes.
I was finally told that if I asked again he would be angry at me for doubting
him.
Before I was told this I asked on various
occasions if he was sure that I shouldn’t sacrifice my love for him, since he
was my spiritual master. I was told that such a sacrifice was "sentimental
voluntarism" and this is "not part of the Shaykh’s perspective."
Sa. Badriyah wrote me a letter which I still have in which she said that the
ruling that this permission is permanent had been accurately represented to me,
and that "the constellation of things that are has been exceptionally
permitted" to me.
As the months passed I tried to grasp how I could
have a "mystical friendship" that was virtually a marriage. I began
to long for a sacramental basis to the relationship. I brought this up many
times and finally was reproached for being ungrateful for the exceptional
permission I had been given, with the result, as I explained before, that
Schuon became violently ill and vomited because of my ungratefulness. I was
then made to write a letter of apology renouncing my desire for
sacramentalization as a "false mystical idealism" concerning all
forms of spiritual union. I was forced to write this letter and do not see a
single thing wrong with a longing for a sacramental foundation with the woman
that one loves, especially since SA. AMİNAH. had pursued and married me, and
not the reverse, and had done so because Schuon himself had neglected her to
such an extent that her marriage consisted of nothing more than watching Schuon
look at the vagina of Sa. Badriyah 3 hours a week while Sa. Badriyah was
painting.
At this point it may be appropriate to mention
that in October or November, before all these events occurred, Schuon had
received a letter from a French Catholic nun who was or wished to be a
disciple, asking him to explain why he had four wives. He wrote to her that he
only had one wife, Sa. Latifa, and that S. A. and Sa. Hamidah were not wives,
but ’spiritual unions" and that Sa. Badriyah was an "adoption."
This was another factor that made S. A. convinced , she was not married to Schuon.
When months later I mentioned this letter to Sa. Badriyah, I was told the
letter was a diplomatic lie meant to passify and comfort the poor outraged
French nun. I mention thisTSecause it typifies once again Schuon’s expedient
and deceitful methods.
To return to my story; having been reproached for
ungratefulness and having apologized, I was told to be "simple as a
chipmunk," that the permission I had been given was permanent, to last my
whole life, and that I "should not be mentalistic" nor "try to define
things" - that if I were grateful and simple as a chipmunk, I would not
need a sacramental foundation, but should live happily and simply, living on
that fine line between adultery and marriage. I accepted this, was grateful,
and though it was difficult to live in this ambiguous manner, I was happy to be
with the woman I loved. I was told finally that this ambiguous relationship was
a "Zen Koan" that I should not try to figure it out, but simply
accept it.
The tension between SA. AMINAH. and Sa. Badriyah
was i considerable. Sa. Badriyah had opened the Koran and had received the
words "punish punish,... punish punish - and so she proceeded to launch
regular attacks upon the person and character of SA. AMİNAH.. S. A. would often
come to my house weeping and needing comfort.
Sa. Aminah had told me many times that her
"marriage" with Schuon was "all obligations and no rights,"
that it was a life of sacrifice, that "if people knew what he was really
like tney would not wish to be close to him" - that he was hard and
judgmental - and that she had never loved him, but rather pretended to be in
love with him.
She often said that during her years with Schuon
she often wished for a normal life, and a husband she could talk to, and tell
her problems to. At the hi ere hiriFdTa problem or fault Schuon would get sick
or asthmatic. Therefore she longed for a real relationship. After 10 years of
self-sacrificing with Schuon she was completely right, in my opinion, to resent
the fact that Schuon had abandoned her for a younger woman. At 49 years of age
Schuon found it unpleasant to look at her body because 'the prophet needs a
young Shakti." i
These legitimate concerns of Sa. Aminah were by no
means new with me. They explain why SA. AMINAH. had an affair with Cyril Glasse
(Sidi Abdul Wahid) from 1972 to 1982, apparently only two years of which -
1977-79 were actively sexual. During this time she was actively sexual with
Schuon as well, often with both of them on the same day. However this may be, I
record this not to condemn Sa. Armnah ("let he who is without sin cast the
first stone")_ but to point to the conflict in her soul, wherein on the
one hand she wishes to have the legitimate life of a normal woman, and on the
other, she felt obliged to serve Schuon who insisted on the absolute possession
of her for himself, a possession that was to continue even after his death, yet
who made little or no effort to treat her as a husband normally treats his
wife.
I asked Sa. Amlnah many times how she could have
betrayed ।
Schuon with Sidi Abdul Wahid, or, for that matter with me, and she would say '
that she wished to save Sidi Abdul Wahid’s soul; with me, she said she didn't •
believe she was married to Schuon any longer. She would often repeat to me
sentences like "he (Schuon) is the most wonderful man in the world"
or "I am completely devoted to him" and when I would point out that
if she were so devoted and he was so wonderful, then why did she betray him,
she would some times reply that I didn’t understand "esoterism." TO
me these sentences seemed the result of 15 years of mechanically praising
Schuon.
I often asked her in the beginning how she could
have three husbands, or two anyway, since at this point sne said she was not
married to Schuon, and not feel, as it were, that she was robbing from Peter to
pay Paul and vice versa. She would always say that she was not married to Sidi
Abdul Ali either, that he was a selfish, helpless man who she was tired of
servicing, and she did so because Schuon ordered her to do so.
One day she came to me with a different answer to
this question - that she gathered from conversation with Schuon and Sa.
Badriyah: she said that the ability to change from husband to husband or wife
to wire, is characteristic of pneumatics, those who are utterly and intrinsically
spiritual, . since such people -
especially Schuon himself - can resolve such contradictions without the
slightest effort, this seemed to me about the most cunning excuse for
conscienceless behavior that I have ever heard, (cf. Schuon's early article
"Conceptual Dimensions in his Transcendent Unity for this idea of
perspective shifts, the operative idea here is that of conflicting wives, like
conflicting concepts, are resolvable from above, and the Above and Schuon are
one and the $ame. See also Dialectical antinominalism in In the Face of the
Absolute.)
I do not wish to be seeming to blame Sa. Aminah in
any of this. She is trapped in Schuon’s world by threats of damnation, guilt
and terror. Schuon imposes on her the fantasy that he is a prophet-king and
Avatara to whom one owes complete self-sacrifice. One should be passive towards
Schuon like "a corpse in the hands of a washer of the dead." Sa.
Aminah’s desire for a husband and a normal life was stigmatized by Schuon as
"diabolic" and / 1 "horizontal." She was told she was the
only woman in all human history to betray ' a prophet which makes her sin more
grave than any woman’s in history. She I was told that she must be
married to Schuon. whether she liked, it or not and that if she desired human
warmth and affection, these desires were from the devil.
It’s true that Sa. Aminah is responsible in that
she should have been able to see through this kind of cultic blackmail, but
having witnessed Schuon’s extremely cunning and manipulative psychic control of
others, often verging on the monstrous, I cannot really blame Sa. Aminah, but
rather, I pity her weakness ; and pray for her release. She is a
kind of psychic captive to a genius of such a high order that he not only
manipulates the psychology of his wives, but he manipulates for his own ends,
religious doctrines ana traditions as well. I grant that she receives wealth,
position, honor and an identity as the wife of a 'great man" and a member
of an elite community, but these things are nothing in the spiritual life, for
as St. Paul has said "without love... or charity... they are as
"sounding brass."
To continue with the story: the last six months of
my stay in Schuon’s group, from December to July, was a downhill slide wherein
I saw increasingly what kind of man Schuon really is and the manner of his
operation. I witnessed the kind of thrall that he can holo people in, and how
tyrannical he is, and how he delegates this tyranny - at this time to sa.
Badriyah, just as in the past he used'Sidi Junayd for this. Schuon’s dark
genius on a social level manifests as an amazing charismatic ability to
terrorize those close to him into a psychic submission which is truly
frightening. Sa. Badriyah would criticize Sa. Aminah, using arguments from
Schuon day after day for months. Every time Sa. Aminah tried to defend herself
she was accused of pride, told that she had the devil in her, or was
"individualistic." Schuon would tell Sa. Badriyah what to say. For
instance, Sa. Aminah was told at one point, when she asked Schuon to pray for
mercy for her, since she couldn’t leave me, that he could not pray for someone
in a state of sin, and that there could be no mercy for her unless she admitted
that "truth", namely that she was married to Schuon. Then, when
Schuon saw that Sa. Aminah was completely devastated as a result of Sa.
Badriyah’s badgering, he would play the part of the generous saint, benignly
allowing her to continue to visit him and Sa. Badriyah for her three hours a
week of watching them paint. Sa. Aminah was supposed to be grateful for this
extraordinary grace.
