Yogis and Sufis

The yoga culture and its healing methods are wider-ranging and older than generally realized in the West. Most people think Yoga is certain posture and exercises. These are all a tiny part of one single branch: the Hatha yoga. Nevertheless, this is important: without any drug, needle or diet, certain simple postures and exercises may dramatically change bodily health, with beneficial consequences on the mind. Then there are the Gnana yogis, yogis of the mind, who use little if any physical exercise or postures but reorient and revitalize the whole personality through their mind. Which of these two methods or systems is to be used depends on the patient or the pupil. In this, the yogis are ahead of most of us: they recognize that humans are as different as night and day. What is poison to one is cure for another.

A third type of yoga is Bhakti yoga, the yoga of devotion or love. the whole personality, mind and body, are cured by emotional input. Then there are the Karma yogis, the yogis of action. Soldiers, statesmen, business men are often cured or satisfactorily developed merely through their actions. There are the Mantram yogis, who develop through repeating magic words or chants, “mantrams”, and all of them pay attention to their breath.

Yoga, therefore, is not a narrow special practice or philosophy. It is the whole past civilization or culture of a continent, its science, religion and behaviorism rolled into one.

In the Near East a corresponding wide-ranging discipline or philosophy is and was Sufism, the inspiration behind the Hebrew, Zoroastrian, Christian and Muslim cultures and religions. The present popular fashion of connecting Sufism exclusively with Islam is deplored as much by knowledgeable Muslims as by other scholars.

Sufis have for millenniums been living side by side with yogis in India and other parts of the world. Both have benefitted and expanded their concepts. Both, again, are closely related to the Buddhists, particularly to Zen.

(excerpt from Planet Earth Demands)

The Future is (Still) Ours

Jim Dempsey added this inspired and thoughtful comment which I felt should be foregrounded here in the archives.

After reading this post I decided to purchase the book The Future is Ours.

It was extremely interesting and covered the banking system, money, inflation, deflation and basic stabilizing the economy but with a focus on allowing all citizens to have enough money/buying power as they needed to get by. This current economic crisis that began in 2008 is very relevant to the discussion in the book. It is clear that some of the solutions in the book are based on economic theories and are used to varying extent in our current economy. Likewise infrastructure spending is recommended as a mechanism to increase the money supply when excess capacity exists, but no money in the system to access this capacity. It is quite interesting because economics is about human energy or ability and the interaction between humans in the utilization of their energy or goods/services is the essense of economics.

In the quotes and theories section of the book Shamcher has questions and then answers them. One is: “How do most of us want it to be?” The answer is “Prosperous, adventurous, unrestricted, secure. We want opportunities for realizing our abilities and resources. We want free choice in every walk of life, no shortages in our stream of supplies, good and happy neighbors”

Economics is about people not money. Economic instability creates imbalance and can cause problems for all society. We need to work towards economic balance for all this will allow our minds to be free to explore more important areas of human existance.

The chapter quoted in this blog on clearing centres was of extreme interest to me. While Shamcher discusses inflation, deflation, deficits, surpluses, money supply, etc. and the associated solutions to a balanced system. The clearing system discussed above was interwoven into the discussion and its benefit of minimum inflationary impact on the money system was very interesting.

But more interesting was the idea of a mechanism for people/businesses to get credit for goods/services and use these to access others goods/services through a clearing system. I recognized this as a way to generate an economy and not being dependent on the money supply. How many communities are money poor but human energy rich and if these energies could be tapped through a clearing system described in this posting we could allow people/businesses to access the goods/services they require in exchange for their goods/services therebye rejuvenating the community and its economy.

Another quick thought is look at developing countries and specifically places like Afganistan or Iraq or any other country in distress. Many of the problems stem from lack of jobs which creates money to purchase the goods/services needed to survive. A bank where people could deposit goods/service credits and exchange with others for their requirements would create an economy from the human energy in these places. Likewise it would strengthen the community as they would be creating most of their needs internally.

