David Hoffmaster: interview, November 20, 1975

DAVID: I met Murshid first in 1965 as part of a bunch of weirdo guys who hung out at City College, San Francisco where I was a horticulture student. And he kind of came and pulled weeds—that basically, is all he did.

WALI ALI: He used to come over to the department and pull weeds, and there were other weirdo guys who came over there too?

DAVID: Yes, that was a strange life.

WALI ALI: They were helpers, or students, or he was, was he both or what?

DAVID: They were retired guys; they'd been into horticulture all their life, and one of the other men was the head nurseryman for the Presidio. When they closed down that nursery, he was out of a job, so he came down. These were people who dug plants more than they dug people, so this was a good place for them to hang out.

WALI ALI: None of these people were on salary?

DAVID: No. No one was on salary; every once in a while they'd take a class, but they just came out more to help out than anything else and supply advice etc. Murshid and I hit it off right away; we kind of formed a friendship, and I found out that I could use him for anything. He seemed to have endless knowledge. I could come up and talk with him about anything. And we'd be talking—much later he admitted that he'd worked on me for quite awhile to get me under initiation, and he introduced me to 3 or 4 teachers—I don't think he really cared who I was under, so long as I was on the path.

WALI ALI: Who did he introduce you to?

DAVID: Father Paul; I met Father Paul before the Holy Order of Mans was even a conception. Father Paul had 3 disciples at the time I met him. Joe Miller came around and I met him—gads, who were some of the other people?

WALI ALI: Are you still now talking around ‘65-'66?

DAVID: Yes, I started school in September ‘65 and that's when I first got introduced to him, so it probably would have been ‘66 before anything happened. The only thing I knew was that he was this strange guy, because when I tell people that all I knew him as was serious, people kind of look at me strange. But that's the side he manifested at school, it was seriousness. He went there and he pulled weeds; and he didn't do all that much joking. He was always a cynic, I think—I don't know ever when he wasn't a cynic.

WALI ALI: Can you give me an example of what you mean?

DAVID: An example of his cynicism, that's hard to do.

WALI ALI: I have to warn you; I'm out for examples.

DAVID: I understand—he always seemed to have complaints—something wasn't right here, something wasn't right there, somebody else wasn't doing what they were supposed to do. Granted, he had every right to be in that frame of reference, because he had been rejected for so long and at the time I first met him he hadn't yet received instruction to really go out and be what you might call a Guru for the masses.

WALI ALI: Had he taken any disciples at that time?

DAVID: At that point, yes, there was Saadia.

WALI ALI: Aside from Saadia, whom I understand. He took a couple in Pakistan.

DAVID: Right, that was one of his first. Akbar, I think, was with Murshid then.

WALI ALI: In ‘65?

DAVID: Right. And there was another guy…

WALI ALI: Clark Brown?

DAVID: Yes, but Clark was before; Clark introduced Akbar.

WALI ALI: Yes, I know that. Howard Mussell, was he a disciple of Murshid's at that point? I never met him, as far as I know.

DAVID: He may have been; I don't know really that Howard was ever a disciple of Murshids. Howard was more like—you've met him—I'm sure you've met him.

WALI ALI: I have?

DAVID: Yeah. Nobody seems to recall him. He was like the last of the Broadway beatniks, the last of the North Beach beatniks, and it was really a sad case.

WALI ALI: What was the fellow's name who introduced Moineddin to Murshid? Kent? Or no, I can't recall.

DAVID: I think that was at one of Steve Gaskin's parties.

WALI ALI: No, it was somebody—I can find out from him. In other words what you're saying is that he hadn't basically begun to function in that way.

DAVID: Right. He hadn't received that instruction yet, he was working more towards Food Programs for the Far East—that's really the only thing I remember.

WALI ALI: You said he was out there pulling weeds—was he doing any other kind of work with tomatoes or anything?

DAVID: He was doing absolutely no experimentation work at all. He was coming out there to help because we were short. The department in those days was in trouble because enrollment in gardening hadn't picked up, it was still manual labor, and people were out for fancy sounding degrees and stuff. So you really had to be dedicated to want to get into it. And they were talking about closing the department down or cutting some classes. And he'd come out and pull weeds out in the nursery just because there weren't enough people around to keep up with it. All of his experimentation work happened long before I knew him. It would be my guess—he was working for the Highway Department—what, in the fifties?

WALI ALI: I think so.

DAVID: I think it was, and his experimentation work happened prior to that.

WALI ALI: He was originally interested in ornamentals, I believe, and then he later got interested in food production.

DAVID: Right, after he visited the Near East, or the East, in general, and he saw the famine that was happening back there, and saw the misuse of the land—that's when he really became concerned about the food problem, because he saw a solution to it. Really, he was always in for the practical; if it was so-called metaphysical, he was against it. If he couldn't apply it, why have it? And he would tell me things like: they would use artichokes in Pakistan for ornamentals and they would refuse to eat them, and here they were starving. They were growing food in their flower-beds and they just wouldn't touch them. In the Arab countries he said there are race-tracks that they have, and they are used once or twice a year. He said the whole field is cleared of everything, and he said it's used once a year for a week. There is no reason why the center of it couldn't be used for agricultural purposes to solve food problems in really simple ways, just, getting people to…

WALI ALI: Take advantage of what resources are right there.

DAVID: Right. He never talked to me about—he hinted at it—it just kind of titillated my imagination about the research he had done in fertilizers and tomatoes; and stuff like that. But what he told me was the practical, like growing coconuts in spots that have extremely saline soil, particularly down in the Colorado Valley, Colo. River Valley down in Southern California wherever it dumps out. The whole basin area down through there is extremely saline and coconuts have to have salt in order to grow, another place that the food problem could be alleviated by using the land as it is meant to be used, and not trying to change it and do something else with it. There is land that you can do that with, but there is also land that can be extremely productive, that is beyond, economic possibility to change it and grow what you want on it. Silent Spring and what Rachel Carson had to say about insecticides he also disagreed with. He maintained that the proper use of insecticides was necessary to agriculture.

WALI ALI: Did he ever mention at that time when he was working out there that he was a spiritual teacher?

DAVID: No, he didn't. As a matter of fact, that was part of what he was doing with me. He would invite me to parties, and he invited me to parties for a year and a half before I finally came to one. It seemed like every two months he had some reason for a party, so I passed up a lot of parties.

SITARA: At his house?

DAVID: At various places, all over the city. He was into food too.

WALI ALI: Restaurants….

DAVID: Yes, restaurants—what's the name of that guy that has the store up on Waverly place?

WALI ALI: On Waverley place?

DAVID: Yes.

WALI ALI: I can't place where Waverly Place is.

DAVID: That's where the Dragon Temple is and where—

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, To-Lun was there—

DAVID: To-Lun, right, but there was another guy on down—

WALI ALI: Right, the art store, yeah, I know—Ching Wah Lee.

DAVID: He used to have dinners there; Ching Wah Lee would close up his place and bring out the tables and we'd have Chinese dinner.

WALI ALI: Oh really, right there in the shop?

DAVID: Right, this again was before he was taking on disciples. He had a birthday party there.

WALI ALI: At Ching Wah Lee's? Not at Ye Jungs? I know he had a birthday party at Ye Jungs.

DAVID: Yeah, I was at that one. That was a feast.

WALI ALI: That was when, in ‘67 or something like that?

DAVID: Yes.

WALI ALI: He went to Ye Jungs a number of times.

DAVID: That's when he had that corner booth and had everyone else stuck in there.

WALI ALI: But this was before that, at Ching Wah Lee’s?

DAVID: Right.

WALI ALI: And you were there for that?

DAVID: No, I tried, he gave me the address and I went down there and managed to find Waverly Place but the address wasn't around.

WALI ALI: So you wouldn't know who would have been present?

DAVID: He told me who was there: Vera was there, Vocha was there, Joe Miller was there—those are the only names I remember. Guin would have been there too, those two go together.

WALI ALI: And was Harry Nelson with the group that was there; when you were at S.F. State?

DAVID: Right.

WALI ALI: He was the head of the department and was he on the scene every day?

DAVID: He was always there.

WALI ALI: What was his relationship with Sam like?

DAVID: I don't think love would be too strong of a word to say of the feelings that Harry had for him. He didn't understand him; he thought he was kind of a strange old guy that was always pulling off something. He would tell me that, like when Murshid went to the East that he was still receiving postcards from various people from colleges all over India and Pakistan and Asia in general because Murshid went back there and gave his name out, quite freely, I guess.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I'm sure he did, because a lot of what he was doing over there was contacting people that had to do with agriculture in some way. Harry Nelson mentioned one visit with Murshid and Murshid’s mother. The strongest impression Nelson got was how totally she dominated him and how Murshid displayed no ill feelings towards her.

DAVID: Right, he said he was still—and this was in ‘68 or ‘67 something like that.

WALI ALI: So how long did this period last when he was just going out there and working?

DAVID: Up until, let's see, I guess towards the end of ’67; then he was getting too busy, because, when was it? Was it late ‘65 or ‘66, I can't remember when he got laid out in the hospital?

WALI ALI: I can look that up.

DAVID: That's when he received instruction, as he put it, to become the "Guru of the Hippies." After-that, things started falling into place—he received the transmission so students started coming to him, and he didn't have much of a choice about the subject. He didn't take—

WALI ALI: Can you remember some of the names of the people from that early period that you happen to remember and may or may not be in touch with? We mentioned Clark Brown and Howard Mussell and Akbar.

DAVID: Let's see, who else might there be? Nancy…

WALI ALI: Nancy Fish.

DAVID: And that whole crowd who was out there at the Ranch.

WALI ALI: The crowed out at the Ranch, yeah.

DAVID: Yeah.

WALI ALI: Was the Ranch around in ‘66?

DAVID: No, that was much later. Nancy was there, who else was out there? Debbie would know.

WALI ALI: Tom Mason? Moonie was another early disciple.

DAVID: Yes, because he had all those tapes.

WALI ALI: We have copies of all of his tapes—he was taping mostly in ‘67.

DAVID: I don't think any of his earlier lectures were taped.

WALI ALI: We have a copy of one interesting tape—it was like a forum discussion that he chaired at the Holy Order of Mans on the subject of reincarnation, in which there was a fierce argument between Master Mathew and Murshid. Ajari was there and Gene Wagner was there. Dr. Warwick was probably there also. There used to be weekly…

DAVID: There weren't that many people around him; discussion on comparative religion at the church of the children. Really there weren't, he was an unknown entity.

WALI ALI: And the attitude of the early mureeds was very casual.

DAVID: None of us had any conception at all what a spiritual teacher was. Like the night I took my initiation, he said, "Okay, now you people will call me Murshid," and he explained that Murshid meant teacher. And so we went along with him and said, "Okay, we’ll call you, Murshid."

SITARA: What had you been calling him?

DAVID: Sam.

WALI ALI: Because when I came on the scene, which was somewhat later, people were still calling him Sam—so then this situation when you were working with him at City College, and he was coming out there, how long did you say that lasted?

DAVID: He continued going to COSF until the end of 1967.

WALI ALI: When was the hospital experience? 

SITARA: April ‘67.

DAVID: ‘67? That late? I thought it was ‘65 or ‘66. I hadn't realized it was that late. Okay, that lasted up until a point. Now the first party I came to was the housewarming party for here.

WALI ALI: Which was?

DAVID: It had to be ‘67. I guess I moved in shortly after that.

WALI ALI: The latter part of ‘67, but we can look that one up, too.

WALI ALI: Was he still working over at City College at that time?

DAVID: Yes, and he continued working for awhile after that out there—not for a whole lot of time afterwards.

WALI ALI: So what happened at the housewarming party over there?

DAVID: For some reason or another I saw him for what he was, and then I went through a period of very intense retrospection to see—actually it was a guilt thing—as to whether or not I deserved to be around him anymore. I wanted to take initiation from him, and he said, "Okay."

WALI ALI: What events transpired that evening? Do you recall anything about what happened? Was there a big meal?

DAVID: There was a big meal—let me think—

WALI ALI: Some fellow was invited in from North Africa that catered the meal, or was that another occasion?

DAVID: Yes and he had trouble keeping enough curry on the table or at least he kept going into the kitchen to do more cooking. Let me think, what did we eat that day? I remember it was a huge—maybe that was the event—I remember it was a huge meal and it was spicy. There wasn't a whole lot. It was like any party that he was at; there was a lot of—

WALI ALI: Were there a lot of speeches or teachings given or anything like that?

DAVID: No, he gave one class—this was before the dancing really had gotten started.

WALI ALI: Yes, but I think he was doing some walks—

DAVID: Yeah.

WALI ALI: In ‘67 he started doing walks—

DAVID: Right. There were some of the walks; the meal was the main point of it and he gave a very short class that lasted maybe 15 minutes. And I'll be darned if I can even remember what it was on.

WALI ALI: I was just curious what you did remember.

DAVID: I remember that was the first time I met Vocha.

WALI ALI: A lot of his older friends were present?

DAVID: Right, that's the first time I met Vocha and Mr. Hunt. He's dead; that's too bad, that was one we could have gotten some stories from..

WALI ALI: He actually died?

DAVID: Right, about 1970 late, I think. I visited him once at the hospital; I went to see Vocha, September ‘70.  She was the one who told me he was in the hospital and that he had died, this was after I was actually in the Order, this was ‘70 or ‘71 I guess. I'm not sure when he passed away.

WALI ALI: He passed away after Murshid?

DAVID: Yeah, definitely, after Murshid.

WALI ALI: So Mr. Hunt moved into this house at that time?

DAVID: Yeah, they shared rooms—they had rooms right next to each other.

WALI ALI: Did Mr. Hunt—oh they had rooms right next each other before—

AVID: Right, when he was living over there in alley.

WALI ALI: Clementina? I was in his room once. It was probably about 1 1/2 times the size of the office at 410 and contained all his books plus a bed, sink etc, so you can imagine how crowded it was— just room enough to turn around if you were careful.

DAVID: Right.

WALI ALI: That was the last place he lived in before here?

DAVID: Right.

DAVID: They had shared a place and then he and Mr. Hunt moved in together and it was the agreement that Mr. Hunt would do all the housework and cooking and stuff to relieve Murshid, because by then he was getting very involved, he was getting into the Commentaries and was screaming because he didn't have any help and there really wasn't anybody who could take it on either.

WALI ALI: And he and Mr. Hunt shortly got upon poor terms, isn't that right?

DAVID: Mr. Hunt was a retiring old coot—he really was—he was a grouch.

WALI ALI: I remember it well—we helped him move when he moved when I moved in, but you were certainly aware of their history?

DAVID: That's the reason I moved in.

WALI ALI: Right.

DAVID: So he'd have somebody to cook for him, so he wouldn't have to hassle with that part of it. The original plan was, just like I said, but Mr. Hunt didn't want to get involved in the public thing—he wanted to retire arid do his water colors, and that was about it, and so that was the cause for him leaving. I moved in while he was still here. Were you here?

WALI ALI: No, I moved in as soon as he left, in Jan of ‘69. And you were living downstairs.

DAVID: I'd been living here for awhile, too.

WALI ALI: How long had you been living here at that time? Six months? It wasn't that long?

DAVID: When I came in September of ‘68—

ZEINOB: Oh the first time you came?

ZEINOB: That was in September of ‘68. And I didn't think that you were living here then.

DAVID: I may have been still up on Precita.

WALI ALI: On O'Farrell?

DAVID: Yeah, up on the hill.

ZEINOB: I came back in Dec. of ‘68 and moved in, you were living here, and I think you were too.

WALI ALI: Dec. of ‘68 you came here?

ZEINOB: Yes, Christmas of ‘68.

WALI ALI: Are you sure it wasn’t ‘69?

ZEINOB: Uh, uh.

DAVID: I remember because we were sitting down; I remember very distinctly because we were sitting at the table in the kitchen eating breakfast, and I heard her scream down here—we won't go into any of the reasons—I embarrassed her—

WALI ALI: I think I probably moved in in December then.

DAVID: So I probably moved in in September.

ZEINOB: You moved in a few weeks before me Wali Ali, I’m positive because when I first come in ‘68, this room was vacant.

WALI ALI: That was Murshid's office, and what David and I did was to move the office into what is now the family room, and I moved into that room. Did you tell Murshid beforehand that you were going to do that?

DAVID: What?

WALI ALI: Move his office?

DAVID: He asked me to.

WALI ALI: He did?

DAVID: Yeah.

SITARA: Where had the office been?

WALI ALI: It was in my old room.

DAVID: You still had bookcases in, there.

ZEINOB: Also, the garden work was in there.

DAVID: I don't know, I had two bookcases in my room and there were about three in his room.

WALI ALI: He would still give Darshans in that room, after that.

DAVID: Yeah, because all that magnetism in there, I don't see how you even slept in there, all the energy that was circulating through there.

WALI ALI: Oh I slept in there okay. So let's see, where are we now in terms of the story? So you came to the party, the dedication of the Mentorgarten, which must have been in late ‘67 or early ‘68; it was probably late ‘67, when it was dedicated.

DAVID: Yeah, I can't remember, I know where I was living, but I can't remember what the date was; I would have to do some serious—

WALI ALI: That's okay, we can find the dates somewhere, and then how soon after that were you initiated?

DAVID: Oh, very shortly, about a month

WALI ALI: So he was ready for you before you were ready for him?

DAVID: Right, he'd been laying for me for a long time.

ZEINOB: Yeah, he used to say it to me, too, how he'd been waiting a long time for David.

DAVID: Yeah, he was fishing for quite a while.

WALI ALI: And then let's see, you were living over there on DeHaro St. with Marsha, or did that just happen?

DAVID: Yeah, what happened was we took over—the place was a commune and she was living there first and I was living on Castro. Then I moved in when there was a vacancy, I was looking for a different place. I just got tired of my own room, and because I was the only person with a job I got to pay the bills because I had a checking account. That's kind of what happened over there. I wasn't over there for very long, I really got ripped off in that place.

WALI ALI: What do you remember about any kind of events or happenings with Murshid during that period?

DAVID: Events or happenings. He was looking for a bigger place and considered Using DeHaro for meetings. We also had him over for dinner once or twice. When I first met him he was very serious, I really didn't see his insane side. When he went to City College, he went there to garden. I got to know him first, because he just kind of sat around and talked some. Then I found out that he did know quite a bit, so we would just kind of talk together and because I was a student-aide—I was being paid to work out there at City College at the time—I got to know him. And we'd talk and he'd tell me about various religious movements that were happening in S.F. that I was being exposed to at the time like the Rinzai Order which was becoming very popular at that point. And I asked him what they were and other things like that. I was still looking, I hadn't decided yet really, and I think that was the reason I was kept away from him, even that one time when I tried to go to a party, I couldn't find it, and I think that that's very interesting. So it stayed on a very mundane plane at that point. The only funny story that happened was he took—there was another woman there—that I have since lost contact with; and he always seemed to pick up the waves somehow or another, and he took this woman out to lunch with Howard Mussell, who considered himself a bit of a lady’s man, and just absolutely freaked the woman out. She refused to go out with him ever again—she told me he was crazy and I couldn't understand what she was saying.

WALI ALI: Who, Sam?

DAVID: Both of them. He just kind of let it all hang out, so to speak. And he just absolutely freaked her out. That's about the funniest story that I still remember.

WALI ALI: She was a student over at City College.

DAVID: Yeah, she was a horticulture student over there. He was just trying to do a nice thing with her and Howard, too, because Howard liked to look at pretty ladies, and she was definitely very beautiful. But she couldn't handle it.

WALI ALI: What about in later periods, what stories do you remember?

DAVID: Gads, it's more of an impression, he was such a combination that he was constant heart; he was constant insanity, but it was serious insanity, it was insanity with an intent. He was crazy—life—living with him, it was hell here, for me, anyway.

WALI ALI: I know it was pretty hard for you.

DAVID: When I wrote you, I said that my strongest impressions were being a thorn in my master's side, and it seemed like I was constantly doing something that was rocking the boat, or on the verge of capsizing it.

WALI ALI: I remember he used to come up some and complain about other people.

DAVID: He did the same thing with me.

WALI ALI: He often complained about you. At first I think it had to do basically with money. He counted on you to help him with the rent, and when you came in—you had a job at that point—and then you gave up your job, and had an operation on your leg.

DAVID: And that created some confusion because I skipped one month there.

WALI ALI: So you got behind on your rent, and that always used to freak him out.

DAVID: Monetary considerations.