Sa. Aminah, during this period, became physically
more and more( delicate, needing often to sleep, spending a great
deal of time in tears. I began ; to see Sa. Badriyah and indeed, Schuon
himself, increasingly as wolves in sheep's clothing, alternately being cruel
and then kind to Sa. Aminah, slowly breaking down her resistance. During this time
1 tried to learn to develop a sense of humor (something I’ve never had much of)
to keep Sa. Aminah happy. I wrote her many love poems to cheer and comfort her
(she later burned most of these poems because she decided they were disobliging
to Schuon.) Some days she would be too upset or tired to perform the prayers,
so I would sit beside her as she was resting and pray out loud so she could
follow me mentally. Other days I would sing her songs, especially songs to the
Blessed Virgin, in order to comfort her.
Sa. Badriyah’s effort to control Sa. Aminah became
more and more demagogic and she began dictating what pictures she could and
could not have tr. •no the walls of her bedroom, what clothes she should
or shouldn’t wear, how she should think, and what she should do. Sa. Aminah
became simultaneously more and more divided in her mind, and when I would point
out that Sa. Badriyah was acting like a tyrant, she would defend her and say my
attitude towards Sa. Badriyah was too low, that she is a Mahashakti and an
avataric woman. This conflict in Sa. Aminah between seeing the truth about
Schuon and Sa. Badriyah, but then denying this truth when it finally came to
the point of having to admit their behavior was tyrannical and hypocritical -
this split in Sa. Aminah became more and more pronounced as time went on.
This split was already present before I came
along, as Sa. Aminah was glad Sa. Badriyah took over her responsibilities as the
"Shakti" of Schuon, for Sa. Aminah had always felt she was not a
"shakti," and had only pretended to be one. She always said that I
could not imagine how difficult it is to oe with him. Part of Sa. Aminah had
long ago rejected Schuon and desired to get away from him, but since "it
is a grave sin to betray Schuon" she had to repeat to herself over and
over "he is the most wonderful man in the whole world." Half
believing this, she therefore had also to half believe that she was cut off
from the divine Mercy and that her sin was the worst sin of any woman in all of
human history, thus, on the one hand she would tell me she wished only to die,
then on the other, she would come to see me every day to get away from Schuon’s
terrorizing methods.
I could tell other stories on this subject, but
perhaps I have said enough. I have wished to show how Schuon’s enormously
sophisticated psychological methods are used to tyrannize over people, and Sa.
Aminah is scarcely the only person he has done this to - and moreover, one must
also realize that the purpose of Schuon’s analysis of the soul of Sa.
Aminah has little or nothing to do with the good of Sa. Aminah’s soul. Rather,
he reduces her soul to a ruin in order to break her and use her to his own
purpose, it being of paramount importance that nothing and no one be
"disobliging to the Shaykh" because he has no faults and is incapable
of doing anything wrong. Such however is not the behavior of a true Shaykh,
much less of a propnet, but rather it is the cunning psychological indirections
of a man with totalitarian ambitions. It was the gradual realization of this
that led me to renounce Schuon as anything resembling a spiritual master.
To bring this story
to an end, the reader will recall that during the winter I had been told by
Schuon and Sa. Badriyah that I need never sacrifice myself for Schuon, that
this was a "sentimental voluntarism," not part of Schuon’s
perspective; that I had been given an exceptional "permission" to be
intimate - "mystical friends" with Sa. Aminah for the rest of my
life. Moreover, I was told to be simple like a chipmunk, grateful and happy to
be given the Shaykh’s wife and an intimate friend, and that I should not define
this relationship, since it had been, defined by Schuonhimself. ...........................................................
Suddenly everything was reversed for no reason
that I could . perceive. I was suddenly told that the relationship was not a
Zen Koan which I shouldn't try to define because Schuon was "not an
ambiguous communicator." And then I was told I had to totally end my relationship
with Sa. Aminah, that Sa. Aminah was too weak to end it and that schuon not
only asks, but demands as my spiritual master that I sacrifice myself for him.
Both sa. Badriyah and Sa. Hamidah told me Schuon had demanded this sacrifice. I
was told I had a "grace period" of one or two months in which to
accomplish this.
If Schuon was not an "ambiguous
communicator" then why, when I had been chided for being a
"sentimental voluntarist" in offering to sacrifice myself, was I now
suddenly asked to force myself by strength of will to sacrifice my love and
relationship with Sa. Aminah? Why, if the "permission was permanent"
was I asked to end it after a period of 5 months? Why, when I had been told to
love on a fine line between adultery and friendship, was I told by Schuon
"there is nothing between marriage and friendship"? And why, when I
had been told to be simple and grateful and had tried to demonstrate I was
grateful, was Schuon himself now contradictory and complex. Many times I had
asked if the permission was permanent, even to the point of irritating Schuon,
and many times I was told yes, it was. But now I was told, when I complained of
these contradictions, that I misunderstood and he had not said such things when
I knew very well he had. Why was he now lying? What became more and more
apparent to me with time was that Schuon and Sa. Badriyah feared that Schuon’s
reputation would be hurt if others knew that Sa. Aminah wanted another man than
him, and that he had been obliged to grant her a permission to stay with me
because she didn’t love him, and told him she didn’t love him and never had. I
am now convinced that the reversal came about because of their fear that my
relationship with Sa. Aminah would become known and that it tooviX proved that "something
was rotten in Denmark" and that the great prophet who believes he is
Krishna is not so great after all.
The terms of his demand that I sacrifice myself
were that he didn’t wish me to die, but he had said on another occasion that if
I did anything contrary to him, "it would be good if you wished to
die."
A month went by since I had been asked to
sacrifice myself. I still was trying to hold on to my belief in Schuon and felt
I should fulfill his demand. Sa. Aminah did not agree with me about this. She
said she would "rather be utterly destroyed" than give me up. She was
referring to a phrase in the Koran that came up through the practice called
"opening the Koran." (Seeking an answer to a situation or problem
based on the verse of the Koran that one opened to.) I do not believe in the
legitimacy of this practice as I saw it much abused, and therefore I will not
cite the passage in question. In any case, I decided finally to try to
accomplish Schuon’s plan and left on a plane for New York City to stay with a
friend and mourn Sa. Aminah’s loss. I returned 3 or 4 days later, the trip
having been a disaster.
Upon my return SA. AMINAH. began speaking of
divorcing Schuon. But it was clear to me that she couldn't do it, as they were
putting enormous pressure on her, telling her the devil was in her, that she
would be damned, and the usual cultic techniques. So I again left, this time
suicidal, still believing I must sacrifice myself for this man and unable yet
to entirely admit how monstrous he really is. Many times I almost drove myself
into bridges at 90 miles an hour. Finally, I reached the house of my mother,
told her the entire story, start to finish. I broke the promise that Scnuon had
coerced me to make. He nad demanded of me in January that I swear on the Koran
never to speak of my marriage to SA. AMINAH. or of the subsequent permission I
had been given. I had not wanted to swear this, and procrastinated about it for
a week, but nad finally done so under Sa. Aminah watchful eye. I decided
finally that Schuon did not have the right to tyrannize .a woman who did not
love him, nor did he have the right to demand of me a sacrifice that would push
me to the point of suicide, and that his asking me to make this sacrifice was
for selfish reasons and had nothing to do with teaching me something in the
capacity of spiritual master. Schuon, I decided, was not Marpa, the Tibetan
spiritual master who asked Milarepa to do impossible things to sacrifice his
ego, rather Schuon was a selfish old man who wanted his wives to be like
jewels, mere decorations for his vainglorious crown. I decided I could not make
myself a sacrifice for his vanity: moreover I decided such a man could not be a
spiritual master, or if this was how spiritual masters proceeded, I wanted
nothing to do with them. I thought all this out with my mother’s help and that
of a friend of mine in Cleveland and decided to return to Bloomington for the
sake of SA. AMINAH. and the spiritual life we had formed together, inwardly I
had renounced Schuon himself. After a few days 1 saw I could not maintain such
a position because S. Aminah selfdeception and duplicity of soul was too
imbedded. Sa. Aminah wanted to live in "sin’’ with me rather than divorce
Schuon, and I could no longer concede that Schuon was a legitimate master whom
1 had to obey whereas Sa. Aminah wished to disobey him only if she did it
secretly. I no longer wished to play this game of deceit, and therefor
announced to Sa. Suad that I had been married to • Sa. Aminah, thus breaking
the rule of secrecy that had been imposed on me once again. The next day Mr.
