This is a book about the intersection of Sufi and Hasidic wisdom as gleaned from the lives and teachings of Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, the founder of the Jewish Renewal Movement and Pir Vilayat Khan, the head and spiritual director of the Sufi Order of the West. The foreword is by Netanel Miles-Yépez who is one of the founders of the Adam Kadmon Book imprint as well as a Pir and founder of a Jewish-Sufi lineage which was blessed and inspired by Reb Zalman and Pir Vilayat. Reb Zalman and Pir Vilayat knew and held each other in the highest regard while still living. Indeed they were initiated into each other’s spiritual community. More than anything, this book shows how a deep spirituality can be developed that is rooted in religious tradition but transcends it. "For centuries the spiritual cross-pollination between Jewish mystics and Sufi saints has enriched both traditions. When Oceans Merge invites you to learn from two great contemporary mystics, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan and Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi, and to awaken to the Perennial Wisdom each of them shares. When Oceans Merge is a powerful antidote to the ignorance and arrogance dominating much religion today." —Rabbi Rami Shapiro, author of Perennial Wisdom for the Spiritually Independent Gregory Blann, also known as Muhammad Jamal al-Jerrahi, is a sheikh in the Halveti-Jerrahi order of Dervishes and the author of Lifting the Boundaries: Muzaffer Efendi and the Transmission of Sufism to the West and The Garden of Mystic Love: The Origin and Formation of the Great Sufi Orders . Netanel Miles-Yépez is an artist and religious scholar. Born into a Mexican-American family, he discovered in his late teens his family’s hidden Jewish roots and began a serious exploration of Judaism and other religions. He has taught in the Department of Religious Studies at Naropa University. Foreword: The Merging of Two Oceans—The Making of a Sufi-Hasidic Lineage and a Universal Priesthood Netanel Miles-Yépez Toward the One The Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty The Only Being United with all the Illuminated Souls Who form the Embodiment of the Master The Spirit of Guidance --- Likhrat ha-ehad Ha-yahid ha-ehadv’ha-m’yuhad Shleimut ha-ahavah, ha-tzedekv’ha-tif’eret Ha-nimtza ha-yahid Ha-kolelkol ha-n’shamot ha-ne’orot Yotzreihag’shammat ha-rabbi Ha-ruah ha-kodesh Sometime in the mid-to-late 70s, my teacher, Rabbi Zalman Schachter-Shalomi―better known as ‘Reb Zalman’―took it upon himself to translate the universalist Sufi prayer “Toward the One” into the traditional Hebrew of Hasidic Jews in Eastern Europe. The prayer itself was composed in English by the first Sufi master to bring Sufism to the West, Hazrat Inayat Khan, and is arguably one of the most popular non-sectarian prayers in the world today. Many years after he first encountered it, Reb Zalman wrote that he initially had trouble getting through a single recitation of the prayer . . . For even as I was speaking, I would be lifted “Toward the One” to regions of “Love, Harmony, and Beauty” where my feet no longer touched the ground of materiality, but instead were grounded in “The Only Being.” I was overwhelmed by the energetic qurb ―‘proximity’ to the One―in the words themselves. There was such holy precision in them and manifest spiritual energy that my heart could not fail to respond to them. And, as with other things that touched me powerfully from outside of the Jewish tradition, I immediately wanted to translate it into Hebrew, the language of my spiritual upbringing. As many people have often asked me how such an important Hasidic rabbi, trained in the traditional world of Judaism, could become a Sufi―indeed, a Sufi sheikh interested in translating the “Toward the One” into Hebrew―I want to tell the story of how this happened, and indeed, of how this same Hasidic rabbi also contributed significantly to universalist Sufism through his relationship with Sufi master, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan. From Hasidism to Universalist Sufism Meshullam Zalman Schachter was born in Zholkiew, Poland, in 1924, and raised in Vienna, Austria, where his parents ran a small store selling textiles. In 1938, after the Nazi annexation of Austria, the family fled with their teenage son to Belgium where, in Antwerp, he first encountered Hasidim of the famous Habad lineage of Hasidism. Hasidism is the name given to a series of communal mystical movements in Judaism, the latest initiated by Yisra’el ben Eliezer (1698-1760), called the Ba’al Shem Tov, from whom all latter-day Hasidic lineages stem. The Ba’al Shem Tov taught that God could be served joyfully through the body in ecstatic prayer, song and dance, instead of the harsh ascetic disciplines commonly practiced among mystics of the time. He taught that “worlds, souls, and divinity” were all overlapping, interpenetrating realities, ultimately reducible to one divine reality, as it says in Isaiah 6:3, “the whole earth is filled with God’s glory