March 1, 1962
My dear Harry,
This is my diary entry written at Bangalore. I have just mailed a letter to the Tourist Office. They have a complicated airline schedules which lands you on fields off or on time, but no information about these places. I got to Goa instead of Belgaeon on the way south, and stopped at Coimbatore or something like that on the way to Bangalore. I ran into a U. of Tennessee Farm Advisor there, but no time to talk and did not even know there was and experimental station there. I have had introductions to three of his colleagues—at this writing no soap, but will try tomorrow. Also there are changes of plans and train time without fore-notice, and again after notice.
Spent some time with Dr. H. R. Arakiri, Deputy Director of Agriculture, Mysore State. We discussed the Olive, Avocado, and Pecan. Avocados grow well here but they have few specimens and want more. He agreed on the need of having both Olive and Pecan here. We had a long, very cordial discussion. Mysore State has a number of soil areas, and several differences in meteorological and hydrological factors. As a province it would be almost self-sufficient and sustaining and was, on the whole, under the Maharajahs.
They are changing the Rice program to fit the Japanese methods and have increased production considerably by it. Dr. A. foresaw the need of adopting the food program to the soil survey. this was not the view of some of the men I saw today. They have one-track minds and see great hopes in the future of Cashews and Peanuts. But these are far more money-crops than proteins for the masses.
Went to the Agricultural College today but the best time was with Dr. N. P. Patil, Research Officers, Farm Management Research Station, Hebbal, Bengalore. He is working closely with TCM. When I asked him what was the chief problem, he said it was lack of knowledge of exact water requirements of trees and crops. I told him this was one of the chief items on my agenda. He has been in California, likes it and was most cordial about receiving help from our State.
I also came up with another important answer, to me, from Dr. Arakiri. He gave me this name:
R. N. Singh
Dept. of Botany,
Benares Hindu University
Varanasi
He is writing a book on “ Role of Cyanophyceae in Nitrogen Fixation,” a matter I have discussed before. There is also a book written on “Cyanophyta,” rather complete, but more closely associated with marine aspects, so this is out.
Also discussed with Patil the project of training apprentices in food processing. He liked it and would like a later report when I reach California. This is a city of landscaping, though not as much as Mysore and I expect to be visiting the Horticulturists next, and also the American, Prof. Badenhop, and thus continue later.
So far as I have seen Canna and Salvia are the dominant blooms at present. Canna are everywhere, planted as carefully as I have seen anywhere on earth and Salvia equally as good. Yews are being used as foundations in the gardens under construction. There are Sweet Williams, Zinnias now in bloom—not large and mostly for pastel shades to contracts with other colors. Oleanders in two colors also in blossom. The Points are still in color here, a dark red, with some green in the bracts. The soil is of decidedly lower pH than in other parts visited, but heavy. I shall give clearer and better reports I hope, tomorrow.
Farm Advisors. The TCM is composed of some of the best men available, who have both skills and knowledge. In practice these persons are compelled to organize staffs, establish offices and even teach—either specialists or teachers and so do not get to the farm or forest. It is difficult to criticize either these persons or their accomplishments. What is needed is to supplement there. They are too few considering the vast number of peasant-farmers in Asia.
The farm-exchange program wherein young boys were sent abroad, presumably 4-H club members has never been given the credit due it and in the establishment of the Peace Corps, has been rather overshadowed. The scientists and teachers in each land visited were very capable—many are graduates of Americans universities—but there was and is a big gap between them and even the largest and most successful land-owners.
One wonders whether it might be possible to send retired country agricultural advisors, plant pathologists who have acted in any capacity and others abroad; and whether we could not encourage simple farmers, especially from the southern States to visit the Orient. One read of complaints all over the world of the gaps between successful research and unsuccessful farming.
Stanford Research Institute has done some excellent work. Here one assumes this is literary rather than field and greenhouse experimentation. But their delving into Rice and Sugar is most important. At this writing the Japanese are carrying on rather successful quasi-industrialization of Rice production, but Sugar has some terrific problems. Some of these will be presented to the Institute—and also to research stations outside of California.
The above should not be interpreted to belittle the work of other States. Ecological factors may be of tremendous importance and examinations in situ show the difficulty of recording light-hours, light-density etc. and the part they play in the successful growing or Sugar, Cotton, etc.