WALI ALI: I know Iqbal had a similar experience on one event that he still remembers intensely.

SITARA: He would broadcast it to the whole community and then it got back to Iqbal.

DAVID: Yeah right; he never said a harsh word to me ever, except once when I made Ice Cream in an ice cream maker he got as a gift.

WALI ALI: Directly.

DAVID: Yeah, it was always to somebody else, and then I would get these third-person narratives about the fact that Murshid was upset.

WALI ALI: He considered it a mistake for a teacher to verbally correct a disciple because he felt that it marred the subtlety of the relationship—to correct a person directly—I know people would come and complain and say to him, "If you have something to say, say it to my face, not behind my back," and I knew that was the principal he was working with; he didn't want to fix a person in their faults by correcting them directly. He wanted them to pick things up by intuition what he was really feeling—indirectly, so as not to make too deep of an impression. Also it was the principle of no compulsion; if he said it then there was the compulsion.

WALI ALI: Yes, right.

DAVID: I know he very firmly believed in that. It's really strange, when I joined the Order, Father Paul used to take me aside and ask me what Sam was into. And I'd say that I didn't think those two ever really understood each other, because Murshid would rant and rave about Father Paul, and Father Paul would rant and rave about Sam. It was crazy.

WALI ALI: What  do you mean, “Rant and rave?"

DAVID: Father Paul was definitely a fire type, and he made no bones about anything. And if somebody was out of line it came down on them, and they knew they were out of line. He told me directly, he said, "This thing—like hell there’s no compulsion in religion, you're compelled to do everything. God makes you do it.” And he'd carry on like this. Even when I was up in Sebastopol he would pull me aside and start mumbling about what Sam was into down in the city.

WALI ALI: He didn't mumble in the sense of being critical because he only saw one side of it, or just had a different way of working?

DAVID: Yeah, it was a different way of working. They were both innovators. They had both received a Divine Message, and both were out to convert everybody, everybody, or at least as many as they could. The only reason the two of them got together was because Murshid received Revelation that he was to work with Father Paul. And that's the reason that Father Paul accepted him, and tolerated him around, because God wanted the two of them together. But as a natural pair they were the odd-couple of the spiritual world, I think. Really strange, because Murshid's approach was—

WALI ALI: I know Father Blighton, he wasn't known as Father Paul at the time.

DAVID: No, in the beginning, it was Father Blighton.

WALI ALI: He certainly respected Murshid's erudition and that's why he was called Dr. Sam, because his tremendous background in the Scriptures was definitely respected, and I do recall a few conversations that I was in on in which he was trying to get Sam to, more or less, take up a permanent staff position there because obviously he had a big organization. He couldn't understand exactly why Sam spent so much time with all those hippies.

DAVID: That was part of it, and part of it was the fact that Father Blighton had a much different method of initiation that is unique in many respects, and Murshid just couldn't accept it. He questioned sometimes the validity of that particular path that was being used.

WALI ALI: I know he used to make the comments on a number of occasions, publically, when he was giving talks at the Holy Order of Mans. He would say, “Father Blighton can get you there, even if he hasn't been there himself." Do you remember that?

DAVID: Yeah, what you guys call “Enlightenment.” I'm not sure if it's what really enlightenment but you've certainly had an experience of light—these kind of really off the wall comments.

WALI ALI: He would always do that. That was in his character. And the people he could work together with were those for whom that kind of thing didn't just mean instant alienation. I remember when Vilayat came here the first time and gave a talk, and at the conclusion of his talk, and before the question time, Murshid stood up and said, "There's only one difference between Vilayat and myself, "I've experienced everything that he's talked about."

DAVID: Do you feel that he said all these comments as though he believed they were true or as challenges?

WALI ALI: No, no, they weren't challenges; they were very innocent in a sense. They were free from any kind of personal malice; they were just said through him sort of as a sort of statement of fact, and the fact that it's uncool to make that kind of statement was.

ZEINOB: I think he felt that the Holy Order of Mans was pushing people through awfully quickly and giving them degrees that wasn't really their realization.

WALI ALI: On the other hand, he would always say—he was so proud of what they were doing—and he'd say, "Here was a church where you couldn't become a minister unless you had an actual experience of Christ."

DAVID: Oh yeah, there was a tremendous respect between the two. That isn't the point I was making. There was just an absolute lack of understanding of the methods the two of them used.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I think that is true.

DAVID: There were two different paths and they both, in a sense, had the same goal. Murshid was uniting East and West; and Father Blighton was uniting West and East. It was kind of a situation like that, where both teachers were teaching their students to be universal in their outlook towards the spiritual path. The fact that there is one God, I think is the common keynote of both of their teachings—one of them. And taught it in reality, not the way any of the other religions teach it.

WALI ALI: Emphasis on experience.

DAVIS: Yeah, emphasis on the fact that there is one God and that that one God is the God of whatever religious calling you happen to espouse.

WALI ALI: Do you recall any more stories? Maybe the easiest time to remember was after you started living here, cooking for Murshid and running him around in your truck and occasions like that. It's helpful to have actual events.

DAVID: I was just really involved in his mundane life and I wasn't going to any of the advanced classes that were happening in Novato at the time or anything like that. The adventures we had were really simple adventures like going to Field's Bookstore and finding new books—we'd go out looking for books—and invariably Fields would have it. Or going across the street to the wine store and talking with the wine merchant and finding out about a good wine. He was constantly, turning us on to good wines. And he would talk about little things like so and so liked such and such kind of ice cream so I'm getting it for her. He was great for running a good thing into the ground.

WALI ALI: You had that experience with the chocolaty chip cookies.

SITARA: Oh God, yes.

DAVID: Did he buy a truck load of chocolate chip cookies for you?

SITARA: Yeah, until I just couldn't stand them anymore.

DAVID: I had the same experience with rhubarb pie.

SITARA: Rhubarb pie?

DAVID: He asked me when I had this operation if there was anything he could get, and just right off of the wall, I said I want rhubarb pie. And a month later he comes in carrying triumphantly this rhubarb pie, and every week, every time he came back from Novato, he would stop off at that bakery and pick up a rhubarb pie, until I got sick of rhubarb pie. I told him to cool it.

WALI ALI: I know, that would be the way he would do it, with presents. Once he had you hooked up with a certain thing, I don't know how he ever got Moineddin hooked up with wine, but he gave him wine for every birthday.

ZEINOB: It was red wine, Vin Rosé, I remember that, and there was always this stuff. Do you remember the lemonade with Vin Rosé poured into it? That's what he used to drink for dinner. WALI ALI: Lemonade with Vin Rosé poured into it, I remember that—

ZEINOB: Or orange juice with Vin Rosé poured into it, or whatever kind of juices—it was usually orange juice or lemonade, because that's what we always drank.

WALI ALI: Oh wait a minute, I had something else—

SITARA: Amin with chocolate ice cream.

WALI ALI: I think an interesting thing to get down to, David, is this curious thing in Murshid's personality that had a lot to do with his real being. In one minute he would be very critical of somebody and angry and saying everything they'd done wrong and the next minute he would be so loving and he would want to go out and buy you a rhubarb pie or whatever, anything he could do for you, the sky was the limit. And, maybe you'd like to say something about that from your own experience. Was that your experience with him?

DAVID: Yeah, he was totally forgiving, he held no grudges. After I joined the Order and had left his direct care, I always looked forward to the Saturday Bible Classes when he'd come over because I always got his blessing. He never held a grudge, with one exception and that's because that person went against his specific instructions and it inconvenienced a lot of other people. And that was when Sheila went over to India. That's the only tine when he held something for any length of time at all. And in the end that was dropped even. He was a true teacher. When the lesson had been given, and as soon as the lesson was received, it was dropped, it was over, there was no sense in carrying it on. And that's the way he operated with everybody. I know, I'm sure he went up to the Khankah and talked about all the faults of everybody down here, and when he was down here and I was driving him around, he would talk about everything that was happening up at the Khankah, and how he was on the verge of kicking so and so out because they weren't doing this, or that and nobody escaped his wrath, so to speak. But it was constructive. He was trying to make a point, and I think it was maybe four years, after he had made his point, that we got it, because he was operating on such a plane. It was really, I think, that we were lucky to have him around in the physical body because he was so taken up in the Spirit of God; he constantly functioned on that level. His feet barely touched the ground, if you ever listened to him walk.

SITARA: Even when you lived beneath him?

DAVID: Even when I lived beneath him. It wasn't that bad. His heels would hit, he had strong magnetism, but he was constantly in that Presence.

ZEINOB: His feet moved by themselves—he wasn't in his body.

DAVID: Yeah, he wasn't in his body. He was functioning from a whole other level.

ZEINOB: Remember how he burned himself, David? He'd get going so fast; remember that whole pot of boiling water that got on his shoulder and one whole arm? That was when the three of us were living here.

WALI ALI: Yes, I recall that; I was taking a walk around the block at the time.

ZEINOB: David and I were in the house; I think David was in the kitchen and I was in David's room, and things like hot water would just pour all over him, he was just going so fast, he wasn't right in his body.

DAVID: That's the thing that absolutely amazed me—was when I get into something, I like to do it perfectly. If I’m going to peel a potato, I'm going to peel the whole potato. He kind of made a couple of passes at whatever he happened to be going at and it was done. The physical didn't matter that much. He paid more attention to the spiritual; in the kitchen, he would do anything. He used to say that after he taught a class, and this was true, I saw it happen time and time again—that after he had been a teacher, he would come back and be a servant.

ZEINOB: He'd forget to rinse the dishes and just put them in the soap and then put them on the drain board.

DAVID: Right.

ZEINOB: Oh no, Murshid don't wash the dishes, please! Crack!

DAVID: And he was serving constantly. Now people are, experiencing his sense of humor which was outrageous.

WALI ALI: The humorous side is sort of like everybody's—it's the myth too, that people love to, remember. Have you seen the In the Garden book?

DAVID: Yeah, I spent the last two days reading it.

WALI ALI: It's well done in terms of bringing—it's got a lot of serious things in it, but I think it's got a lot of the kind of anecdotes and stories that people really appreciate, and because they're true, they're sort of modern Nasruddin, or something.

DAVID: Right. I don't, think he ever—as long as I knew him he always had shaving cream behind his ears.

WALI ALI: Until he stopped shaving?

DAVID: Yeah, until he stopped shaving.

ZEINOB: Shirin said he should have a beard.

DAVID: Right, and then he had problems because it wouldn't grow. He had to command it to grow, he got really upset because his hair wouldn't grow and his beard wouldn't grow. He had the scrawniest looking beard for the longest time. He was complaining about it, he would say, "My hair won't grow, I can't get my beard to grow, I finally had to command it to grow." It never did do much—

SITARA: He was getting haircuts at the end—

WALI ALI: Yeah, he got shaggier at the end.

ZEINOB: I'd trim his beard; I remember doing that, and haircuts.

DAVID: Yeah, he had that scroungy thing; I don't think he ever combed it.

WALI ALI: His beard?

DAVID: Yes,

SITARA: Later he did.

DAVID: While I was around him, it was just totally wild.

WALI ALI: I remember when I came in the house and started coming over here during the day to work, when Ed Hunt and you were living here, the place was such a mess, it was unbelievable.

ZEINOB: Oh, I thought I was going to die when I first walked in here.

WALI ALI: The level of housekeeping—yecchhh.

ZEINOB: You know how it looked to me? I saw Murshid and he was just like this little being of light, and he'd make little light paths that he travelled on, and they were clear and all the rest was just, yecchh—you could see where his little light trails were through the house—and all the rest was just filth—

WALI ALI: The office was the same way, it was one pile on top of another pile on top of another pile, and sometimes when he would find something he would say, "It's a miracle!" He had more miracles in his office than anybody I ever knew. Every time he found something he was looking for.

DAVID: His bedroom was the same way, there was one path from the door to the bed and the dresser happened to be on that same path so it got caught too. Kolsoum and I spent one full day cleaning up his room, just his bedroom, and we didn't touch the office.

WALI ALI: Because he wouldn't let anyone touch the office for the longest period of time.

DAVID: Right, that was private domain; I went in occasionally and straightened newspapers in the basket.

ZEINOB: Yeah, I remember him not letting anyone touch the papers.

DAVID: That was verboten, understandably so.

WALI ALI: Finally he let Abdul Rahman and myself begin to organize it somewhat.

ZEINOB: I think you started work on that about the same time I moved in.

WALI ALI: hy don't we go to that story because I think that will probably bring out some things. Was that Christmas you'd come around first in?

ZEINOB: September.

WALI ALI: Yeah.

ZEINOB: September 15.

WALI ALI: You came here to the house—

ZEINOB: 14th or 15th, Wali Ali.

WALI ALI: I didn't see you at that time.

DAVID: No, I remember coming home from work and Murshid greeted me at the door, and said, "I have two surprises for you in the kitchen." I didn't have the foggiest what it was. So I walked in and here were Zeinob and another girl sitting at the kitchen table.

ZEINOB: Sitting? Working—chopping onions; what do you mean, “Sitting?”

DAVID: And they split, they didn't even stay for dinner; they were invited for dinner and they didn't stay, and I remember that.

WALI ALI: Were you still strung out on speed then?

ZEINOB: Wali Ali!

WALI ALI: It's true, isn't it?

ZEINOB: It's true. I was, but also at the time I was staying with a family in San Francisco and I had to go back to take care of the children. It was a commitment I had, but I was definitely strung out.

WALI ALI: Zeinob, you were in the worst condition of anybody—

DAVID: She was in better shape then, than when she came back the second time.

ZEINOB: Was I? Was that Christmas Eve the first time?

DAVID: Yeah, the second time was Christmas Eve.

ZEINOB: No, no it wasn't Christmas Eve; it was three days before.

DAVID: That's when we went up to Amin's—

ZEINOB: No, it was at least three days before—

DAVID: Was it three days before? Yeah, I remember I had to talk you into that—

ZEINOB: The 22nd., I think.

DAVID: I had to talk you into going up to that Christmas party.

WALI ALI: You had that one pair of white pants that you wore for the next three months.

DAVID: White pants and a navy turtleneck.

ZEINOB: You wouldn't even look at me. I'm surprised you noticed what I had on.

WALI ALI: I know—I wasn't giving you any energy at all.

ZEINOB: One time David came home and he found me sitting in his bedroom curled up in a little ball saying, "Wali Ali hates me—no Melvin hates me." I couldn't move; you were throwing me so much—I was totally open—and he was throwing me so much yeecch! I couldn't do anything.

DAVID: Murshid wasn't exactly compassionate either.

ZEINOB: When I first came he was really good to me. When I came in September—then I was baby-sitting, so I couldn't come back, and I told him I'd try but I wasn't sure so at least I told him what was happening—that was a hard point in my life—just to come to the house.

WALI ALI: I'm sure it must have been. You couldn't stay still for a second without shaking, you were all shakes.

ZEINOB: I don't remember shaking.

DAVID: I remember that. I remember the six weeks.

ZEINOB: Because my nervous system was shot.

WALI ALI: Yeah, it was shot! You didn't have it together mentally enough to boil a pot of water.

ZEINOB: In fact I have letters—it's really neat—this whole period that I was living with Murshid I wrote Gary at least once a week.

WALI ALI: He was in prison at the time?

ZEINOB: Yes. And so I have those letters and in one of the first letters I wrote to him I said that the house was so full of light and Murshid's being so so full of light, because even though my body wasn't able to do things, I still could see—

WALI ALI: Yeah, you were very psychically eloquent—

ZEINOB: Totally, clairvoyant, clairaudient, I heard people thinking and I saw auras around everybody; I was totally open; I wasn't a dummy, I was just a wreck.

WALI ALI: Your nervous system was shot and your mind was shot and you were wide open.

ZEINOB: But my psyche wasn't and my heart wasn't—

WALI ALI: And otherwise—

ZEINOB: Wali Ali just didn't have any use for anybody who couldn't do something.

WALI ALI: I know, you were totally useless and then later you became useful.

ZEINOB: Murshid thought I was useful; he could see it because I remember when I first came he wanted me to stay for dinner and then I had to leave and then I came back in December and then Wali Ali said I was worse off, and then David didn't, didn't he say something to you after I left, before dinner?

DAVID: You didn't tell him, you told me you were splitting; all you said was that you were leaving, you didn't give any explanation. And here we had this huge dinner, and the two of us ended up sitting down and doing what we could to it.

ZEINOB: He terrified me—he told me more people were coming, he told me you were coming and some other person was coining. Or a couple was coming, there was somebody else expected that night for dinner besides you because he told me.

DAVID: That could have been, because we had guests constantly, it could have been because Moineddin and that whole crowd were still over in Bolinas at that point, I think.

WALI ALI: It could very well have been because they moved from Bolinas to the Khankah, which I believe was founded in spring of ‘69, wasn't it?

DAVID: Yeah, could have been, the Khankah hadn't been around that long when I left.

WALI ALI: It was right around that period anyway. But it was your idea to take Zeinob in when she came back the second time, wasn't it, David?

DAVID: Yeah.

WALI ALI: Didn't she just sort of hide in your room?

DAVID: Right, it was really kind of strange. When she came back, she was totally destitute, she didn't have any place to stay, so we set up the mattress—it was the rainy season—

ZEINOB: You told Murshid I would be back when I split before dinner. You said he said, "Where'd she go, where'd she go?" And you said, “Don’t worry, she’ll come back.”

DAVID: Yeah, I had a premonition that—

ZEINOB: And you knew that my girlfriend who was with me wasn't going to—and she never did.

DAVID: I don't remember that part; I know I wasn't near as impressed with her as I was with you. Yeah, the second time she came back she hid back, because both of you—

WALI ALI: How'd you get your name? Tell that story.

ZEINOB: The first thing which I think is in In the Garden—the first thing Murshid said to me was—I knocked on the door—and he said, "Who's there?" in this booming voice, and you knew where I was at—a booming voice just sent me into the tremors—and I said, "My name's Claire, and Anon had sent me.” Do you remember Anonymous Bliss who was a friend of Moineddin's and Mansur's from Michigan or wherever it was?

And so I came in and he sat me down in a chair and he said, "Sit up straight, there's nothing you've ever done in your life that's been wrong." And that was the first thing he ever said to me. And then he gave Yolanda, my girl friend, the Darshan of Christ. He said, "You know who Christ is, don't you?" And she said, "Yes." And then he just—I saw him go right into Christ Darshan as he sat across from me and looked at her, and then he said, "Come on, Yolanda, people are coming for dinner, you have to cook." And that was the first meeting. And when I came back the next time, I don't remember, but I think, David, you greeted me when I first came back.

DAVID: The second time? Yeah, I did. Because I don’t even remember if Murshid was around that time. Anon was never initiated by Murshid as far as I know, I met him only once when we went down to Southern California to tape Inayats’ lectures and meditations. When we got back I asked about Anon and his name; Murshid replied that he had said to Anon that if he took that name he could never be a mureed.

ZEINOB: I think he might have been in Novato, when I first came back, or someplace else—

DAVID: He may have been—

WALI ALI: That rings true to me because the Khankah had just been started a few months before—

DAVID: Yeah, it was totally my idea and I had to fight both of you to keep her here for awhile.

WALI ALI: Oh I recall it was your concentration and you shared your room with Gwen.

ZEINOB: Yeah, "What's your name, “Claire,” “Gwen?"

DAVID: She didn't talk above a whisper for the first six months at least.

WALI ALI: And you were so skinny Zeinob.

ZEINOB: And I thought I was fat, I remember putting on these pants and saying to David, “Gee, I’m really fat!”

DAMON: And were fat because I was in you then.

ZEINOB: No, not yet.

DAMON: Mama, where was I then?

ZEINOB: You were with the angels.

DAMON: Oh yeah, I had real wings, too.

ZEINOB: Yeah, I did, I weighted 110 lbs. And Murshid said I was a reject from the skeleton society.

WALI ALI: And he began a program of fattening you up.

ZEINOB: In three months I gained 65 lbs. I went up to a horrendous 175! Wali Ali and I looked like twins and we used to dance around, rock around the living room like dancing bears. Do you remember that, Wali Ali? Dancing with me like bears? It was always your initiative. I never would have initiated that.

WALI ALI: So do you remember how that came down that Zeinob got accepted to live here? Did Murshid ever speak to you about her leaving?

DAVID: He asked me why she was here, why I was keeping her, and I told him that she was somebody that was very spiritual that was in trouble and needed help. That's what I said, I just felt super protective. And I knew I didn't want her out of my sight for awhile anyway. And the reason she moved into my room was because—

WALI ALI: There was nowhere else for her to be.

