Polarization

This chapter argues that in the period immediately after WWII, Western Sufism began to polarize between more and less Islamic tendencies. The most important Islamic tendencies were represented by the Traditionalist Alawiyya in Paris and the Traditionalist Seyyed Hossein Nasr in Iran, where he established the Imperial Iranian Academy of Philosophy. The most important less Islamic tendencies were represented by Meher Baba, an Indian understood to be an avatar, and by Pak Subuh, an Indonesian guru. Both were universalist and anti-dogmatic, and both perhaps owed something to the Theosophical Society, but neither were particularly Sufi. Frithjof Schuon and John G. Bennett exhibited polarization within their own selves. Schuon was adopted into the Oglala Sioux, while remaining shaykh of a Sufi tariqa; he eventually gravitated toward universalist perennialism. Bennett lived as a Muslim Sufi in Damascus and Turkey, only to end up joining the Catholic Church.