Fitzgerald (Sidi Kalamadin) and Mr Jones (Sidi I Qaddur) came to my house to
announce my relationship with SA7AMINAH. was finished. They virtually locked
Sa. Aminah in her room, changed her phone number and forbade her to see me. I
found all this awful and terroristic and in despair called Rama Coomaraswamy
and Dr. Wolfgang Smith who together with another individual in Bloomington. The
three of them talked over my story, helped me see that my conviction that
Schuon was a false prophet was true, helped me to organize myself and flee from
Bloomington. They all felt that it was dangerous for me to stay in Bloomington.
To these men I am deeply indebted and grateful.
I should add that my doubts about Schuon did not
begin during this period but rather from the beginning of my relationship with
SA. AMINAH. I was surprised by Schuon's meanness and tendency to tantrums, to
despise others, and his selfishness and wish to be divinized. I was shocked
that he had no conscience at these Primordial Gatherings about sexual contact
with young girls, j I was shocked by his treatment of Sa.AminahJ could never
believe his opinion • that SA. AMİNAH. and Sa. Badriyah were saints and as
early as January I began to doubt the legitimacy of the Visions of the Virgin.
This last doubt is the central and decisive concern for me. I remember clearly
one day being overcome with a feeling of disgust and indignation on behalf of
the Blessed Virgin, but I suppressed this because I had been brain washed to
think such thoughts on my part were diabolic. But I was right to be disgusted.
When one understands that "the devil tells 9
truths in order to tell H one lie" one sees that in Schuon this one lie is
a lie against the Virgin Mary, and is part of this lie is that because Schuon
had sexual contact with the virgin Mary, that he is therefore an Avatara - is
so monstrous and awful that the 9 truths Schuon may have told in his books are
overshadowed. The entire development of his writing, painting and his life
becomes of doubtful validity. He dreamed a dream whicn became a nightmare. If
one loved Schuon it is because every man who ardently desires God, desires a
Master to lead him to God and this desire for a Master is a legitimate desire.
But one is forced to admit that Schuon is not this Master. But as Miester
Eckhart said, "God is not mocked," and the truth remains the truth
and as the Prophet Mohammed said, "seek ye the truth," even unto
China." Schuon tried to create a civilization and failed through his own
pride, and this is an old story, and one must rise up on one's feet and begin
anew, free io learn that God has to teach us, in a world where there are many
illusions and trials. As Guenon once said, "the end of a world is the end
of an illusion." To face the fact that Schuon was a master only of
illusions may be a hard truth, but is not a hard truth for all that, still a
truth and infinitely preferable to a beautiful lie?
This does not mean that when
Schuon enunciates basic Vedantic doctrine, that is, to discriminate between the
Real and the unreal, and concentrate on the Real - that this doctrine is false.
It means that Schuon’s use of this doctrine is suspect because he has used it
to glorify himself. Likewise, Schuon’s adaptation of the Buddhist doctrine of
the 6 Paramitas into the 6 themes of Stations of Wisdom is not a falsification
of this Buddhist doctrine, but rather that Schuon has taken the 6th theme, that
of Immanence, and identified himself and his body (through the Alchemy) with the
highest metaphysical truths. This is to make a religion of himself. Frithjof
Schuon IS the Transcendent Unity of the religions, and this is a heresy not
simply against one traditional form, but against all of them. This constitutes
a crime against the Spirit of an order that does not admit of easy comparisons.
Therefore, if one is to read Schuon’s books, one can only rightly do so with an
awareness of Schuon’s global error, and thus, while recognizing that the
traditional doctrines are reflected in Schuon’s writings, they are so in the
midst of a universalist ambition, the like of which has never been heretofore
seen. Therefore, if one once read Schuon with awe and reverence, and blind
faith in his seemingly infallible scope, one must now read him with an absent
heart, a critical.mind and a skeptical eye. Obviously the Moslem way * ,, as ”. the Invocation of the Name, but
for myself, I can no longer follow Schuon’s method
since I see where it has led him, and I do not wish to go where Schuon has
himself ended up. As to the paintings; they do not picture the Blessed Virgin
and to pray to them therefore constitutes a form of idolatry. He has falsified
the Vedanta and in the Primordial Gatherings he abuses the doctrine of
Atma-Maya. And even Schuon’s use of the American Indian religion is
questionable and one can see that someone one day will have to apologize for
his illegitimate use of their sacred way. May Waken Tanka have mercy on his
soul.
There Is one last story to tell. After I left
Bloomington over 3 weeks ago, SA. AMİNAH., missing me for 3-4 days, decided to
leave Bloomington and come to see me in Cleveland. I accepted ner at
her word that she did not do this under prompting by the hierarchy. She has
told me countless times that I know j more about Frithjof Schuon than any other
man in the world. This may or may not be so. But I do know that Sa. Badriyah
had said to me that she thought this stoiy between SA. AMİNAH. and I could
destroy the Tariqa. Whether or not SA. AMİNAH. came to see me under prompting
by the hierarchy and whether or not this story between her and I will destroy
the tariqa, I do not know: God knows best.
SA. AMİNAH came to Cleveland to tell me she wished
to divorce both Mr. Murray (Sidi Abdul Ali) and Schuon, if I would come back to
Bloomington and continue in Schuon’s tariqa and spend the rest of my life with
her in the house where we had spent the last year together. I told her I could
never return to Bloomington, that she would have to come to me. She has not and
indeed cannot do so. She hasn't the strength to resist the tyranny of their
mind control methods.
When she was in Cleveland with me she told me a
new detail of the vision Schuon had had of the Blessed Virgin a few months
previously. He had this visionary dream when he was sick as usual, and when she
was barebreasted also as usual. He talked to her for a few hours of his
miserable youth and other matters. At one point he asked the Virgin why Saydah
Amlnah had betrayed him. She is supposed to have said "because the devil
got into her."
Here then is the spiritual pathology of Schuon.
Even the Virgin serves his convenience. Imagine what it must be like to be
condemned by the Blessed Virgin herself, she whose purpose is not condemnation
but Mercy. How convenient is this vision! Schuon has used the Blessed Virgin
herself to blackmail Sa. Aminah. into submission to him. A more coercive,
destructive and demeaning strategy of blackmail I have never heard of.
The next morning, after her first night with me,
the subject of this vision came up a second time. Unlike the night before when
I had been silent as she told me this vision, I spoke up and said the vision
was a ploy and a lie, and that she should deny it, and that all of Schuon’s
visions were lies. I said I knew that she could not aoide my questioning Schuon
in this way, and that I was going out for a half hour and if she wished, the
airport was 5 minutes walk from our hotel and she could easily go back to
Bloomington. She did. She could not deny Schuon and his false virgin.
Sa. Badriyah said she would break SA. AMINAH. and
it is done, and one prays for her soul, that it might grow strong again.
Those who would blame SA. AMINAH. for her weakness
and lack of courage should consider the terrible nature of this kind of mind
control and demagogic intimidation. Moreover, let those who would blame SA. AMİNAH.,
if there are any who do, consider that it is primarily because of her that the
truth about Schuon is known, that it was her desire for love and a normal life
that led her to reveal things about Schuon that have been secret for many
years. She is not to be faulted for this, but praised, for she served the truth
despite herself.
I should like to say a few more words concerning
Sa. Aminah. I have heard that she has "lost her mind" (Sa. Latifah
said this), and is taking drugs to stabilize herself. She still defends Schuon,
even though he has ruined her life and she has been sacrificed, like so many
others, to preserve Schuon's myth and reputationTffiis is how powerful the
brainwashing techniques of Schuon's group are.
Sa. Aminah is one of the principle victims in this
situation. I do not blame her for her efforts to justify Schuon’s
righteousness, nor her enlistment in the effort to vilify me. I know that she
suffers from all sides in this situation. I know that her effort to avoid the
suffering of admitting the hypocrisy of Schuon and the fact that he has used
her for his own convenience and self glorification, can only lead to her
suffering even more profoundly. I do not blame her therefore, but feel compassion
for her and pray for her. I hope moreover that others might do so also. I
cannot but believe that God Himself looks on her with a merciful eye. Her
circumstances are genuinely tragic and God willing, will eventually lead, as
all tragedies do, to a catharsis, a turning over of the soil, and a clearing of
the air, such that new life may grow and God’s good sun could then shine down
and penetrate the dark places and expose the frightful things.(god is the
truth, and may He help Sa. Aminah and all of us to see the truth and be set
free.