DAVID: She was down here.

ZEINOB: This was a garage, but there were mattresses down there. No, there was a car in there, but I slept on a crib mattress the first night. And there was no light. And there was a car in here, too. It was filthy!

WALI ALI: That's right, David's truck.

DAVID: Or it could have been that Buick, either one. I'm not sure.

ZEINOB: It was pretty terrifying down here. The only other room or space for me to have a room since the three of you each had your rooms, was to stay in David’s bed.

DAVID: I was the only one who had a double bed, too.

WALI ALI: And you used to sleep together and astral travel or something.

ZEINOB: No, the one I astral traveled with was you. Because what I remember was, I remember going out, and in the morning I related that you said you had the same dream so it was you and I that were actually floating around together.

WALI ALI: I don't recall; I always thought it was David.

DAVID: The only thing I was a listening post, while she worked the thing out. That's what it amounted to.

WALI ALI: I do remember one occasion when Murshid took Gwen and I over to Rudolf Schaeffer School and you were—it wasn't too long after you'd just come on the scene—

DAVID: mother had a stroke, she went down to visit her. That’s when we fixed up the little room in the basement, more or less fixed it up. We put in a closed and a bed but she still had to swim out sometimes, when she got back the change was amazing. It was as if Gwen left and Claire came back.

ZEINOB: No, it took me at least three months to get myself to that point together, I'm sure of that, Wali Ali.

WALI ALI: But when you went over there you weren't a member of the school at that time—the first time he took you over there to see the place?

ZEINOB: He enrolled me in one class that lasted two hours which was a lecture class and he enrolled me in that when Abdul Rahman was coming and staying here and he’d sleep here, because he’d stay here. One night a week he’d sleep here. He’d sleep in the living room because I remember Abdul Rahman gave me a ride to school one morning. Daniel, we should call him. He was Daniel then.

WALI ALI: In any case, Zeinob, you were still somewhat shy at the time, as I recall. I remember very well. It would probably be better to forget some of these things.

DAVID: Anyway, the final decision came; I was working and was going to have that corrective surgery, which at the time I moved into the house, he knew I was preparing for. That was part of the reason that he moved me in here, because he didn’t know what the implications were going to be. Who would take care of me, after the surgery? But there was going to have to be someone else who was going to be doing the cooking because I was going to be out of commission for six weeks, two months, something like that, where I wasn't going to be able to function. And he accepted that, so that's how she became the housekeeper. And that's how she lived rent free for one month, is that it?

ZEINOB: You know what I did? Murshid looked at me and he said—over the breakfast babble one morning—just out of the blue he said, "You bring me a $1000 and I'll fix up that room downstairs for you." So I went off with you, right after your operation, with you and Mansur and crazy Gregory down to L.A. to tape Pir Vilayat's lectures.

DAVID: Right. Reading Gurdjieff all the way.

ZEINOB: Right, and brought him back a $1000. Mansur drove us in his VW van, and there were the-four of us together when we took that trip to LA and back. And I think Gregory stayed in L.A., he didn't come back with us, did he?

DAVID: I can't remember.

ZEINOB: Greg Potemkin.

WALI ALI: That was like—I don't know what to call it—the Fools Caravan or something.

ZEINOB: Ship of Fools. It was a car of fools. Also with the history that came down later to think that Mansur was off taping Pir is also ironic, the whole trip. But anyway it blew everybody's mind at the table when they heard Murshid say, "Bring me a $1000," and I remember saying to David, "I can; I have it, because I had $2500 in the bank from turning 21, because I had just turned 21.

WALI ALI: He never had any idea that you had money when you first came on the set, because I remember him referring later to Cinderella who was dropped on his doorstep.

ZEINOB: He also called me the virgin, he asked me if I was pregnant the first time because I’d come right before Christmas, and that seemed to have implications to him.

WALI ALI: So then you went down there and you got the $1000 and you mailed it up here and he spent it before you got back, Right?

ZEINOB: I think he used it to pay off past debts, but I didn't hear anything that I should pay rent money for some time!

WALI ALI: Right, then you lived here rent-free for awhile—that was taken into consideration.

ZEINOB: Yes, I was a little off the hook. I think after that the noises were made about my paying rent, and finally I started giving him $80 a month for the room that was really your room and you moved into Ripley Street.

WALI ALI: Oh that’s right.

ZEINOB: And that was when I was paying.

DAVID: There you could drag some skeletons out to get Wali Ali.

ZEINOB: Yes I certainly could: You don't want all that on tape, do you Wali Ali?

WALI ALI: I don't care.

ZEINOB: About Wali Ali's romances?

WALI ALI: It's past, it's all over, it happened; my feeling, really, is not to write a polite biography. On the one hand I am interested in getting a lot of data from all sorts of sources and some of it may be more accurate than others, because I know some of the sources are not entirely accurate, and so to have an accurate record on file. The other thing is the writing of the book which I certainly want to take into account that we are dealing with a very complex human being who had many faults and limitations from the human point of view and he was nevertheless a fully illuminated soul; he was functioning with full consciousness, so that people can realize that God uses limited human vehicles to do His Work and it isn't always some kind of fairy-tale thing that goes on where everybody is so good and perfect.

ZEINOB: I think the fact that all of us who came to him had so many faults and yet his compassion was so great.

WALI ALI: That's the reason I want the real story from them—

ZEINOB: People concentrate so much on the fact that Murshid was Fudo, and they forget that he was Quan-Yin. Because, so help me, he never, Murshid screamed at me personally twice in a year and a half of, living with him. Now, most people said Murshid was screaming all the time but he only did that because he knew I couldn't take it. The first time he did it I went into hysterics and I remember I went downstairs and Wali Ali had to bring me back upstairs. You said, "Zeinob, you have to go upstairs and sit at the table." And it was all I could do to control myself, the pain that I felt that this being would be angry with me.

DAVID: I remember that fist one.

ZEINOB: And the second time he screamed at me, I screamed back. And he apologized. But he didn't just go around doing that to everybody. He was conscious of who he did that with and who he didn't.

WALI ALI: It's true.

DAVID: He used to brag about the fact that he had a Zen stick but he never used it.

WALI ALI: But what Zeinob says is true, as Khadija says, Murshid never raised his voice to her. Amina says that Murshid never raised his voice to her.

DAVID: He never raised his voice to me.

SITARA: Shirin too.

WALI ALI: Basira said the same thing.

ZEINOB: He was very gentle-with women. His practice with me was to hold the little fingers like this, crossing the little fingers, and to walk and he would always take me to the car that way. It was so beautiful to me. Wali Ali said I had no clothes and he would take me out, and say, "I have to get you into dresses, you have to look pretty.” He'd go out and take me to Home Yardage and say, "I'll give you five minutes to grab anything you want." And I'd grab, and it was the same way in the super market. We'd have five minutes in the super market and whatever the first impulse, whatever you saw you could grab. Maybe you'd end up with a balanced meal, and maybe you'd end up with potato chips and granola!

WALI ALI: I know he would do that; he'd say, "Buy whatever you want; just get anything you want."

ZEINOB: Remember the children at Christmas? He'd take all the children at Christmastime, like Nathan, Natasha, and maybe Bob Cogswell's children—the city didn't have any children, so it was all Marin children—and he'd take them all to the toy store and say, "Buy whatever you want, pick out whatever you want."

WALI ALI: I remember once that he came back from the toy store; he'd taken Nancy and Natasha to the store up at Sears. He was a combination of very, amused and sort of grumbling. He said, "She went right to what she wanted and picked it up, and her mother didn't want her to get it because it was too inexpensive!"

ZEINOB: That's typical.

DAVID: Really. He went out I remember and bought a swing set because I remember going down there. He was constantly—once a month he would buy something—

WALI ALI: His attitude towards money I think was very interesting because he could sometimes be so generous and the sky was the limit and you could just spend anything you wanted; and you could just spend freely and other times he could be so penny-pinching.

ZEINOB: I remember he wouldn't buy me wax for the floor; the kitchen floor was like, well there were fifty people coming through this house all the time. What did we have, maybe five classes per week? And it was filthy, plus there were at least 8 or 10 people eating lunch and dinner because they were involved in the work here, or whatever, because Murshid kept drawing more and more people in here, so to keep the kitchen floor clean I would have had to wash it three or four times per week. And he wouldn't buy me wax, which would have made the whole thing so much simpler. He would just sort of close down on something.

DAVID: One of the things he bought every shopping trip was cranapple juice. Oh’s on mission St. was where most of the staples, grains etc, were bought. He enjoyed joking with Mr. Oh a lot.

WALI ALI: He wouldn't let you buy butter, either, I remember, margarine was good enough.

ZEINOB:  Because Saul kept saying, "Murshid, you should eat butter, margarine is not good for you." He'd buy maybe a couple of cubes and then he’d go back to Saffola.

WALI ALI: But that's just the thing, and then you'd go out to dinner and he'd treat everybody, and buy those sheepskin jackets. In the process he bought one for Moineddin, and Mansur; he'd have 12 people or 15 people to supper at the Khyber Pass. That fellow, Hassan, still remembers, he says, "He came in and spent $500 one evening here—or $400."

DAVID: That was that big party we had in that back room.

WALI ALI: And then he would realize he'd spent all this money and he would get real real…

DAVID: I remember him quibbling about those jackets; he quibbled about them for a week. He said, "I had to do it because they didn't have any warm clothes!" He didn't like it!

ZEINOB: He didn't have to buy $80 jackets either.

DAVID: Right, but they were there.

WALI ALI: It’s just a good example—

DAVID: That's the way the lamps got bought for here, too. He went out to a lamp store, I happened to be in on that expedition. There were, let's see, there was a desk lamp, where was that desk lamp? I think it was up in the office, a great big black thing; he walked in and said, "I want that lamp," and walked right back out again. And that's the way he did a lot of his stuff.

ZEINOB: The first thing he saw, he'd go always, his first—

DAVID: Right. This house was the weirdest conglomeration of stuff that—

WALI ALI: Now you went out to buy the bathroom sink, why was that?

DAVID: That was her—

ZEINOB: It was my fault. David has taken the blame for that for years. It's not David's fault at all. Murshid sent the two of us out, he thought I'd pick the decorative side and David would do the practical, but I'm afraid I won out. And I picked something totally decorative and totally impractical, and David was stuck—

WALI ALI: Which we still have!

DAVID: It still works, doesn't it?

ZEINOB: And David was stuck with the job of putting it in—

WALI ALI: So you spent more money than he wanted or something like that.

ZEINOB: He kept saying that we should go to the Cleveland Wrecking Co. and get a used or another old sink.

DAVID: That's where I won out, because I told him it was ridiculous to go out and buy another hunk of junk that's going to fall apart with as much use as that thing gets.

ZEINOB: And so we got a new, expensive hunk of junk, and it didn't work!

WALI ALI: You tried to install it and you weren't successful or something like that?

DAVID: Something happened with the drain, it wouldn't drain right. I don't know just exactly what it was. 

ZEINOB: Yes, we always had a slow drain from that.

DAVID: Right.

WALI ALI: And he was irritated because he didn't want to pay for it, and you ended up paying for it!

DAVID: Right, I ended up paying for it.

WALI ALI: Eventually.

ZEINOB: It all gets so entangled.

WALI ALI: I just think it's curious because his whole attitude about money is a real—

DAVID: He really never comprehended it; here he had these parents who were outrageously wealthy, who had totally turned him off, and for most of his life he supported himself on what he earned.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I know that for years during the depression he just lived on what he was growing in the garden and didn't have any money whatsoever.

DAVID: And then all of a sudden he gets this landfall of money, and he didn't quite comprehend—

ZEINOB: He was getting $700 per month and he never quite adjusted to feast and famine, so that's what we went through. We went through his childhood and then the depression, and into his childhood and then the depression.

DAVID: Okay, an early impression, that's one of the first things he talked to me about. That was one of his primary bitches was the fact that his family completely turned him off, that his family totally rejected him, told him that he was mentally retarded, that there was no hope for him to learn anything. And one of his favorite stories was the one when he took his entrance exams at I believe it was Berkeley, that the psychiatrist that interviewed him asked him how he thought he did on his test, and he said, "I think I passed on it," and she said, "Your problem is inferiority. You have an inferiority-complex," because he had scored the highest, he had made the highest score in history on the entrance exams in the history of the University of California—not just at Berkeley but in the history of the University of California. I remember very distinctly that this was one of his stories that he repeated any number of times.

ZEINOB: I remember the story of the psychologist or psychiatrist that he went to and he said, "Madame, if this isn't the worst story you've ever heard, I'll pay you; if it is the worst story you've ever heard, you pay me." And she paid him!

WALI ALI: She let him go free; it was Dr. Baker.

DAVID: I know Vocha mentioned her a few times; is Vocha still around?

WALI ALI: She's dead. She just died this past year. To get back to the money thing, because I think a lot of, part of the conflicts that would come up in the living situation had to do with money. It was, "David was late on the rent, he bought this sink; it was just this late on the rent" business and then when Zeinob first arrived, "Here's just another mouth to feed—where am I gonna get…" because his Quan Yin, his good side, would care for people but then his—

DAVID: Jewish side—

WALI ALI: You said it, I didn't say it, his Jewish side would be concerned about money, and people supporting themselves with money. He was real sensitive about the problems of communes in which some people were spongers and, some people were contributing, and he had all these problems at Olompali Ranch trying to deal with that whole syndrome out there where everybody was living off of big daddy pretty much. So he would oscillate in that sphere, and then he would sometimes tell me, like when he went out on occasions to do something like going to Hagues, "Get whatever you want, just bring it up, anything you want," he would tell people and then later he would say, "When I get into that place, it's like God—I'm just in this Divine Intoxication, and I can't say no to anything. And then later when I sober up, then I worry about it."

ZEINOB: He used to say for us to protect him too in the house. It did take me maybe three months for him to get me together, because he really did it by the work that he gave me to do. But I remember after that period I was very involved in things, like Murshid saying, "You've got to protect me! When I'm in that state I can't say “No." After a class when everybody whomps onto him and wants this and wants that, you have to step in. And he wanted the three of us,

I remember, to step in and protect him when he was in those high vulnerable states. And also, you remember, when he was typing—the state that he was in. I'd start to go into the office and I'd watch my breath before I opened the door, watch my breath, get very peaceful, walk through the door like I didn't exist, close the door and reassemble myself in the kitchen. And you had to be so careful because you could really hurt him if you went through there with your trip—he was too sensitive.

WALI ALI: And people would be unaware that he was in some high state and ask him sort of mundane questions or something when he was typing. Jarring experiences were his problem because he would get very high and then be jarred all the time. It was very difficult for the nervous system, very difficult.

ZEINOB: Toward the end, he couldn't stand for anybody, not just mureeds, but only when we got larger, he couldn't stand for anybody, to even be upstairs. You remember when we had a Sunday afternoon walks class? This was when the Saturday afternoon class was on Sunday, not the Saturday night class. And then we'd have a dinner for maybe 50 people every Sunday night, and then the Dharma class would follow that.

WALI ALI: 30 of 40; it would differ.

ZEINOB: It would differ, but anyway, he didn't want anybody upstairs washing the dishes. First of all we said, "Is there a mureed who can wash the dishes?" Then he said, "It's only got to be people that I know personally very well." Because it was between two classes and he was preparing for his second class and he had to meditate again.

DAVID: Yeah, I can remember because I wasn't involved in those.

WALI ALI: He just wanted privacy.

ZEINOB: Yeah.

DAVID: We laid the carpet down here, and once the classes got too big for up there they came down here and nobody went upstairs. Even before I left nobody was really going upstairs that much.

WALI ALI: A few people could come up; if you wanted to come up and be quiet and watch Perry Mason or something it was alright.

DAVID: Right, but even that had pretty well slowed down.

WALI ALI: So when did you join the Holy Order of Mans, David?

DAVID: In January of 1970 is when I joined the Order.

WALI ALI: Murshid died January of ‘71.

DAVID: Right, I was in the Order for about a year before he died. That was kind of a shock to all of us, I think. We kind of walked around empty for awhile.

WALI ALI: What were the circumstances when you left here and joined the Order? What went down in terms of your discussions with Murshid on the subject?

DAVID: Yeah, we never really did discuss it, and that's something I was going to take up with you after the interview ended. I was at a place where I wasn't really functioning here in the house, and I knew that my time was ending here. I didn't know what I was going to be doing so I was in limbo, so to speak. It was driving me up a wall, and my constant question was doing my exercises, when I'd do my meditations, I'd just ask, "What am I supposed to be doing?" Finally I received the Message, "Join the Holy Order of Mans." I don't know how long it was; it took me awhile before I finally got around to doing it. The really funny part was that I received a phone call from Mansur, I think it was, telling me that I was going to have to leave the Mentorgarten here, and that I could either move in with Daniel, or I was trying to get a thing going with a guy over in Marin that was a gardener; but I'd already made this decision and had already talked to Father Paul and told him the experience I had. He looked at me kind of out of the corner of his eye and said, "Okay, but you're going to have to get permission," and I said, "Yeah, I realize that." And that was on a Saturday when Murshid was going over to the extension for classes. I would take him, drive him over there and then pick him up, and when I picked him up I told him, I said, "I'm going to join the Holy Order of Mans," and he said, "Okay." I told him that I would need his permission—

WALI ALI: As I recall his reaction at the time, he was pleased.

ZEINOB: I remember that too. I remember him really giving his blessing to you.

DAVID: yeah, he did.

ZEINOB: Upon leaving and starting that work, because it continued a connection that he had with the Holy Order of Mans and with Father Paul, and that definitely met with his approval.

DAVID: Yeah, he—

ZEINOB: There weren't any bad scenes over David's leaving at all.

DAVID: No, and like I say, every week when he came over to teach class, he would always, invariably, if he had to go out of his way, would give me his blessing so that that connection was—

WALI ALI: I remember some bad scenes around Frank Tedesco's leaving, and that was a funny situation.

ZEINOB: That was a very funny situation.

DAVID: Yeah.

ZEINOB: Because apparently what Frank had done was—Frank had given Murshid all of his money and said, "Keep it for me, because I keep spending it." And Murshid had put it in a bank account for him, and then Frank was saying that Murshid had ripped him off, or—

DAVID: He wanted his money back, but Murshid said, "I'm protecting it for you."

ZEINOB: I remember a real scene, you were involved in it upstairs in what was then the meeting room.

DAVID: Yea, for sure. Yeah, I know. It finally came to the point where Murshid wouldn't talk to him. I received a couple of phone calls from him when he was over in Berkeley. Murshid just absolutely refused to have anything to do with him.

WALI ALI: I saw Frank Tedesco in Philadelphia—

ZEINOB: When he was on the East Coast—

WALI ALI: Last year I was giving a seminar in Philadelphia, and who should show up but Frank Tedesco.

DAVID: Amazing!

SITARA: Did he ever get his money back?

DAVID: Yeah, Murshid finally gave him his money back and told him that he couldn't come in again until he had his things straightened around.

ZEINOB: But Murshid wasn’t planning on spending the money. It wasn't that kind of scene.

DAVID: No he wasn't, he had it in a—

ZEINOB: It was that Frank had made a stand, I think, that Murshid said that he gave him the money, then wanted it back three days later. It was an incredibly short time, and he just didn't like that kind of flip-flopping. Murshid liked it when you made a decision and you…

DAVID:  …Abided by it.

ZEINOB: Yeah.

DAVID: There was something about the bank account too; he put it in some kind of bank account.

WALI ALI: A special account.

DAVID: Yeah, some kind of a special account where he couldn't get to it without having to pay a fine.

ZEINOB: He probably put it in a savings account.

WALI ALI: I don't know what it was; it was some trouble—it was in another town or—it was just a big drag. He was just trying to use it as a way of teaching Frank some sort of lesson. Frank wasn't having it.
Let's see, what haven't we covered?

