“A classic of esoteric literature, which should be read, re-read and read again.” – from the Foreword by Peter Young. This book could be called a fruit of the courses of the Chisholme Institute, where hundreds of people have taken part in six month courses since 1975. Many of the twelve papers which it contains were given in response to a particular stage or difficulty faced by students on the course. This lends them an immediacy and an enduring usefulness, since they help to relate experiences, which many people might share, to the goal that has been recognised and accepted. Bulent Rauf did not leave a great deal of writing of his own. His great contributions were, introducing many people to the refined and sublime taste for Reality, which Ottoman spirituality at its best inherited and cultivated, his support for the establishment of the Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi Society, and the translation into English of Ibn ‘Arabi’s Fusus al-Hikam with the commentary of Ismail Hakki Bursevi, a profound, subtle and beautiful rendition of the incomparable original, were accomplished without much formal writing on his part. But the papers in Addresses, occasioned by the particular needs of students for clarification and assistance, were selected and ordered by Bulent himself. He left the collection and publication of anything else he had written to others, one outcome of which was Addresses II.