To those who would think that I have sought to
expose Schuon and written what I have written out of revenge against him for
taking away the woman I thought was my wife, I say they may think what they
like. There is perhaps some small amount of truth to such an accusation, or I
will at least consider that there is truth to it. But I must say in my own
defense that there was a time when I loved Frithjof Schuon with all my heart
and soul, and for two years I suppressed increasingly grave doubts about him. I
tried to give the best interpretation to all he did, said, thought and wrote. I
submitted to Frithjof Schuon even up to the point of almost sacrificing-my life
for him when’he asked me (©’sacrifice myself. It is not revenge that motivates
me. It is the awareness that Schuon has betrayed me, betrayed God and betrayed
all who believed in him. Corruptio optimi pessima: the corruption of the best
is the worst. It is disappointment and not revenge that inspires me. It is
disillusionment. He who I believed was a man greater and holier than all men is
a hypocrite. But let me not dwell on this. God is no less wise if Frithjof
Schuon is corrupt; the sky is no less blue; and the Blessed Virgin in all her
infinite Mercy still looks down upon us with love and concern in her eyes,
calling us beyond the world of false happiness and false prophets, and the
grief and suffering of this life. I imagine her standing above me in Her blue
cloak^and under her beautiful gafe rbow my head and kneel down andllskTHer
TdfKtercy, bot for myself and for all of us.
All praise belongs to God.
APPENDIX
SCHUON’S PERSON: DOCTRINE AND METHOD A PERSONAL
ASSESSMENT
There are two positions taken by individuals
familiar with the- - , Schuon that I think are questionable: these are firstly,
that there are two Schuons, the one who wrote the books and the other who is a
selfish and immoral old man. The second is that one can reject the selfish
megalomaniac person of Schuon but still hold to his method. In what follows I
will address these two positions which really are one. What follows is my own
opinion, and I may be wrong. My intention is to spur reflection about Schuon in
the hopes that others, in view of the truth, will also question Schuon’s
doctrine and methods.
In his article The Nature and Function of the
Spiritual Master > Schuon says in a footnote that "one of the worst
abuses is the pretension of making a "psychological analysis of an
Avatara." There are texts which express the same idea and I know from Sa.
Aminah that Schuon considers himself beyond such judgement. However this may
be, it is clear that Schuon is not an Avatara, and though it would certainly be
out of the question to'subject Christ or Krishna to psychological analyses, in
Schuon’s case his error is so vast and his psychology so complex and bizarre
that the making of such an analysis is more than legitimate - however it must
be made from a spiritual point of view. I hope that someone more qualified than
myself will make this analysis. My attempt here is only to point to what I have
learned of Schuon’s person and ambition and deduce what is logical in regard to
his psychology.
When one reads Schuon’s books one becomes
mesmerized by the truths of the traditional doctrines discussed in them, and
one transfers one’s awe and reverence for these doctrines, legitimate in
themselves, to Schuon. In this way, many people mesmerized by Schuon’s books,
end up mesmerized by Schuon himself Many of the doctrines used in these books
do indeed come from God and reflect the divine Intellect, but Schuon has used
these doctrines, and, - indeed, uses God, to assimilate all of the religions to
himself. Schuon has made himself a new religion of which he is the sole unique
prophet and exemplar.
The trajectory of Schuon’s life, his 26 books, his
paintinqs, all indicate an individualistic ambition which assimilates all the
world’s religions and all that is sacred to Schuon himself. Schuon thus sets
himself from his first to his last book as embodying The Transcendent Unity
of Religions. One could not have imagined such an ambition to be possible,
and indeed, one cannot recall any individual whose ambition has been so vast
and universalist. Such a totalitarian claim needs to be a heresy not just
against one religion, but against them all.
In his books, Schuon has created an impersonal
personna, if this expression be allowed, which in fact is a pose which
dissimulates Schuon’s totalitarian individualism. He seems to be writing as if
from above the religions he discusses and this gives the appearance of a
disinterested egolessness; out in fact, he has put himself above all the
religions because he really believes he is beyond them, and this explains his
often cold and despising tone. He despises the tradition which he uses to exalt
himself. Schuon told me himself that he is the pole or qutb (center) of the age
around which everything revolves. The world, the religions, the universe, all
center on Schuon the Avatara, the "diefied man," as he calls himself,
and it is this exaltation of himself which enables him to identify himself with
the divine Intellect, and thus to discriminate and judge all matters, great or
small, which come before his self-proclaimed infallibility. He cannot be wrong
he claims, because all-that is spiritual belongs to him. All the prophets, he
claims, have come to him in visions, Al-Khidr, the mysterious Immortal
recognize; him, so he claims, and he claims the Blessed Virgin gave him her
body. The devil tells 9 truths in order to tell one lie: Schuon’s lie is not only
in his books, it is above all in Schuon himself.
Many of Schuon’s articles are in fact narcissistic
and self-reflective: his books are not as disinterested as they seem. Schuon
both as a man and an author discriminates in order to denigrate, and by denigrating,
he exalts himself. This power of discrimination is never exercised towards his
own ambition, and this in itself proves the fundamental error of his ambition.
As I mentioned earlier, The Mystery of the
Prophetic Substance is in fact about himself. So is The Mystery of {he
Bodhisattva and The Wisdom of S. Isa - these represent "the
play of masks . Indeed, all the essays about the themes, such
as The Synthesis of the Paramitas and The Stations of Wisdom are
about himself since he believes that the six themes are his own spiritual
portrait. But while these articles are-or less directly about himself, all the
articles in his books are much more self-concerned than one's first impression
would lead one to believe. For instance, all his articles on the difference
between esoterism and exoterism have the ultimate implication that there is no
plenary esoterism but Schuon himself. In a similar way, his articles on Islam
and Sufism ultimately point to his own transcendence of Islam and Sufism.
Secondary articles,
such as Sedes Sapientae, indicate Schuon’s relationship to with the
Blessed Virgin in a veiled manner. Schuon identifies himself with Solomon and
Schuon identifies the throne of Solomon with the Blessed Virgin, who, like the
throne, gives him ease and signifies his station and authority. observe
saint,
much less an embodiment of Atma or the Holy spirit. To the contrary, these
comparisons are part of his pathology.
If I had not come into close contact with Schuon,
and therefore
enabled to learn about his
personal behavior, I would have continued to be fooled by the presumption of
his books and his method. It was only seeing at close quarters the lying,
demagoguery and psychological illness ot Schuon and , those around him that proved
to me his falsity. Schuon is unquestionably a genius, but as Dr. Coomaraswamy
said, quoting his father, "Lucifer was the first \ genius.":
Schuon seems to me to be possessed by a
pseudo-spiritualmythomania whereby he coopts sacred persons, concepts and
stories as he reshapes them to the needs of his own psychology.
In many places in Schuon’s books he seeks to
dissimulate the relation between intelligence and pride. But in Schuon’s
posture and behavior there is nothing more evident than his pride, this is
apparent even in the countless photographs of him. I recall that when I would
have interviews with Schuon, I felt no grace in his presence, and even before I
met him, I would read his books and wonder, but where is God? I doubted and
suppressed these
" intuitions, but now I see, thee-is no
grace, nor true love in this man. God is not with him precisely because of his
pride. Yes, Schuon is an intellectual genius; he has enormous powers of
discrimination, but as one remembers from Genesis, the devil gave the apple to
Adam and Eve from the tree of knowledge of good and evil, with the promise,
"ye shall be as gods." Schuon has the need to be worshipped as a god
and one is aware when one sees him worshiped in such a manner, especially by
his women, that this is a man who may have enormous powers of intellectual
discrimination, but he is really a weak pitiful and corrupt old man who needs
constant adulation to bolster a false pride. He is a man incapable of love and
because, humanly speaking, his intellectual pride has
, emptied him of the capacity for love, he
requires absolute adoration and loyalty of those around him as if the
possession of such power over his admiring worshipers could compensate for his
own human weakness and emptiness.
If one looks at all the books, life, paintings,
and texts of Schuon arosso modo, what does one see? One sees a man who
has tried to synthesize in himself all that is great and profound. Firstly, he
has set himself up as the summit of all religions, indeed, more than this, as
the quintessence of the
religions, but even beyond this,
as the Superformal embodiment of pure metaphysic and esoterism. He has made
himself the Prophet of all prophets, the AVatara who summarizes all the other
Avataras. He considers himself the Primordial Norm at the end of time. He is
the King-Pontiff - the bridge between Heaven and men. Since he is the Man of
all men, and thus Hamsa, beyond caste, beyond all laws and peoples, beyond
religious and social or moral forms, he is the infallible, amoral determiner ot all that there is. Thus he creates in
his books and his tariqa, or so he claims, a quintessential civilization based
upon an Anthropological theory he himself has created. This Anthropology has
himself as its model and exemplar, and from himself he derives his theory of
quintessential castes and types. His anthropology, moreover, determines who is
and who is not qualified for his spiritual method. His spiritual method in
turn, which mixes various Hindu, Buddhist, Christian ana Islamic
elements together with his own psychology, is primarily a theory of the virtues
which seeks to replicate in a disciple the spiritual growth or state of Schuon
himself. His method is therefore heavily colored by his own psychology. This is
indicated by the fact that the
highest expression of his method,
the Alchemy and the 7th theme, that is, his
tantric and existential Alchemy, have as their
basis Schuon’s own belief in the I diefied nature of his own body. As Sa.
