20 August 2025
Dear Companions on the Path,
There is a cool, subtle breeze flowing through the window on a beautiful summer’s day in England. The noise of the bombs, the cries of hungry children and the images of floods, fires and earthquakes are loud.
Hazrat Inayat Khan said, “Verily, the power of the word can move mountains.”
So the loudest word in the newsletter is Amaan, which means sanctuary.
Amaan, Amaan, Amaan…
To this, we can add the Divine Names that Pir Zia shared at the Prayer for Healing in the World. You can find the recordings here.
These words carry for me the faith that this ceasefire in Gaza will actually happen and close on the heels that peace will come to all the places in the world where wars are being waged.
There are many organisations that you may be supporting. Please let us know who they are. Thanks to our friends Aseil and Nizam-un-Nisa, I am highlighting the Middle East Children’s Alliance and a flood relief appeal for Pakistan.
Amaan, Amaan, Amaan…
It has been a while since I have written. I know many of you are finding ways to take action to stop this destruction of our planet. I also know that we all need little glimmers of hope that help us to carry on doing what we can.
So I am happy to share with you that in June this year at the UN Ocean Conference, for the first time, a Faith House was established as a dedicated space where spiritual wisdom directly informed marine conservation, co-hosted by Heartfulness Institute and Faiths for UNOC3. Thanks to our friend Tariq, our dear Hazrat Inayat Khan was present at the entrance, welcoming people with this beautiful quote.
The Inayatiyya International has signed the declaration, which is a beautiful balance of scientific evidence and the role that faith can play. I hope you will sign up too. It’s also worth looking at the 10 Inner Principles for Ocean Protection.
Amaan, Amaan, Amaan…
All of us carry people in our hearts who are suffering, who have been unjustly murdered, who show immense courage and remind us throughout history that justice will win. As Martin Luther King, Jr., reminded us, “the arc of the moral universe is long, but it bends toward justice.”
I hope you will take a moment to hold them in your heart and send prayers of gratitude.
The people I keep close to in my heart are a circle of artists and musicians whom I met in a refugee camp in Jordan. As we sat listening to the bombs in Syria, one of them said with tears falling down his face, “I want Music to stop the war.” I believe this is possible!
I see it echoed in the radio show of our friend Zakir Amin Ron Povich, where, in addition to uplifting music from “the top 6 continents,” they acknowledged the suffering of our fellow human beings. It featured music from 10 countries in particular, where there are humanitarian crises, ongoing life-threatening circumstances, with high levels of upheaval, and suffering. In an homage to the durability of the human spirit, there is the joy of music.
I hope you get a chance to listen to it as it will only be up until Friday, 22nd August 2025.
Amaan.
Even if I don’t know you or you are a close friend, please know that being part of this caravan of souls, with all of you, touches my heart and makes me feel a new world is possible. I send you my prayers, love and gratitude for all you are doing in the inner worlds and this world at this time.
Amen, Amin
Yours,
Deepa Gulrukh Patel
Vice chair of Inyatiyya International
Postscript! There are many chances for us to meet in the coming months. Please see below. I want to highlight two things happening in the country where I live: Mysticism of Sound, which will be the launch of Universerai, a new musical collective, and working with the Four Archangels. Both are in London and online!
As we deepen our spiritual study, we are initiating a series of one-day retreats on themes core to the Sufi path. Join us for this initial retreat with Pir Zia Inayat Khan on an essential practice—the contemplation and recitation of the Asma al-Husna: The Beautiful Names. During our one-day retreat, we will begin to explore the practice of wazifas through both spiritual teachings and recitation led by Pir Zia. More details and registration.
During our weekend retreat we shall delve into the mystical symbolism of light, darkness, and color. We will explore how the Earth’s rotations -both on its axis and around the sun- stimulate different states of the soul, and how the awakening of the soul manifests through a spectrum of colored lights. Together, we will also plumb the depths of darkness to uncover a hidden luminosity that reveals the richness of existence. More details and registration.
You are warmly invited to an evening of music and contemplation with Pir Zia Inayat Khan and Universerai, a new collective of musicians devoted to the sacred through sound. Through word and music, we will journey into the mysticism of sound, inspired by the luminous cosmology of Hazrat Inayat Khan—who, in 1910, journeyed from India to the West bearing the wisdom of the Sufis. He gave a series of lectures and musical performances on Mysticism of Sound at venues including London’s Theosophical Society and Leighton House, sowing the seeds of a spiritual path that continues to resonate today. Now, over a century later, his grandson Pir Zia continues this transmission. More details and registration.
‘The Universe, continually emerging from the Divine Source, is in reality a Tricosm of angelic, imaginal and physical beings. These angelic and imaginal presences, which we sometimes feel and are inspired by, are our partners in the unfoldment of our life, light and our love. In the angelic realm, four vast beings function as celestial personifications of the essential vibratory currents pervading and organising the Universe. These four archangels – Mika’il, Israfil, Azra’il, and Jibra’il – have their being both outside us and within us. In this weekend retreat we will familiarize ourselves with their natures and learn to invoke and recognize their presence.’
Pir Zia will guide us in spiritual discourse (suhbat), contemplation (muraqaba), meditation (mushahada), and ritual remembrance (zikr). More details and registration.
In an Eastern Rose Garden turns us toward the ideal of freedom. All beings pursue freedom since freedom is an essential quality of the soul. Too often, however, one person’s purported freedom is achieved at the expense of that of someone else. A truer freedom arises from the realization of interconnectedness.
Over the next year, we will explore Hazrat Inayat Khan’s teachings on peace and creativity, freedom and friendship, aristocracy and democracy, the inner and the outer. The reconciliation of each of these pairs of seeming contraries lies the realization of the purpose for which we were created. More details and registration.
If you have any news to share please send it to zephyr@inayatiyya.org with the subject heading “News of the Caravan.” Photos are welcome.
The Zephyr is a monthly newsletter of the Inayatiyya, an interfaith mystical fellowship with branches worldwide. For more information, please visit us at inayatiyya.org.
