Reshad Feild (born 1934 as Richard
Timothy Feild) is an English mystic, author, spiritual teacher, and
musician. He is the author of more than a dozen books about Sufism and spirituality
and has exercised a huge influence amongst western seekers over the
last forty years.
As a young, upper-class Englishman, he was educated at Eton and served in the
Royal
Navy, where he had an undistinguished career. In the early 1960s Feild
was a founding member of the popular British folk trio The
Springfields.
Feild was influenced spiritually by the teachings of, among
others, G. I. Gurdjieff and P.
D. Ouspensky. He was very much involved with spiritual healing, and was
involved with the Alice Bailey community. In the late
'60's, he was initiated as a sheikh in the Sufi Order International by
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. He also met
and studied with Bulent Rauf, a Turkish author and
translator who himself stemmed from a long line of Sufism going back to
the Andalusian
mystic Muhyiddin
Ibn Arabi (1165–1240). He established the Beshara Centre in Aldsworth, England,
in 1970. A description of events at this center is given in the book I,
Wabenzi, by Rafi Zabor. In 1972 he resigned his role
in the Sufi Order.
In December, 1971, he and a group of students went to Konya (Turkey), to meet
Bulent and see the sema
of the Mevlevi
order of Dervishes.
While there, he met a former sheikh, Suleiman Dede. In 1973, he resigned
his role leading the Beshara Centre and went to Los Angeles, Tepoztlan,
Mexico, and Vancouver Island, BC, where he taught on his own. In 1976,
he was made a sheikh in the Mevlevi order by Suleiman Dede, and moved
to Boulder, CO where he started a small center. In Boulder Reshad
assisted in introducing the sema ceremony – which was declared a cultural
world heritage by UNESCO
in 2004 – to America and Europe, thereby opening it up for the first
time in history to women as well as non-Muslim participants (i.e. students).
Since then, Reshad Feild has been teaching the essence of the
universality of Sufi teachings, making them available to people of all
religious and spiritual backgrounds. He has published more than a dozen
books, some of which have been translated into many languages. In his
best selling autobiographical novel The Last Barrier,
he gives a fictionalized account of how he met Bulent Rauf.
Published works
- The Last Barrier : A Sufi Journey
(Autobiographical trilogy part I) ISBN
0-906540-52-6
- To Know We're Loved : A Time to Love and
a Time to Die (formerly "The Invisible Way: A Time to Love -
A Time to Die" ISBN
0-906540-04-6, Autobiographical trilogy part II) ISBN
0-89556-154-9
- Steps to Freedom: Discourses on the Essential
Knowledge of the Heart (Autobiographical trilogy part III) ISBN 0-9625412-1-4
- Going Home - The Journey of a Travelling Man
ISBN
1-85230-878-8
- The Alchemy of the Heart ISBN 1-4208-3110-0
- Here to Heal ISBN
0-906540-80-1
- Reason Is Powerless in the Expression of Love
ISBN
0-9625412-0-6
- Footprints in the Sand ISBN 1-85230-027-2
- A Travelling People's Feild Guide ISBN 1-85230-003-5
- The Inner Work ISBN
3-905272-21-0
- Breathing Alive: A Guide to Conscious Living
ISBN
1-85230-050-7
External links
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