21 October 2026
Dear Companions on the Path,
The state of the world today provokes pressing questions. Is the networking power of the Internet bringing us together as a global community or are the bot armies that plague it tearing us apart more systematically than ever before? Are the diverse neighborhoods of today’s urban centers in the West glowing examples of burgeoning cosmopolitanism or symptoms of migrations spawned by disastrous interventions in the developing world? Does the race to AI Superintelligence portend a utopia of advanced medicine, abundant food production, and ingenious ecological solutions, or a panopticon of authoritarian control, if not an immediate threat to collective human survival?
The desire for a guiding intelligence greater than the capacities of our bumbling brains is a reasonable one in the face of the immense challenges humanity currently faces. But in our rush to turn valleys and forests into servers and generators, we are missing the intelligence which is right under our noses. Hazrat Inayat Khan said, “If the planet on which we live had no intelligence it could not have intelligent beings on it.”
The Earth is a living expression of the life of the cosmos, which is itself a direct manifestation of the Divine nature. Avicenna called the intelligence of the Earth the “Active Intelligence” (al-aql al-fa‘al) and said that human minds are capable of conjoining themselves with it.
Imagine what would happen if people around the world consulted the Earth Spirit by way of meditation as readily as netizens consult ChatGPT or Claude. To a mind conditioned by materialism, the very idea sounds ridiculously woo-woo. The derision, however, is only evidence of how spiritually delimited the contemporary human psyche has become. Beyond the materialistic mind’s narrowly inscribed circumference loom oceans, rainforests, skyscapes, planets, and stars that are entirely of a piece with the consciousness it so glibly claims exclusive possession of.
The beauty of the Earth is that it is the home of all of us: Christians and Muslims, atheists and agnostics, gnus and crocodiles, redwoods and mangroves. On the surface of the Earth, there is no center or periphery – the expression “corners of the globe” is a complete misnomer. If a center is to be sought it must be sought deep underground, in the planetary core. This is just where we are headed in Descending into Light.
Many social and political problems would be easily solved if, instead of championing the cause of one identity bloc or another, we all put our common earthiness first. As for the rest, when minds methodically and devotedly attune to the Active Intelligence rippling through the planet, knowledge is shown.
Wendell Berry, who passed away this summer (God bless and keep him), was known to say, “What I stand for is what I stand on.” Understanding comes with standing on the Living Earth. More than a mere data center, the planetary furnace is a dator formarum (“Giver of Forms”), a generative portal between matter and spirit. There lies Superintelligence.
Yours ever,
Pir Zia
Pir Vilayat Archive: New Transcripts and Photographs
The Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan Archive has published one of its biggest updates so far: 26 fully transcribed recordings and 69 new photographs, including a 1973 retreat in New York City and a 1990 seminar at Omega Institute.
New photo collections include historical portraits and snapshots, a curator’s selection, and scenes from the summer camps in the French Alps in the 1980s. Everything is free to explore, without registration. To stay up to date on new releases, you can also subscribe to the archive’s newsletter.
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.