Irina Tweedie

Personal

Vocation

Russian-British Sufi and teacher of the Naqshbandiyya-Mujaddidiya order, whose book, Daughter of Fire: A Diary of a Spiritual Training with a Sufi Master is an account of a spiritual training with a Sufi Master and the most detailed account of the relationship between disciple and teacher that exists in Western Literature. The book was first published in its abridged form as The Chasm of Fire which has sold over 100,000 copies and has been translated into five languages. Her guru was Radha Mohan Lal (1893-1966), a Hindu Sufi sheikh from the Naqshbandiyya-Mujadiddiya order, living in Kanpur. She became one of the first Western women trained in the Naqshbandi system. She first Radha Mohan Lal him on 2 October 1961, through her friend Lilian Silburn (1908-1993), a Sanskrit scholar and translator at the Sorbonne. After her guru's death in 1966, she returned to England where she started a Sufi meditation group in North London. Gradually the group spread throughout Europe and North America. Irina Tweedie retired in 1992 after having named Llewellyn Vaughan-Lee as her successor. She died on 23 August 1999, aged 92. Link to Wikipedia biography