Most people here believe in evolution, right? Well, so do another very unlikey group who'se tradition has been recorded for thousands of years. The Sufis. It was in the tenth century they said man comes from the ocean, but even then they were derided as delusional.
You see to them, sufism is not a religion at all, it's methods simply produce effects found in other religions - that is "miracles" & other phenomena.
Here's what Idries Shah, in his book, "The Sufis" says specifically about evolution & telepathy
"Sufis believe that, expressed in one way,
humanity is evolving to a certain destiny. We are
all taking part in that evolution. Organs come
into being as a result of the need for specific
organs (Rumi). The human being's organism is
producing a new complex of organs in response to
such a need. In this age of the transcending of
time and space, the complex of organs is concerned
with the transcending of time and space. What
ordinary people regard as sporadic and occasional
bursts of telepathic or prophetic power are seen
by the Sufi as nothing less than the first
stirrings of these same organs. The difference
between all evolution up to date and the present
need for evolution is that for the past ten
thousand years or so we have been given the
possibility of a conscious evolution. So essential
is this more rarefied evolution that our future
depends upon it."
Regarding evolution from the Mathnawi (In it What is In it), Rumi says
"I died as inanimate matter and arose a plant,
I died as a plant and rose again an animal.
I died as an animal and arose a man.
Why then should I fear to become less by dying?
I shall die once again as a man"
Regarding magic & other such phenomena
"Magic is a training system as much as it is anything else.
It may be based upon experience, upon tradition of celestial
or other ascription, upon religion. Magic not only assumes
that it is possible to cause certain effects by means of
certain techniques; it also schools the individual in those
techniques. Magic, as we know it today, may be subject to
every form of rationalization. It embodies, taken as a whole
corpus of collected material, minor processes such as small
hypnotic techniques, and beliefs which attempt to duplicate
natural happenings. While Sufism cannot be taken apart to
see what its constituents are, the magical tradition, because
it is a truly composite one, can in fact be so dissected. We
are only concerned with that part -- a very large part -- of
magic which is involved in the effort to produce new
perceptions and to develop new organs of human development.
Looked at in this light, a great part of the human
heritage of magical practice (which often includes religious
practices) is seen to have geen concerned with this quest.
Magic is not so much based upon assumptions that things
can be done which transcend the normal man's capabilities,
as upon the intuitive feeling that, if you like, "faith can
move mountains." Those magical activities which are designed
to exercise the projection of thought or ideas at a distance,
or to see the future, or to attain a contact with a source
of superior knowledge, all carry their echo of a dim human
consciousness that there is a possibility of man's taking
part consciously in the work of evolution; and the feeling
of a stirring, evolving organ of perception beyond those
senses which are formally recognized by physical science
as it stands today.
Magic, then, to a Sufi, is judged according to Sufic
criteria. Is it involved in the development of man? If it
is, where does it stand in relation to the main Sufi
stream? Magic is seen, Sufistically, as generally a
deterioration of a Sufic system. The methodology and repute
of the system continues, but the essential contact with the
continuing destiny of the system is lost. The magician who
seeks to develop powers in order to profit by certain
extraphysical forces is following a fragment of a system.
Because of this, the warnings against terrible dangers in
magical dabbling or obsession are frequent, almost
invariable. It is too often assumed that the practitioners
imposed a ban on casual magic because they wanted to
preserve a monopoly. From the long-term viewpoint it is far
more evident that the practitioners themeselves have an
imperfect knowledge of the whole of the phenomenon, some of
whose parts they use. The "terrible dangers" of electricity
are not dangers at all to the man who works continuously
with electricity, and has a good technical knowledge.
Magic is worked through the heightening of emotion. No
magical phenomena take place in the cool atmosphere of the
laboratory. When the emotion is heightened to a certain
extent, a spark (as it were) jumps the gap, and what
appears to be supernormal happenings are experienced.
Familiar as an example to most people are poltergeist
phenomena. They appear only where there are adolescents
or others in state of relatively continuous nervous
(emotional) tension. They hurl stones, seem to cancel
the force of gravity, move tremendously heavy objects.
When the magician is trying, shall we say, to move a
person or an object, or influence a mind in a certain
direction, he has to go through a procedure (more or
less complicated, more or less lengthy) to arouse and
concentrate emotional force.
Because certain emotions
are more easily aroused than others, magic tends to
center around personal power, love and hatred. It is
these sensations, in the undeveloped individual, which
provide the easiest fuel, emotion, "electricity" for
the spark to jump the gap which will leap to join a
more continuous current. When the present-day
followers of the witchcraft tradition in Europe speak
of their perambulation of a circle, seeking to raise
a "cone of power," they are following this part of
the magical tradition.
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"The Sufis", Idries Shah,
pp. 378-81.