Another interesting quote from Shamcher in the book is: “The scientific method can be used to explore the the atom, but let it be applied to human affairs and at once the pressure of …. party loyalty, of nationalism, or merely of established customs prevent the acceptance of valid conclusions. It is the full revelation of the spirit of science, and the fact that it envisages all of civilization and not merely useful gadgets that will bring us to the age of science. To call on present science for help is futile. To call on politicians, lawyers, clergymen, economists, is equally futile until they have learned, from science perhaps, the spirit and method of research.”

The interesting thing about this quote for me is that it suggests that we have to understand research the concept of critical thinking and looking at the facts and coming to a conclusion that makes sense.

The “Future is Ours” discusses the facts and issues trying to create understanding. There is so much that needs to happen in the world and the process of faciliating this is through researching and understanding topics and coming to balanced approachs that can be tested and adjusted helping stablize humanity.

Within the context of the above context I am currently interested in two areas of research and development:

1. The clearing bank model: I am interested in more information on this topic with the goal of fully understanding the various models available. I then plan to develop a framework for these type of bank(s) that could be used to start actual banks. I then hope to start a bank of this type and work with others to do the same. If anyone has further information on these types of banks from the past or current models please let me know.

2. The second area is the topic of research and development or the scientific model. More specifically this is an area I have been interested in a while in conjunction with some reading I have been doing of Harold Innis works on communication and media as well as some thoughts regarding frameworks for creating venues for dialogue on topics for those interested in researching and developing thoughts and projects in specific areas of human/planetary/universal interest.

Again I have a similiar idea of development of a framework for dialogue on topics through multiple medias that could help progress thought and development patterns influencing social/human development. The “spirit and method of research” Shamcher quotes aligned with the ideas regarding dialogue and information that have been percolating in my mind lately.

If anyone has any interest in either of these areas or ideas please feel free to contact me for further discussion. I have started writing on # 2 and plan on working on #1 in the near future, further information will be available somewhere on the internet as they progress. I can be reached at jim.dempsey@shaw.ca.

Full Employment and Inflation

From the Appendix to Every Willing Hand, Shamcher’s book advocating full employment for all which is particularly relevant today.

A concluding word about inflation. If full employment were, as so often alleged, bound to generate inflation, amending the Employment Act to give it real teeth might have little point. But two recent developments have brought that gloomy thesis into the most serious question — first, the ample demonstration that inflation now tends to occur even without full employment, and second, the not unrelated shift of informed public opinion into favoring an incomes policy of some kind to help maintain price stability. Thus full employment need no longer carry such burdens as do not, properly speaking, belong to it.

More than that, however, it is here submitted that a program of guaranteed full employment along the lines suggested would not only not feed inflation but actually be the best cure for inflation. This is asserted for two reasons in combination. First, the ceilings on employment and on consumer spending that would be imposed under this approach would choke off upward demand spirals almost entirely. That is the built-in “mechanical” aspect. It would limit “demand pull” directly, as already emphasized, and indirectly it would also moderate the wage-demand side of the “cost push” by holding down the prices that make up the worker’s cost of living. Second, there is the psychological point that cannot be proved but that should appeal to common sense-a point that would arise from the very fact of the government’s readiness to commit itself in this unprecedented way. An agreement on the part of the government to assure a total market adequate for business prosperity, and to assure continuous full employment for labor, should be enough to persuade business and labor leaders to agree to abide by some reasonable set of price and wage guidelines.

Those who blame inflation on the incurable wickedness of Big Business or Big Labor or both often seem unaware of how far the behavior of both has been caused by the malfunctioning of our economy — its cyclical instability combined with secular weakness — the inevitability of which is precisely what needs to be denied. Once the government stood ready to assure continuously adequate total demand for products and for workers, (1) all businesses would have more chance to spread their overhead costs and hold prices down; (2) management in areas of administered pricing could logically give up planning for extra profits in boom times to cushion losses in future slumps; and (3) union leaders would feel less pressure to demand extreme hourly wage rates on the one hand, or annual pay guarantees on the other, to fortify their members against the return of unemployment.

To put this in context — as these words are being written, the country is deep in President Nixon’s economic Phase II. Whether this experiment with a Wage Board and a Price Commission will, be followed soon by selective permanent legal controls or by some other incomes policy is impossible to say. But what the government commitments proposed in this article would in any case contribute, when it comes to resolving the ultimate hard-core part of the “cost push” phenomenon, is to open the door as wide as possible to achieving essential results by voluntary cooperation.