Plant Protection. Much of the research done in California in this direction is by large industrial corporations, but these cannot be overlooked. The subject is complex owing to excellent work being done on disease-resistant varieties by Plant Breeders, etc.
Seeds. Finally one need not by-pass Ferry-Morse and other growers. The writer has been encouraging either free or reciprocal exchange of seeds from country to country to promise peace and good-will and the increase of food and economic crops.
The above is a summary only and does not cover all the experiences or observations or data-collations of the writer.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis—ex ‘18
October 10, 1962
My dear Gordon:
Last Sunday I visited your exhibition in the De Young Museum and lest there be anything that looks like flattery, I am giving you a sincere and somewhat detailed report. It is easy enough to be influenced by, or to respond emotionally to a friend. But looking at it from a distant view I found such enjoyment I could not look at other pictures and had to go into the Chinese room “to cool off.” What is it that evoked such responses? I left with one question: “Are you depicting the present age? or predicting the next?”
Leaving the Museum I glanced down at the Terrazzo and saw the sympathy between your work and “nature” by which I do not mean the nature of philosophers which has nothing to do with anything outside their conceptions. When I was in Cairo the differences between the inner structure of marble and its outward functions were noticeable: indeed they became the subject matter of the tourist guide who was an expert in Islamic architecture. The term “texture” is used loosely yet, but it is used and some day it no doubt will establish its own rationale.
I myself am at the bottom of the ladder, taking up drawing at the Rudolph Schaeffer School. There is a long story here bringing together the two facets of my trip abroad—the scientific one concerned with the food problems; the exoteric one concerned with occultism and mysticism. These were both entirely successful abroad, but because of the unwillingness of locals to accept I am taking a long, slow cautions path.
Fortunately the scientific people do not operate as do newsman and metaphysicians so the way has been entirely edifying; everywhere. The same is true with saints and mystics; often they see full at a glance or even without looking. The position one holds in Asian-Asia is totally different from the on previously held here. But God and man are both on my side now and there is no time to dally with metaphysical skeptics, even when they are popular.
The two phases, scientific and mystical, were synthesized by one Sufi teacher who happens to be the guide of President Ayub. That President Ayub is his disciple is not so important as that the rejection of the existence of such men is this Sufi teacher show uncertainty and insanity. Anyhow I have been assigned the subject of “Leaves.” This is basically a book of scientific research, but I have determined to do an “Audubon.” Only unlike Audubon I am a Yogi (against the acceptance of this by others is totally inconsequential.) That is to say, I know both the plant physiology and vital life force in trees and shrubs and this will undoubtedly affect the ultimate style. (I am having trouble with the typewriter.)
This would bring one to the point: what is the reality in the plant? Or leaf? Instead of answering this technologically, I hope to find it through life’s experience. I have already discussed this at the Schaeffer School and there is agreement on the value of synthesizing science and art.
I am not now prone to discuss my trip. The few persons who have been my confidants are more than satisfied. The need for writing books with a purpose overshadows any effort at autobiographical sketches. Yet memoirs are needed. Paul Brunton is now walking in my path whereas before I walked in his. I know the holy men of each land and I know the uselessness of trying to make this known, or rather this was true until recently. Last year at long last the actual Zen Buddhists in America got together and published an anthology of Zen. The American Vedantists have done the same thing. Nobody has touched Sufism though there are many times more Sufi disciples then all other schools combined. But this departure is encouraging and will be included in my The Lotus and the Universe in answer to The Lotus and the Robot.
My Main Work, “How California can help Asia” is all absorbing and has brought nothing but favorable responses everywhere. Again I am rather careful to whom I divulge plans. It will probably take two years to write but I have or can get the material. Here I have received more encouragement in the last two months than in the previous almost sixty-six years of life.
Among my minor assignments has been that of locating an architect for the new Islamabad University to be built in the projected capital of Pakistan. The possibility of “winning the cold war” by showing the superiority of American art and technology had not been tried. The “cold war” would have been over almost from the start if the editors could stay out of the way; they can’t and won’t and they really miss everything.
The one evidence of my trip is that I look younger than when I left. Some day when a few people take this matter up seriously we shall not only have more “Yogis,” we shall have people who can live long with a purpose and vitality.