Aminah told me many times, Schuon’s body and the divine Name are more less the
same thing. Thus one can say that Schuon’s method leads ultimately to Schuon
himself, and it is this which makes the method questionable, and not only this,
but not practicable. This is not because the heterogeneous elements of his
method taken from diverse traditions are therefore compromised: Japa is still
Japa; tantra is still tantra; the virtues are still the virtues. Rather,
Schuon’s syncratic and heterodox assimilation of these elements into a
pseudo-esoteric method cannot be admitted as valid nor practiced with impunity.
In other words what is legitimate in Schuon’s doctrine and method can be found
elsewhere. One does not need Schuon or his method to practice pure prayer, and
moreover, to practice pure prayer under Schuon involves one in dangerous
deviations which are part of Schuon himself.
It should also be noted that Schuon has created
not only a metaphysic, an anthropology, a social "civilization," a
psychology ana a spiritual method, but also a cosmology which justifies and
services these other concerns. This cosmology, one the one hand, he derives
from his metaphysic, and on the other, from his anthropology, these doctrines
are contained in such articles as Seeing God Everywhere, The Structure and
Universality of the Conditions of Existence and The Universal
Categories. Schuon himself told me that this last essay is the greatest
thing ever written on this subject and that such an article could not appear
sooner in history, but rather it was providential that it be revealed at this
time. The Mystery of Subjectivity - that is Schuon’s own subjectivity,
has become the pole and center of all the "conditions of existence."
All that exists, exists for Schuon and leads to or away from him. Thus, since
all things either go toward or head away from Schuon, one is saved or damned
according to nis schemas, or his analyses of the afterlife, as in his Universal
Eschatology.
We will say
something of Schuon’s aesthetics shortly, but what needs to be said here is
that the vastness of Schuon’s scope must be recognized. One cannot think of a
similar system builder since Hegel, but even Hegel was not so total, nor did he
presume to be an Avatara, Alexander the Great, the divine Lover like Krishna,
and the world’s greatest artist and King, all rolled into one. Assuming one
could take all this seriously, then "not even Solomon in all his
glory" could be as great as Schuon. But this is of course d absurd, and
Schuon is not Solomon, although he likes to compare himself to ‘ him.
T_.,'What
is characteristic of Schuon’s method and doctrine is that it d inculcates pride
in his followers. One reads Schuon’s books and feels one has become an instant metaphysician; in the method
one feels one practices the quintessential method of all religions. I have found
that those who still hold to ,j Schuon’s method and doctrine, despite knowing
of Schuon’s decadence as a person, do so, I believe, precisely because of this
pride. Schuon’s system inflates the ego of his disciples so, as one of them
said to me, they feel "as if on a mountain top" of knowledge. Thus,
for Schuon’s followers to legitimately question Schuon’s method and doctrine is
to question their own interests, their own investment, their own ego. “A tree
is known by its fruits" and the fruit of Schuon’s doctrine and method is a
stubborn elitism, a self-defensive arrogance, and a refusal to inquire into the
legitimacy of Schuon’s system. This amounts to a denial of the truth in favor
of self-complacency, or self-interest. If Schuon’s system were really true, one
would welcome and even encourage all questions which seek to test its validity.
This is not done, and veil upon veil of secrecy and self-defenciveness is used
to deflect all legitimate questions. This is characteristic of a cult, and
reminds one of the Pharisees who walked to the other side of the road rather
than look at the sickness of the man lying in the gutter. Schuon is a sick man
and this sickness inheres in his system and method. It is like an inversion of
St. Peter's denial of Christ. Peter, speaking of Christ said "I do not
know this man." Schuon’s disciples say "I know the man is a
prophet" while denying the logical consequences of the facts which prove
he is not.
' Schuon, in various articles, discusses the
differences between Bhakti and Jnana, always speaking rather disparagingly in
regard to the former. His "gnostic" emphasis on intellectual
discrimination involves a derogation of the human which is accompanied by an
arrogant pride. One could speculate that Schuon inherited this tendency to
despise others and exalt himself from Guenon who had a similar tendency.
In Schuon, like Guenon, one sees a certain
paranoid self-exaltation' and an emphasis on a cold jnana which ends in an
acidic dispising of others.
In various essays Schuon has said thaMhe Bhakta
needs love, the jnana needs beauty. One sees at the primordial gatherings this
formulation realized. He dehumanizes and deindividualizes some 30 women and
uses their
beauty to exalt himself. There is a fundamental
error here and one must conclude in deference to authentic jnana or bhakta,
such as they might exist in any religion, that Schuon has somehow misunderstood
and misused these concepts, just as he has misused his women. One must also
conclude that Schuon has incorrectly situated Beauty. I offer this reflection
to stimulate inquiry into this subject in more detail.
In an interview
Schuon told me that the Intellect is manifested passively in contemplation and
that Ramakrishna and Sri Ananda Moyi Ma typify this. Actively, the intellect
manifests as discernment, and he cited Shankara ano Guenon as typical of this.
He said he is the great rarity that embodies both these modes. The vainglory of
such a formulation necessarily brings into question his understanding of the
Intellect as well as his use of it. Since the concept of the Intellect and the
related concept of Esoterism are both central to Schuon's system, I question
the very core of his system. I do not answer this question, but once again only
wish to raise it for others to consider. While the perennial wisdom no doubt
exits, since God exists, Schuon’s esoterism appears to be merely an inflated
individualistic pseudo-synthesis.
Schuon quotes St. Iranaeus who said "God
became man (Christ) in order that man might become God." He assimilates
this patristic formula to Hinduism and says "Atma became Maya that Maya
might become Atma." Now, Maya and Christ are not the same thing. While
meaning creation, or the created order in general, Maya is an ambiguous
concept. Moreover, maya has a descending aspect as well as an ascending one. It
is the descending or illusory aspect of Maya which allows Schuon to identify
himself with Atma, and which leads him both to a megalomania and an abuse of
young girls. Schuon’s use of the Vedantic theory of Atma-Maya is almost
certainly in error, and moreover he has certainly reduced the patristic
Christian formula to a parody.
Though many have desired to separate them,
Schuon’s doctrine, method and person cannot be separated, Schuon's method.is
essentially the six themes combined with the'invocation of the divine Name.
Both the divine Name and the six themes he has identified with himself. I told
the story earlier of how he realized that the six themes represent the form of
the prophet and the prophet is Schuon (Cf. Mystery of the Prophetic
Substance). Thus, the six themes which derive partly from the six paramitas
of Buddhism, as well as the six directions of the American Indians (the
compass), express the six essential virtues or spiritual 'divine
presences" and are, in Schuon’s own estimation his personal
"spiritual portrait." Schuon’s portrait, a subject that seems to
concern him particularly, is in summation, the Atma.
Schuon’s method is one of ascent, beginning with
the first theme, Purity, and ending with the sixth which identity or union. Tne
sixth theme then is divided into 3 parts: called the Alchemy, wherein the mind
in itself, the heart in itself, and the body in itself are identified with God
through the agency of the divine Name. The Alchemy in turn gives way to
something called the Seventh Theme which Is existential, sexual or tantric. It
is the domain of adoration or existential repose in non-thinking being, there
is, beyond this, a domain of sexual techniques which Sa. Aminah taught me, but
as I now doubt their legitimacy and do not wish them to be imitated, I will not
speak of them.
In any case, though the six themes as a basis for
meditation may not in themselves be harmful - though the 5tkand
6th themes may well be questions,-Schuon has through the six (or seven) themes
and the Alchemy, identified himself with the Immanent Presence of God, and this
has led him to consider himself an Avatara. And this in turn has made him
believe himself equal to the Paraclete, the Holy Spirit, and this in turn makes
possible for him sexual union in his heart with the Blessed Virgin. This false
vision, in turn has led to Schuon’s cult of nudity, his belief in the divinity
of his avataric body, and thereby to the Primordial Gatherings wherein as Atma
Schuon arrogates to himself the right to come into quasi-sexual union with
thirty or so naked women, the wives of other men and young girls included.
Here then is where Schuon’s methods lead, and
since "the tree is known by its fruits" one is forced logically to
not only doubt, but reject Schuon’s method. If Schuon’s method has led him to
the vision of the false virgin and the Primordial Gatherings, it clearly cannot
be a viable method. No method is viable which leads to blasphemy against the
Virgin, crimes against young girls and in general to a spiritual decadence and
a pathology in Schuon’s own person and psychology which is morally appalling
and spiritually syncratic and corrupt.
