CENTER FOR CONTEMPLATIVE STUDIES

The life of Lex Nur Hixon shows the deep certainty and deep commitment to Truth and humanity that guided his steps, and his abundant legacy is, without a doubt, a wide-open window that invites us to participate in the exceptional breadth, spiritual freedom and clear vision of Alexander Paul Hixon, the name he received at birth —in Pasadena, California, United States—, on the day of the celebration of the Nativity of Jesus, in 1942.

Throughout three decades of his life, his presence unfolds in a passionate search and in the study and practice that made him the receptacle of five spiritual lineages. In his literary work, composed mainly of eleven books, as well as in the articles, poems, conferences and interviews he gave in the United States and abroad, he freely shares the penetrating knowledge arising from the transcendent experience of the oneness of existence, also called the perennial religion.

Lex as his friends call him, grows up in a family that defends intellectual freedom. And at the age of thirteen, he enters a conservative scholastic academy in Connecticut. There, for four years, he experienced an intense discipline that he would later describe as “blessed, almost monastic.” “Guided by wonderful minds and spirits,” he discovered himself to be a passionate seeker of Truth, and a committed practitioner of Philosophy, music, and poetry, currents that were interwoven and fed back into each other throughout his life in exceptional ways. His refined performance of the guitar and other string instruments reflects a training that includes teachers of the stature of the Spanish guitarist Carlos Montoya (flamenco guitar) and Vasant Rai (sarod master), with whom he studied classical music from India.

Instead of returning to the comfortable cultural environment of California, he remained in a more challenging context—on the East Coast of the United States—to pursue his bachelor’s degree at Yale University, and later, he would move to New York City. He graduated in Philosophy with a thesis on the German philosopher Soren Kierkegaard, whom he recognizes as his first spiritual guide: “Kierkegaard opened up the spiritual dimension to me; he clearly demonstrated that this dimension lay beyond what I called the aesthetic, the ethical, or the logical.”

At the age of 19, and under the spiritual guidance of Vine Deloria Senior—an Episcopal priest of Lakota Sioux origin and the father of his college roommate—he became a conscious Christian. In him, the richness of non-European Christianity, of Father Deloria's high spiritual ideals—subtly rooted in his Native American heritage—merged with the intense and existential Christianity of Kierkegaard, a sharp critic of Hegelian rationalism, the trend of expansionist European thought. Thus began his spiritual life, at the confluence of European and non-European currents.

He met the English translator from India of The Gospel of Ramakrishna, Swami Nikhilananda, when visiting the place that was listed as the book's publishing house, and began a relationship that lasted for the last 7 years of the Swami's life. This guide, a renunciant monk in the Sri Ramakrishna Order of Calcutta, of the Advaita Vedanta tradition, was godfather to his four children. From 1971 to 1984, Lex Hixon produced and hosted “In the Spirit,” one of the most outstanding and original radio programs ever made, which was broadcast on the station WBAI cultural center. During this foray into journalism, he made the wisdom of the great sacred traditions widely known by transmitting his insightful conversations with teachers, practitioners and scholars from all nations and spiritual traditions.

In 1975 he offered a course at the New School for Social Research. The editing of the transcripts of these lectures culminated in the publication of his first book: Coming Home: The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions, now a classic on the subject. (Ed. Doubleday, 1978, reprinted in 1988 by Jeremy Tarcher.)

In 1978, he met the great spiritual master from Istanbul: Shaykh Muzaffer Ozak al-Jerrahi (1916-1985) —who had spiritually led the Halveti Jerrahi Sufi Order for 25 years. This Sufi mystical Order had already been in existence for 700 years. In 1980, the Shaykh, filled with love for him, placed the crown of the Order on his head in the newly inaugurated Masjid al Farah in New York City and formally asked him to assume responsibility as the spiritual guide of the growing community of seekers. Fariha al Jerrahi, his spiritual sister, received the crown of the Order in the same ceremony to be a helper to him with the community. Masjid al Farah was the central home of his path in Sufism until he opened the Dergah in Mexico City which became beloved to his heart. He opened other smaller centers of Sufism which he called Circles of Nur and in each one placed a trusted representative. When he was home in New York, Shaykh Nur would lead the Sufi ceremony of Zikr every Thursday night and give a talk on Sufism in the Masjid. He would also attend the full 30 days of Ramadan retreats over the course of twelve years until his his final retreat into the realm of Beauty.