Full Employment

From Planet Earth Demands (unpublished ms.) regarding a proposal for full employment:

While there will always be periodic changes in business activity, it may be maintained at levels that are at all times satisfactory. While some may still dislike their jobs, it is possible, in view of our many urgent options, to offer a choice of several jobs to any applicant. The Kennedy Administration planned a supersurvey that would list resources, manpower and potentials and thus put the entire nation to work based, less on workers’ previous experience, rather on being taught and trained at work in the new procedures of coming decades.

A slam-bang meeting, a talkaton of all the groups working on various parts of this jigsaw puzzle was planned when tragedy struck. [the assassination of Kennedy] These workers, who had toiled with financial nightmares in many corners of the world, scattered. The effort collapsed.

These repeated efforts to bring sense and reason into the chaos of our economy has been followed by keen observers abroad, not the least because the whole world’s economy and happiness is so closely related to America’s. Sir William Beveridge, one of England’s clearest and most dedicated thinkers, said on various occasions, “If the United States, possibly the only nation able to achieve full employment here and now — would actually accomplish this, she would thereby do more good than by all her aid and all her wars — not only for herself but for all of us.”

Teachers, Successors

From various correspondence:

You opened your eyes and let me look into your mind and beyond to your heart and soul.  A “thank you” is too feeble to express my feeling.  Didn’t you give me glimpse of The ONLY BEING?

And “manners” – are signs of the heart.

Please forgive me when, like that sufi in one of Idries Shah’s stories, I tell some people what they want to hear, because, as this sufi explained, “I am not his teacher, so I just support his belief in his own way, which is all he can take.”

In the West, discipleship are not and cannot be exactly as in the East.  Pir-O-Murshid learned this gradually, painfully, but at last perfectly.   There will always be different degrees of discipleship, not merely “mureeds and true mureeds” but a million finely distinguishable degrees.

No “successor” is a copy of the predecessor.

You have no slightest obligation to admire or approve what one pir thinks or does, not, for that matter do you need to criticise him, but, like me, you see the flame from within your own heart and so you can storm ahead and work and suffer all kinds of people, the devoted pir–worshippers , the equally devoted God–worshippers who see no “pir”.

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Two Handwritten Letters to SAM

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To SAM: “We are all black bags.”

15 March 1967

My dear Sufi Achmed Murad Chisty Cheleby Samuel Lewis & Brother,

Among many other things, our communication of March 13 indicates you are willing to sacrifice yourself into serving the sufi movement in collaboration with Vilayat and the most humble and brutally proud undersigned and in this line any and all posts of confidence are open to you at your choice. The head of the Brotherhood? It is yours. The head of any other activity? It is yours. It is I who determine those things. Have I ever given the impression of not fully acknowledging and appreciating you? If so tell me when and where so that I may repent and strew ashes over my dinner jacket. (I have no dinner jacket but my suit may do.)

I was catapulted into my incongruous position without my knowledge and now has this enormous power which, also, I shall surrender to you if Vilayat so chooseth. Actually I was appointed by Allah, God, the Unfathomable at the age of 8 to revolutionize the religious temper of the world and I hoped to do it on my own terms, that is, God’s terms. I have temporarily lent a hand to the sufis because they are less errant than many other groups. They are not perfect, not one of them, not the greatest or smallest of their masters and I proposed to Hazrat Inayat we might drop the Sufi name. And one day, if no accident interferes, I shall again cut loose and set the world aflame. Posterity will dig up my past and all influences and say I was this and a that. Actually only God exists. The man in a black bag who attended the student meetings in Corvallis, Oregon had the right idea. The black robes of the Universal Worship is basically the same idea. We are all black bags, if we only knew. Therefore I am not as moved as I should be by all your negative experiences. What do you expect? What did friend Jesus expect? to be tortured to death. Well, he actually survived and was brought to India by yogis. He took in the entire yoga lore in addition to, previously, the sufi lore. Now he is a good teacher to those who tune in.
Love
Shamcher

[Written under a Sufi Movement letterhead.]