Please give my regards to Jacqueline,
S. A. M.
Samuel L. Lewis
Sufi Ahmed Murad
October 13, 1962
My dear Gavin:
I have tried the meditative method and I came up with an answer which may not be satisfactory:
This method can only be used when both the method and operator are accepted. It cannot be a test of skills or of person. And it does not depend in the least on the worthiness or non-worthiness of the petitioner.
The most dramatic instance was when I used it at a very holy place in India and I received an answer—concerning an entirely different person. There was nothing to do but accept the answer. When I was leaving Pakistan this man was the only one to come to my assistance.
It was not anybody’s fault. 75% of my closest friends had been transferred from Lahore and others were away on business and this man, upon whom I was not depending, came to my help. It has reinforced my faith in the methods, and if one wills, in the “living God.”
I use a different method when I am in the position you are in, but it is a Sufic method and its use is entirely restricted to my fellow-Sufis. I am not using it now though I am in temporary straits. But a spiritual brother arrived last night and I may have to use it for him.
I shall use an entirely different method Sunday because the Muslims claim to have a belief in “Allah, the Compassionate, the Merciful” and they say He is the All-Wise. If so, why are they in this strait? In their case they are going to get a moral punch in the nose. This may only be delivered to religious (and/or) hypocritical people.
Honest occultism has to be separated from dualistic morality. When a person is in need, that one is in need.
Your I Ching message to me was about the same as I received from a very high spiritual source in Pakistan. Someday, no doubt, a section of the American public will become interested in “Real Saints, Real Shrines, Real Sages”—this will enable me to carry on an entirely different mission—in connection with the above.
Faithfully,
S. A. M.
October 16, 1962
My dear Gavin:
I don’t know whether your I Ching rending was correct but it brought out two things:
a. It accorded with all the other predictions made to me concerning my self
b. It was impersonal and included none of your own reflections.
No doubt Honey attracts more Flies than Vinegar but it also may attract undesirable insects. Much of my life has become deliberately patterned after another Samuel, viz. Morse. He stuck to and through thick and thin until he invented the telegraph. That I accept.
The last part of his life I don’t accept so much:
1. He avenged himself on all former enemies. I think he won nearly every law-suit too.
2. People became afraid to oppose him even when he was not right.
Of these I shall not indulge in 1. but I shall accept 2. and before I leave this world expect to find people accepting from me as if I were an oracle. This is a psychological reaction against blind rejections and has already taken place here among the real Zen Buddhists.
Yesterday I had another long meeting with another Asian diplomat—cordial from the start, but more cordial at the finish. With Asian-Asians I have always gotten along and think I shall continue to get along. I do not accede to the “expertism” of any European on Asian matters. A man who has a Ph.D. in the West is not always honored. A German biologist or physicist would no doubt be received by his colleagues, even put to the top, but in the medical field he would run into hazards. Why don’t our medicos accept a PhD from Europe in biology, as an authority on medicine?
And why don’t Asians accept European PhDs. as authorities on Asia? Not even in linguistics is there agreement. So I’ll stick to the position of Walt Whitman that John China may know as much about China as Prof. Von Schmeercase and Das Gupta may know as much about India ad Dr. Zioniotaph.... Here I must admit all American institutions do not agree.
Anyhow I am much encouraged by all talks with all Asians on Asian subjects, and with most Americans, too.
October 17, 1962
My dear Gavin: in re: Bryn Beorse
This is one of the saddest letters of my life. To see a great genius going toward disintegration and disruption because of some sort of false pride. It is almost forty years since I met Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan, and was already then a student of Sufism and related subjects. Or first oath, after allegiance to the Teacher is allegiance to each other. Without going into the moral of it, this has been no end of satisfaction and even “getting by” in foreign lands. But I am becoming more and more reticent concerning my experiences which by now are as varied as Bryn’s, perhaps as exciting or more, and certainly far more integrated into the body of knowledge.
In previous years I spent a whole afternoon with him at the Pakistani Consulate and have taken up the matter of Salt-Water Conversion at places far away and at levels I am not supposed to contact and do. Indeed the doors have been opened for him in many lands. But what does he do? He contacts other countries—some of whom have government I would be ashamed of and is double-crossed.
If he had trusted me one whit, just a little, he might now have a big job for a foreign government or even have inducted into our A.I.D. I don’t know what stands in the way. I am trying to arrange to meet Senator Engle with Yvonne present and I can easily meet senator Kuchel, engineer fiends present, to take up this matter of Salt-Water conversion. But there is something that has gotten beyond me and I only hope I can hold the literary threads together.