Schuon’s abuse of the method of Invocation does
not invalidate the methods of Invocation such as they exist in legitimate
traditions. Likewise, the Buddhist theory of the six Paramitas remains intact,
even if Schuon has coopted this and similar spiritual methodologies and turned
them to his own use. In a
similar way, the Vedantic theory of Atm a-May a is
not invalidated by Schuon’s syncratic abuse of it in the Primordial Gatherings,
nor is the essential Vedantic doctrine of discrimination between the Real and
the unreal or illusory made invalid by Schuon’s self-interested abus’d of the
faculty of discrimination. Rather, one must now discriminate between the Real
and the illusory in regard to Schuon himself, and one must ultimately forget
Schuon and concentrate on God.
There must certainly be a perennial wisdom, a
wisdom that is always, everywhere and true, for such vyisdom is God Himself.
But that Schuon represents this wisdom is completely oqt of the question. I
have seen, in the Primordial Gatherings, and in Schuon’s own person, that he
has betrayed the legitimate rites and doctrines of not only the American
Indians, but also of Islamic and Hindu doctrines and methods. Rama Coomaraswamy
tells me moreover that Schuon’s understanding of the essential Eucharistic rite
of Christianity is Protestant (see Evidence and Mystery in Logic and
Transcendence). The same can be said of his equating Protestant sects as
being on a par with Roman Catholicism and the Orthodox Churches.
Wolfyuy Smith has expressed doubts »s
to whether ocnuon 5 terpre-fatt'ons op/be CAr/shan Tr/nity are in all
respects acceptable *
He also tells me that Schuon’s essays on science are presumptuous and
uninformed. This latter is a complex subject about which I am not qualified to
comment.
•••
St. Thomas Aquinas said'that an error in regard to
the Creation will inevitably lead to an error with regard Jo the nature of God.
So mutatis mutandis, Schuon’s errors , such as those related to the Blessed
Virgin, or the syncratic Primordial Gatherings, must represent errors in regard
to his thinking about God. His metaphysics must therefore be faulty. Dr. Smith
was speculating that Schuon’s error may be akin to the Gq'pstic heresy. I
suspect a fundamental error but do not know at this point just what it is. It
is clear however that Schuon’s f global error is to have identified
himself with the transcendent unity of the religions.:
One can say, in any case, that Schuon’s system is
syncratic and self-serving. Moreover, one can say,-given his abuse of the
Blessed Virgin, as well as the women and young girls in the tariqa, that there
must be a fundamental error in his understanding of Femininity. (Cf. The
Problem of Sexuality, Mahashakti, The Feminine Element in Mahayana.)
Schuon’s notion of the intrinsic virtues, or
intrinsic morality, sounds very good on paper. However, the practice of this on
the part of Schuon himself is quite another matter. Schuon’s notion of the
intrinsic virtues becomes . confused with Schuon’s "nature" which he
associates with "the nature of things." | Thus Schuon’s actions are
"esoteric" which is synonymous in practice with his I being beyond
the law. This leads him to a kind of pseudo-tantrism whereby ' Schuon’s need of
"primordiality" or femininity as a consolation for Schuon
becometfntrinsically moral. In this way he justifies the Primordial Gatherings.
The error here is that "the nature of things" and Schuon’s
selfishness becomes confused. Moreover, Schuon has abused tantra. Tantrism, and
one is here speaking of legitimate tantra, occurs as a highly organized
religious set of rituals which are used only after years of preparation and
under the strictest supervision. Tantrism ha^nothing whatever to do with
Schuon’s pressing himself against the breasts and htpslbf 14 year old American
girls who are spiritually unprepared to understand this act, or to understand
the supposedly divine nudity of an 84 year old man who embraces them in this
manner. Thus Schuon’s "intrinsic morality" is merely an irresponsible
expediency which leads him to promote a false primordiality which is immoral on
every level and according to the criteria of each and every religious
tradition.
One can speak as much as one likes of "crazy
wisdom" and "fools for God"; of heyokas and other examples of
"backwards wisdom," but these concepts are precise exceptions which
rarely occur, and when they do, in complex cultural and spiritual surroundings.
IN Schuon’s case one is not dealing with a man whose exterior actions are
immoral while his "intrinsic" purpose is spiritual. One is dealing
with spiritual errors which grow from a pathology in Schuon himself. This
pathology stems from his belief that he is an Avatara, and this is nothing more
than a kind of vanity and false pride reaching cosmic proportions. This leads him
to create an ethics which in the end is anything but universal; Schuon’s ethics
serves Schuon and his community, and actively leads to the despising of
anything and anyone not approved of by Schuon. Thus, » Schuon arrogates to
himself the right to break religious laws, beginning with I Islamic laws; he
illegitimately combines disparate religious forms and ideas, I reduces the
sacrament of marriage to the trivial, and having set himself up as being beyond
the law, makes of himself the Atma which ought to be worshiped.
Schuon’s notion of the "legitimate ego"
or of "legitimate pride" has led him to identify humility with pride.
Schuon cannot help it if he is an Avatara, and the Atma, and he sees it as
humble submission to the truth for him on his part to admit and accept this as
a fact.
The notion
of chatty is reduced in Schuon’s own words to : "charity belongs only to
those who oeserve it." In practice this means that Schuon’s group only
gives alms to themselves. Thus, as an act of charity, Sa. Badriyah is
iven a house and hundreds of thousands of dollars
- much of it the fruits of alm c>r likat by duped followers.
These abuses grow directly out of Schuon’s theory
of the virtues and this theory is essential to his method. This is not to say
that Schuon may not have said some true things in his books and texts about the
virtues. It is to say that his methodology logically leads to real errors.
Christ said he came not to destroy the law, but to
fulfill it. Schuon, in setting himself up as beyond the "law and the
prophets" makes a mockery of both.
I do not wish to seem to desire to blanketly
condemn all aspects of ' Schuon’s work. Rather I wish to point out that what is
legitimate in Schuon’s work has little to do with Schuon himself. In the domain
of aesthetics, for instance, he speaks many a truth. But these truths are
derived from Christian, Buddhist, Hindu and Islamic aesthetics which he merely
assimilates. Schuon’s error on the aesthetic level enters in where these
traditional theories are combined with and colored by Schuon’s personal
psychology. This is nowhere more apparent than in Schuon’s own art work, where
he combines traditional styles with his own i obsessional and sexual psychic
concerns which transform traditional styles into i a syncratic
porno-spiritual iconography - if such a phrase is permissible. I
I know that Schuon would himself say of me that it
is some moralism or psychic trauma on my part that makes me reject his
aesthetic, his vision of the Virgin, and his Primordial Gatherings. This is
what he always says in [ such situations. He would plead his purity, since
"to the pure all things are pure." I However, this is mere
self-justification on his part. It is precisely because I studied painting with
Schuon and because I assimilated the "esoteric" meaning of these
paintings that I reject his aesthetic. It is not moralism on my part. I greatly
admire Hindu temple sculpture for instance, but I reject Schuon’s Virgins,
think his portraits of himself are grotesque at best, and consider his Hindu
and American Indian painting, for the most part, and especially those painted
by Sa. Badriyah and himself, to be betrayals of these traditions. Schuon is an
opportunist who uses all religions to make himself greater and greater. Lastly,
I the fact that he has his disciples and even children pray to these
"icons" of himself and the Virgin is a certain proof to me, not only
of the falsity of Schuon’s aesthetic, but also of his method and way.
Schuon’s tariqa is called the tariqa Maryamiah,
and since the word tariqa means Way, it is the Way of the Blessed Virgin Wary.
However, since the vision of the Virgin Schuon claims to have had is certainly
false, it follows that his claim to have been "adopted” by the Virgin is
also false. The tariqa is therefore not Maryamiah, not of the Virgin.
Given these false visions, given the questionable
nature of Schuon’s method, given the decadence of Schuon s character and life,
his false marriages, his despising of others, his demagoguery and ambition,
given the decadent and syncratic nature of the Primordial Gatherings as well as
the global error of his doctrine and his setting himself up as an Avatara;
given all these factors, one must conclude in good conscience that Schuon’s tariqa
is not a tariqa, and that such being the case, the master, the doctrine and the
method cannot be acceptable or legitimate.
All this last section is written as an opinion of
the writer in the hopes that the good of the spiritual lives of those touched
by Schuon may be served. May God guide us towards a truly good and straight
path.
All praise belongs to God, and may He have mercy
on us.