ZEINOB: We went very rapidly from the beginning of the three of us living together to David's leaving. It was a gradual build-up of us all. When I first came, the office had already been moved and it was such a gradual building up. More and more people were coming here every week. I remember one time: you and David and Murshid and myself—it was on a Monday night, the Monday night Sufi class—wondering if anybody was going to show up. And nobody showed up and we just roasted marshmallow until I think, maybe Vashti and Basira or somebody wandered in and joined us. But people don't understand that even when we were in this house sometimes things were very slow. And also a lot of people don't know that Monday night was not a dance night. We didn't dance Monday nights; we'd have the meeting upstairs, and Murshid always started with some kind of political, social rap, that's how it usually started. But he'd always done his meditations and while he was doing that he was incredibly high. And he'd usually read a little bit from Inayat Khan, if it was Monday night and Ram Dass or one of the Sutras if it was Sunday night. And then as it got on a little but, then we'd come downstairs to do a dance which would sort of close the class; it was the second half of the class, after the tea-break. We had tea upstairs and then we'd come down here. And also I remember Pir arriving the first time which we haven't talked about at all. At least I don't know if it was the first time he came, but it was the first time I ever met him, and it was maybe two weeks after I came so it was in January of ‘69; and also the New Year's Eve party.

WALI ALI: He came before in July of ‘68.

ZEINOB: That was when you saw their first meeting; you were present at their first meeting. But you weren't living here at that time.

WALI ALI: No I wasn't. I just actually had just met Murshid less than a month before that.

DAVID: The second time was the time I went to pick him up.

ZEINOB: Yeah, because he came back here.

DAVID: The second time, I picked him up, down at the airport.

ZEINOB: And I remember there was talk of him initiating people, so Murshid was this the second time that Pir and Murshid had ever been together that he came to this house?

WALI ALI: He'd seen him before in Los Angeles when he'd been on some sort of panel at the East-West Center, yet he didn't have a chance to talk to him.

ZEINOB: Was this between the July and the—

WALI ALI: No, before that—prior to July—but really the meeting in July was the first real meeting.

ZEINOB: Did Murshid invite him to come here?

WALI ALI: Yes, he did. He invited him, and he accepted, and then he came back shortly thereafter and did a seminar at the camp at Olompali Ranch. Pir Vilayat then gave a seminar there.

ZEINOB: Before he came to the Mentorgarten?

WALI ALI: No, he came back almost immediately because he saw what was going on. He saw all these young people and all this interest and tremendous magnetism and so he responded to it.

ZEINOB: So I remember him, he was giving initiations though in this house in January.

WALI ALI: Right, Abdul Rahman, Daniel, had been initiated by Pir Vilayat at the thing at Olompali Ranch. He was the first person whom Pir Vilayat did initiate. He was in some sort of waiting situation with Murshid, or something; anyway he was initiated by Pir Vilayat at that time. Then when Pir Vilayat came back in January, there were several people that Murshid had not yet initiated and had been kept waiting. Daniel's wife, Fawn, and Banefsha. At that time, maybe those two, and maybe one other person.

SITARA: So Banefsha was initiated by him?

WALI ALI: She was initiated initially by Pir Vilayat, because Murshid still had her on a waiting basis for initiation. She came up to me shortly after and said, "I just couldn't wait."

ZEINOB: But Murshid must have known that that would have happened.

WALI ALI: Abdul Rahman informed him—in fact he was so glad that Vilayat and he were going to be working together—because he'd been forced to work by himself and he never wanted to helve to work by himself, he wanted to work together in the Order.

ZEINOB: He was really into unity.

WALI ALI: You never heard that story before?

SITARA: Unh-unh.

DAVID: The thing that kept them apart too were stories that Vilayat had heard.

WALI ALI: It wasn't worked through for years; Murshid wanted to get the esoteric papers for one thing; they'd been taken away from him, and that was one of the things that he wanted from Vilayat was to receive back all those papers—Vilayat had never taken them, it was Murshida Duce. But he wanted back those teaching materials and that was an action that he wanted by way of recognition. And that didn't happen for a long time. They came trickling in gradually, simply as a result of the inefficiency of the secretariat in Europe.

ZEINOB: We were given initiation but Gatha classes, at least for me for us here in the house, didn't start for some time did they?

WALI ALI: But he had the Gathas; he just didn't have hardly any of the Githas and none of the Sangathas with a few pages of exceptions.

DAVID: I know, I'd been a disciple for a long time before we even started receiving them—

WALI ALI: Yeah, he didn't necessarily put people immediately into the Gathas, or didn't immediately give them practices.

ZEINOB: He did immediately give you practices; in fact when I first moved into the house, as soon as he accepted me, when I had that first interview with him where he gave me Darshan, he gave me my practices, prior to initiation, he gave me a few things to do. But also there's Saadia's coming which was a big—

DAVID: Oh yeah—

ZEINOB: That marked a certain part in the history of the three of us living together, too. And I try to remember chronologically when that took place.

WALI ALI: I can remember chronologically when that took place because I was at the camp—it was actually the first summer camp, it was the Colorado camp, so it must have been June of ‘69. It was June of ‘69 in Colorado because at the time when Saadia arrived I was still at the camp and there were a lot of new romances that took place at that camp.

ZEINOB: Yes.

WALI ALI: And what happened then? Oh yes, Fazl Inayat Khan was here also during that time.

ZEINOB: When Saadia was here?

WALI ALI: When Saadia first arrived, Fazl was having a meeting at some hotel where they did the Universal Worship.

ZEINOB: It was the Canterbury Hotel.

DAVID: Was Saadia here—that was before Saadia came, wasn't it?

ZEINOB: I'm sorry I have to object, Saadia was not there—(reel change—some words lost)

WALI ALI: The Universal Worship that Fazl led, that Murshid took some mureeds to.

ZEINOB: Do you remember exactly who was there?

WALI ALI: I know Yasmin was there. And Amin was there and he had to leave the room because he started breaking out laughing.

ZEINOB: And was Moineddin there?

DAVID: Yeah, Moineddin was there, Fatima was there, I think Hassan was there; most of the Khankah was there.

ZEINOB: I think if Moineddin and Fatima came, then probably the whole Khankah came.

DAVID: Right, the whole Khankah came down.

ZEINOB: I remember sitting next to Murshid and seeing this whole thing come down. And it's rare for me to really get angry, and I felt such pain. I was just about to stand up and say, "This is false," with that power that just comes through you, it's not personal. And I said that to Murshid afterwards, I said, "Murshid, I felt such pain I couldn't believe how I felt.” And he said, "You felt the anger of Inayat Khan." And he verified that, he said, "You were right." Because I knew what was truth and what wasn't. I knew when someone was speaking from a place of truth and when they weren't. But Murshid didn't put him down; he tried to find him afterwards and he—Fazl just did what he had to do and the other fellow—a lecturer—remember there was that fellow from—

DAVID: I can't remember who it was—

ZEINOB: From Africa—who lectured—and then both of them just went into another room and then Murshid started the singing; we all chanted and sang outside the door.

DAVID: That was in the room when we did that; we all stood up. Murshid had us all stand up and we all began chanting, at the first one. We went twice to the Universal Worship Service. The second time we went—I went to the second one too—they made us promise at the door that we would keep our mouths shut. The second time we went we had to promise that we'd be quiet.

ZEINOB: And Murshid started, "Allah, Allah, Allah, Allah, Ishk Allah—Oh dear!

DAVID: We got more response than what they did. One fellow came back and said, "That had more life in it than the service did." Not to knock Fazl, but it was empty.

ZEINOB: I remember Pir calling Fazl, "Fizzle."

DAVID: He was the head of the Sufi Order? More skeletons!

WALI ALI: There are always lots of skeletons. So I want to go back to what we were talking about when the tape recorder was off. Can you describe this experience that you had in terms of what actually happened?

DAVID: I have met—I can't remember the woman's name—one of his ex-lovers. He used to always talk about the fact that God had chosen him to remain single. This was something that he talked about very frequently.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I know, I discussed about it with him too.

DAVID: And I remember him specifically, telling me one time—as I recall we were going over to Brother Juniper’s for a class there, he said, "I'm really worried about my disciples putting something on me that I'm not; that I've not been celibate all my life, and they are trying to make me into a virgin, and I'm not."

WALI ALI: He said that?

DAVID: He said that very specifically. It really kind of worried him that they were trying to put something on him that he couldn't live up to. And he described, "I seem to have constantly been bringing in something out of the cold," and I think he saw a bit of himself there doing that. And he would describe various and sundry mutual friends and he said, "I used to live with a woman that was like that. I had to drop her because she just couldn't make up her mind whether I could stay there."

WALI ALI: I don't assume that when he says, "Live with a woman," that he meant sleeping with a woman?

DAVID: Yeah, in the context that he was using it, it was. He not only slept with her, but he was having sexual relations with her. I have to draw that distinction there because of Zeinob and myself. I often wonder sometimes what some of the tales were that were going on—I know I had people coming up to me and saying how happy they were that I had a girlfriend and all this stuff. And the only thing I could say was, "Yeah, she's a girl and she's my friend!"

WALI ALI: You said on one occasion you met—I remember we used to go out to dinner with Betty on some occasions, you're not thinking about her?

DAVID: No, no that wasn't Betty, it was, she was, someone who was Murshid’s age, that came around—he had absolutely no interest; she came out to City College; one time: She was trying to renew an old flame and it wasn't Murshida Vera either, because I can vaguely remember her coming out every once in a while.

WALI ALI: Would you remember her name if you heard it?

DAVID: I might, but it was such a brief meeting, and names don't stick with me. If I saw her face I'd recognize her.

WALI ALI: Just a second—

SITARA: The face of who now?

DAVID: Of this one woman I met that he used to live with.

SITARA: That he had had relations with?

DAVID: Right.

SITARA: It makes sense in one sense that he always was threatening to give us a lecture on super-sex, do you remember that? And he did, on and off, he gave little tidbits, I never got the big one. I don't think if he ever gave it, he would have talked about anything that he hadn't experienced. That was the motto of his life.

ZEINOB: Also, the fact that all of us coming from a different place, that he was tolerant of it. If he'd been totally pure and totally celibate why would he have tolerated it?

SITARA: Have you ever heard of Karmu in Boston, the healer that Murshid met?

DAVID: Yeah, I remember when he went back there he was tremendously impressed with the man.

ZEINOB: Yeah, he said that he was the Black Christ.

DAVID: Yeah, he had met the Black Christ, I remember that distinctly.

SITARA: Murshid introduced us and after that Murshid came back here and Karmu told me that Murshid had told him that he had slept with 28 women. I told Wali Ali that.

ZEINOB: Who said what?

SITARA: Karmu had said that Murshid had confided in him that he had slept with 28 women. Karmu is a Leo and he's an exaggerator, but I'm recall that time that I told you that Karmu told me that Murshid Sam had told him that he had slept with at least 28 women!

WALI ALI: Oh well, that's Karmu's imagination.

SITARA: I think it's exaggeration, but I always felt that he had, because he wouldn't have talked about it. This is the first real authentication of it now.

ZEINOB: I've always said that he was celibate because—

SITARA: Despite what David says?

ZEINOB: No, before, because he always came on to me in such a totally pure way. And he also said to me he knew that I was going to be celibate living in the house—and he said that the secret of it is you just don't exist from here down (and he pointed at his waist)—you don't live from here down.

SITARA: You see that he did master that.

WALI ALI: I know this was one of his old flames or at least an old dancing partner. Her picture is over there on the right, do you recognize that? Leonora?

DAVID: No it wasn't her. The woman I met had longer hair and her nose was smaller. That's the thing that stood out; I notice noses a lot.

WALI ALI: I just thought on an odd chance maybe that was it.

DAVID: No.

WALI ALI: Do you remember any other occasion beside that one when you were in the car when he said to you, "I hope my disciples don't think I've been celibate?"

DAVID: No, he only mentioned it once in relation to that. He used to constantly walk around—for awhile when he first started taking on disciples—in total amazement of the fact. He said, "You can reach a state where you transcend sexual desires," where you are, in essence, no longer horny. He used to mention that with a deal of regularity, which is not necessarily confirmation of the fact that he did lead a celibate life. But he had views, and I don't know if that's been put on tape yet, about marriage and things like that. He refused to perform a marriage and when asked why he said, "I'm not sure that that institution is going to be carried on in the New Age."

WALI ALI: I think he had a thing about being a priest. He never wanted to officiate at the Universal Worship, for example, but he got put into that position at one point and he resented the fact that the Sufi Order had, after the death of Inayat Khan, put all of its emphasis in the Universal Worship and not in the esoteric school, and he didn't feel that his functions in life were in the line of his being a priest. He was more in the line of being a prophet or a spiritual teacher, or a member of the spiritual hierarchy or something, but not a priest and he didn't see himself having those functions.

WALI ALI: I think what you said is consistent with that; it sounds like a remark he would have made on some occasion.

DAVID: I forget whose marriage it was, was it Mouni? No, it wasn't Shirin. It was early disciples and they dropped out a long time ago. The girl had a perfectly round face.

WALI ALI: Was It Padmani and—

DAVID: Yeah.

WALI ALI: What was his name?

DAVID: I can't remember what his name was.

WALI ALI: He was never actually initiated—they wanted him to marry them.

DAVID: Right. They wanted him to marry them and he wouldn't. And I remember asking him why, and that was the reason he gave. He also said at one point and I don't know how serious he was when he said it, that he saw his disciples being very free with their sexual energies and that he was teaching them how to renew that force within themselves so that they wouldn't be depleted. He saw all these depleted people walking around. Rather than condemn their actions, he was giving them exercises that would increase the life force so that they could continue functioning. I'm sure he was aware of the side effects, too, for gaining more control over those forces.

WALI ALI: But you don't remember anything further about that whole subject from a personal point of view?

DAVID: He mentioned it only once to my whole knowledge the fact that he was not celibate, and that his disciples were trying to put that bag on him. And he was kind of worried about being made a saint—that's one thing—

ZEINOB: Yeah, he was worried about that—

WALI ALI: I know he used to always go around saying, especially when he started doing this Krishna dance with women; that he never touched them with any kind of lust, and that was just entirely—God had showed him that he was supposed to touch those women, but he was not feeling about it in that way, and he didn't arrogate to himself any ability to kiss or touch any of his women disciples that he wouldn't give to any of his men. That always struck me as funny, when he would say that He was conscious. But for example, the actions of certain spiritual teachers—Hindus and others when they are teaching Brahmacharya and sleeping with their secretary, so to speak.

SITARA: He once told me upstairs in the kitchen, "You are very beautiful, or one of the 200 most beautiful women in the world; and God is sending all to me" and it is a very hard test. I have to be very careful.

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, he was very conscious of being careful about it; he was real strict with himself on that subject.

ZEINOB: Wouldn't that prove also that if he had been celibate all of his life, he would have mastered it by the time he was in his seventies.

DAVID: Not necessarily, no.

WALI ALI: I don't agree.

DAVID: He was probably one of the most virile men I have ever known in my life, really.

SITARA: My father thought he was a ladies' man—that was one of his impressions.

WALI ALI: Some of the stories that used to go around about him in the peripheries of the world were that he was sleeping with this lady and this lady and this lady, that came around.

SITARA: His disciples, you mean?

WALI ALI: Yeah, but of course everyone knows that wasn't true.

ZEINOB: Because they'd see pictures of him, for example, one of them is in that book where he's sitting in a chair and there are two women just—

DAVID: Two disciples kind of draped around him.

ZEINOB: I hate that picture.

SITARA: Oh, I love it. Ayesha and Mashaal.

WALI ALI: And Summer.

ZEINOB: No, not that one, that's not the picture I'm talking about, I love that picture too. This is another picture I am talking about, it is before he has a beard, and it's in the Murshid book, and it's not in the same light at all as that picture. I love that picture; I'm talking about a different one.

WALI ALI: Oh, I bet—

ZEINOB: I'm talking about one that the two women really do look sleazy and it’s not Ayesha and Mashaal. I don't know who it is but it's not in the same light at all.

WALI ALI: I think we are going a little far afield now; somehow we ought to try and refocus and just kind of get down to the basics that need to be covered. I'm glad to have had this discussion with you though, David, because it’s been very helpful. What do you feel, Zeinob? Maybe at some point we ought to go through—it seems to me that you need to make a separate tape rather than trying to do everything today, and I think what we should concentrate on is finishing up David's accounts of things.

DAVID: Okay, the only other thing that we touched upon that I think should probably be mentioned is Saadia, because I had more contact with her actually than even Murshid did. What exactly, I'm not sure. She was one of his early disciples; she was Murad rather than mureed. She chased after him, she told me she chased after him for a long time saying that she wanted him to be her teacher, and he refused for a long time until he received in vision that he was to initiate her. At that point she said that she was in the family home in Pakistan, and they had a private shrine and that he came to her there as she was just finishing her evening prayers and he initiated her at that point, and said, "Because I sought you out, you are a Murad, you're not a mureed." He also spoke of her in very high terms, very high terms.

WALI ALI: I know. I saw her this past year in N.Y.

DAVID: And I was totally surprised at what fell in my lap, so to speak, because I was the one who took her around to see the sights, and the second time she came he was in New Mexico, and I was the only one in the house—you were somewhere—

WALI ALI: I must have been at the camp; Yeah, I was at the camp.

ZEINOB: Yeah, you came back and Saadia was here, and David and I both stayed at home, and you went—it was the next summer that we went off—

DAVID: But we had long talks and in the East he was totally madzub, like maybe Major Sadiq whom Murshid talked about. I guess he would all of a sudden come—Major Sadiq's wife—he stayed at their house for awhile and the wife said, "I don't know what that man is but he has me cleaning out the chair and that's something I don't even do for my own husband." And he would come in to where she was and come storming in saying, "It's because of you that your husband will lose his powers of healing." And he would in the middle of the night go running down the street in his bare feet, or just with socks on or something, going to the Mosque for some reason or another, just totally—something that I don't think any of us ever saw, I know I never saw him in a state like that. He had his feet very firmly planted on the ground. Now there is a question of where his head was, where was the rest of him? But his feet were always on the ground. He was always teaching when he was with us. This is something which in a way I'm sorry I didn't see. But, in the West had he allowed that state to overtake him I imagine he would have ended up in some institution somewhere, because people just don't have the same opportunities here.

WALI ALI: You could feel that, and sometimes he showed it, but it was obvious it was under control, and a lot of his power was involved in his ability to control that state of madzubiat.

DAVID: That state of ecstasy. The real tale, I think, that I gained out of the time I spent with Saadia, other than picking up a lot of what the Oriental culture was, because she was very old world. I don't know what she is like now. I know she went through a lot of changes with us.

WALI ALI: She's had a lot of changes to go through.

ZEINOB: Her approach to Murshid was so different from the way we related to him. Her respect from knowing who a Murshid was from generations and generations was very different from our relationship to him.

DAVID: Verging on worship.

WALI ALI: This is the Oriental way.

DAVID: We treated him with very little respect and quite often no respect at all.

WALI ALI: I don't know—it was certainly different; he tolerated many different approaches and that was one of his interesting features that he with some people, he was a joker, and a ragamuffin and they didn't think seriously about him; to others he was—and even among his mureeds there were many different attitudes that he accepted. Yeah, I think that's an interesting point, David, about the attitude toward a teacher that she demonstrated.

DAVID: I know she was really upset when he was taken to Taos to be buried, because she said that he had picked out a place in Pakistan, that he said, "I want to be buried on this hill."

WALI ALI: Right, he told me, though, that he had two places—

DAVID: Right, he told me that too.

WALI ALI: That he had seen that he would be buried in, and one was in Lahore and the other was at Lama.

DAVID: Right, and it just depended on where he happened to die.

WALI ALI: That was just the decision that was made at the time; nobody was prepared to send him to Pakistan.

SITARA: He did also say that it would be one of the two places depending on what part of the world he was in when he left.

WALI ALI: Oh, I never heard him say that to me; he had just said one of the two.

SITARA: Yeah, he said it to me.

WALI ALI: I'll ask you one last question. Taking in the whole picture of the effect that Murshid had on your life and how you now see him, what would you say to evaluate in those terms the effect he had on your life, and how you now see him.

DAVID: He said it himself one time; he was my ersatz-father. He adopted me and took care of me when I felt that my family rejected me and didn't understand what I was getting into. And he helped me along, because when I'd go through hard times he'd always come through. It wasn't always pleasant for me, but he always did the right thing for me, for my own growth. Spiritually he was the one that picked me up. I was totally unaware of the fact that there was even anything called the spiritual path, and he proceeded to take me by the hand and lead me in that direction. And he couldn't initiate me until I realized that there was such a thing as initiation, but he definitely—and he had the weirdest techniques—for example he started out by inviting me to parties because that was the only thing I could relate to. After that the heavies came! In the Holy Order of Mans he is called the incarnation of John the Baptist, which I am sure is common knowledge. That was his mission, to initiate, and he quite often said that himself, was that his dances were not his main teaching, but that was to introduce people into ecstasy, into a higher consciousness, but that wasn't his real work. I don't think anybody really figures out, as far as I know, what his real work was because he had his hands in so many different things.