I offered to go to the Orient as a representative or agent for Prof. Reiser and to some extent did. I did not fail, but the fact is that Oliver Reiser is becoming known far and wide and at a rate we can hardly appreciate. I think he is the only man is the world whose pace, so to speak, seems to be faster than my own. I won’t explain that here but it comes out in his “Cosmic Humanism.” But Reiser is not a Hegel or Aristotle; he does not write books and let it to at that. His plans have already been instituted and instituted not because of him, but in spite of him with his consent.
In going into the Earth Science Building at Berkeley recently I came across one Mrs. Harriet Allison whom I have known since childhood. We have always been friends, rather strange sort of friends, and have gone through plenty of thick and thin. There is a strange relation here that both of us, starting off as occultists have landed as scientists or more strictly as research workers in the literature of science. Yet we both hone fundamental research in labs too-although in different sciences.
I was thoroughly amazed to see Mrs. Allison’s latest book. If one had a blue-print of Prof. Reiser before one it could not have been more perfect. So I have written to Pittsburgh, taking the first step to bring U. C. and Pittsburgh together in what Reiser calls “Project Prometheus.”
There are just two ways in which to understand my conversations with Asian diplomats: one is to know the history, religion and psychology of the Nation involved; the other is to know “Project Prometheus.” This is no potter-clay “Peace Corps.” This is the integration of the knowledge collected by each land for each and all.
There is no person who would and could fit into this picture better than Bryn and there is no person who would accept the proposals slower.
October 26, 1962
Dear Gavin:
I am sending you copy of letter to Yvonne with a purpose.
You said I have written you a mass of letter. Of course I have. I am not permitted to speak, so I write. When I am permitted to speak letters will not be necessary; or better yet, to communicate.
I remember years ago I gave a big public address on the McMahon Line. I have studied Asian history and what not. I can go to the Orient and teach as my friend Reps foretold, but here I sometimes can’t even get into classes. Now one by one every single paper which was a priori rejected has been accepted. I don’t mean rejected, I mean a priori rejected. This is something else.
You have told me about your former lives. I see no reason to double. But what about my former lives? When I was asked whether I might not join the Chinese Buddha Church I asked the requirements. The first was that I had to accept reincarnation. The “experts” know better but the poor dumb devotees accept reincarnation. I laughed and told them I remembered my former lives. They were stunned.
Now this is supposed to be a sane world and there is fighting going on between India and China and trouble in Cuba and some day somebody may ask for my opinion on the Chinese-Indian border situation. So far I get deluged with Cuba. No wonder I have to resort to stratagems.
The second is my consorting more and more with real scientists. I am planning another trip. The answers of letters to scientists and gradually the answers from real top professors in other fields is so encouraging. I think now, too, I have made three or four of them back-track in Zen alone. But the scientists don’t backtrack because they begin, continue, and end with facts, data, events, statistics and such and private opinions are out.
I function from former incarnations. The more I yell in India the more I got accepted. The reactions there are exactly the opposite of those here. Where we believe they are skeptical and where we are skeptical they believe. This covers everything including Astrology.
Cordially,
October 26, 1962
My dear Yvonne,
I am having two of my pictures reproduced here and one especially in the highest role, perhaps, I have fulfilled in this life. I have two other pictures taken at Multan where you see me with a saint. The meeting could be totally “inconceivable” in the mind of some of our former mentors and it is not so much the pictures themselves but what actually happened that may be of importance to you.
There is a tremendous difference between a real saint and a fancied one; also between a real saint and a Ph-deist, these misled and misleading mortals with whom you have been associated. The real saint works among people in all kinds of ways. When I went to this saint he asked: “What do you want?” “I have come to teach you.” “All right, teach.” If you want details you can have them … in the end all the Sufis lined up to mutual embrace, so I came back and had these pictures taken. There was an American witness too.
This “teaching” is of a different nature for it combines knowledge, wisdom and love with tremendous feeling. You touch the audience from within. Whether it be one person or a crowd, you get the keynote of the heart, or the eye (which comes to the meeting). You then know the “spirit” of the audience or person in a true sense and work in and with that spirit until there is an adjustment. This usually means the removal of pain, or complexity or a problem.
