Rani Kathleen McLaughlin teaches within the Sufi lineage of Hazrat Inayat Khan. She teaches Sufi classes, meditation and offers individual spiritual guidance. She has given lectures at the Universelle of the International Sufi Movement in Katwijk Holland. She has also published articles in the Sufi journal Toward the One , including The Veil of Beauty and The shadow of the Beloved. Several of her published articles, as well as sermons and lectures are available on this website.
Murshida Rani was a Professor of World Religions at lewis and Clark College in Portland, Oregon (1970-1987). During these years she had the opportunity to study the major religions of the world, and was continually struck by the similarities of the mystical teachings and the universal themes in symbols and myths, despite theological and historical differences in the world’s religions. When she found the writings of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan, she was amazed to discover his teachings on the Unity of Religious Ideals and the divinity of the Human Soul, along with specific instructions for meditation and spiritual practices so that people could realize these Truths in personal experience. Having traveled in India, and intensively studied Hindu and Buddhist meditation, she left her academic career in order to study Western psychology as thoroughly as she had studied Eastern psychology. She was particularly interested in how people actually live their beliefs, and the ways in which Western people developed psychological problems when they took up Eastern spiritual practices. Since 1990 she has worked as a psychotherapist and psychoanalyst in private practice in Portland, Oregon.
Having met Murshid Hidayat in the 1970s, Murshida Rani was inspired by his vision for the Federation of the Sufi Message. She worked with him for over twenty years to facilitate communication between the different organizations in the lineage of Inayat Khan. She has held many positions within the Federation and within the International Sufi Movement, but has now retired from these functions. She is inspired to bring the Message of Human Brotherhood and Sisterhood to the world that needs it, and to teach the esoteric practices of the Inner School.
