The Dances of Universal Peace are a meditation in motion, integrating
spirit, mind and body, through awareness of breath, sound, movement
and stillness. Combining simple folk dance forms, with singing
or chanting the Divine Names, and sacred phrases, from the world's
major spiritual traditions, the Dances offer easy access to expanded
states of consciousness and the experience of Unity--without
dogmas, catechisms, or theological belief systems.
Currently being presented all over the world, the
Dances were originally received in vision, in San Francisco in
the late 1960's, by Hazrati Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad, aka Samuel L.
Lewis), an American mystic, and long-time friend and student
of Ruth St. Denis, one of the pioneers of American modern
dance. Murshid S.A.M. was publicly recognized and confirmed
as a master teacher in several spiritual lineages: as a sufi
murshid by the sufis of various orders in Pakistan, India,
and the Middle East; as a zen roshi by both the Soto
and Rinzai zen lineages in Japan and Korea; and in the
bhakti yoga tradition, his hindu guru, Swami Papa Ramdas, of Ananda Ashram in India,
confirmed his ability to enter samadhi through his absorption
in the Divine Being of Ram, and the repitition of the sacred
phrase Om Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai, Jai Ram. Since his passing
in 1971, Murshid S.A.M.'s immediate disciples and their own students have
continued to embody and expand his vision, spiritual transmission
and mystical legacy, as well as those of his sufi teacher, Hazrati
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, a representative of the Chishti, Naqshbandi, Sohrawardi and Qadiri
Sufi Orders of India, who came to the west in 1910 to sow
the seeds of a new form of Sufism--one more appropriate to the
psychology and evolution of the people in Europe and the Americas.
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