A few years ago one Marlene Casperia came here. She was sent by my friends, the Rheinholds of Hollywood and she came with the idea I could solve any problem she might have. (What and exaggeration?) In the end it simmered down to her desire to study Zen Buddhism. I asked her if she seriously wished to study Zen Buddhism and not flim-flam or Beatnikism. She said yes. I took her to the Zendo. She made considerable progress both in Zen and in all her studies and graduated with a top scholarship and is now doing research work. You can confirm this from Claude or Della.
But this madness is reflected. Everybody asks me about Cuba of which I have very few ideas and care less; or as Puck says, I don’t smoke cigars. Twenty-five years ago I gave a great public lecture on the McMahon Line (I was the authority on Asian problems then). Nobody has asked me about the Indian-Chinese crisis. No wonder I wish to be “mad” and delight in them calling me mad. One can only laugh.
I have not had the time to mind but there are more Marlenes in this world because I have run into a nest of them. Even if only one person took my prescription this was enough. It worked for her, but this is not the dualistic communication. I got into India by telling them I knew all the answers and got in immediately. Because this depends upon mutual identification. It is not difficult to help another when there is identification. Marlene not only admitted it, she wanted it—she got IT. What is this?
If we call it Love or Compassion or anything, we run emotionally all over the place and react to words. Of course God is Love. Of course God is Wisdom. These become the same when there is realization.
Why did I come home when I did? I waited a long time through thick and thin for my companion to have this realization. Then Christ came to him, although he was a Muslim and he got IT. He had a hand which palmists said was the hand-of-Christ. He already had the healing power. But the power is only a reflection of the heart. He had to have the realization. Now he has had it and thousands came to him.
How did I know this would be? My poem was written in 1942. Something happened long before that.
Warmed by the success at the Zendo I wrote a letter to the Vice-President of India and before he got it I received a call from the Consul-General to come and visit him at once—he had the carbon. Satya Agrawal introduced me to his best friend and we never had to talk. When I was in a certain sacred place I announced who I was in a former incarnation. It was accepted at once. It was accepted more recently here, then and there by real devotees of realization. It accounts for the tough scale in which I am clothed. I am not even a Chelon with a soft underbelly. What does this cover?
You won’t find it by looking at me; you will find it by looking at thee! Walt Whitman said, “In all men I see myself,” but even Gavin who is devoted to Walt can’t do that. Five seconds in the Orient and not five years here—it is no use trying to push light through opacity. But when there is opacity for light which is love which is life which is illumination which is freedom—then!
My first teacher’s first book was “A Sufi Message of Spiritual Liberty.” It was not successful because Europeans and Americans think that spirituality means discipline which means the giving up of freedom. Sure, you get a certain discipline. When you go to college to study Biology you probably drop courses in Physics, Poetry and Arabic. Nobody thinks of that. It is the same with spiritual discipline, you have to become one-pointed. After you make your key you open the door and rove through the palace. But pretty much you make your own key.
I had a vision once in which I was the gatekeeper of ! I had all the keys. I went away because this was not accepted. People refused to accept my ownership of ! I said was the gatekeeper. I still am. Ownership of ! belongs to … anybody. It costs nothing. It brings its own reward.
You look down and see sex and you look up and you get caught in a mirage. We say the sex is bad so we get caught in the mirage. That is not it at all. Who started the “good” and “bad?” I say you need fulfillment. You know you need fulfillment. We want to pass from world to realities. It can be done. I’ll show you the picture of myself with the saint. Who was the teacher! You have hardly felt my lips, you haven’t felt my test! Watch out!
Love and blessings,
S. A. M.
November 9, 1962
Dear Gavin:
Last night I was not well and one reason for going to Thea’s was I have not been well and wanted to get away from myself. While not so bad this morning, it is possible that this communication may not become all that it is intended to be.
In my second book I have a sort of theme that Sri Ramakrishna was an Avatar - and this minus (-) was supplied by Walt Whitman here. Both had aspects of cosmic consciousness, but the Guru drew the people and the wanderer went to the people. Jesus said: “I am the first and the last” which practically is poppy cock for I have never met any pretender to spiritual knowledge who has the guts enough to be the last and guts is both a pun and a multiordinal term (ask Lloyd what “multiordinal” means).