WALI ALI: I made a crack at giving that answer; I wrote to the preface of the Jerusalem Trilogy, in terms of his real work. And I think his real work was in the area of what we call the Spiritual Hierarchy, those beings that are responsible for the protection of the whole planet and for the evolution of human history in terms of becoming more God-conscious and meeting with actual problems of the whole planet.

DAVID: He was definitely a member of the Hierarchy.

WALI ALI: And so he was called on to do many different things in different periods of his life and, in fact, it's kind of like reading many different lives. And that's what is fascinating, too, about pulling together the whole picture.

DAVID: Really, I know he said quite frequently that he was the only person in history, or at least the first person in history, that was an accepted Master of all the religious traditions of the world. He was accepted by other teachers of those schools. He was an accepted Yogi Master; he was an accepted Buddhist Master; he was an accepted Zen Master; he was an accepted Christian Master; he was the first man in history that did that. That's what the New Age is all about, if he came to introduce the New Age—the title of this is The New Age in Person, really is an apt title, in that respect, because the Aquarian Age is many individuals functioning as one organism, and that's kind of a keynote. And that's what he set out to do.

I was listing to some tapes the other day and he mentioned his tomato experiments in it. The only real information I got from the tape was that he was doing them during the time he was going to Berkeley and that he was directed by God to stop because the human race was not ready to receive what he was discovering and so he destroyed his notes and thought of it no more.

The Temple of Understanding
March 17, 1976

Dear Sabira -

How nice of you to write about our dear friend Sam, and I wish I had a lot of information for you.

Our main point of contact was by letter, as you have already discerned, and his letters to me were always full of wit and wisdom.

We met only once, in 1970 in Geneva when the Temple of Understanding held its second Spiritual Summit Conference.

At that time, due to the business of the event, we didn't have much of a chance to visit. When we did, it was a twinkle and a laugh, across a crowded room, at some of the more ponderous speeches. We had a sort of inner sharing, mainly full of laughter at life, and its essential element of joy.

I loved him, and I believe he loved me, and intuitively we knew each other well.

This doesn't seem too helpful, but it's about all I can come up with. If I think of more I'll let you know, and would love to see you if you like, but don't think I have much more to contribute. Do let me know how the biography progresses, as I do care.

In His Service

Judith Hollister

Comments of Moineddin Jablonski

MOINEDDIN: Fatima just added that Murshid liked peanut butts on his spaghetti. Anyhow, after supper, everybody went to the front room and set around and that’s when we started lighting up the marijuana joints up and passing them around. It didn't faze Murshid in the slightest. And I guess the first things that happed was that Alan started passing around his color photographs of flying saucers and we all looked at them and I took about five minutes and then Murshid just started talking. I can't tell you what he talked about. It was interesting. I guess it was just that the ring in his voice had such a vitality of such a magnetic feeling to it that we were just all riveted to him as far as our attention went. And Ted Rich would interject comments to it here and there and Murshid would say, "Yeah, that’s right." I really can't tell you what he talked about at all, but I do know that about midnight Ted Rich said he had to go home, so I took him. Fatima had a little sports car at the time, so Ted and I went out and I drove him home. I can't remember where he lives, somewhere on Geary I think. I drove back and Murshid must have talked for another hour. It must have been until one-thirty in the morning.

INTERVIEWER: "Did you know right away that he was going to be your Murshid?"

MOINEDDIN: I guess I had a feeling, but it certainly didn't present itself like that. I didn't know anything about discipleship or anything. I just knew I wanted to meet a Zen master.

FATIMA: We knew right away that we were going to study with him, because we were going to (??)Subaru where we had to sit outside for 3 months and listen to them inside. So we went and sat outside for 3 months and we were just about to go in and then we met Murshid, and we never want back to (??)Subaru, I remember that. And you said that this was the way you were going to take, you decided that.

MOINEDDIN: Yeah, yeah, we gave up (??)Subaru instantly as soon as we met Murshid.

FATIMA: So it was known, it wasn't exactly expressed, it just happened.

MOINEDDIN: Anyhow, after this first meeting at the Cosmic Messiahs house, we started going to public meetings and at the time Murshid lived in a little back street between Howard and Folsom called Clementina between eighth and ninth avenue. The address was 772 Clementina St. and it was the apartment formerly occupied by Gavin Arthur. And you could look up at the dingy ceiling and see where some astrological symbols had been fixed, like little labels, and taken off and you could see where the dust around them made it as you could see where they had been. Anyhow, as I was telling somebody earlier today, that little room was permeated with the kind of atmosphere that I'd never experienced before. Even the type of incense that he burned at the time, Murshida Vera burns the same kind. It was a Japanese incense, purple stick I think. It always reminds me of Clementina St., because the atmosphere was so potent it could just transform your being just by walking into it, even if Murshid was there or not, or I should say, that actually that was a sign of his being there, if he was physically present or not. And us. The first or second meeting I thought I'd made some kind of wise remark when we were at the Cosmic Messiahs and Murshid sort of pooh-poohed that notion, he said, "No, what you said was something like what the world really needed was love." And I said I didn't remember saying that. And he said, "Oh Yeah! That was what you said. That was the most important thing you ever said!" I don't know if I said it or not. Murshid said that I said it, so I started believing it. Anyhow, that was a kind of nice thing to have happen, because it got me off thinking I'd made some really wise comment.

FATIMA: It was a tiny, tiny little apartment, just a little bedroom, and a little kitchen. It was the back half of an apartment, the front half was shared. They shared the bathroom and the front two rooms was a fellow named Jack, was that it?

MOINEDDIN: A fellow named Jack who followed the courses and who had a parrot. We used to see him occasionally; he had nothing to do with Murshid’s meetings. In fact Murshid used to sit on his bed and talk to us and he had plastic curtains like shower curtains on the window and they rattled and crackled in this tiny little room. It was the kind of place you would ordinarily call ramshackle or dingy or run down, but it had its redeeming factors. So we met there twice a week on Sunday and Monday evenings. At the time we were living in Bolinas. We'd made friends with a lady named Sheila McKendrick who ran a dress shop in Mill Valley and we met her because Fatima sold her jewelry, and still sells her jewelry which was at that time a good thing cause Haight Street was happening and it was kind of a psychedelic jewelry and mandalas and stuff so it was we met Sheila, and soon after we introduced Murshid because she was our friend. We'd go to Murshids for the Sunday night meetings then we stayed overnight at Sheila's, and then go to the Monday night meeting, then we went to Bolinas where we lived. In the meantime of course Fatima and I are corresponding with Otis and Nickey, Mansur and Jemila who are in Marquette, Michigan where Mansur is teaching at the college there and Nathan is less than a year old. We were writing them and asking them to come out and visit us and maybe live in California. And I started to say earlier in the tape, Mansur was actually my first guru because I said I was kind of on an atheist trip and Mansur, no matter what he said, always said that God was real. And that he connected or identified God with the experience of eternity, which we got glimpses of on our drug experiences or psychedelic experiences. It was really Mansur that gave me the glimpse that God was and could be a real being. So, we were writing to the Johnsons and ultimately they did come out the following fall of 1967.

INTERVIEWER: So you were writing to them and telling them that you'd found a connection?

MOINEDDIN: Yeah, I wrote to Mansur and told him I'd found a Zen Master, who turns out to be a Sufi teacher, which I don't know what I can tell you about, you just have to come out and experience it for yourself. That was an interesting thing because we'd invite our friends to come meet Murshid and who we called Sam at the time, because he wasn't Murshid yet and he didn't tell us to call him Murshid. We’d never heard the word Murshid. So, they'd say, "What’s he like?" And we'd start saying, "He's like this," and we'd get half way through our description of what he was like and realized there’s every possibility that he's not like that at all! If they went to see him, he'd manifest any way he wanted to manifest. He'd ask them if they had cold feet or empty stomachs or he'd be very sweet or he'd be very nasty—anything could happen. Actually though, I must say, those were the days he was all sweetness, primarily until he moved to the Mentorgarten. I'll tell you about that later. But he never showed his rough side or his Fudo side until he moved to the Mentorgarten. Alright, I think we'll stick to Clementina Street for a while. As I say, we went to meeting twice a week on Clementina St. and at one of these meetings a fellow who was later to play a certain role in Murshids life, Father Blighton, Father Earl Blighton, who before he died last year sometime, was the head of the Holy Order of Mans, a Christian Mystical Organization, came to one of or two of Murshids meetings on Clementina St., as well as some of his disciples. One fellow in particular named Eric who Murshid worked very closely with for a while. However, those first days on Clementina St., there were roughly 5 or 6 people who used to come and listen to Murshid’s talks. As Fatima said, he sat on the side of his little single bed there and spoke to us. We were arranged around the room in sort of e rough crescent, there were about 8 or 9 chairs never totally filled. Kirk came for awhile; Eric, followed by a disciple came; Fatima and I always came; Akbar had been initiated approximately a month before. Akbar was the first young person in our group or in the SF area to be initiated by Murshid. Murshid had, as Murshida Vera mentioned in her tapes, initiated quite a few people when he was living at the Kaaba Allah Khankah in Fairfax. At this time he had a few older Mureeds, at least in their late 30's or early 40's. All men. A fellow named Clark Brown and a few mureeds from Corte Madera, one named Wayne and another I can't remember his name. I remember his face but not his name. Shortly after we started coming they all dropped away. (Wayne and Howard and Claude Brown still continued to come because he was really interested in Murshid’s teachings. But a year or so later he got busted for grass or something in Idaho and spent a year in jail. Haven’t heard from him since. We were sort of, although we didn't realize it, we just thought we were interested in what we were interested in, but we were really a new wave type of people who were seeking spiritual teachings and Baraka and so forth. So we came and more and more people started coming and it started building very gradually. Then a traumatic event happened. Murshid ended up in the hospital. And I think this was the. Murshid had gone down to Ojai in South California to visit some old friends. And the next thing we knew was that he was in the hospital. And I think another fellow that was coming at that time was Amin, and even James from the Khankah was too. And I remember Amin had a bad back for about six months and Murshid told him to lay down on the floor of the apartment. So he did and Murshid walked right over his back! Just walked right up his backbone and apparently it set something in place and Amin said he had relief for the first time in 6 months, plus getting a real blessing from Murshids' feet.

Anyhow, after Murshids return from Ojai, we heard he was in the hospital. He was in a Chinese hospital, so we went to visit him, which later was the place where he actually did pass away. And we went in and I couldn't believe it. Here was this … he just sort of looked ashen gray and just totally, totally and absolutely … supremely subdued, I can't put it any other way. It was as though he were hardly even alive at that time. And as he later said, he'd gotton ptomaine poisoning, and I said Wow! What a bout you must have had with ptomaine to put you out that much! But he just looked gray. That’s where we met Joe and Guin Miller for the first time. Joe and Guin were there and Joe was being his usual self—mostly serious this time. He was actually exhorting him to live, was what he was doing. As I recall, he was saying "You know Sam, this world is waiting for you to give what you got to give them." And sure enough Murshid did rally back from the experience, which we later found out from his old friend Bill Hathaway, he said, "Don't tell the kids this, but I really had a heart attack." And I guess that Bill said he'd had one before that. So while Murshid told the disciples he had ptomaine poisoning, he told Bill Hathaway he had a heart attack. It was during this time in the hospital that he had a very profound vision. He said, "Yes, I saw a mountain, and at the top of the mountain was this little tiny trickle of water, and as it went down the mountain, other little trickles of water started gathering into it, and then a little farther down the mountain pretty soon streams began to run into it and then rivers. And he said, "By the time it was down to the base of the mountain it was this tremendous wide expansive water that kept going and going. And later he realized what this was, which was the vision which was indicating to him that the stage of his mission as a teacher. He said that the first trickle was the first disciples and gradually as the message began to come down from the mountain top, more and more disciples were to come and the message was to become broader and broader until finally, he said it went in 3 stages. The 1st stage went from 5 to 30 disciples, the 2nd stage was from 30-60 disciples, and the other stage was from 60-100 disciples. And he was waiting for more than that I’m sure. He told me once, "God tells me that I may have to stay in the body till I'm ll9!" And I could believe every word of it, because when he was vigorous, he was absolutely vigorous! No doubt about his youthfulness, which he's explained in his 6 interviews with Hazrat Inayat Khan. He talks about his initiation of Khwaja Khidr which he says generally has the effect of making one's life long, so it was shortly after this hospital trip which Murshid used to characterize by saying, "I'm a pretty feisty guy; sometimes even outright nasty, but, when I was in the hospital flat on my back, that’s the time Allah chose to come and speak to me, so I couldn't talk back. So I was flat on my back, I was just told what to do, so, and I couldn't talk at all." And he said that was the time God came and said, "I make you spiritual teacher of the hippies!” That sort of concludes the Clementina St. chapter. Shortly after that Murshid had Akbar come over and pack away his books and get out his personal things from the basement and he said he found a place over in the Mission District, which turned out to be 410 Precita Avenue, which is now known as the Mentorgarten. That’s where he moved. It was June of '67 he moved to Mentorgarten and set up house there. Murshid's old friend Mr. Hunt, who was a painter, lived in the backroom which is where Wali Ali and Khadija are going to be moving now. Just Murshid and Mr. Hunt. Some of this isn't clear to me, but at any rate the garage was simply being used as a painting studio by Mr. Hunt. And sometime after that David Hoffmaster, who later became a disciple of Father Blighton, lived there and used to work on his old blue pick-up in where we dance now at the Mentorgarten.

FATIMA: Was Wali Ali there too?

MOINEDDIN: No Wali Ali didn't come around till June of '68. We’ll get to this; we met him at rancho Olompali.

So know I want to give a little idea of the first month at Mentorgarten. Murshid kept his meetings, Sunday and Monday nights. I think he did keep those, and in the meantime Mansur and Jamila did come out to live in Bolinas.

They found their own house and also Jayanara and Hassan. First Jayanara, then Hassan was convinced that he should come out to. They weren't exactly together at the time although they really were destined to be together. So we sort of formed a nucleus of the disciples out there and Ayesha also lived in Bolinas. She wasn't particularly interested in Sufism at the time. She babysat for Nathan at the Johnsons house while we went into the city. And I think we started driving in about 4 times a week from Bolinas, which is quite a thing for 2 or 3 meetings. On Sunday and Monday nights, then on Wednesday for Murshid’s lectures at the Church of Man which at the time was called the Church of the Children. Then on Saturday morning, Murshid gave a walking class, which Mansur and I used to like, where we would just climb hills in San Francisco. I should also mention here, it was in the Clementina St. days, it was only a matter of two or three weeks after we met Murshid that I finally got up the courage to ask Murshid if I could study with him as a disciple or whatever he called that relationship. He said, “We’ll prepare a ceremony for a couple of weeks and your wife Pat can be initiated” and she didn't know if she wanted to at the time, but as soon as he said it, she thought, “I guess I do." Maybe there was a slight hesitation. She overcame the initial reserve, then (?) and Akbar showed up and handed us the fruit juice (?) in the Sufi Order, which we still didn't know too much about. It wasn't until Murshids move to Precita St. we started in the teachings, hearing the Gathas. So we started a regular schedule of going to the meetings and at the time Murshid was talking at the Church of Man and he was lecturing on the 5 religions of man or something, the 5 great world religions Buddhism, Hinduism Christianity, Islam, and Judaism. Now somewhere along the line we came in contact with A. Warwick, otherwise known as Dr. Warwick, who Kirk introduced us to him too. It was funny; Kirk had a very interesting role in all this. Kirk introduced us to LSD, he introduced us to Murshid, he introduced us to Warwick, he was like a catalyst, he introduced us to so many things, and finally he started getting way off balance...?

We've had a break due to faulty batteries, so we're starting over 2 days later.

I think we've just talked about the role Kirk has played in introducing us first to LSD, and to both Murshid Sam Lewis and to Dr. Ajari Warwick, who’s the head of the Kilosh(?) Shingon Buddhist group here. To continue with the stream of how Murshid played an important part of our lives at this point, Fatima, and I were still living in Bolinas and it was a few months after Kirk had introduced us to Murshid. We’d been getting a little upset, hadn't mentioned it to anybody, simply because Kirk had been coming to our house and coming in and lighting up his own joints with no regard to whether we were or not and playing our records at top volume. Finally, we simply went to a meeting and I think Murshid picked up something through the ethers and he just said to me after the meeting, "You're gonna have to tell that man to get out of your house." And as I say, up to this time Murshid had shown "The Sweet" side of his nature and when he asked me to kick a man out of my house I realized all of a sudden there was a certain strength in his being which I simply hadn't realized. I think he knew that it was going to be a problem for me to do it but he asked me to do it so I said I would and I went home and I did. I kicked him out and I said, "You're simply not right for us at this point, so please leave." And he left.

Now, continuing along the same stream of … I want to indicate my first meeting with Murshid as my Fudo, or Fudo-sama, who is the Bodhisattva of dharma protection who manifests his fiery nature or his powerful nature more often than not, although Murshid said if you're really Fudo, you have to have Quan Yin or all mercy behind your actions just as if you're Quan Yin you have to have the strength ultimately to back up your gentleness. Now at this time Mansur and Jamila were living a couple miles down the road from us in Bolinas and Hassan and Jayanara were living up the road a couple of miles from us. Mansur and I were the habit of going to Murshid’s Saturday morning walks classes mentioned earlier on the tape.

