Stained glass spiral

Course Description

“You start at a point beyond religion and go inwards from there.” So said Bulent Rauf, consultant to the Beshara Trust from 1971 to 1987.  His striking and intriguing statement is the starting point for the Beshara online courses, whose aim is to acknowledge the one reality that underlies all religious and secular beliefs and to allow for the exploration of inner meanings.

The Ways of the Heart courses are designed to facilitate an understanding of the deepest aspects of the human being. We are looking to awaken the identity that the 13th Century poet and mystic Jalāluddīn Rūmī voiced as: “I am not of the East nor of the West. My place is the placeless, my trace is the traceless,” and also when he says: “I am pure Light.”

The aim of these courses of study and discussion is to open up a transformation in perspective. It is based on a series of essential themes that are relevant, contemporary and timeless. There is an aspect of ourselves that longs to escape what the scientist John G Bennett memorably called the ‘prison of consciousness’, and to find instead its own total liberation. As Rumi himself put it at the beginning of his epic Mathnawi: “Burst your bonds and be free!”

The Ways of the Heart III course consists of five themes and ten online seminars on the following themes:

The Essential
The Perfect Human
The Self – Subsistent
The Straight Path
The Four Pillars of Wisdom.

This course is complete in itself and open to all, both first-time students and those who have already completed a Ways of the Heart course.

The materials for each theme will be sent four days before the first seminar. Each theme will be comprised of two Zoom online seminars – one to begin and one to end the theme. Between the two seminars there will be a course forum for discussion and reflection on the particular theme. Seminars will be recorded for students to listen to during the course period.