Bhai Sahib: Radha Mohan Lal

The Sufi master Bhai Sahib (Elder Brother) tells Irina Tweedie that the purpose of the spiritual training is ‘to become One with the will Of God and so lead a Guided Life: guided by that which is Eternal’, and without concern for the future. He tells her that surrender and obedience are the meaning of Christ’s statement that ‘the Father and I are One’, and ‘Thy Will be done on earth as it is in Heaven.’ The task of the guru is to help the disciple by encouraging the disciple to merge with the teacher. This is called fana.  By surrendering to the teacher, the disciple takes the step to surrender to the Will of God; and the path taken is always individual.

The training Tweedie goes through causes much suffering, and could be interpreted as manipulative and abusive. Sometimes the Master speaks to her and other times she is ignored. This leaves her confused and deeply hurt. Sometimes his family laugh at her as she’s left outside in the rain and cold, or in the summer in intense heat. She writes: ‘I felt even more alone. To be in the hands of a man who will do anything, absolutely anything, for the sake of training is a chilling thought’. Later she is told that suffering is a form of redemption; ‘the burning away of dross.’

And yet she also records times of peace, bliss and ‘never-experienced happiness’ deep within her.

‘So ethereal, so elusive. It seems to have nothing to do with me as a person, nor with my environment, nor with my state of mind … It appears like a state of Grace … it comes when it wishes … During the night, I listened to the currents inside my body. For my body was full of Sound. A Sound connected with the light circulating in it, with this mysterious web burning my tissues. The outlines of the heart were clearly visible; it was surrounded with a faint, bluish light, beating regularly; a beautiful sight.’

After nearly 18 months of the spiritual training Tweedie writes:

‘His Presence is constant. To live with God as a Reality is great happiness. As I understand it now, one does not surrender to the Master at all; for in reality the surrender is through the Master to God. The Master is only the focus of attention on the physical plane. In other words, the outer guru points to the inner guru, the Self.’

The guru tells her: ‘The road to Him is to forget all, to leave your preoccupations behind, to let go; put yourself in His hands, trust and you will know.’ He then gives Tweedie money for travel, and tells her to return to London until he calls her back. Heartbroken, she leaves for nearly three years.

On her return they have a further 6 months before the Master dies. Tweedie is able to write:

‘I have found our relationship to God … is a merging, without words, without thought even; into “something”. Something so tremendous, so endless, merging in Infinite Love, physical body and all, disappearing in it …’

Living in the Himalayas months later, Tweedie writes of the changes that have happened inside her.

‘Something which seemed intangible, unattainable, slowly, very slowly becomes a permanent reality. There is nothing but Him … This constant vision of the One is deepening and increasing in the mind, giving eternal peace.’

Returning to London in 1966, Irina Tweedie started a Sufi meditation group in London, and groups spread through Europe and the US. After her retirement in 1992, it became https://goldensufi.org/