Fatima and I went one Sunday to a meeting and Murshid said, "I want you and Fatima to come for your first lesson.” Which was to be at 3 o'clock on Sunday afternoon a week from that day. At the time we were highly impressed; we thought, oh wonderful, our first lesson! During the week our hopes and our aspirations were running high for that first meeting. Then Saturday came along and I don't know if I suggested it to Mansur, or vice-versa, but somehow we found out that Dr. Warwick was going mountain climbing every Sunday on Mt. Tam and he usually spent the whole day up there, and for one reason or another we decided to go mountain climbing with Dr. Warwick. And so the next Sunday morning instead of preparing to go to Murshids class at 3 o'clock, Mansur and I drove to Mt. Tam, or to Mill Valley and hiked up the mountain with Dr. Warwick and a bunch of other people. Not only that, after we came down the mountain at 4 o'clock, Mansur and I took our own sweet time and went to eat supper at a restaurant on Folsom Street. We had a beer with our meal and so forth and so forth and so on, and we got to Murshid at 6 o' clock, 3 hours late for our appointment, but Fatima got there just a few minutes after I did, she had driven out with Jayanara and Jemila I think from Bolinas. Whether intentional or not she'd missed the appointment, too. And all I can say is that Murshid said, "Moineddin, come into the front room, I want to talk to you." And I just noticed a different feeling in the atmosphere, like I say, up to that time it had been a lot of joy, a lot of love, a lot of laughter and so forth and everything was nice. And I could tell there was palpable tangible difference in the atmosphere there, and I didn’t know what it was and I could feel this new tone in Murshids voice. When Murshid said, “Moineddin, come into the front room I want to talk with you," I hurried as fast as I could. Murshid had a way of beating you to the punch and I followed him as fast as I could, but he was sitting down waiting for me by the time I stepped into the room, and he said "Sit Down!" And the only place I could sit was on the floor. So I sat down and he said something like this, he said, "You've missed your appointment." And I could not say a word, I knew I'd missed an appointment and that really somehow seemed to trigger off a whole stream of power coming out of Murshid in the form of words and scolding. And he said, ultimately he said, "When I make an appointment with you, don't ever break it again. You could have at least had the courtesy to phone me, all I received no notice of this or anything, you're three hours late, all I can say is don't ever let it happen again." He scolded me like this in front of at least 5 or 6 of the other disciples, and I was just totally ashamed. I couldn't manifest any kind of positivity after that in my inner or outer being with what felt like 4 or 6 weeks after that, with any of those people. It had a very deep affect on me I didn't know what to do except to keep coming back and keep accepting Murshid, because I had accepted him. I didn't know what else to do, I just kept going back, and finally the effect of it seemed to wear away and I got on my even keel once again and started feeling pretty good again. And that was my first meeting with Fudo. Actually, that was my second. The first meeting with Fudo was more during one of the Saturday morning walks which Mansur and I used to drive to. Not too many people went on them. Clark Brown, at the time senior disciple, Akbar, who was the first young person to be a disciple—he was initiated about a month before Fatima and I received our initiation. Early in 1967. And sometimes Amin, sometimes James, and a few other people here and there. He used to take us through these neighborhoods south of Mission which we'd never been in before. Vernal Heights, Potrero Hill neighborhoods I can't ever remember anymore, they were so far flung. McClaren Park. Whenever we were tripping through a neighborhood, seems like we attracted all the children in the neighborhood who would come and follow us around for a couple blocks on the bikes and yell. Hippy! Hippy! It was great! After one of the Saturday morning walks, Clark Brown took Mansur and I out to eat at the good Karma Cafe, and said. "Has Murshid put you on the Sufi symbol concentration yet?" And I said No, I don't know anything about it. And he says "Gee, I'm surprised. I do it 45 minutes every day. He will soon, and you'll really start having experiences all over the place.” And I thought, well that’s pretty far out. But I didn't know what to make of it really. Then Clark Brown said “Did Murshid ever tell you who he was in any of his past lives?"' And I said, past lives, you're kidding!? He said, "No! He didn't? Well, he was Marpa." “Marpa. Who's Marpa? Never heard of him.” "Marpa was the teacher of Milarepa." “Milarepa. Who's Milarepa? Never heard of him either.” He said, "Why don't you ask him?" So I said, "Sure." Even though in later years I may have gotten kind of afraid to be that informal with Murshid, although I don't know if I was or not. Sometimes I was. Sometime I wasn't. Anyhow, at that point of my life I wasn't at all. That was my whole demeanor with Murshid. In fact I don't even know if we ceased calling him Sam, at that time. We may have still been using the name Sam to refer to Murshid, before he asked us to call him Murshid. So in the following week, Murshid was leading us on this walk again an at this point on our walk, we were coming down the hill real fast, my mind doing what you might call a real fast water walk. And it was so fast, my mind started delighting in the step we were taking down the hill, and we were actually way ahead of Murshid and I looked back and said, "Hey Murshid, Clark said that you were Marpa in your past life." And I looked in front of me so I could see where I was going, and I heard this voice yelling, "Yeah, what of it?” It was Murshids voice. I said “Yeah!” and he said, ”So what’d you think?” And I felt this attraction to look backwards again and I looked backwards and there was Murshid and all of a sudden it was just Murshid leading us on a walk. He was full of this incredible, as Wali Ali would say, this radio-active power, which was just exuding or flaming out of every pore and at the same time he was just this compact fiery being just like an atom bomb, mini-sized. I realized later that this was the first manifestation of Fudo, in his own way in Tibet, many centuries ago. The effect it had on Marpa was to produce cosmic awakening, which was the whole point. So that was actually the first time I met Fudo in the form of Marpa and although Murshid never confirmed it—sometimes he would say he knew who he was in this past lives when he was taking with Hindus. Other times when he was talking with different types of people, some Sufis, he would interpret the history of his soul’s development in the terms Inayat Khan describes in the Sufi Message volumes, where there isn’t necessarily the soul reincarnating, but the personality reincarnates, but the soul simply has two motions: toward manifestation and back to its origin. Either way he could explain it. And I heard him say regarding Marpa, that it could possibly have been the falling of Marpa’s mantle upon him and he was simply fulfilling a particular mission in this life. Same as Dara Shiko. He could have explained that he was Dara Shikoh reincarnated or that he simply received the tana-souk (?) or the mantle of Dara Shikoh mission to unite the religions of the world. In October of 1968, I think the

Families Jayanara and Hassan, Mansur and Jemila and Fatima and myself, made plans to move to Novato to what is called a Khankah, which is the Sufi name for Ashram. That means where the brethren in unity with their Sheik. We had made these plans with Hussain who lived at Bolinas also, but Hussain, as was his wont, and may still be, to make plans and not carry them through, I don't know. So we all made plans to move to the Novato Khankah with Murshid who said that he'd be glad to move in with us if we found a p1ace. We did find a place two weeks later. The money manifested to buy it. We bought it. It has served its purpose well, and continues to serve its purpose well as a type of Garden of Inayat, which it has been named by Murshid, which the functions of which are described in Murshids Commentaries on the work of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s Spiritual Architecture. In November of 1968, we all moved to 910 RR Avenue, the Novato Khankah. Murshid loved to throw open houses, yard parties and work parties at this location. And it was on the occasions of one of these yard parties and work parties that I met Fudo for the second time. My being on the receiving end, but this time, I was able to face it. I'm not sure of the exact date of this, I don't know if it was the Mayday celebration of 1969 or whether it was earlier than that. There were many people there and it was a whole work party situation and at one point in our preparations I had made a sign, I put it at the bottom of the stairs. It said “Non-residents not allowed on second floor.” Murshid said that’s fine. So, Murshid led us in a round of dances, maybe about an hour’s worth of dances and then we all went inside. And what happened was that we'd gotton so high doing the dances that Fatima and I invited Philip and Salima, Philip who is now known as Vasheest Davenport, who at the time they were married. So we invited them up to our room on the second floor and we talked and talked are talked and even Mansur came up. And we were just talking about spiritual experiences and Murshid and we were just running off at the mouth just for an hour or so and all of a sudden I sensed the atmosphere getting this feeling again that I'd experienced once before at Mentorgarten. Just like the atmosphere had prickles all over it and there was a kind of fiery quality to it. All of a sudden there was this knock-knock at the door, just so determined and I just knew what it was in a flash. I went to the door and opened it up and I said I know Murshid, I know what it is. He said, "I want to see you in the meditation room.” And I swear I ran down the stairs as fast as I could, by the time I got there, there was Murshid sitting down again before I walked in the door. And he says, "Sit down!" So I sat down across the room and Murshid shot this glance at and me and he just, like I say, it was no less fiery, but to me it seemed more focused this time, and, for some reason or other, I was able to face it and accept it and I absorbed it. And he just said, "You know what you've done." and I said, “Yes Murshid.” And he said, "You made a sign, and you've gone against the sign you made. I don't care if you make a sign, but if you make a sign you've gotta stick to it! You've got to stick to it, if you don't stick to your words, what are you going to stick to?" I said, "I know Murshid, and I won't do it again." So that was my second meeting with Fudo. But as I say, it filled me up and I feel like necessary it’s in the reservoir of my being, and if necessary, it has been called forth, simply, not by my willing it so, but simply because it has been called forth, just a few times for a certain purpose. Since we're in the process of mentioning my meetings with Fudo, I might as well go to the third and most superlative Fudo I've ever met. This came as a result of the tree-seat project. Murshid had asked that two tree-seats be built. One around the willow tree off the office and one around the scrub oak tree in the middle of the back yard at the Khankah. So Mansur built an interesting sun shaped tree seat made out of 2 x 4's which were like rays of the sun around the scrub oak, no, the willow tree, which really has never been used. As Fatima says it’s impossible to sit on, although Basira has sat under it many times and reports that it’s a most wonderful place to sit. It’s not what you'd call comfortable. Around the scrub oak tree slightly larger, although not anymore, because the willow tree has grown. At that time it was ‘68 or ‘69, Jelaluddin came and really made a wonderful tree seat. He 's a master craftsmen and carpenter and he picked up some driftwood around the canals around Larkspur where he was living and a five-pointed star or pentagram shaped tree seat with a back rest on it. It was wonderful, and yet it hadn’t been affixed yet. It was in two sections. One section could be easily taken apart and fit around the tree and nailed together again. Murshid came and saw it and said that’s very beautiful, but I don't want it installed until you get this other project finished. I can't remember what the other project was at this moment. Fatima mentioned that Jelaluddin was not a disciple at that time and Murshid was somewhat perturbed by the fact that we were having a non-disciple do something in opposition to Murshid’s wishes. Possibly it was the fact that Jelaluddin and Hassan were working on a large gas line installation that ran from the front of the house way to the back of the middle of the shed to be installed next to the kiln, which was and since has been used many, many years now. Whatever it was, the project was not finished and it was perfectly fine, the tree seat sat and it wasn't affixed around the tree, everything was cool. One afternoon I came home after working at New Age, and there was the tree seat around the tree! Immediately I started asking questions. I said, ”Who put the tree seat up? Murshid didn't want it up ‘til the end of this other project. At least the end of April.” There was at least a month to go. And they said, "Jelaluddin just came over and started doing it, he didn’t ask anybody." I said, ”Gee, gosh!” I could just feel what Murshid was going to react! But my mistake at that point was letting the project go through. I didn't ask Jelaluddin to take it down and Murshid would have. So the next day Murshid came and he didn’t see anything so I went up to my room and I know Murshid walked into the house and was enjoying himself a whole lot. And I tried to be pleasant, and he went out to work in the garden a little bit. I went to my room. I don’t know if I was just trying to hope things wouldn't happen or whether or just to escape whatever was going to happen. All of a sudden I heard this voice. "Moineddin … Moineddin” and I said something like coming, which is the only way you could answer such a voice. And I got down to the stairs and he was facing me and he turned around and said "Come here!" And all I knew was from that whole walk through the hallway of our house to the kitchen through the back room and out the back door, I felt like I was walking through fire. I felt like I was actually walking through actual fire! We got outside, and the first thing that Murshid said when we got to the tree-seat. He pointed to it he said, "I'm going to take an axe to this!!" And I couldn't say a word (laughter). He said, ”I’m to take an axe to this!!” And I felt so terrible. He said, "You've gone against Murshid’s word. I asked that this not be installed. I’m going to take an axe and break it myself!!" I couldn’t believe what was happening. It was so powerful, I couldn't believe it. I said, "Murshid this was done without my knowledge, it was done against my wishes.” He said" You could have stopped it." I don't know if he said that or not but it felt like he said that. Some other things were said. Finally I said, ''Murshid I'll have it taken apart if you want”. He says, “No! It’s done" But I'll tell you, for about six months after that I felt funny about sitting on that tree seat. I just felt funny about it. When I sit in that tree seat, there that memory of Murshid saying “I’m gonna take an axe to this." And that’s about the worst moment of my life. When I heard him say “I'm gonna take an axe to this,” maybe I felt almost a smidgen of the first time of all those seven times Marpa told Mi1arepa he was gonna tear down the house he asked Mi1arepa to build for him. I never told Jelaluddin. Jelaluddin all the while simply was in this space of assuming he was doing this very nice thing for us, and Murshid could care less about nice things that were being done against his wishes.

FATIMA: They'd think they were being real nice and they'd give it to Murshid and that meant he had to take care of it. This is an instance, another time the Garden of Allah gave us a little pine tree in a planter box two feet high, very beautiful, and of course Murshid said, “Thank you.” Then when the Khankah people got home Murshid said, "Look what they give me. Look at this. Instead of coming by to help me by working, they give me a tree which I have to plant. It’ just nothing but more work for me, just like the garden next door that went in without my orders, and was abandoned and Murshid had to salvage it. Do you realize that for every project that a disciple starts and then stops, Murshid has to finish." He said. "Murshid is one with his mureeds, I cannot allow my disciples to stop a project and not let it be finished."

FATIMA: His God-daughter from Pakistan was staying at the Khankah, and there was an annual rummage sale nearby that we went to every year. She went and she came back with two birds in a cage for Murshid. He was so furious not just because he'd have to take care of these stupid birds, but he loved cats and the house was full of cats and so immediately the first thing that happened was the cat jumped over the cage to attack the birds, so she had to get rid of them right away. So that was another case of somebody being nice—ugh!!

We might as well since we're talking about interesting episodes at Khankah, this is other one here. I guess a little gossip is allowed. At one point, Fatima woke up one morning very early, about 5:30, and said, “Moineddin. Moineddin wake up, a skunk is in the house." And I smelled and there was this extremely powerful odor, even in our bedroom which was upstairs. I said. "Fatima, don't be silly. That’s Murshid cooking breakfast, and he always uses onions and garlic". Fatima says “No, it’s a skunk”. I said. No its Murshid cooking breakfast.”

She said "Go see!" So I got up and went downstairs and it just kept getting stronger and more powerful, and all the kitchen was all dark and I went in and Murshid room was just off the kitchen right next to the back door, and we had a cat door which any animal could come into to get the cat food. What apparently had happened was that the skunk had come in, eaten the cat’s food from the dish which was right outside Murshids door which was open, Rufus the dog had surprised the skunk, the stunk had let fly with his defensive mechanism. Rufus had freaked out so totally from the experience of being shot through with this odor that he just jumped up on Murshids bed and started shivering. And that’s the way I found him, there was Rufus upon on top of Murshids bed, shivering and stinking to high heaven. And there was Murshid sleeping Peacefully, breathing deeply. Murshid had a presence when he slept that you wouldn't believe. It was very very potent and peaceful at the same time, when he wasn't so nervous.

FATIMA: Talking about sleeping. I looked out the back door at the Khankah and there was a little patio and three steps up and then a path out to the back gate, and there was Murshid, lying face down in the path, right out in the yard. Just lying face down and I thought, Oh my gosh, what happened? And I go out there and he'd just decided to take a nap and just gone out there, gone up the three steps and flopped down on his face right in the middle of the path. And that’s where he was sleeping. Another time Moineddin saw him sleeping under the oak tree, taking his nap, so Moineddin saw him and thought he'd go out there too, and sleep there to when he was done working, right on that place because it would be nice to sleep right where Murshid slept, get the baraka. So he went out there and laid down in the exact spot, and it was full of oak, and apples and rocks!

MOINEDDIN: It was so uncomfortable, you can't believe how uncomfortable it was, and all I could assume was that Murshid totally surrendered to the pokings of the sharp rocks and those oak galls there called, those round balls that grow on scrub oak. It was the most uncomfortable thing like a bed of nails! And there was Murshid just totally unaware of it all.

So, after that the skunk used to visit us sometimes, two or three times a week and usual procedure would be to wake up, light about three sticks of incense and stand by our door, inhale very deeply, take a very deep breath, open our door quickly, run down the stairs, put the incense all over, open all the doors and windows downstairs, run back upstairs, close our door and breathe again, so I wouldn't have to breathe in the skunk odor. And go to sleep and about an hour later when it was time to wake up all the smell would be mostly gone the incense would have helped a lot. People from the outside would notice it, but we just got used to it and after Murshid had passed on we actually—it became a family of skunks that lived under our house. There's a saying in the Gayan, "Snakes gather around the throne, while scorpions multiply under the crown" or something like that; anyway, I thought it was kind of fitting that a family of skunks should move in under the Khankah. But we finally had to get the humane society to give us a trap and we trapped them all and got rid of them and nailed up the bottom of the house so nothing else could get in.

MOINEDDIN: He was the type of person—you just didn't do things for him. Physically people just didn't. He was completely on his own that way. With a lot of teachers you have to be fixing for them, or washing their clothes; he was so independent of taking care of himself. Sometimes you’d want to do things for him sort of, but you'd almost feel funny about it. He didn’t do such a good job of taking care of himself, but he did it himself!

MOINEDDIN: Remember he'd use Score hair crème, the way he would apply Score hair crème, he would simply go into the bathroom, put a glob of score into his hand and hit one swipe on his head and that would be that. One swipe! And you’d look and there'd be a glob of hair crème right above his forehead just sort of imbedded in his scalp. And that would be his grooming—it was crazy. Actually the one thing he would allow was Shirin or Fatima or Jayanara to brush his hair out on the way to a meeting. But it was so snarled. And one time for Christmas this girl that lived in the house gave him some strawberry yogurt shampoo. And he opened it up, he usually opened a present. He barely looked at it and set it up he said. "Oh, too bad I already washed my hair.”

Didn't he tell Hassan once that it was good to wash your hair once a month? I think that’s what he said, something like that. It hasn’t helped Hassan’s hair much.

I think it’s time to shift the emphasis to Rancho Olompali which became one of the first spectacular hippie communes in the area anyhow. Sort of like Morningstar. It turned into a type of Morningstar. Although there are some really serious people have come out of Rancho. I’m not going to mention their names. But actually I have to. Shirin, Muni, who was at the time was known at the time as Mary Sue who later became Sultana, is now Muni. Richie who lives up north now makes sound equipment for the Grateful Dead. Khadija was there for a time. Sheila, who I mentioned earlier. Sheila was the friend’s house where we stayed overnight when we went to Murshid’s meetings on Sunday and Monday nights at Clementina Street. I should go back a little bit. We had started having Wednesday night meeting in Mill Valley. At Sheila McKendrick’s house in Mill Valley. And these were attended by upwards of 20 or 30 people.

