(An interview of Whitman Eliot Blake by Soren Nijilsen, reporter for the influential German ezine Journal Des Kettensäge Verkäufers, here gratefully reprinted.)

WE: Address me? Well. Let’s see… You may address me as Your Corpulence.

Soren: Please pardon me if my English is not fully competent, but is not corpulence to be fat? And yet you are quite thin.

WE: (huffily) I will remind you that it is considered discourteous to challenge a man’s pretensions at the first meeting. Violation of adab, and all.

Soren: I’m sorry. I meant no offense. I was just noting that you are thin, and that is all.

WE: Perhaps you do not recognize that my title has significance in another dimension, other than the mere physical. My title, Your Corpulence indicates my spiritual stature, which is, as the name would suggest… obese.

Soren: Yes? Very large?

WE: Most assuredly. Almost revoltingly so.

Soren: But let us perhaps start. Let me ask you…. since the Blaketashis came out into the public view a few years ago, there has been much public note has been taken of your group, and I personally have read several articles, from different countries, written about various aspects of Blaketashism. Also various groupings of Blaketashis have emerged also into the public view across the world in the last years… And so, my question is, what are your thoughts about the current hervorragend…notoriety enjoyed by the Blaketashis?

WE: My first thought is that that Public Relations guy we hired was worth every dollar.

Soren: Really? Really? I had assumed that your success could only be attributed to the flow of baraka or God’s will within the world, or that at least that you would think that was the reason.

WE: When I am sometimes inclined to think such thoughts, I then remember the success of Ms. Britney Spears, and am chastened.

Soren: Chastened?

WE: If one measures success as a spiritual accomplishment, then I would be forced to conclude that Britney Spears is inwardly… Mother Theresa. And I would rather think that the Blaketashi’s success was a fluke, than to think that.

Soren: In what has been written about the Blaketashis, there is some commentary that the whole Blaketashi phenomenon is some sort of joke. A foil, if you will. While others think that your group are real Sufis. Might I ask for your comment about which of these your group really is?

WE: Well, your question assumes that a joke and a foil have no significance, and that the required attitude of a ‘real’ Sufi is earnestness. As your assumptions are untrue, well, we live completely in each of these dimensions, and many more which you have not noted.

Soren: Such as?

WE: As a spiritual laxative, as it were. But I see that you do not have the esoteric background to discuss this matter.

Soren: Well? Let me ask you, then… I understand from my discussions with your Khalifa that since your group has gone public, that you have received many thousand emails from people around the world.

WE: That’s correct.

Soren: What kind of responses have you received? Are there any patterns?

WE: We tend to get three or four sorts of inquiry, or sort of comment. We get numbers of messages from the dissolving circle of persons interested in the writings of Idries Shah; and we get messages from people who see in poetry what we, the Blaketashis, see in poetry; and then, we get messages from the esotericists, who are interested in capacities like the lataif. And then there are the others…

Soren: The others?

WE: Yes. The naïve. The credulous. The patently insane.

Soren: Which sort of message does your group find most compelling?

WE: Well, it all depends on one’s standard, doesn’t it? For sheer entertainment value, the patently insane win hands down. But if we are talking about those messages in which we understand our common brotherhood and sisterhood with that of the writer, why… that is with those who speak of poetry.

Soren: What about the Shah group? What about the esotericists? Does not the Blaketashi resonate, if that is the word, with these?

WE: To an extent, but to a lesser extent.

Soren: Why is that? In regards to Shah?

WE: Well, there is an old Zen koan which says that if you meet the Buddha on the road, kill him. Same thing needs to be said now about Idries Shah, dead though he be. Dig him up and burn his body!

Soren: Why do you feel that way?

WE: We receive a steady stream of messages from those who have circled in his orbit for decades, who are searching for ‘the Sufic current’ and the ‘teacher of the age.’ Prior to Shah, Sufism was properly understood to be a cottage industry, distributed ubiquitously amongst many places and cultures. After Shah, it took on an arcane sense, that stirred up the imaginations of those in the west who delighted in the thought of becoming part of the mystical elite, of the secret brotherhood who wield great powers… The Knight Templar wannabees."