9 June 2023
Dear Friends,
We write to you on the 107th birthday of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, inviting you to imagine this: While reading and meditating with Pir Vilayat’s The Ecstasy Beyond Knowing, you are enthralled by his description of the state of Reverie.* You can almost hear his voice, feel his attunement and you long for more: hearing his actual voice! Imagine him guiding you to glimpse “that which transpires behind that which appears.” This is possible!
Pir Vilayat’s 20th Urs approaches in one year on June 17, 2024. To celebrate, we are launching a project to create a searchable digital archive on the Inayatiyya website that will offer a curated collection of Pir Vilayat talks from various seminars and retreats.
Inspired by this milestone and Pir Vilayat’s (nearly) 88 years on this earth, our initial goal is to offer 88 resources – including events presented to different audiences in North America and Europe. Resources will include trailblazing themes dear to him and to us: science and mysticism, light, the planes, awakening in life, and many more.
For years, volunteers have been working to catalog, digitize and transcribe material from the 1970s onward. They stand on the shoulders of dedicated leaders and murids** who produced living records, rescued audio and video cassettes, DVDs, transcripts and other materials from the Abode barn and other sites. This monumental effort has already produced visible results such as the Pir Vilayat Archives at the Astana, the Pir Vilayat leaders’ materials on the Inayatiyya website, and PirVilayatLegacy.net. Considering the 8000 plus items in the database, the initial digital archive won’t contain everything. The work of preserving Pir Vilayat’s legacy will pull us into the future.
In order for this initiative to manifest fully, we need financial support for:
- Preservation: Continue to store materials in climate-controlled facilities.
- Guidance: Hire dedicated archivist and long-time murid, Elizabeth Hess, to hold the project and provide needed expertise.
- Technical Support: Engage Inayatiyya staff in this project as part of the Adaptive Plan.
- Financial Integrity: Maintain a restricted account for donations which ensures that funds go to this endeavor.
- Communication: Commit to communicate project progress quarterly.
The scope of the digital archives will depend on the support we receive in the first year. To kick off a project like this requires staff knowledgeable about archives, appropriate database management systems, rental space for physical storage, transportation of material and online system costs. We estimate the first-year costs will be $4000 a month. As with many projects, having more funding means we can do more.
As we start, we are pleased that:
- As part of the Adaptive Plan adopted in January 2022, the Inayatiyya in North America has committed financial as well as technical support for this initiative.
- We are delighted to announce that we have $10,000 in matching funds which can multiply the impact of your generous contributions.In order to benefit from the matching funds, we must receive your donation by Friday, August 4. You may easily donate through this link.
We invite you to listen to some of the recordings on this page and if you are inspired to support this initiative with a donation, in August we will send you the link to a two-part talk given in Vancouver in 1989 called One Evening.
If you would like to stay informed, email PirVilayat@inayatiyya.org and we will add you to the list for a quarterly update. Send us the name of your favorite talk of Pir Vilayat and we’ll see if we can add it to the collection!
Yours sincerely,
Pir Vilayat Archives Council: Yaqin Aubert (MA), TajAli Keith (PA), Abad (NY), Noor Amina Peterson (CO), Elizabeth Hess (PA) & Karim Updegraff (AR). We will be adding murids from all over the world soon!
PS *Reverie, it turns out, is the subject of a 1984 Memorial Day retreat, a Seattle event in 1998, and many more!
PPS **List of murids who have tirelessly served to preserve Pir Vilayat’s work: Mikhail, Yasodhara, Lakshmi, Karim, Espabad, TajAli, Abad, Yaqin, Telema, Amida, Batina, Wahhab, Ata’allah, ‘Arif, Suhrawardi, Rizvana, Nuruddin, Phil, Raqib, Zak, Khaldun, Aqil, Savitri, Atum, Wahhab and Hayyat and innumerable transcribers. Fellow travelers from Europe have also engaged in this important effort include Tajalli Lacuisse (France), Daena Thelen-Daniel (Germany) & Ischtar Dvorak (Germany). In memoriam: Steve Amdur, Mikhail Davenport & Chechma Diskan.
The Inayatiyya is a non-profit 501c3 organization, Tax ID #23-7159641. Your donation may be fully deductible for tax purposes per United States IRS guidelines.
By making a donation to support the Pir Vilayat Archive Project, one hundred percent of your donation (after processing fees) will directly support our ongoing archival and digitization efforts. For this we thank you.