 Part 3 Moineddin

All right so were at Rancho Olompali here as Fatima just pointed out. It wasn`t really like Morning Star, because at Morning Star the people were fairly poor, and at Rancho Olompali—although the people may have been poor, they shared the wealth of Don McCoy who was sort of the chief "Acid Guru" of the group there, a towering figure, about 6'7" or 8', who had upwards of $200,000. I'll get to that later, but anyway they had a very exciting 2 or 3 months. Another fellow who has since become very instrumental and a key figure in our community is Saul, who came down from Mt. Shasta after studying with Mother Mary. He was also a big [?], whose name was Gypsey at the time. I'm sure there are more, probably think of them as the interview goes along here. Anyhow I want to—this tape is supposed to be reminisces of Murshid Samuel Lewis—I want to talk about his role at Rancho Olompali—which was on three occasions direct, and those are the times I want to talk about. Don McCoy had this habit of calling Murshid in for guidance, for advice. And, I remember once going up there and actually my first impression was rather startled because we got up there and there were a bunch of people swimming at the pool without any clothes on For some reason, maybe I shouldn't have been shocked but I was shocked simply because I felt that as Murshid remained fully clothed I thought that people should follow his example. Which I did, but anyhow, I saw Murshid frown a couple of times in my direction and I thought maybe he was simply saying that, I don't know what they're doing. Later Mansur asked him, "Murshid, why don't we do the nude thing?" and Murshid said to Mansur, "Look, we cannot join all the revolutions and succeed, we can do a couple of them and succeed, but if we join all of them we'll fail." Anyhow, later that day, Murshid turned to me and he said "Gee," it is wonderful, these New Age people even have different types of bodies than I'm used to. People have beautiful bodies." And that was a really startling thing for me to hear because I didn't expect to hear it, but Murshid was able to say something positive about something I felt kind of negative about. Anyhow, it was either that time or later on another occasion that Don McCoy had asked Murshid to come and bless their Deer Camp which was a former hunters cabin where they went up to hunt deer and it was up about 1/2 mile or 1/4 mile up this very steep slope up Mt. Burdell, on as Murshid called it "MacGraw-Hill" because a little bit down the road the MacGraw-Hill Book Company is located. But Murshid called it MacGraw Hill instead of Mt. Burdell, but anyhow, so he said "Come along, Moineddin, I want you to help me." So we got a bowl of water, some incense, and Murshid took me I;, I don't know if anyone else was present of not (Fatima says she was present) and Sharid and anyhow Murshid said the prayers Saum and Salat and then went and said the Invocation in every direction, facing the four directions, asked me to come there with a bowl of water (or maybe somebody else was holding the bowl of water), somebody was. He took his hands in the bowl of water, sprinkled all four directions, sprinkled in the dark corners and up above and all around, and said over and over again "Allah Mubarak which means Allah's blessings be here and then somebody was supposed to hold a lighted candle and hold it in all the dark corners and make sure any noxious influences would depart. And incense was done in the same fashion and we said Khatum or something and that was it. In the meantime, and that was fine, Murshid thought that was a good sign and he asked me to start a Thursday night class, or possibly it was a Friday night class, I can't recall, up at Rancho Olompali. So I went up there. I should go back a little bit to Bolinas here: Murshid sprung a real surprise on me once. He said, "Moineddin, I want you to start reading the Gathas," (which are the esoteric lessons for use in the Sufi Order) "I want you to read Gathas to the disciples in Bolinas." And the first few times I did that, I was so scared of facing people in that capacity that I would smoke a lot of Marijuana first just to get brave enough to do it, but it worked out fine. It sounds funny saying that now, but "Them's the facts". So at the time Buzz who later was named Dara by Murshid (who also lived at Rancho Olompali), Dora and Shirin came; they were the only two disciples from Rancho Olompali; they came to Bolinas to hear the Gathas. Then we moved to Novato and I started this other class Murshid had asked me to start and I didn't know what kind of class it was supposed to be. The dancing hadn't started, really, maybe just little tiny bit, hardly at all, maybe the Three Wazifas Dance and the Allah Line Dance (or Snake Dance or as Wali Ali calls it the Snail Dance) whatever it is; Ya Hayy, Ya Haqq may have been there. But there was some: Om Sri Ram Jai Ram Jai Jai Ram Dance, I think, because I chose for that first class to read some of Papa Ramdas's utterances when he was mostly in Samadhi at Panch Pandav cave in 1922 I think it was. Very high utterances, just totally illuminated statements from a very high state of consciousness, blissful, joyous. Anyhow so I think I went there for two weeks in a row. It was mostly most of the people were just into a heavy Marijuana, STP, LSD, trip—that was their scene, and maybe that’s all they were interested in. Later it turned into this thing called PCP which later turned out to be a horse tranquilizer. That’s what they were getting stoned on, a horse tranquilizer. Anyhow than after the first week fewer people came the second week because they just weren't into what we were doing. They may have had flashes of it, but nothing that would last, like trying to impress a seal upon a rock rather than on wax. So I gave that up. I said "Murshid, nobody's coming to the meetings." I was just sort of borrowing an attitude of Murshid's, why should I spend my time , when nobody comes? So, anyhow. I didn't spend my time, and it was O.K. with Murshid. However, after that, Don McCoy asked Murshid again to come for some advice and Murshid spent two hours in Don McCoy's private master bedroom (which was rather palatial at the time which you will see as I describe the events which followed later). And Murshid came out of that saying, "I had a very good meeting with Don McCoy." He seems serious about taking my advice" and so forth"; I haven't asked him to stop doing any of his dope or anything or any of his LSD." But shortly after that, as it turned out, Don McCoy never followed his advice, never ever took a word of it and started a big ego trip, he started a being tyrannical with Shirin, he just started saying why do you take Sam as your teacher?" He says "I'm just as good a Guru as anybody," just this type of thing. I shouldn't say this, this is mostly hearsay, but anyhow there was a heavy trip being laid down at this time and at the same time Don knew he couldn't stand up to Murshid, but this was sort of the beginning of the end of the Rancho Olompali Commune. And it just got worse and worse, Shirin could see things coming; she tried to keep her own little apartment clear of any of the noxious influences, but the spirits were kind of getting restless and the place was full of spirits of different sorts. Finally, one night, Rancho Olompali (which was called the Burdell Mansion, it’s a historic site, which actually was one of the "Grateful Dead's summer homes before that; they rented it for a summer) burned all the way to the ground. And like I say, this was the beginning of the end. Totally burned to the ground and this is also a pattern of things that has sort of followed Murshid's life. In 1949, when it was clear that the Khankah Kaaba Allah in Fairfax was no longer harboring sincere souls, seekers after God, primarily, for whatever reason, it burned to the ground. And later was sold and so forth and so on. I think it was after Murshid Martin passed on and gave her successor ship to Ivy Duce, who had, as Murshid said, no more right to be successor than … whatever. It just wasn’t a valid successor ship. And she foreswore the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan for the teachings of Meher Baba. Anyhow the place burned down and even at the Khankah in Dec., 1968, I think it was, shortly after we moved in, our apartment, Fatima's and my apartment burned, as Murshid said, "For Occult reasons." But as he later said, "It happened so you would be able to beautify your place". So that’s what we did. We accepted it totally. And, any-how, Rancho Olompali burned down. Wouldn’t have been so bad, but they still wouldn't pay any attention to Murshid’s advice, whatever it was. I wasn’t in the conference; I don't know what it was. But, whatever it was, it wasn't being taken seriously, that’s clear. And things started getting more and more scattered. I just assume that Murshid said simply, "Keep a Toward the One concentration and believe in the Prophets and believe in Allah or believe in Ram, God, who you say you're following." They did have a nice program for a while of baking bread and handing it out free to people on Haight Street. It was a wonderful program, but after a while there was no center to it, and the last straw was, after it burned down, everybody moved, sort of, more on to the land and shortly thereafter two young children died by drowning in their swimming pool and that sort of put the cap on it. Later Don McCoy apparently couldn't handle his psychic state and went into a mental institution for a time being and Sheila, who had long since abandoned Murshid, also did the same thing. I'm not sure if that's the case, my memory isn't too clear here on exact dates and events. What happened at a certain point, as I mentioned this fellow Dara used to be called Buz, but he received the name Dara because in the Fall of was it 1968?, sometime around then Murshid named this fellow Dara because he said that he and Sheila were going to go with Don McCoy to the Temple of Understanding Conference in, it was supposed to be in Darjeeling but it turned out it was going to be in Calcutta. This is a very interesting episode. Dara was so named after the figure Dara Shikoh who was a Prince in the court of Akbar, I think he was the grandson of Akbar, Emperor Akbar and really speaking, he sort of received the mantle of Akbar, in the sense that he took on the mission, or the Dharma of trying to unify all religions, as his grandfather, before him had tried to do. Anyhow, so he named this fellow Dara because he was going to a conference of all the religions of the world. When they got to Calcutta, for one reason or other they followed out none of the things Murshid had asked them to do—they were Murshid's disciples, they were asked to convey certain love and blessings to people, which I do not know if they ever carried out. What they did do, and this is in the journal of Thomas Merton, it’s actually in the journal of Thomas Merton. He talks about meeting these young people, who did nothing but smoke pot all night in this little village with this other apparent Guru. Anyhow, what they did was they went to this other Guru, who has since come over here, who they call Father whose name is Sherinjiva and when Sheila and Dara came back with Don McCoy—they no longer wanted to be with Murshid. (This is not the Dara in the Sufi Choir, a totally different person.) Although we did meet this first Dara who I'm talking about now at the Marin Co. Fair last week and he seems to be doing all right, he's married and I don't know if they have children yet or not. Anyhow, he has a twinkle in his eye, and I know where it comes from anyhow, so they went to this conference and abandoned Murshid for all intents and purposes and came back and Murshid was quite upset and he excoriated Sheila for about an hour one morning, she came over to see him and he just really scolded her good, Later he told me and I don’t know if we should say this on tape, but anyway he said "She is my Judas" and anyhow nothing was ever right from then on between them, which later happened at Murshid's funeral at the Khankah in January of 1971. Sheila got the floor. Pir Vilayat asked if anybody had any words to say, Sheila raised her hand and said "I'd like to come and say a few words." She just started spouting off about Sherinjiva and she said, "As Murshid knew, Father was Murshid's teacher" and so forth, spouting off words which had no basis in fact. She started going on in this Pollyanna fashion until Wali All finally just manifested Fudo and came up and said "Yes, he was a little man and do you know who this little man was?" and so forth and simply gave her the Bum's rush, to every one’s delight and applause. Anyhow, so, there's that in it too. I think that also happened before the total demise, like I say, the drowning of those two young, children. But, there's a lesson in it, and the lesson is that you don't play around with an actual representative of the spiritual hierarchy. (Who Murshid said, after he was dead, we could actually talk about. Before he was dead please don't say it.). Ali and many other people know this history and probably more than I know. But anyhow, Murshid said that he was an Abdal which means a changeling, it's taken from this word Bidelium which means change stone, or like a Chameleon able to change one's function from moment to moment in order to satisfy the fulfillment of God's purpose on earth and he was never consistent and he never said he was. He always said, "Don't expect me to be consistent, it's not my function." But anyhow, like I say, people have to learn a hard lesson when they mess around with God's actual representatives and this goes on and still goes on.

I want to go back to Sheila’s apartment in Mill Valley, or her house where the Wednesday meetings first started. They were at Sheila’s house before they moved to the San Anselmo Theological Seminary, which is characterized, oh, the Garden of Allah, that’s right. First Mill Valley then the old Garden of Allah, where Amin and Amina lived, on Morningside Drive. Then, it moved to the castle or the San Anselmo Theological Seminary. These Wednesday night meetings were the first place where the dances actually began to manifest It was also the place where I saw Murshid initiate Ruthie Winfield whose name is now Parisa on the spot. One of the only persons I ever saw him do that to. Anyhow we started doing the beginning dances there, The Snake Dances, the Ram Nam Dances, oh, Ya Hayy Ya Haqq was first and the Dervish Cycle over and over again that’s right. Yes. Yes, I remember doing those at Amin's old place. And also at Sheila’s living room there is the first place where the sacred walks began to manifest, at least to our group, as we know those walks. The first one being the walk of Moses, I believe and Mansur took pictures which (of course, Murshid didn't have a beard at this time) and we have some pictures of Murshid doing the Effacements or the Tasawwuris of Sri Krishna, Lord Jesus, Lord Buddha, and of Prophet Mohammed of Nabi Moses. Now, getting back to Rancho Olompali, in June of 1968 (I believe that is the date) no no I'm going to go back a little bit. Earlier that Spring was Murshid's first meeting with Pir Vilayat. Murshid had written to him before, as early as 1956, and possibly earlier, but I have a copy of a letter written at that time, where Murshid, some people may think brashly, and maybe even presumptuously, but I'm sure Murshid realized that it was part of his mission to speak directly to Pir Vilayat and he did so. And the manner in which he spoke to him was by introducing himself as Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti and saying that he was a direct disciple of your father (Pir Vilayat's father, Hazrat Inayat Khan, his sainted father, he would say). And he said, ”If you would allow me, I would be Shams-i-Tabriz to you as Jelal-ud-din Rumi. And, if you think about it, this is a very interesting statement. I don't want to go into that at all, but simply to say that Murshid had written to Pir Vilayat and hadn't met him physically until this time as far as I know.

So, Murshid and I drove down, and maybe Hassan drove too, I'm not sure, I think Hassan was with us. Somebody was with us. We drove down in the micro-bus to the airport and looked all around for Pir Vilayat; couldn't find him. Turned out that somehow he slipped by us and was waiting in the baggage claim check area, so, we went down there and saw this man, very clean shaven very delicate looking, as I’m sure his condition was very delicate at that time. A man whose name was Pir Vilayat; I didn't know what to expect; Murshid just said were going to meet this man, Pir Vilayat I said "who is he?" He says, "He’s Hazrat Inayat Khan’s son, he’s apparently trying to carry out the mission of his father.” And Murshid didn’t know if he was succeeding, or what to think or anything, Murshid said, that he would just wait and see how he felt when he met him. As Shabda reports, he said, as Murshid told Shabda, he said “I’ll know him by one glance, whether or not to accept him.” And apparently Murshid accepted him because he did accept him. So anyhow, we picked Pir Vilayat up and we were driving back to the city and one of the first things I remember Pir Vilayat saying to Murshid, I was sitting in the back seat, Pir was in the front, I think, with Murshid, was, "They call me Pir, but I don't call myself Pir, they call me Pir.” And, I don't know, I can’t remember Murshid's response but I don't think he paid too much attention. When we got to the Mentorgarten, which was where Murshid was hosting him. Murshid sort of spent half his time in San Francisco and half in Novato more or less. So when we got home, I noticed that Murshid had typed up name cards, gee it was really wonderful. Murshid had set all the table, he'd gotten organized in the living room, which was the front room of the Mentorgarten, which was at that time the meeting room and we had, I can't remember what we had to eat, probably some curry dish. And there were name cards all around, and I noticed that I was on one side of Pir Vilayat and I think Mansur was on the other side, and I said "Gee Murshid, you put me next to Pir Vilayat. And Murshid turned to me and said, "Yes, I want him to know." I really didn't know what Murshid meant. He said, "Yes, I want him to know." Anyhow, I say that for what it’s worth and after that, after supper, Pir Vilayat gave a lecture where he incorporated many elements of Hermetic teachings and talking about the chakras and how the sunflowers used to symbolize the chakras wherever the light was, that was where the sunflower turned and always turned to the light. And it was what you might call an erudite presentation. I wasn't, simply speaking candidly now, impressed spiritually with Pir Vilayat’s presence; I wasn't vibrating to him at all, mainly because I wasn't interested in him, I was simply interested in Murshid as my spiritual guide and I wasn't really interested in anything else. That was just my manner at the time, my disposition.

 So, after the lecture Pir Vilayat called for questions, and some people asked questions, then, Murshid, as the host, got up and he said, "Now, I want to say a few words." Everything Pir Vilayat has told you tonight, that is wonderful and I can say everything Pir Vilayat has talked about, I have experienced actually.” And we all thought, "What a thing to say." It was almost like a challenge, as if to say, "Pir Vilayat's just talking about these things, but I've actually experienced them." But Pir seemed to be unruffled and just took it in stride, at least, those were the words I heard, for what they're worth and later, after Murshid passed, I took a ten day retreat, at Pir Vilayat's direction and came to the conclusion, had a kind of an insight into that experience and I could just hear Pir laughing uproariously that such a thing could possibly happen, just enjoying the whole joke of it and perhaps Murshid was too.

Now begins a very important chapter in my own life, and Murshid's life and in the life of Sufi community locally and the Sufi order, at large. And this is to coming to the group of Wali Ali, who at the time was named Melvin Meyer and he was a Mailman. And I met him at first at…. A few months later Pir Vilayat returned and gave his first series of lectures and seminars at Rancho Olompali. Like I say Rancho Olompali had a tremendous future, if it only knew it, but they didn't know it, so they weren't able to live up to the trust and confidence that was given to them. Anyhow, Pir Vilayat came there, I remember Murshid had Akbar, Amin and myself speak privately with him at the time. Presumably we three were considered to be the advanced disciples, at that time. So, we did and I'm not going to go into that. Anyhow, that's where I met Wali Ali. I remember on that occasion, I too, took off my clothes and joined in with the nude swimmers, which was wonderful and so forth and then, we went into the main room of the mansion, it was an actual mansion, the Burdell Mansion. Into the front room where the record player was blaring, as it usually was, with the latest in the Pink Floyd. Procol Harum whatever music was current. Anyhow, there was this very large chess set there and apparently Wali Ali was a chess freak. And I wasn't a chess freak, but I liked to play an occasional game, so we played. And right away, I could tell, Wali Ali had a real concentrated game, but for some reason he made one mistake, and I check mated him in a few moves, I think it was a few moves, could have been a few more moves but anyway I beat him and I think we played one more game and he soundly beat me. But I never played with him since. I guess Farid…. Tape cuts off here, can't make out the name.

Side Two

That was my first meeting with Wali Ali and shortly after that, I have a very vivid memory of Murshid telling me; he said, "There's an interesting new disciple, several, as a matter of fact, but this one fellow, he said he's had some real advanced experiences." Which, I later found out was an experience Wali Ali had a week after he met Murshid; he was going to the beach and playing the Zither through a kazoo, and having a cosmic, he entered into a cosmic state although he was on LSD at the time, he knew that the actual nature of it was the realization of it was due to his connection with Murshid, or I should say, his connection through Murshid. And as it turned out, this fellow, Melvin Meyer, was later to be named Wali Ali, and he did indeed prove to be a very capable being and met all of the expectations of Murshid, which I felt were contained in his initial expressions to me, it was simply something in his tone of voice that he simply expressed about this person. Now here and there Pir Vilayat would come from time to time, I think it was that summer that Pir Vilayat gave his first Youth Camp in Colorado and still—speaking personally—I had about as much use for Pir Vilayat as I had for the President of the United States, I just didn't care about it. I just wasn't interested. His meditations didn't send me nothing particularly connected. And I was amazed when so many of the people from this group went to the Colorado Camp, because all I could assume was, they must see something in Pir Vilayat. On the other hand, I was a little jealous for them of Murshid or something, I thought they should be paying more attention to Murshid because he's our teacher and so forth. Wherever that was at, I don't know, I'm just telling you my feelings at a certain time. After that first Camp, a lot of people came back very, very stoned, and I think I was secretly jealous of some of the high states they'd reached or something although, I don't know why I should have been jealous, I guess I just was. Anyhow they seemed to have arrived at their highest states through a form of, some practice they called "Counseling," which was to get the person up in front of the group and to sort of read their past lives, just become imbued with the sense of their eternal being or eternal face. I don't want to say too much about it, I wasn't there. Anyhow this is just to say that Pir Vilayat came around from time to time; started that year giving his youth camps, which have now expanded to being held internationally at Chamonix. And, in the meantime, every time Pir Vilayat came to the Bay Area, Murshid would host him and give a demonstration of what we were doing. I remember a couple of meetings where Murshid led us in dances, had us do the spins. Pir Vilayat was always moved to express himself simply by saying, "The center is the hub of the New Age, no doubt about it, and this group, in particular, is a center of power." He used the word "Power," which was one way of looking at Murshid's being, although, not the only way. I think that's the way Pir Vilayat looked at Murshid's being because it was powerful.

That, I think, was the summer that Pir Vilayat and Jemila got together. Fatima says that Mansur decided to stay home from the Colorado Camp the night before but Jemila decided to go ahead. I don't want to go into personal histories here, because it would clutter up what were aiming for, but anyway, it has been the pattern of life Murshid definitely encouraged everyone to go to Pir Vilayat’s Camp, but as soon as everybody had left, the next day, the first thing Murshid manifested was his furiousness that everybody had left him to do so much work. But anyhow, we put on these dances for Pir Vilayat, who enjoyed them, but was mostly impressed by their powerful atmosphere. Oh yes, the interviewer, who is Shannon has asked me, "Was that the summer that Pir Vilayat and Jemila met?" Yes it was the summer at the Colorado Camp. I don't want to repeat the story, anyway they met at a very profound level of their being, possibly, what may even be regarded as recognition of their nature of being twin souls. And this started a very troublesome time at the Khankah, where we lived, because Mansur and Jemila were supposedly married and Jemila and Pir Vilayat were simply destined to be drawn together. This resulted ultimately in a divorce of Mansur and Jemila and very strained psychological testing for Mansur, and so forth and so on. I don't want to go into it, things seem to have worked out quite for the best, that is all one can say. I might add here, too, up to this time, and beyond this time Jemila had occupied a rather special role in Murshid’s transmission of his Krishna Dances. And as Murshid told many of us, for no reason or for every reason, Jemila was Radha when he became Krishna—she simply was Radha. Other women may have been other things, but Jemila was Radha when Murshid was portraying Krishna in the Dances and that was a rather special relationship and was probably part of both of their unfoldment. Incidentally, to go back a little bit, at that first Temple of Understanding Conference, where Sheila and Dara abandoned Murshid, as I say, for all intents and purposes, Pir Vilayat was present, as the representative of the International Sufi Order, at that conference, and he met the Reverend Trappist Thomas Merton, and if anybody ever has a chance to read Thomas Merton’s Asian Journal, it is called, it's been published, it's not too expensive, do so, it's a wonderful account of that time. As I say even Thomas Merton mentions these young people at the Conference. I don't know if he mentions Pir Vilayat, but there's a picture of Thomas Merton and Pir Vilayat arm in arm at that conference in a book that I have which was put out by the Temple of Understanding. Thomas Merton was apparently on his way after that conference, by way of Thailand and Northern India and then the Southern Buddhist countries of Thailand and Ceylon, to San Francisco, the Bay Area, and Murshid had a feeling he was on his way to meet him. Murshid told me that anyhow, Thomas Merton made it to Ceylon and all this time received permission from his Father Superior at Gethsemani Abbey in Kentucky, to seek the wisdom of the East and (God bless the Trappist Abbot) was given that right, or given that privilege; with full blessings, to go to the Asian Countries to seek the wisdom of the one and only Being. So, he did, and when he got to Ceylon, after seeking many, many different paths and studying with two Tibetan teachers amongst whom he said were the highest beings he's met, were these Tibetan teachers. He said he finally had his illumination Experience in Ceylon outside of Colombo. I think Ceylon is now named Sri Lanka as it was in the Mahabharata, and he said he came across these ruins, not exactly ruins, some of them were ruins, but some of them were still standing. These tremendous statuary of Bodhisattvas, centuries old, and, he said first he simply contemplated them for their size, as Murshid used to remark, he said, “If you ever go to Egypt, the statuary there is awesome. You will be awed by the statuary, and it is its own atmosphere." He said, “It simply represents a realization of those peoples that we simply lost sight of." Anyway, there was a similar awe in what Thomas Merton contemplated here, in the form of these statues. But he said, the real illumination came when he realized in a flash the being of those sculptures who had made those Buddhas and Bodhisattvas seated in meditation. He said, "The expressions on their faces conveyed perfectly the realization of what spirituality is in its fulfillment." And it simply illumined him at that moment, it was what the Buddhists, Zen people would call a Kensho.