There are no worse interpreters of Ramakrishna and Vedanta than European philosophers and there are no worse interpreters of Whitman than PhDs but this life is such that a lot of persons, including yourself, prefer to go to the elite rather than the learned, and not only you but a lot of other people too. This morning Indonesia has anti-American riots. One of the reasons I expect to meet senator Engel is to bring this point to him: the Indonesians all over the world have begged me to come to their country and someday I hope to convince some Americans. You were with me at the Bowles dinner years ago and yet you have missed the point why I went. I know I can carry on the message of good-will to Indonesia and neither any PhD nor relative of the President can—God help them if they try.
I walked through the palace grounds in Japan and Thailand and as soon as I reach India and telephone the President asked me to come over. Ho-hum and call in your “authorities.” At the recent Zen conference what? No Watts, no Kerouac, no Rexroth, no Spielberg, no Saxton—how come? It could not be a real Zen conference, nobody there but us chickens—I mean realized Zionists.
Jesus, the poor mutt, said, “I am the first and the last” and the commentators say: “I am the first and the foremost.” The Scribes and Pharisees do all the lecturing. Claude saw a piece of me in Cairo. Then one day in Lahore a group of workingman were having trouble moving a sewer pipe. I passed and they challenged me to help them. So I rushed home, got my gloves, joined them and shouted “Allaho Akbar,” “Allaho Akbar,” “Allaho Akbar.” And soon the pipe was in place. The bishops, the PhDs and the “experts” are the first and foremost and I am the first and the last and don’t you forget it. When I see some critic beating me at being the last, I’ll surrender dear and no nonsense.
While all these processors and experts lecture on Karma Yoga—lecture—I have dug ditches and drains and worked with the share-croppers in the South which no self-respecting reader of Caldwell would dare do. I let the Pope be the first and the professors and bishops and “experts”—in South Carolina there was a Methodist conference and they got stuck on biblical interpretation and I came in and forced a word in edgewise and that was it. They weren’t “experts” and they were just as unanimous as the Zen Buddhists minus Watts, Kerouac, Spiegelberg, Saxton and Rexroth, The lone Ranger flies away.
Havelock Ellis wrote The Dance of Life years ago when I was at college I called on the heads of the Girls Gym and said: “You would think that and older man was having the time of his life—dancing with so many girls, fondling them and no doubt being permitted to go as far as he wanted. At least girls in one class have said “no” to nothing so far, but in one class only. I am actually miserable: it does not take me one dance to psychoanalyze the girls. I know all about them, their home life, etc. And if the girls of another class reject me, it is nothing as to how they reject the opposite class. The hands-off girls are lovie-dovie to me compared to the hands-off girls to the hands-on girls.” They understood.
From the Ellis language of “What do you dance” and interpreting it I have moved in two opposite directions. Last night while you were demonstrating (and get that pun boy, get that pun), that “molasses catches more flies than vinegar,” I took Blanch out and showed her the picture drawn by the real Yvonne. I said: “never mind what she says or he says, this is what she is.”
In the other direction, I have passed from the dance to the kiss and nearly all women fall into the trap I want. This came out first and most easily with Dorothy. The centers of communication are not necessarily the lips and they may be the lips. But kissing falls into such obvious groupings, too easy to explain and I won’t here.
When I saw Yvonne right off I knew what was the matter and you ought to too—we are among those unfortunates whose parents did not agree and it has warped and thwarted us. I knew there was a buried treasure. I knew I could not communicate and to skip everything I was very, very happy when she became engaged.
Now the analyst in Indian Psychology which you will never learn from all the Germans in the world and then some—is that the analyst is the asura, the worker in darkness. The integrationalist works toward the light. As you are one moment an integrationalist and the next a seguro servidor of the analyst provided he is a PhD or something you miss a grand opportunity. It was not only that the demon-stration that what was that? is better than something else to catch flies—but the real Yvonne was stark naked to me in her drawing.
What is a Walt Whitman? In all men I see myself. Well I haven’t reached that. Maybe I am nearer to “I am the Vine and ye are the branches thereof.” It is an awful thing to love somebody as if they were part of yourself. You get nothing but pains and growls and scars and you can no more change than you can alter your blood count.
I feel toward Yvonne as a sort of combination of mother, father and uncle and she pretends to be looking at something else. That is all right because this combination and pattern is a scaffold. I feel the same toward Norman—also the child of a disrupted household, etc. I did succeed in at least telling Yvonne I felt the same toward a political person, i.e. Norris Poulson, whose path I have crossed again and again and again.
