Pir Zia on the secret history of the world

From a nondual perspective, aren't the world's great spiritual traditions expressions of a single living wisdom? In this intimate conversation, Pir Zia Inayat Khan explores the inspiration behind Tears from the Mother of the Sun, a sweeping mythic chronicle of sages, exiles, and revelations spanning continents and planes of existence. Drawing on sacred stories from Persia, India, Egypt and beyond, the book weaves the world's legends into a vision of humanity's shared spiritual inheritance. Together we discover the place of myth in a modern world, the imagination as a path of knowing, and the role of our deepest stories in restoring a sense of belonging to one another, to the Earth, and to the mystery that animates us all.

Topics

  • 00:00 Welcome
  • 00:03 Growing up in a universalist lineage
  • 00:06 Ferdowsi, Soroush, and the frame of the book
  • 00:11 Why the world's traditions belong to one story
  • 00:14 History as a living stream: the three worlds
  • 00:16 The Mongols, violence, and unification
  • 00:19 "I was a hidden treasure": the beginning of history
  • 00:22 Syzygy, and the question of AI
  • 00:29 Honoring the Earth inside our devices
  • 00:34 Isis, Osiris, and the birth of music at Gaza
  • 00:43 Grief, contraction, and the opening of the heart
  • 00:49 Rabia, Noor Inayat Khan, and the green shoots

Pir Zia Inayat Khan

Pir Zia Inayat Khan, PhD, is a scholar of religion and teacher of Sufism in the universalist Sufi lineage of his grandfather, Hazrat Inayat Khan. He is president of the Inayatiyya and founder of Sulūk Academy, a school of Sufi contemplative study and practice. He divides his time between Richmond, Virginia and Suresnes, France.

The book

Also by Pir Zia

  • Immortality: A Traveler's Guide
  • Mingled Waters: Sufism and the Mystical Unity of Religions
  • Saracen Chivalry: Counsels on Valor, Generosity and the Mystical Quest
  • Dream Flowers: The Collected Works of Noor Inayat Khan
  • Caravan of Souls: An Introduction to the Sufi Path of Hazrat Inayat Khan (editor)

Figures and ideas in the conversation

Lineage

  • Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882–1927), who brought universal Sufism to the West
  • Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, who convened interspiritual dialogues and conversations with modern science, including with David Bohm
  • Noor Inayat Khan, storyteller, author of children's tales and retellings of the Jātaka tales, and SOE wireless operator in occupied France. Killed at Dachau in 1944. Her last word was liberté.

Persia and the frame of the book

  • Ferdowsi, author of the Shahnameh, who died in Tus believing his life's work had come to nothing
  • Soroush, the tutelary daimon who narrates the book
  • The Ishraqi or Illuminationist tradition

Sufi teaching

  • The Hadith Qudsi: I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so I created the world that I might be known
  • Rabia al-Adawiyya, who carried a torch to burn down paradise and water to quench the fires of hell, so that God would be loved for God's own sake
  • Najm al-Din Kubra, killed on the battlefield during the Mongol invasion
  • Qabz and bast, contraction and expansion
  • Ar-Rahman, Ar-Rahim, and rahma as the action of the womb

History, empire, and emanation

  • Genghis Khan and the Palace of Myriad Peace at Karakorum
  • Akbar and the interreligious debates at Fatehpur Sikri, under the policy of sulh-i-kul, peace with all
  • Tahqiq, experiential knowing, as against taqlid, following what one has heard
  • Avicenna and the three contemplations of emanation
  • Syzygy, the alignment of beings into a molecule of spiritual work

Isis and the birth of music

  • The story of Isis and Osiris as told by Plutarch, in which Isis buries Osiris at Gaza and blesses a boy named Palestinos, who becomes the first musician
  • Sirius, whose rising signals the Nile flood, understood as the tears of Isis

Also mentioned

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