Zapping the PRAM

 

 

Letters: Shamcher Beorse and Carol Sill, 1974 – 1977

History is one way of making a gestalt: historical references, figures from the past release the foreground event from being stuck in only what it says it is.  –James Hillman

My dear friend Carol Sill has just published a very wonderful book, a collection of the letters written between her and Murshid Shamcher (Bryn) Beorse, one of Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan’s chief students, named by him as “the esoteric inner head of the Sufi Order” during and after his life, for the diplomatic work and amazing teaching he gave during his lifetime, a very special containment for the nascent Sufi Message of that time.  At Inayat Khan’s direction, Shamcher was referred to on many occasions by his son, Pir Vilayat, as “the esoteric inner head of the Sufi Order,” a vital role at the time, and one he was perfectly suited for, for he loved everyone with a complete lack of judgment.  He was many things to many people in his long life:  Shamcher has been described by another of his students, Carol Sokoloff, as “the ideal of what a contemporary western mystic can be — an activist, an artist, a spiritual guide — working in all realms, the scientific, the literary, the political and the spiritual.”  We knew him as all these things, but he refused to take the titles or roles people wanted to give him, and he was a law unto himself in the Sufi Order, working tirelessly to be the glue that held us together during troubled times.  He was at the same time a diplomat and an outlaw, but most of all, to some of us, he was a friend beyond compare.

Shamcher lived a spotless life, yet as he himself said, he “loved women,” and while he had many friends of both genders, these letters are not for the faint of heart, for he understood and revered women in a way few men can, and he was entirely capable of pouring out his devotion in words if not acts, reaching inside the emotion of divine love in a way that could be daunting to the timid, yet always transformative.  Carol was one of the few who was able to answer him in kind, and this collection of letters is particularly searing, because Shamcher came into Carol’s life at the time of the tragic drowning death of her seven-year-old son, and supported her while she lived through that very special agony.  As a result of their relationship, Carol became a teacher and Siraj in the Universal Worship of the Sufi Movement in Canada, and worked hard for the Message for many years.  Shamcher particularly wanted these letters to be published, yet I know that she has hesitated, as many of us who knew him well have, because not everyone might understand the depth of his devotion and the strength of his love for his friends and students and his special way of expressing these.  Now that she has finally published them, they can be ordered through links on the site http://www.letters.shamcher.com/.  Additionally, for those who haven’t visited the archives for his writings and teachings, visit http://www.shamcher.org/and http://shamcher.wordpress.com/

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Among Shamcher’s last words were “there are NO teachers!  YOU are the teacher!” and he seldom took students or gave initiations.  He was a devoted correspondent, however, typing his letters on the backs of torn-off holiday cards quite often, on a manual typewriter, with little attention to mechanical details.  He protected the confidentiality of those who wrote TO him, but he left all his own written correspondence to Carol, and she has worked for years to put his letters into readable form.  I was one of Shamcher’s students, and I have my own stack of his letters, so I personally know what kind of work that must have been, yet what a tremendous gift to those of us who received those letters and those of us who can now read them.

For those who are members of or interested in the Sufi Order International, reading the stories of our early teachers and the early days of this organization is important, for it is in understanding our past that we can create the future.

Buy the book!!!

Returning into God

from Gustave Doré's illustrations to Dante's Divine Comedy

Nirvana is as a star in our hearts which we develop; and as we develop it, it becomes brilliant.

Its brilliance consumes all the wrong of life until nothing is left but that purity which is the divine light.  – Inayat Khan

Here in the Piedmont of North Carolina, I am beginning to wonder if winter is ever going to begin.  Just a few days until Christmas, and the temperatures are still sometimes in the seventies every day.  This afternoon a heavy, chill rain began, and I sat on the porch in my rocking chair to practice.  No need for music today!  The rain pounding on the roof, clattering in the gutters and dripping endlessly into the dirt under the bushes says all that needs to be said.

I suppose some would call it magical thinking, but I see that the Spirit of Guidance finds all kinds of ways to answer my questions and concerns.  Last weekend, we were in a bookshop in Chapel Hill, a used bookshop, and I found one of Ram Dass’s books, STILL HERE.  I remember when he was the rock star of the New Age movement, back in the 60s and 70s, and I consider him to be one of my best friends, even though we’ve only met a few times, and then wordlessly.  He always seemed to play the role of, as he himself said, “the one who goes before.”  In recent years, he is evidently going before us into the aging process, and he kicked that off with a severe stroke that hastened things quite a bit.  It is heartening to see him still doing his work, making use of the Internet now that he can no longer travel (www.ramdass.org).  The crowds are definitely smaller these days, even online, and I feel rather sad about that, but he has done good work, and perhaps, as he says in his book, an increasing withdrawal and loneliness is part of the process of returning the soul to God.  As to the book, it is very wonderful, just what I needed, for since my health issues began a few years ago, I have been rather lost, still determined to do things as I once did, constantly asking “What’s next?  What should I do?” and beating myself up for my increasing need for solitude and quiet, instead of relaxing into them as a natural part of the growth process.  In this last year, when I have surrendered to my need for retreat, I have continued to ask myself “When will this be over?  When will I return?” and now I’m thinking. . .  ”What if I don’t?”  ”Do I have to?”  Perhaps.  Perhaps not.  But I think what life is calling for me and other elders to do, is to live into a new mode of being, one that is actually intrinsic to the balance this old world so badly needs, with the so-often ego-based rush-rush of the younger generations, the constant need to do, to acquire, to accomplish, to kill, to have, to. . . well, to not get caught in the solitude of reality.  I suppose it is all about fear, really.  We are all deers afraid to get caught in the headlights of what is, afraid to relinquish control, afraid of annihilation.  That last, I find (annihilation), is increasingly the only thing that makes sense to me.  One comes to feel (if one is fortunate, I think) that death is the goal and the healing, that death not of the body–although obviously that will come–but of one’s concepts, one’s ambitions, one’s ideas about reality, ultimately one’s sense of oneself as a separate entity. . .  Really, that’s what all this mystical stuff is about, but the ego–the temporal self–screams in fear at the very idea.  It has taken me many years and much desperation to subdue the screaming of my own nafs, the Arabic word for the ego, the self we all think we are, the dimensions of which we try to keep hidden, even as it runs the show with an iron hand, until. . .we decide to stop it (mine is still subject to frequent yelps, by the way).  I find that this process has taken more than a decision, and God knows it took me long enough to even get to the decision, but once made, one can begin the best journey of all in life.  My road looks like a lonely one at first glance, but I find that increasingly I am joined by all the holy women and men I called to my journey, and the scenery is increasingly beautiful.  Ah, but that nafs!  Oh well, I suppose we need the nafs as long as we need it.

As some ancient Sufi said, the journey to God is a finite one.  The journey in God is never ends.

Unconditional Love

There are those with whom we resonate quite naturally by the gift of affinity, or those dear to us whom we admire even if we do not see eye to eye with them.  But we are challenged in our capacity to love by those whom we find difficult to love, or who make themselves difficult to love, whose personality we criticize, or whose actions we condemn, those who have treated us unjustly or even abused our confidence.  In fact this is precisely where dislike or simply incompatibility escalates to the point of culminating in resentment.  It is resentment that constitutes the veil separating us from our celestrial counterpart and will block access to our celestial home in the hereafter.  – Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, Life is a Pilgrimage

The best Christmas present I got. . .

Season of Light

May all people be free