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Mansur Johnson’s Book on Murshid SAM

We’ve been posting several letters from Shamcher to Murshid SAM lately, so this review fits right in!

Mansur Johnson’s Murshid

Mansur Johnson’s recent book, Murshid, is a wide ranging account of his pivotal years as student and secretary to the remarkable sufi mystic, Samuel L. Lewis, now known as Murshid Sufi Ahmed Murad Chishti. Taking place at the end of the 60s, the memoir draws directly from Johnson’s diaries in which he noted both the sacred and the mundane, along with quotes from Lewis’s correspondence of the day.

The book, a Personal Memoir of Life with American Sufi Samuel L. Lewis, covers the years 1967-1970, as the transformational energies of an increased interest in spirituality in San Francisco area drew students and seekers into the sweep of new consciousness.

This consciousness was nothing new, however, to experienced sufi Murshid SAM, who soon found himself to be a teacher and leader of this new generation of seekers. Speaking to them in a language that had never blossomed in quite that way before, using dance and song and meditation and all his years of training in Zen, Sufism, Yoga, esoterics, using all his travels and awareness, and mostly by following his inner intuition Murshid SAM gave not only Sufi Dances (now the Dances of Universal Peace) but an inspiring rare outlook on the world which for some became a lasting awakening.

What was happening behind the scenes in San Francisco, while he spread his message of awareness? Who had supported him before the young people began to flock at his feet? Many such questions are answered in this book, but many are still left to be discovered in other writings on his life and work. Mansur has simply selected a small area in which to focus and express some of the larger imponderables. Many of these larger philosophical issues he has left to others to define. Instead, he gives us an immediacy in the form of an almost daily log.

Here his edited and slightly annotated diary entries mingle with quotes from correspondence and unpublished papers. Covering the time of the origin of the San Francisco Oracle, the Sufi Dances in the park, and the rise of the Grateful Dead, the book reveals a social history by intimation. It also directly documents Mansur’s relationship with Murshid SAM as his pupil and oft-time secretary, and bravely reveals both his youthful devotion and limitations.

One value of this book lies in the very details that many readers could find superfluous. A scholar himself, Mansur is aware that the price of the meal taken at a specific restaurant could be of interest in the future. A mention of a name, a detail that seems to over-ride other information, these are all here as diarized, and as such, they provide a verity that mere theoretical or mystical speculation would never offer.

Sufi history (in the west) and politics of spiritual organizations, are all touched upon here, as are the direct ways that his teacher had to struggle to create a capacity for the work that he had to complete in his lifetime. The pupils he worked with, many of whom are mentioned in this memoir, went on to carry on his legacy. (It was almost as if they had been gathered to him to receive the energies in his final years on earth, to validate, amplify and pass them on.)

None of this is emphasized in the memoir, which is as down to earth as you can get, and gossipy as well. Any one participant in any event has his own point of view, and Mansur Johnson is no exception. Not only by repeating some of Murshid’s words on his opposition to Paul Reps, a famous fellow-pupil of Inayat Khan, but also by printing some of his own opinions on events, Johnson could be accused of not telling the whole story, or of being biased. Everyone caught in human events is naturally biased and subjective – this is the value of first-person narrative history. We will have to wait for alternative first-person accounts to give other aspects, or wait further for an impartial history.

Until then, we have Mansur’s account – which is inspiring and revealing. Shamcher (an old friend of SAM’s and also a fellow-pupil of Inayat Khan) often repeated the quote that history was the story of something that never happened, written by someone who wasn’t there. Well, Mansur was there, and because of that his book is a great read!

Murshid is a long and dense work, yet it only covers a few years. It is filled with photographs, and is rich with detailed lists: the 422 characters mentioned, a full glossary of terms, an extensive index and full bibliography of books mentioned. Johnson indicates that a shorter version may be released in the future, and perhaps in that volume he may reveal more of how he actually felt, or what his conclusions are, now that life and time have taken their course.

From the heavens to the most mundane, the book takes the reader on an extraordinary journey. It’s fascinating for its behind-the-scenes look at what happens in the close proximity to a mystic. Some may feel “you had to be there” to fully understand what this book is about. I disagree. In many ways, with this book Mansur takes his readers a place in proximity to Murshid SAM where very few individuals had the opportunity to go. Into the room where he is preparing to give a talk to his students. Into the car to drive to do necessary errands. Into the mystical realm where much remains unexplained. - Carol Sill

More info, including an audio talk on the book, can be found on Mansur Johnson’s site.

