The Lectures of Irina Tweedie The Empty Bell Volume 5 German Lectures: Hamburg, Germany Aug 20, 1987; Schwarzsee, Switzerland July 2 - 9, 1988 (Week 1 of 2) Translated and Compiled by Harvey L. Stahl Make your heart Like an empty bell, And wait… In stillness. During the time that Mrs. Tweedie was with her teacher, she was ordered by him to write a book based on the daily experiences of her training. That book, “Daughter of Fire” and its abridgement “Chasm of Fire” has since proved an invaluable help to many people at all stages of the spiritual journey. Since that time, Mrs. Tweedie has clearly and repeatedly refused to write anything more, saying that her duty to write was fulfilled with this one book. And yet, those of us who have had the privilege to spend time with Mrs. Tweedie in her group in London, know that over the years she has spoken on many themes that are not in her book. It is to make some of this material available to others that I have compiled dialogues based on her lectures. I have focused on her German lectures because these have been especially inaccessible to the English reader. I wish to make it clear that although these pages are based on Mrs. Tweedie’s lectures, and that I have tried to convey this material in something of her own style, that ultimately they are my own words, and alas, are limited by my own understanding. I would like to thank the many people who have given me support and encouragement in this undertaking, especially those German speakers who took the time and care to meticulously review the translations for content and context and to correct my limited German: Suficamp 1988: Alexandra Hamm for her work on parts 3 and 5, Karoline Feuerbach for her work on part 4, Katherina Linhuber for her work on the omitted part 1, and Liselotte Treytl for her work on parts 2 and 6; and also for her work on the Hamburg lecture of 1987. and to Gillian Stokes for her final edit and review of the volume. And lastly and most of all, I wish to express my deepest respect and gratitude to my teacher. Cover Photograph: Chinese Bell, Chou Dynast, 5th century BC. Courtesy of the Trustees of the British Museum. Copyright © 1996 H. L. Stahl. All rights reserved. No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, including photocopy recording or any information storage system without the written permission of the publisher. Edited for digital formats: July 2019 Email contact: [email protected] 3 The Lectures of Irina Tweedie The Feminine Path of Suffering Based on a Lecture given in Hamburg, Germany August 20, 1987 Today I would like to speak on a theme that one does not find in books. I would like to speak about the suffering of women, and whether women suffer more than men. I have not brought many notes with me, and I hope that you will have many questions. It is an important theme: it is the feminine path of suffering. People have often asked me if the spiritual path of women is the same as the path of men. In many ways it is quite different, because women differ from men both physically and psychologically. In some areas, the paths are the same, for on the level of the soul we are completely the same. On this level, here, we are quite different, and the path is quite different; but at the level of the soul, there is no difference. Today I want to speak about the differences and similarities of the spiritual paths of men and women. My teacher, Bhai Sahib, once said to me, “Men need many practices, because energy works very differently in men from the way it works in women.” That is why I give men a great many exercises. Women need almost none, because they are able to reach reality through their feminine being. That is a very important statement. You can imagine how excited I was when I heard that! I thought, “Aha! How wonderful;” but I didn’t say anything. Suddenly, he turned to me and said, “Oh no! That is no reason to be happy. The way is equally difficult for everyone! Women are different and have other difficulties, that is all.” Look! A woman is closer to the material level than a man. We are created differently. We have to produce children in our bodies, and for that reason, our body and our psychology, even our chakras, and everything else, are completely different from those of men. Yesterday, or the day before, we spoke of what someone asked me at Schnader, a spiritual community. “Why are most spiritual teachers men?” I had to think about it, but now it is clear to me that the man is freer than we are. When we, I mean most women, look at our lives, we see that the first thing our family does is to get us married. And then we have children, and the children always come first. Men are free. A man has a child, and he can leave it with the woman and go out into the world and teach or do whatever else he wants. He can work or travel as he likes. Can we do that so easily? When a woman is completely alone, or not married, then it is very much easier. In one of the minor Upanishads – there are many Upanishads; there are those that are very important, and others that are … less important, of minor interest – it is said that for a woman to reach reality, she should never marry, and never have a partner. But the Sufis have another view. My teacher married and had six children. Sufis do marry, and they do not find that it is an obstacle. One day Guruji said to us, “We must live in this world, and we must behave exactly as other people do.” It is difficult, because the world puts pressure on us from all sides, and there are many temptations. And the more and greater the temptations, the more one gains from overcoming them, and the closer one comes to reality. Now, the Irina Tweedie The Empty Bell Volume 5 4 Upanishads say that one must be free, and the Sufis say you should not be free. Most Sufis are, of course, from Islam, and the women are not as free as they are here. There is also a quality that is quite notable in our character as women: we tend to stay more in the background. A woman does not step forward as easily as a man. You see, even love has two aspects. Everything in this world has two aspects: the masculine and the feminine. The masculine of love is, “I love you,” and the feminine is, “I am waiting for you.” The woman stays in the background; it is the woman's character. Of course there are exceptions, but the exceptions only prove the rule, as we already know from the rules of grammar. One shouldn’t even need to say it. Ibn El-Arabi, the great Sufi, who was born in Mortsia, Spain, had a Murshida – a Murshida is a Sufi teacher who is a woman – as his teacher. When he met her, she was about ninety years old, and she died six years later. Anna Marie Schimmel, in her famous – and large – book, ‘Sufism, the Mysticism of Islam’ described this relationship. She wrote that the teacher of Ibn Arabi was ninety-six when she died, but looked fourteen. I believe that that is a bit exaggerated; (General amusement…) but, perhaps she did appear to be quite young. (More laughter.) Yes, OK, it was a bit exaggerated. Our teacher, Bhai Sahib, said to us, “We Sufis die young.” That means that youthful energy remains in the body right up to the time of death. Of course the body gets older, that is the law of nature. No one can remain eternally young, but the energy remains. And we die with our boots on, like soldiers; we die while we are working and in service. That is why he said that we Sufis remain young. There was also Rabia, a great Sufi woman who is very well known. In our line of Sufism – the line to which our entire group belongs – there were very many women. There is a book in Persian about women Sufis. I have seen it, and it is quite a thick book. It has not been translated because, after all, who is interested in the names of so many Sufi Saints. You see, I recently came across a book about women Sufi Saints. I read this book and was completely bored by it. It all happened so many hundreds of years ago that it no longer connects to our lives; it is too different, too unfamiliar. It is as if from another planet, and so it was not at all interesting for me. Further, while I do find history interesting, I find that it is better to think of the future. History is only important insofar as we can learn something from the lives of great beings; when we can read something of the lives of those people who went ahead of us, and who opened the way for us. For me it is only interesting from this point of view. And I do not think that a book that is only enjoyable to read is quite enough.