Irina Tweedie

Life

"Irina Tamara Karpow (Ирина Тамара Ка́рпов) was born in Russia.^[3] Her family escaped the Bolscheviks to Central Europe, and she eventually lived in Austria, Switzerland, Italy, France, and then finally England. She studied in Vienna and Paris. After World War II she married her second husband, an English Navy officer surnamed Tweedie. Due to her second husband's premature death in 1954, she went through a personal crisis that launched her on a spiritual quest. She became an active member of the Theosophical Society and eventually she travelled to India in 1959.

On 2 October 1961, through her friend Lilian Silburn (1908-1993),^[4] a Sanskrit scholar and translator at the Sorbonne, she met her guru, Radha Mohan Lal (1893-1966), a Hindu Sufi sheikh from the Naqshbandiyya-Mujadiddiya order, living in Kanpur. She became one of the first Western women trained in the Naqshbandi system.^[5]

Her teacher's first request of her was to keep a complete diary of her spiritual training—everything, all the difficult parts, even all the doubts. He predicted that one day it would become a book and would benefit people around the world. Indeed, it became the book, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master.^[6]

This diary spans five years. It is an account of a spiritual training with a Sufi Master and is the most detailed account of the relationship between disciple and teacher that exists in Western Literature.^{[citation needed]} The book is written in diary form. From a psychological viewpoint, the diary maps the process of ego dissolution, gradually unveiling the openness and love that reside beneath the surface of the personality.^{[citation needed]}

The book was first published in its abridged form as The Chasm of Fire which has sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into five languages. Later the unabridged book, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master, was published. This title has sold over 40,000 copies worldwide and is now being published through The Golden Sufi Center.^[7]

After her guru's death in 1966, she returned to England where she started a Sufi meditation group in North London. Gradually the group spread throughout Europe and North America. Irina Tweedie retired in 1992 after having named Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee as her successor.^[8] She died in 1999, aged 92." (Source Wikipedia)

OSL view

One interesting fact about Irina Tweedys spiritual journey is in our view, that she was trained in the tradition of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiya order,  which is a quite traditional order, as a western woman.  Furthermore her teacher was  Radha Mohan Lal (1893-1966), a Hindu Sufi sheikh, what means he was born in Hindu family, but sent from his father to a Muslim sufi teacher. In her biography  "Daughter of Fire" she described in detail and openly how she spent 3 years with her master.  The biography is a long read, but shows accurately all the sufferings and doubts that occur on such path. Another interesting aspect is that teachings given by her master was a mixture between Hindu and Islamic traditions, which can see as a bridge between this very different religious traditions.

See also

1. Wikipedia Naqshbandi