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To SAM: Mystics

2 Feb 67

My dear Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisty,

You have a prominent place in a book that will catapult this civilisation, you are compared with Dag Hammarskjold, a mystic who kept so secret about his mysticism out of a modesty that was pride-colored while you make mysticism a common heritage by crying from the housetops, out of a selflessness that needs neither pride nor humility. And when that book appears you will become desperate because you will be flooded with pupils, newsmen, requests, some proper, some dumb, but that’s the way the ball bounces.

Nothing is mentioned about your nagging jeremiads when the talk is about you, but in another chapter the wailing, the infirmities of so many mystics is mentioned and put in its place and the extremely few who have freed themselves of this hampering widdledebiddle are mentioned. Perhaps, some day, you will be one of those. You know, don’t you, that it is extremely untrue to talk of yourself as not recognized. You are recognized by all who matter — but many of these are also concerned about this very shortcoming with you. Why bother? There is in this physical world no justice. There couldn’t be. Sooner or later all masters know. That they don’t bother you with it doesn’t mean they don’t know. Also when you speak of the many brotherhoods as a fake — the opposite is true. The many show that many care. Only, you need not and should not join, but you should and must be gracious, encouraging, for these, like the sects, is all some have and it you take that away from them before they are ready they will go to worse hell — and, for a while, so will you. As to the “family” leave me worry about that. You have detached yourself and any mention of them reflects only on you, as unreliable. And why should you pretend to be unreliable? For you aren’t — and yes, that incident with lnayat visiting: He also said “He (Sam) needs it (his visits) and deserves it” and while he said in words I should not write you, he winked his eyes that I should.

Your statement that Reps can teach and not be taught I take as a sign that you can be both teaching and taught and thank God for that.

Blessing from the unfathomable, all-pervading

Shamcher

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To SAM: Murshid?

12-27-67
My dear Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisty,

Yes, the avatar business runs so parallel in our minds as so many other things. At the camp of the Dalai Lama in Mussoree in the Himalayas there was a picture of Meher Baba, and the Indian police man in charge of the Dalai Lama explained to me that a lady representing Meher Baba had put it up (the lady was not received by the Dalai Lama) and asked me if I felt anything because, he said, “one is supposed to feel it when one is near an Avatar” so, by a succession of short statements and answers we came very close and at last to the fact that “This age is not the age of Avatars.”

And so, dear Sam, with most things, we think and feel along kindred lines, so please do not ever jump into an antagonism for it is always due to either lack of clarity on my part or on yours. You wrote me under title “MURSHID”, for the second time and I have to wiggle out of any such accusation. You have all the right to use any title on yourself and I acknowledge them all with pleasure. But just as you usually call yourself Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisty, which is your proper name, inscribed in heaven — so I am called Shamcher and nothing else, and just as you usually do not call yourself Murshid so you must give me that Same right not to be called that or any other title.

No no, I did not say you were shaking the world, neither that I was “trying” or not trying. I am not trying anything. I am just shaking it for that is so written, and by shaking it, ripe plums , among other things, drop into your lap, and there are many other consequences. The one who shakes the world does not try or do anything of his own purpose. It was told me long ago and I forgot it — until it happens, but how does it happen? Of course I do not know. But don’t worry about that, just be respectful and never, never give me any title, just as I am respectful of you and give you only the titles you put in my mouth to use.

Incidentally, in your later letters there has been some indications that you know what a murshid is. Most people under this title do not know. This, again, does not matter. But remember that everything and everything that you do and think is clearly recorded and can be read, so do not write or talk about not being recognized. You are, by any and all who can read. The others matter no more than the silent rocks. Never try to disappoint me, for I know before you write — know truth, and all the spirits know you, whether in Asia or in Europe or America, in fact there is no Asia, Europe or America.

There is also something else about this age: It needs no howling and wailing as Mohammed and Rumi and many others did at another age. It does not become this age.

Shamcher

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