19 November 2025
Dear Companions on the Path,
I hope these lines find you well.
It was a pleasure being with some of you at the recent concluding session of Inner History. Since not everyone was able to attend (albeit the recordings are available here), I thought I would use the opportunity of this letter to share a few reflections on our historical moment.
How best to describe our era? A common answer among the environmentally attuned is to say that we live in the Anthropocene, a bookend to the long-running Holocene, when human activities are fundamentally altering Earthâs geology and ecosystems. One of the first scientists to fathom the full implications of climate change was James Lovelock, the co-formulator (with Lynn Margulis) of the Gaia theory, which posits that the planet functions in a manner comparable to the self-regulation of an organism, making it a kind of superorganism.
At the end of his life, Lovelock coined a new term: the Novacene, referring to a new epoch. What distinguishes this period of time, he says, is the emergence of Artificial Intelligence (AI), a development that will transform the world more thoroughly than any technology hitherto has done, and which will, Lovelock believed, produce a solution to the planetâs climate crisis.
Obviously, not everyone shares Lovelockâs optimism regarding the future of AI. The âGodfather of AIâ himself, Geoffrey Hinton, has warned that AI comes with âexistential risks.â Nonetheless, whether one is apt to regard AI as a godsend or a plague, the enormous changes afoot seem to justify the adoption of a new conceptualization to designate the mysterious historical space we are moving into.
To whom shall we turn to make sense of the trajectory of history over the last two millennia as a prelude to what is yet to come? Vico, Hegel, Spengler, Toynbee? May I suggest, instead, the Mughal emperor Abuâl-Fath Jalal ad-Din Muhammad Akbar. His enlightened policy of sulh-i kull (universal peace) had its underpinnings in a theory of history that remains freshly relevant to this day.
Akbar and his philosophical vizier Abuâl-Fazl asserted that Islam had a transformational role to play in the shift from a religious paradigm, in which religions posit ultimate truth claims in competition with each other, to a metareligious paradigm, in which all prophets, revealed texts, and communities are recognized as facets of the individual and collective processes by which the Deity discloses itself to consciousness within the context of existing, and ever-shifting, cultural settings.
It was the time of the Renaissance, of booming international commerce and scientific exploration, and Akbar sensed that now, a thousand years after the lifetime of the Prophet, the Age of Friendhood (daur-i vilayat) was at last due to come into its own. Was it because Friendhoodâthe manifestation of the universal human beingâwas needed more than ever on account of our worsening negligence, or because humans were better prepared for it in light of our growing awareness? Paradoxically, both may be true.
Whereas the establishment of the worldâs global religions involved the drawing of hard distinctions between faith and unbeliefâthe dividing line the Egyptologist Jan Assmann called âthe Mosaic distinctionââthe Age of Friendhood calls for oneness and reconciliation. But Hazrat Inayat Khan crucially reminds us that the emerging spirit of fellowship must be understood in terms of spiritual unity rather than exoteric uniformity. The guiding telos is a dynamic organic whole, or an ecology of symbiotes, rather than a sterile monoculture.
The Divine providence that dispels the uncertainty of our fast-moving moment is the blossoming of the Age of the Friend, surfacing capacities of the heart the time for which has come. How is the sahib-i dil, the possessor of heart, to navigate the Novacene?
If AI is, as Lovelock believes, humanityâs progeny and successor as world-builder, its destiny is wrapped up in what we bequeath to it. It will mirror our thoughts and aspirations, and will magnify them.
The Earth is undergoing an enormous meteorological, geological, and biological transmutation on our watch, with the result that the planetâs sixth mass extinction is underway. Under the circumstances, business as usual is obviously untenable. The question becomes, what are our spiritual responsibilities toward the species that have been driven to physical annihilation (and which still exist spiritually in the inner worlds), and what are our spiritual and physical duties toward the fellow denizens of the Earth that endure? Since humanity is a synthesis of the constituents of the planet and the cosmos, to neglect the mesh to which we belong is not only ethically problematic, it fundamentally impoverishes our humanness.
Nor are our internal protocols currently adequate. While genetic research is laying bare the bloodlines that unite humans within a single tree yielding numerous branches, ethnic, national, religious, and political rivalries remain in many cases so fanatical that the shedding of pools of blood that can be seen from space is treated as a matter of course. The art of reconciliation, sulh-i kull, is the sine qua non of the healing of the planet. It begins with the dissolution of the fear-fueled aggression that has its germs in the minds of all of us.
And so we wander âbetween two worlds, one dead / The other powerless to be born,â as Arnold puts it, seeking the power that will give birth to the Age of Friendhood and the Universal Sanctuary (dar al-aman). That power can never come from ourselves: it can only come from the Self of all selves. And in our deepest moments of stillness, we find that it is already here.
Yours ever,
Pir Zia
We reunite at the Astana, the Inayatiyyaâs home in Richmond, Virginia, for a weekend on The Subtleties of Suhbat, with Pir Zia and special guest Shaykha Fariha of the Nur Askhi Jerrahi lineage of Sufism. Please come join us for the depth of Sufi Suhbat, interspersed with music, practice, sweets, and zikr. All are welcome, with options online and in-person. More details and registration.
On behalf of Shaikh-al-Mashaik Mahmood Khan and Pir Zia Inayat Khan Maulabakhsh, we warmly invite you to the âDutch Sessions.â Each session centers on readings from the works of Hazrat Inayat Khan, with an introduction followed by time for questions and discussion. Conversations may reflect on the readings as well as on themes relevant to our world today. The Dutch Sessions are free and open to all. More details and Zoom link.
Tauba is an Arabic word meaning âturning back to the One.â The One is Al-Tawwab, âthe Ever-Turning,â who receives our sorrow and regret, transforms it, and returns it to us as healing guidance. Together, in retreat, we will go backward and forward at onceâback to the Source of our being, and forward toward all that the coming year holds in store for us and for the world. Pir Zia Inayat Khan is our guide in this process, one that will lay the groundwork for further growth, integration, and spiritual maturity over the months to come. More details and registration.
Here is a small photo album from our Niagara Falls event last October.
This month, we have news to share from the Caravan. Read more…
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.