When I have been in Washington Clarence Lea, Jerry Voorhees, the late Carl Hinshaw and Norris Poulson all dropped everything when I entered their offices. Those were in the days when the PhDs and Europeans hadn’t taken over the teaching of Orientalia. Indeed Poulson gave me a nod which I am still using and all your humbugs in disguise can’t take it away but this concerns U.S. Intelligence.
But it is not the intellectual side that matters. One look and Mrs. Ruth Sasaki accepted what I could not get in edgewise with Alan Watts; and someday I know Alan Watts will accept what it is hopeless to try to get over to a Spiegelberg or Saxton—no use even trying. I saw the last disciple of Senzaki-san and said, “I am going to whisper something in your ear and you will get the whole Dharma.” Now what kind of nonsense is this? Only fools and real Zen Masters accept it.
I won’t say what it was but it concerns the deepest recesses of the heart. Roerich wrote on Heart and Reps wrote on Heart—hurrah, hurrah! Let’s buy their books. But when it came to practice—do you know what it means: St Paul said: “I die daily.” But to have to live through Crucifixion and Death and no nonsense—while people are shunning they can’t explain the vitality and connectivity. Here you win a point. I have given my secret to Yvonne in a poem and she shuns it. All I need to do is to be present with here on Christmas Eve, her child also must be there and I’ll get the point over.
I received a letter from the greatest Sufi I know the other day. I dare not show it, yet. Secrets are not made secrets; they become secrets because those who have an ear to hear won’t hear and it is the listener not the knower that compels the secrecy. There is a picture of the Tibetan saint Milarepa with his hand to his ear. Someday I may meet a Western person—an American possibly, an Englishman very slightly, a German never—who will understand the meaning of that picture. There are no secrets from Sufis and no walls before dervishes.
Yvonne thinks I want to meet her father for me—I want to meet her father for he from something she said to me which is most important to him and far, far more important in our international policy. I am not playing cards. Even when I wrote to Earl Warren I never called attention to the fact that he and my father were palsy-walsy—I try on my own.
Tears, sighs, laughter, speech and touch all reveal and the sciences of the Sufis are secret because we don’t know how to accept such things. Sufis are using mind-reading and thought-transference even in their counter- espionage against the Reds and I have been able to communicate a little of this to Prof. Rhine at Duke and Reiser at Pittsburgh. But this is still external to the heart-life.
I know all the tears, sighs, grunts and groans of people I deeply feel for and this has nothing, absolutely nothing to do with their reactions to me. There is no tit-for-that; there is either titter or tatter or non-resistance. You agree with your enemy quickly or you give him a Zen uppercut which is like the Japanese wrestling throw. Someday I hope to explain to al least one European professor of Oriental philosophy how you win debates in Asia, but this may be hopeless. Anyhow someday I will explain to some Americans how it is done.
Yvonne is my child and you are my brother, but caught in this samsaric world plus its Christian-Aristotelian legacy, you don’t know all the facets of love. You confuse it with its shadows, its phases, its derivatives, its offspring. The branches you see, the trunk remains unknown. Then you get out on a series of branches and Yvonne gets out on another series—you are still on the tree though each thinks the other is not—and you can’t conceive the trunk.
No, you did not lose the debate. But rationally it is useless. I admit that as a father-mother-uncle, or as a gentleman I seem strongly for Yvonne, but if this were a court of law of even a Judgment Council in heaven the answer would be quite different. My main tour de force against you is that you have not realized Whitman. If you got into the heart of Whitman, I would have given you the palm. Or if you ever could get into the mysteries of the heart: well it has taken 20 years for my one disciple to awaken and it has take even longer for Bryn to say “yes” once to me so I can’t blame either of you. And what is the purpose of the “yes?”
Whether it is balm to a single person or to a whole nation, the principle is the same. In the heart of man is the constant death-cum-resurrection and in this culture heart has come to mean something entirely different. I was very impatient when young, but I have long outdistanced Job. If I had you and Yvonne in the room, with others, on Christina Eve I would play another role. Indeed if my official garbs arrive by then I might even put them on.
Yet I have no right to chide you pretending to a gentleman. I might be doing the same thing myself to Sophie Ginsburg and even more so. I would tell Sophie: “Yes, we are proud of our race and religion, so proud that the President of Israel has to practice Buddhist meditation and moi aussi—who’s kidding whom?