APPENDIX
In what follows I offer Schuon’s own words
regarding Primordial Gatherings. These words, taken out of articles written in
the last year, will eventually be available. These articles are entitled as
follows: Ex Nihilo, In Deo; The Liberating Passage; The Play of Masks; In
the Tracks of Original Sin; and Man in the Cosmogonic Projection.
"Man, we have said, has been placed in the
world so that there be in it someone who can return to God. This is what is
suggested, among other signs, by that "supernaturally natural"
theophany that is the human body: man being imago Del, his body necessarily
symbolizes a liberating return to the divine origin and in this sense it is
"remembrance of God." It is true that the noble animal - such as the
stag, the lion, the eagle, the swan - also expresses a given aspect of the
diving Majesty, but it does not manifest the liberating return of the form to
the Essence; it remains in the form, whence its "horizontality." The
human body on the contrary is "vertical"; it is a sacrament, whether
it be masculine or feminine; the difference of the sexes marks a
complementarity of mode and not, quite clearly, a divergence of principle.
Sacred nudity - in India for example - expresses the exteriorization of that
which is most interior and correlatively the interiorization of that which is
most exterior; "and that is why, naked I dance," as Laila Yogishwari
said, after having realized the immanent Self, extremes meet; the natural form
can be the vehicle of the supernatural essence, and the latter can be
manifested by the former."
"Mentalities having little familiarity with
the processes of symbolism might contest the physical deiformity of man by
arguing, for example, that God has neither a frontal nor a posterior side and
that He could not walk since He is immutable. This is obvious when one takes
things literally, but it is important to understand that the incommensurable
levels of the points of comparison do not abolish analogy nor consequently
symbolism. The posterior side, which may be in question here, is none other
than Maya inasmuch as it separates Being from non-Being; the frontal side is
Being inasmuch as it conceives the possibilities to be projected into the space
of Maya', and God’s walk is that very projection. Being, since it
pertains to Maya, turns its back on Beyond-Being while remaining united
with it in respect of the Essence; and it turns its face towards Maya by
the very fact that it existentiates the potentialities that will make up the
world. Finally we would say that the Creator’s progression is noble..."
Whatever truths may be expressed in these
passages, I was with Sa. Aminah when these articles were written and I know for
a fact that Schuon is here speaking of himsislf, and he is trying to define and
justify all the various aspects of the new rites he was then inventing and
elaborating.
He is speaking here of his own body primarily which
is supposed to "symbolize the liberation return to the divine origin? He
compares himself to the "noble animals," those he uses to symbolize
himself in his paintings.
Then, after discussing Sacred Nudity, a concept
Schuon has culled from various traditions, but which Schuon has certainly
abused by mixing it with his own psychology - after discussing sacred nudity,
he implicitly claims realization of the Immanent Self, since both he ano Sa.
Badriyan have identified themselves with and indeed, co-opted, Lyalla
Yogashwari. The he speaks of the front and back sides of the body in terms of
Atma-Maya. This is important because of Schuon’s own behavior at the Primordial
Gatherings. When Schuon is in the circle of 30 naked women, approximately, he
walks, or rather struts, like a proud peacock, like a lion among admiring
females, indeed, as if he were a god. Schuon’s walk is like "God’s
walk" and Schuon is imitating or play acting the Creator Himself. This
play act however, Schuon takes quite seriously; Schuon represents God Himself,
whose "divine virility" is thrust upon and comes into union with the
30 women who collectively represent Maya, the receptive substance through which
God’s potency is manifest and through whose admiring eyes Schuon is able to see
himself as God.
Thus Schuon denies that this is a rite publicly,
in fact he has made his body a sacrament, or rather, a pseudo-sacrament and he
parades himself as if he were Atma or God Himself.
"The motionless mover - as Aristotle said --
is none other than man who, being "made in the image of God" is open
to the Absolute and to Deliverance. Man ipso facto represents the Immutable and
the Unlimited, in the manner that the extreme limit of universal Manifestation
renders possible; he represents these qualities potentially, indirectly and
passively in the case of ordinary men, but effectively, directly and
actively in the case of deified man; he is then central, not only -- like every
man - with respect to the animal world,"KT also, in a particular manner
and in addition, with respect'to the“multitude of ordinary men. ~1
he'"believers” are like the qdpis dancing around Krishna and uniting with
him; while he - the "motionless mover"'-- plays'hissalvitic
flute?"
"To say that the deified man has the function
of the motionless mover with regard to a human collectivity, means implicitly
that it is Revelation, Tradition, the divine Symbol, or the sacred in general,
that represents this mover. We will mention as examples of the Symbol -- or
symbolism - the circumambulation of the Kaaba, primordial sanctuary; in this
rite the movement is circular like the revolution of the planets; another
example is the Sun Dance around a tree representing the axis Heaven-Earth; the
movement is then alternatively centripetal and centrifugal like the phases of
respiration, which brings us back to the dance of the gopis with its two modes,
circumambulation and union precisely. The universal symbol of the wheel
combines both types of participation, which finally refer to the two
fundamental relationships between
Atma and Maya,
the analogical and the unltive: manifestation of diversifying Potentiality and
reintegration into the original Synthesis." -
In these quotations we see Schuon’s ego in all its
vainglory. Here he identifies himself with Aristotle’s "motionless
Mover." From this false assimilation, since Aristotle never identified the
motionless Mover with a man, Schuon calls himself the "diefied man."
Moreover, with enormous pride, Schuon puts himself up above all men. Then he
identifies himself with Krishna, and in doing so, identifies the gopis as
"uniting with him," despite the fact that he publicly denies any
sexual element in this rite. Here, in his own words, he admits
Then, in the next paragraph he compares himself to
the Kaaba, the Sun Dance Tree, and Krishna again, as well as the point around
which the planets revolve. No order of greatness is too great to compare
himself to.
The operative metaphysical idea in these
gatherings is Atma (Schuon) becomes Maya (the naked women) in order that Maya
might become Atma; This is Schuon’s central doctrine. It is a paraphrase of a
Christian idea wherein "God became man in order that man might become
God." There is then implicitly an identification between himself and the
Logos, who is Christ as the Word. This is of course, nothing short of
blasphemy.
If I remember correctly Schuon worked out all
these ideas and analogies in Dec. or Jan. of 90-91. Sa. Amlnah told me at this
time, all of these things, as he discusses such ideas with her and Sa. Badriyah
during their "visits."
"The divine symbol, by definition, is
paradoxically ambiguous: on the one hand, it "is god" - this is its
reason for being - and on the other hand, it "is not God" - this is
its earthly materiality; it is "image" because it is manifestation
and not principle, and it is Participating emanation and liberating sacrament
because it is Atma in Maya, the human body in itself - not in
a given diminished form - is sacrament-symborbecause it‘is "made in the
image of God": this is why it is the object of love par excellence;
not to the exclusiorTof the soul that inhabits it’ but together with this
soul, for the human body has its form only in virtue of the content for which
it is made. The body invites to adoration by its very theomorphic form, and
this is why it can convey a celestial and in principle, saving presence;
but as Plato suggests, this presence is accessible only to the soul that is
contemplative and not dominated by passion, and independently of the question
of knowing whether it is an ascetic or a married person involved, sexuality
does not mean animality, except with fallen, thus infra-human, man; with the
properly human man, sexuality is determined by that which constitutes man’s
prerogative, and bears witness to it, precisely, the theomorphic form ot his
body?
And this brings us back to our distinction between
the Essence and the Substance: the masculine pole refers to the essentiality
and to transcendence, and the feminine pole, to substantiality and immanence.
The trajectory toward the Sovereign Good - which is at once the Absolute and
the Inf nite - necessarily comprises masculine as well as feminine modes so to
speak; moreover, Truth pertains to Rigor and Justice, and the Path to
Gentleness and Mercy, in loving woman, man fundamentally loves infinitude
and goodness; in loving man, woman fundamentally loves Absoluteness and Power;
the Universe being woven of geometry and musicality, of strength and beauty. VVe
have said above that transcendence means discontinuity between the
Principle and its manifestation, and immanence
means continuity: it is thus that divine Virility is thrust upon us,
with the implacability of the nature of things, of principles deriving from the
immutable, and that divine Femininity on the contrary grants to us, with all
the freedom at Love’s disposal, the imponderable graces that bring about
the miVade of Salvation.
In the above quotation we see Schuon using a term
he often used in his book The Eye of the Heart, the phrase "the
divine symbol" referred in this book to the Divine Name, but here the Name
has become Schuon’s body, which he calls a "sacrament-symbol,"
"the object of love par excellence." If one could see how ridiculous
and even rather grotesque this 84 year old man looks in his
"primordial" costume, one certainly could never imagine him as
"the object of love par excellence."