At the ripe old age of 40, Lex Hixon, after receiving the name Nur al-Jerrahi, made the major pilgrimage of Hajj to the holy cities of Mecca and Medina with his teacher. From this deep immersion in the sacred mystical tradition of Islam, known as Sufism, three books emerged: The Heart of the Qur'an (1988), The Harvest of Honey (1989), and Atom from the Sun of Knowledge (1993).

In 1987, following the guidance of dreams shown to his Mexican dervishes in New York City, Shaykh Nur traveled to Mexico and founded a new Dervish community at the center of the 2nd. largest city in the Western Hemisphere. He placed the newborn under the spiritual guidance of Amina Teslima al-Jerrahi, who in April 1995 received the Order's crown-turban. The turban was blessed by the then Grand Shaykh of the Order in Istanbul, Sefer Muhibi Dal Efendi, so that it was placed on her by Shaykh Nur, while he was at his home in New York, just seven months before his departure from this realm.

Since its birth, the community of dervishes in Mexico City has grown and strengthened year after year. Shaykh Nur especially treasures his encounter with these passionate disciples, of whom he says in the book Recolección de la miel (Honey Harvesting) —published just two years after the community was founded— that they “represent all the currents of Mexican culture, ancient and modern, and have allowed six of the mystical writings that appear in this book to flow from my being. The three long poems “El salto del derviche” (The Dervish’s Leap), “El círculo del encuentro” (The Circle of Encounter) and “Rostro y corazón del Shaykh” (Countenance and Heart of the Shaykh); the letter “Una epístola del amor” (A Letter of Love); and the essays “Nueva luz sobre la ciencia sufí” (New Light on Sufi Science) and “El hombre perfecta” (The Perfect Man). I conceived, lived and wrote these modern documents on the Sufi path in the Spanish language because of my intense love and communion with them, although I had never written or spoken in Spanish.” This profusion of mystical texts and the clear intention of getting closer to his disciples and offering them spiritual transmission in Spanish are some of the amazing fruits of his love for this community.

During the celebration of the seventh anniversary of the Order in Mexico, he declared: “What was once a possibility has become a reality.” From the beginning of the community, he cultivated with extreme care and love a deep friendship with the tradition of the Danza de los Concheros, through the captains and members of the Mesa del Santo Niño de Atocha who embraced his teachings and joined the tariqah that was just emerging in the sacred valley of Mexico City.

After the foundation of the Tariqah in Mexico, Lex Nur Hixon visited the community on numerous occasions during seven years, and nurtured it with the mystical teachings of it’s dazzling lineage. On his last visit to Mexico, in December 1994, he led the community for the last time in a pilgrimage to the sanctuary of the Virgin of Guadalupe that he made a yearly tradition. His affinity and intimate relationship with the feminine and nurturing aspect of Truth is a thread that shines through his entire spiritual journey.

The vast and expansive soul of Shaykh Nur migrated to the kingdom of divine beauty on November 1, 1995, a date marked as sacred in several of the traditions that he explored: the Day of All Saints. His comprehensive way of loving the Truth was not satisfied with the contemplation of a single face of the Beloved. He wanted to love Him/Her through all the most beautiful forms.

The day before his transition to the Kingdom of Divine Delight or mahasamadhi, Amina Teslima called him as she always did on the day of her birthday and he only said: "Your birthday is my birthday.” He was completely present and conscious as the final transcendence approached.

Lex Nur Hixon sought and found Divinity in various ways, he sailed on different sacred rivers, through forms and without any form, immersing himself deeply in the integral and particular vision of each one of the sacred paths he practiced.

He remained conscious and light until the moment of leaving the physical body despite facing cancer. He left this world in the same way he lived: spiritually conscious and fully present. His last book Living Buddha Zen was published just before his death.

His literary work was the product of direct experience in the field of spirituality and expresses his intellectual refinement and high human sensitivity.

He never resigned himself to only assuming the role of a scholar or expert of religions in the academic field. His intense 30-year spiritual practice and his own adventure of spiritual realization lead commentators of his literary work to refer to him as “a devoted scholar of religions, intimately versed in the traditions of faith.” As a tribute to his friend, the well-known Buddhist poet Allen Ginsberg commented: “Lex Hixon was a pioneer of the spiritual renaissance of the Americas in the last four decades.”