So I have this Sufi friend and we talk frequently about her practices...

[cags]

I consider myself pretty knowledgable regarding religion and spiritual practices.
I am pretty liberal in my own views that I do not believe in any particular religion but
believe in something outside of our physical existence.

I love discussing religion with people so my friend and I began talking and she is getting more
and more comfortable disclosing her "secrets" as a Sufi with me.

She practices deep meditation and tells me that you need to cut off your 5 senses so that you can have a true spiritual experience. Her most recent revelation was that during her meditations she speaks to aliens called the Pleiadians. Yes I could barely keep a straight face. Then I looked up these aliens on the internet and low and behold there are a whole lot of people who think they speak to these particular aliens!

My friend is a perfectly normal person and I would have never thought this about her. I used to think that she was just a very spiritual person, but now I think she is engaging in sensory deprivation causing herself to hallucinate.

Do you know or have you ever known a Sufi who has told you things like this?

[katanalori]

1. Your friend is on a positive path

"Awaken, dear friends, within this dream and realize that it is your duty and responsibility as human beings to imagine and visualize a safe world. It will be as you decree, and your own experience will thus reflect it." — The Pleiadians

[Name removed]

2. Deleted message

Message removed by moderator. Click here to review the message board rules.

[Odin2005]

3. Buddhist meditation teachers often remind meditators to beware of hallucinations.

This is a good example of it. :-(

[Cleobulus]

4. Frankly speaking, her belief in talking with these aliens is no stranger than any other religious...

belief.

[dimbear]

5. A number of English Christians had similar communications with fairies

around the turn of the 20th century. These things come and go. BTW, let's all be glad your friend is in touch with the nicer sort of alien. There are many aliens (in that same imaginary land) that aren't so nice.

[struggle4progress]

6. I don't think that's Sufism

[GliderGuider]

7. I agree. Sufism is a mystical form of Islam. No aliens... n/t

[GliderGuider]

8. About cutting off the senses during meditation

I once did a 3-day sensory-deprivation meditation lying on a bed wearing a blindfold and earplugs. It was interesting, and gave me lots of time to watch my mind at work. Ultimately it did little to further my inner development. I got so caught up in the fascinating things my mind was doing that I found it hard to rest as simple awareness.

[Angry Dragon]

9. You took just the first step

The journey to inner self is a path of many steps.

[GliderGuider]

10. Yes, I know.

I've traveled a long way since that experience. The desire to have that experience was just another manifestation of Maya - necessary at the time, but nothing to get stuck on.

[onager]

11. I lived near a big Sufi festival town in Egypt.

And never heard of any Sufis talking to aliens. So I'm inclined to believe this is just the usual woo-woo claptrap from western enthusiasts of the religion.

Mainstream Sunni Muslims don't seem to like Sufis much at all. I heard that expressed repeatedly during my 2 years in Saudi Arabia as well as nearly 4 years in Egypt.

The town of Tanta, Egypt has a shrine to a Sufi holy man, and a big 3-day festival is held there every year. I lived in Alexandria, about 70 miles away. My Egyptian co-workers told me all kinds of lurid rumors about the Sufis having music, dancing and SEX!!!! right inside the mosque in Tanta. I don't believe that for a minute - for one thing, the American ambassador always attended the festival (or moulid).

Sufis are famous for enthusiastic dancing, which wasn't always benign. In the late 19th century they were known as fanatical warriors and called "whirling dervishes." In 1885 a Sufi army besieged the British at Khartoum, where the Muslim religious fanatic known as the Mahdi killed the British religious fanatic, Gen. Charles Gordon.

[eShirl]

12. I've heard of people who believe in Pleiadians, and I've heard of people who are Sufis

but this is the first I've heard of anyone who was both.