Toby Mayer

Kubrawi texts which speak of the process of realisation, drawing on that unsurpassable archetype of journeys to God in Islamic tradition, the Ascension of Muhammad, read oddly like accounts of kundalini yoga. The return of the spirit through higher and higher stages, to its own realm — a microcosmic reditus — cannot be brought about without the medium of this ambiguous, even chthonic, lebensgeist-energy, spoken of as the Sufi’s own “little lightning flash” or Buraq.

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Originally published in The Muslim Word, 2010. Republished here with thanks.