Following this Schuon then
employs one of his more sophisticated forms of double-speek. He says implicitly
that hej§ th^ppjeqt of love, which all of the women at the gatherings should
love (and amazingly enough, they do love him) and thus should be adored, since
he embodies God, or is god, and therefore he can heal the soul with the
"saving presence" of his body. I remember that when Sa. M told me of
Schuon’s attempt to seduce her and she rejected him, he accused her, in some
letters he wrote to Titus Bruckhardt, of not being qualified to receive the
blessing of his body. Here one sees the double- speeK. It is Schuon’s
"prerogative" to have all women since he is the "diefied
man" (as he had already implied in his article entitled The Problem of
Sexuality). Thus he masks his extraordinary egotism with the term
"adoration" and excuses his mania for pressing himself against some
30 naked women on the grounds , that it is an actof
"adoration" rather like men who look at Playboy magazine say they do
so because the articles in it are so good. '
Having thus excused himself and defined his
"prerogative," Schuon goes on to define femininity and masculinity.
He identifies himself with Absoluteness and Power and says that "Divine
Virility is thrust upon us" as if he can’t help it that God has made him
the perfect Man and Avatara that all women should adore. Then he says that the
women grant to him ^the imponderable graces" that bring about the miracle
of salvation." Sa. Aminah often told me that Schuon sees the breasts, hips
and private parts of women as embodying God’s Mercy. Thus at the Primordial
Gatherings Schuon is acquiring as much "divine mercy" as he can, and
he can’t help it, since the "divine Virility" is thrust upon him. I
do not mean here to sound ironic, but rather only seek to unmask Schuon's use
of language!
"Meister Eckhart wrote somewhere that every
meal has a sacramental import for souls deeply united to God; thus pleasure, to
the extent of its effectiveness, excludes the mechanism of passional falling
away, whether the person involved be a hermit or polygamous. Water takes on the
color of its receptacle,’ says Al-Junayd, which implies that pleasure takes on
the nature of the an enjoying it; In other words, the nature of the subject
determines the relationship between the subject and the object."
In the above quotation one sees again the strange
mixture of the highest metaphysics and Schuon’s vainglorious psychology. Schuon’s
"adoration" has now become pleasure, the only pleasure an impotent 84
year old man can have, and sexual pleasure has become for Schuon looking at and
pressing himself against as many naked women as possible. His is allowed this
in his own estimation because, also in his own estimation, he is a god-man and
since "pleasure takes on the nature of the man enjoying It" and
Scnuon is the greatest saint, prophet and Avatara there is, he can do anything
he wants, he is beyond the law.
Sa. Amtnah told me that Schuon needs femininity in
order to live, and indeed, my impression of watching Schuon at these gatherings
was of a man starved for nudity, starved for the satisfaction of the illusion
of his own greatness. Sa. Aminah said these gatherings keep Schuon alive. These
gatherings are a perverse criminal and heretical combination of Schuon’s
metaphysics and his sexual fantasies. His Vision of the Virgin is also a
combination of sexual fantasy and metaphysics. These gatherings, like Schuon’s
"vision" bring into question his entire system, his doctrine, method,
and person. Certainly Scnuon was great, but he ought to be remembered only as
the most brilliant false master and prophet ever to appear in the history of
spirituality.
Obviously, one cannot take any of this seriously,
but even if one hypothetically supposed Schuon were a "Diefied Man,"
this writer does not believe that there is a single woman Schuon unites with or
a single man who witnesses these Primordial Gatherings, who would be truly
capable of assimilating metaphysical truths through these kinds of symbolic
forms. The people at these gatherings are not Tibetan Buddhists who have been
in monasteries for 30 years contemplating the mysteries of the Mahamudra; they
are American And European wives ana husbands with jobs, and children, who know
nothing of Schuon’s vainglorious fantasies. Schuon’s Primordial Gatherings are
therefore not simply vainglorious syncratic parodies; they are spiritually
irresponsible and dangerous heresies. *
To this mode of cosmic projection that is the
human phenomenon there is added a so to speek secondary but intrinsically
central mode, namely the avataric mode, the "divine descent," the
incarnation; supreme mode of the projection of Atma-Maya. In the
framework of fallen humanity, and owing to this fall, the initial human
projection is repeated by the Avatara in order to reestablish
equilibrium and to restore to man his first vocation; it is to this that the
symbolism of the dance of the gopls around Krishna testifies."
"The play of Krisaha with the Gopis refers to
the masks; the apparition of his immutable form before Arjuna refers to the
divine Substance. This form, reflected in Maya, assumed in its turn
innumerable masks, not earthly but celestial."
Here, in these final quotes, one against sees
Schuon claiming to be a "divine descent" and he situates his
Primordial Gatherings in this context. All souls are "gopis" in
relation to Schuon, and though men can’t participate, they can watch their
wives and daughter's breasts and hips being embraced by Schuon and thereby
saved. Here we see then: Schuon has become a parody of an Avatara, and whatever
truths his doctrine and method may contain, these truths have become grotesque
and are sued like a mask to hide Schuon’s pathology.
THE MESSAGE OF THE ICONS
by Sa. Badriyah
In the most direct of the Tantric icons of the
Blessed Virgin, (on whom be blessings) one is irristably attracted to her and
she in return enters into one’s heart, The viewer and the image are one. for
centuries the Blessed Virgin has been saving souls and at this moment she
offers her most precious gift by giving us her body in a powerfully direct
way. Beginning with the adoption of bur Shaykh on the voyage to Morocco in
1965, the Blessea virgin has chosen a most intimate way of revealing herself.
One could even say that she is her Revelation. These icons are an exact
replication of her message to the Shaykh on the ship, both in standing and in
kneeling, and they have been given to us. Our participation is a powerful
descent of her mercy and a glorious ascent into Paradise.
Three of Schuon’s poems from the 1930’s are
reproduced. One sees in them already the elements of the Primordial Gatherings
- Krishna, gopis, sexual union, and a rather heavy sexual-spiritual atmosphere.
Sidi Abdul Kafi translated these poems at my request with no attempt to be
poetic. I asked him to do so because I wanted to know what they said. I showed
them to Sa. Hamidah who destroyed the copies I gave her and asked me to promise
never to show them to anyone, as they are "compromising to the
Shaykh." I see no reason to keep this promise any longer as in fact, they
express something fundamental about Schuon.
GOPI
Thou walkest, proud, young striding spring songs
along thy limbs are gliding. Thoughts of spring along thy body glide, while
thou walkest Thy breasts move (bounce?) Oh, the living poem of thy body, is
held in the rounded cradle of thy beautiful hips;
and from the sweetness of thy life thy dreaming
face is glowing.
BAJADERE
A red gold noon sultry and broad over the pregnant
earth blowing with desire, and the massive waters of the Ganges glistening.
in an ecstasy of death and beatitude.
The silver,bangles of the Devadassis (temple
prostitutes) are ringing; in the smile
and promise of her lustful dance.
So her bodyilaughs and her limbs
are winding like snakes.
And the God's kiss her dark cheeks, and her body
is liberated through dance and her mouth laughs, teeth white like pearls.
While the sacrificed animal cries in its own blood
and the garlands of flowers are resplendent and fragrant.
And she bathes her heated breasts in the tumbling
infinitude of the Ganges.
KRISHNA AND RADHA
My love was the gentle ring which circled
caressing, around your body, like a round dance.
And you extended (displayed?) your body before me,
on dark mosses spread out, heavily breathing like a wild animal.
And your breasts proudly expanded and you were not
a woman any longer nor a mere ornament, but a golden mirror in which a God
prepares himself (unclear translation)
Oh you most wonderful being, I followed you into
the stillness of the woods and you turned, smiling into my will, and heavy and
sweet, you were hanging in my arms.
And you embraced me in love (dreamlike) like a cup
ready to be filled and I was the drink you received and then you were breathing
quietly and like a browned grape our body hung one me and I held you as the
vine does the grape.
Oh beloved. I would like to rock (cradle?) you
until you fade into me becoming eternal and I merge into you.
The following documents are, firstly Sa. Ammah’s
and my letters to Schuon. We thought of ourselves as already married but she
didn't wont to shock Schuon too much. My earlier drafts of this letter were
different and the changes were made by her. But these details are really not
necessary here.
Secondly, there is a love letter from Sa. Aminah
to myself which I would not include because of its personal nature, but it
speaks of the fact that she had "to talk me into it" - i.e., the
relationship. Whereas Inverness currently lies and says the relationship was a
result of my initiative. The "Butterthief" is me. Butter is Sa.
Aminah, a figure or metaphor taken from the story of Krishna who was called a
Butter thief as a child.