Now I think at this time I'm going to shift to Murshid's journey to Los Angeles, where I drove him down, accompanied by Zeinob and by a girl named Hali, whom Pir Vilayat later named Lachme. This was in early June of 1969 and perhaps it came following the reception of a letter at Mentorgarten, which Wali Ali reported to me and showed to me after Murshid had read it, from a man named Sri Premanand Trikanand. Premanand means the Ananda of divine love. And Premanand Trikanand is Papa Ramdas's grandson, so there's a real connection here, because Murshid's Hindu Guru was Papa Ramdas. And he had even known Sri Premanand When Premanand was 12 years old in India during one of Murshid's trips there. Anyhow, the letter that Premanand sent, simply asked that Murshid come down. It was an invitation to come there, at least this is my recollection, and Wali Ali, I remember him, so happy that we were going to go down and meet Ramdas's grandson. I might also add another thing here. I have refrained from giving any esoteric history here, except indirectly, but now I think I will give a direct example of esoteric history here, because it may mean something. Anyhow, it simply illustrates, for the record, to me, what is a very wonderful attitude to have and this attitude is the attitude that one that a fellow Mureed encourages the spiritual development of his fellow Mureeds I think this is wonderful, and stands as an ideal. So, I will say here for the record , that in Feb. of 1968, I went into meditation, doing one of the practices at the back of the book Zen Flesh, Zen Bones and for some reason, I knew, there was a feeling in the atmosphere that night when I knew everything was as the astronauts say, "Go". Everything was "Go." I felt positive, I felt almost exalted from the start, and I knew that I was destined to go into meditation that night. And I don't normally feel that way, I don't know if I've ever felt that way, except by way of by way of reminiscing about some childhood memories. But that night, everything was "Go." So everybody else. Murshid wasn't there, physically at the Khankah, I didn't even connect this feeling with Murshid's presence at all, I just felt that it was a good feeling and that I should meditate. Everybody else was in the T.V. room at the Khankah and at this time our room was still under repair, after being burned so, I went into the guest room, which was where we were staying (and this is one of the reasons why I still consider the guest room a very sacred location) and entered into one of the practices at the back of the book, Zen Flesh, Zen Bones. It was one of the practices you were supposed to do as you go to sleep. I must have practiced that practice for about two hours steady; then something started to happen. I started to enter into a cosmic awareness, I knew at that moment that that being always was, always is, always would be. I knew that my limited being had many times entered it, many times gone away from it, but that it would always be there; that it was, what you might say, the initial awakening to the real nature of God's spirit and it was, what I would say, simply the experience of eternity. Anyhow, I don't know what my mind must have started up after that and I simply came out of the state. Possibly it could have been only a glimpse, a momentary glimpse but even a thousandth of a second of a glimpse of that reality is sufficient. And that was the whole point. And anyway remember, after this, and this was the point I was trying to make. It's funny, I didn't even tell Murshid about it until about four days afterwards. I said, "Murshid, I had this experience." He said, "God bless you, this is very important." And that's the last I heard of it. I guess he hugged me and said "God bless you." Then a few days later, I went to the Mentorgarten. Wali Ali, who at this time had become Murshid's esoteric secretary at the Mentorgarten, while Mansur was his secretary at the Khankah and I was a few times, occasionally. And the first thing Wali Ali said to me was "Hey, Moineddin, Murshid's just dictated this important letter to Fir Vilayat and he talks about your awakening.” And I knew Murshid had said something about that and I was half embarrassed and half totally joyous that another disciple would share in the delight. This is simply by way of saying that Wall All was delighted when Papa Ramdas's grandson asked Murshid to come down, He was delighted when Murshid chose Moineddin to go down to meet him. He was simply delighted at the blessings bestowed upon other beings, so to speak. Now, maybe you’d have to ask yourself, "What are other beings?" Perhaps the best reason for delighting in the joys and blessings of "Other beings" is because one's being is seen as the being of other beings. So to continue, I drove Murshid and Zeinob and Hali to Los Angeles and we ended up going to Premanand's house and this was one of the blessed experiences of one's life. Murshid had long talked about the blessedness of Ananda Ashram in India, the home of Papa Ramdas and Mother Krishnabai. Murshid had privately told me once, he said, "These other people go around saying who and so and so is an Avatar; pretty soon, you end up with Avatar's on every street corner, but if you ask me who the Avatar of this age is, to me, it's Papa Ramdas as Avatar,” although Murshid totally excepted the being of Hazrat Inayat Khan as the message for this age. But, he said, as an Avatar, fulfilling, what you might say, functions within the background of the Hindu life he considered Papa Ramdas Avatar. And as a further example, He said, "The most evolved being on earth he'd ever met was Mother Krishnabai” he said he'd never met a more holy being. So it was rather special going to Ramdas's grandson's place. So I dropped Murshid off at the apartment, it was in N. Hollywood and I parked the car and Murshid had found the place and I went up, because I knew the apartment number too and I walked in. As soon as I walked in there was a feeling in that place which is beyond my ability to describe. It was even beyond what I described in the last tape session, of the atmosphere of Murshid's place on Clementina Street. I won't say it was it was beyond it, but it was different just a little different. As Murshid would say, "The atmosphere at Anandashram in India was like the Garden of Eden. Sufi Khankahs are not necessarily like Gardens of Eden; they have their own mode of Baraka, each unique and each blessed, in its own way.  But this was more like the Garden of Eden.” And it was, in a way, like the Garden of Eden. I walked in there, and they had this special Jasmine incense burning which, even now reminds me of that atmosphere. It’s put out by the Vedanta Temple in Los Angeles: Jasmine Incense. They also make Sandalwood and Lilac. Anyhow the way that evening unfolded was, Murshid simply sitting there and Premanand, who’s very young Premanand is a little tiny fellow about 5'5" (Murshid himself was probably about 5'3"), and Premanand' s diminutive wife named Sheela, S-h-e-e-l-a, I think and they were both in their late 20's or early 30's I think. And they had friends, houseguests there, too, whose names were Bill and Linda—not Linda but Ida or something, I think. Bill looked like he was a professional football player and his wife was very tall and thin and they were so devoted. He would look like a football player, except that he would call Murshid "Brother" and the twinkle in his eye was just so like a child. And that was the atmosphere, the atmosphere made one feel as though one was a child. Even Murshid felt like he was a child, and yet Murshid functioned from the standpoint, that evening, of a Sage, a very old Sage. And it was like his being was channeling the spirit of Ramdas and all of the Sufis put together. I can't remember exactly what he talked about. Of course they talked about Papa end Mata Ji Mother Krishnabai and the old times, when he was at the Ashram. But, mostly, they talked about Realization, and the realization of Ram and the new Spiritual Movements but more than any words they said, and any stories, related, delightful as they were, everything was conveyed through the atmosphere for about an hour, until at one point Premanand said "Would you join us in our Meditation Room for Ram Nam?" And Murshid just, sort of, made the Pranam—Bow—folded his hands together and we went into the room, off the main room there. And there was just enough room. there was this huge poster-size print of Matha Ji and Papa, standing and I guess that's the way the Hindu's do things, they deify their Gurus end I thought that was a little weird but that's the way it was. But, as I say, the atmosphere was speaking more loudly than anything else. And Premanand played the Tamboura; his wife, Sheela, played the Tablas (those are the drums); I think the lady played some of those cymbal clackers, Bill played another stringed instruments, I had a pair of finger cymbals, and they gave Murshid something else, I can't remember what. But we all had musical instruments, and Premanand started singing Ram Nam. Before that time, I had not heard this version that we now sing, mostly (sings) Sri Ram, Jai Ram Jai, Jai Ram Om and so forth and we developed in, and he really got into it the but the minute he opened his voice, something happened, it's as if, even that atmosphere, itself, jumped 3 or 4 octaves. And I found myself in a state of consciousness, with beings, whom I felt I'd been with many times before, in many different lifetimes whether on this earth or in the heavens or wherever. I just felt I had experienced the same thing before at the side of my Guru, who was Murshid, in this case just an exalted state. And that whole night, after we finished, Murshid talked some more. Murshid did try to make one point and that was, that the state of Bhakti Yoga and the Sufi realization of Fana fi Sheik and Tasawwuri Murshid were identical. And he said, "The worship of God in form was not the highest realization and that the Sufis had systematized their devotion to include all realizations and that was the only point of disagreement that they had and it was, what you might call, doctrinal—they simply accepted that state could be the highest of worshiping God in a form. And Murshid didn't deny it, but he said there was more to it than that. But, I must say, Premanand there were 2 couches, I think, and Premanand opened up a couch and another one, and they put on clean sheets and pillow cases and Murshid and I slept on the couches. And that night was passed in the most beatific presence that I can remember sleeping in, in my whole life. And the next morning we woke up to Premanand singing Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram, just fixing breakfast and apparently that's all he does. He sings RamNam all day long, wherever he is, that is what he does, and every syllable and every note of the melody went into one's being and the only way I could express it was that I felt that Murshid and I were returning royalty and we had just been admitted into this heavenly reception into our home. Anyway it felt like it was our home. And Premanand fixed us breakfast. We ate, I think we had eggs and toast, coffee (Murshid said the best coffee in the world ever had was at Anandashram) and as we left that place we were driving across town to get the girls, who stayed overnight at another place. I'm sorry they were not able to come with us, but that was the way things worked out. Anyhow, the first thing Murshid said was, “Moineddin, (I don't know if you’ve had the experience of…. He knew I was high). In India they worship the Divine Mother, they worship this feeling we've been experiencing, but if there is a sin in India, it is the unwillingness or the inability to put into practice what the Divine Mother does. Worshiping her is half of it. Maybe even less than half, and they stop there." He said, "But you see what Premanand is doing, he is manifesting the Grace of the Divine Mother and that is what we have to do. We can't stop at worship, we must manifest to others what we, ourselves worship." And, it was right-on. It was just right. Anyhow on our way down to Los Angeles, we had stayed at the home of Murshida Bhakti Engle.

Jemila and Nathan Johnson

JEMILA: Memories of murshid Sam. What struck me the deepest, in my own life and in other people's lives, was his ability to awaken us to our purpose in life. According to Hazrat Inayat Khan  the very first step for a person is the awakening to your purpose in life.  Of course he didn’t say, "OK, this is what you should be doing, this is what you're going to do. He did it in little ways that gave you clues.

 I was his dance partner. This included all different kinds of things. Sometimes first thing in the morning, he'd say he wanted to see me after breakfast in the meditation room because he had a new dance he was working out.  He'd go through the preliminaries with me, showing it to me, and later we would show it to the Gatha class and then later to the public meeting.  When he would do the Krishna dance, embodying the spirit of Krishna, became Krishna, it was my role to become Radha.   Long before the dances actually started,  I had a dream about him as my lover. Later he had a confirming dream. And as the result of those two dreams and the fact he considered me the most “impersonal” woman in the group , he said I should be his dance partner.  In other words, I guess I wasn't very attached to his personality so it worked out fine. We often danced together and it was wonderful, even magical. It opened up whole other spheres and all of life.

And after he passed on, I was at the Khankah one night for a class.  I was  reminiscing in my mind about how I hadn't fully appreciated all that so much, that it seemed to be over before it began. He was with us for just a few years and we were all so immature. Maybe not all of us, but I was, and not very awakened to the depth of things.  I was thinking l how it was really a pit that it all went by so fast without my really being able to feel the depth of its meaning.  I remember thinking, “ah, if I could just dance with Murshid one more time”.  It was like after someone's passed on, you think, oh, you really blew it because you didn't take advantage of the gift of their presence. It was during a break and I had just slipped out of the class for some reason . I was in the Khankah kitchen and I had a vision of Murshid. He said, with his big grin on his face, making fun of my thoughts and saying, "One more time, you'd like to dance one more time, all right." And then we danced all around the kitchen at the Khankah, just like when we used to dance at the meetings.

Nathan, you knew Murshid Sam from the time you were one year old until you were about three and a half. And it was a very significant meeting.  Mansur and I had just moved to California on the invitation of Moineddin and Fatima. It was the day before Nathan's first birthday,  14th of July. Nathan was a little baby just starting to walk.  The first day we drove into Bolinas Moineddin and Fatima said, "You'll want to go into the city tonight and see Sam.” Naturally we said yes and took Nathan with us. Murshid Sam had just moved into his new flat and there wasn't anything around except boxes of books and stuff. We went upstairs, put Nathan down on the floor. He proceeded to crawl over  to Murshid Sam’s feet and went into sidja position, surrender. Murshid Sam took this as a real good sign for Nathan. He said something line, "This little baby knows what he's doing." So, Nathan, do you remember anything about murshid?

NATHAN: I kind of remember, me and my friend Kevin, he used to take us to a coffee shop or ice cream store every day, and we always used to get rock candy and donuts.

JEMILA: He used to make me furious, he'd be buying them sweets all the time. In the middle of a meal he'd say, "Do you want some ice cream?" And you still hadn't eaten your dinner. What else to you remember?

NATHAN: I remember he used to always sit in the Khankah, in the TV room cracking walnuts, watching the news and singing "Peas porridge hot, peas porridge cold, peas porridge in the pot, nine days old"

JEMILA: Do you remember when he had the broom on the end of his finger dancing around trying to balance a broom, for the party?

NATHAN: I don't think so; he always played Bridge.

JEMILA: Yes, that's the other thing, he cured us of bridge. Because we used to play bridge a lot, and when he would play, he played for blood. You'd get scared stiff to play, because he was apparently, so serious. Poor Jayanara and some of the more timid people just couldn't stand to do it anymore, and finally we all didn't like it anymore and quit. So I don't know if that was his intention or not, but that's what happened.

NATHAN: Whenever he was going to put down a trick … ”Uh!"

JEMILA: Like this….

INTERVIEWER: Was he a good bridge player?

JEMILA: Oh yes, fantastic! genius, and that was the trouble, we couldn't keep up, there couldn't be any match what-so-ever.

INTERVIEWER: Were you the only kid around?

NATHAN: Kevin, I lived over there with Kevin. I used to always sleep in his room. After he died or something, I can't remember where he was. He had a real nice soft bed. It was real long.

JEMILA: Although a lot of the time, I didn't know what I was doing , in the midst of it all, still,  murshid Sam gave me an introduction to Hazrat Inayat Khan,  my eternal Master, from the beginning of time to the end of time. I  have nothing but gratitude for the being who opened the way to me.  It was  from his mouth that I first heard the words, "Hazrat Inayat Khan" or the "Sufi Message". He was the doorway to what has been the most meaningful thing in my life.  It’s difficult to remember things because I have a natural aversion to going back  into the past. I think, in many people's case, it is not the past, it's the present. The seeds that were sown at that time have blossomed, and there's a wonderful garden in people's lives. This garden comes from that time

The Einstein Academy South Florida
Baraka Manzil
313 NW 9th Avenue
Homestead, Florida 33030
March 30, 1976

Beloved One Of Allah Dearest Ma-Sheikh Wali Ali

As-salaam aleikhum. I understand that you are interested in articles regarding experiences people have had who met Murshid Sam Lewis. Well, I know that you’ll get enough to fill the volume(s) you are anticipating and really I never did meet Murshid "in the flesh"; yet he is so close to me, so dear to me and there are so many like me that I have to speak out.

Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti: Sam Lewis

Concerning those who have never met Samuel Lewis in-the-flesh, so-to-speak, yet, feel him closely:

For me it was living intimately with Mansur in Boston for a couple of years and whenever he, Ayesha, Ananda and Qayyum visit with me now. It was attending a public dance and a Gatha class led by Moineddin. It was attending a public dance and a weekend seminar lead by Wali Ali. It was riding in the back seat to and from Pir’s house each day for a weeklong conference while Abd al-Rahman sat in the front seat. It was watching Zuleika, Amina, Benefsha, Fatimah, Suriya. It’s whenever Shahabuddin, Suriya, Serr, Una Inayat visit me. It was the time a very strong feeling got me on a plane from Boston to visit the Maqbara to sing the name of Allah and after 45 minutes feeling the visit completed and time to return to Boston. It’s whenever I listen to the Sufi Choir records. Or the numerous times I went to see "Sunseed." It’s whenever I read his writings or writings of other’s concerning him. It’s all the wonderful "Murshid Stories," and the dances.

The dances are really it. And the walks!

And at the dances here in Florida some come who have danced or walked with him somewhere.

It has been all these moments and countless more that Murshid has been so close to me, asking something of me, demonstrating something for me.

Subhan Allah, Al Hamdu Lillah, Allah Ho Akbar!

love and love,

John Johnson

Mansur Johnson—Memories Of Murshid Sam—6/28/77

WALI ALI: Alright, I’m talking to Mansur, this is June 27th 1977, some six years after Murshid’s death. I’m just going to jump around, Mansur, if that’s alright with you, and you can give whatever answer you like, and if I want to get more, I will ask you some more about it.

MANSUR: My full answer is contained in a book called "Bowl of Sake, Life of Samuel L. Lewis," as well as the authorized biography of Samuel L. Lewis called "Murshid" which is now in progress.

WALI ALI: Alhamdulillah! That makes it a lot easier for me, because as Murshid said, "Mansur is my biographer," and basically what I am undertaking is to write a biography because I thought at some point ago that what you were going to write was not going to be…

MANSUR: You’re writing what I feel is a history; I am writing what I feel is a personal biography in the nature of the “M” who wrote a biography of Ramakrishna from his personal table talk experience. That’s the basis of my work.

WALI ALI: Right. Ok, I certainly want to get some of that feeling into what this person is doing also. It’s true, I want to give the historical background and put Murshid’s life in an overall setting. Are you going to try to take up anything in relation to before he had all these disciples?

MANSUR: One time I asked Murshid something in the kitchen at Mentorgarten about his life; he said, "My past life isn’t important, what is important is your awakening," and so as I said yesterday in Santa Cruz, there is a huge gap in my understanding between the death of Hazrat Inayat Khan and when Murshid went to the East in 1956. I don’t have a clue, although I had a meeting with a man first in Atlanta who used to run the New York center and he tells the story about the time that Murshid came in and asked him how he was doing, and he said, "We aren’t doing so good, we’re not really attracting very many people, we have our own little oasis here, but things, aren’t going so good," and Samuel Lewis told him that he could help him, and this man said, "I’m sorry, I’m not authorized to let you help me, my superiors aren’t open to that.”

WALI ALI: Who were his superiors?

MANSUR: Pir Vilayat was one who came to town that he arranged workshops for—I can’t remember who his initiator was.

WALI ALI: Right. This was not Hugh Dandrade, this was a long time ago.

MANSUR: This was an older man than this, I can’t remember his name, but he is in Atlanta now at the Khankah, and we are good friends, because when I walked in he said, "I feel the spirit of Hazrat Inayat Khan," and he went into ecstasy.

WALI ALI: I had that experience with a Sufi Movement lady from Oakland that had been traveling with Hidayat when I gave a talk at Dr. Chaudhuri’s Ashram this year.

MANSUR: Good!

WALI ALI: I couldn’t have felt Murshid more than that day and the Sufi Message of Inayat Khan—so I am going to try and fill in some of that period, though it’s admittedly a most complex task. I talked to Murshida Duce; I know you would be interested in hearing her account of things, and I am going to try and talk with some other people from that period; I have talked to a few people, I have Murshid’s notes. I know he wants a story to be written and I can feel it, and your report of what you are going to do eases my burden.

MANSUR: Did you hear that? Two books!

WALI ALI: Yeah, two books, alright!

MANSUR: The "Bowl of Sake" is finished down to Nov. 26th.

WALI ALI: In the Khankah here we are developing our publishing work, it hasn’t yet struck the surface yet but there is a lot of stuff going on underneath the surface.

MANSUR: I have an appointment at ten o’clock tomorrow with Harper and Rowe, and I am just going to present my whole opus—I have 10 or 15 books and the first one I am presenting them is a children’s book called "Curiosity Liberated the Cat," and then I have my three-volume book of tales of stories from "The Sufi Message," and then I have the index of "The Sufi message." I have those three with me to show them, and then I have "Muta Kubla Anta Mutu, but Pir Vilayat won’t let them publish that unless I exorcise all of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s words.

WALI ALI: We’ll wait until his work comes out and then you can quote his book.

MANSUR: Exactly, that’s what I am waiting to see, in fact I am sending one of my most purest mureeds up to him this summer to ask him why he is asking Mansur to do that.

WALI ALI: It’s just the ins and outs of organizational hierarchy. I want to dive into the past even though I agree that the present is a lot more interesting. It’s just that in order for me to go forward I have to go to backwards in some ways.

MANSUR: Lay it on me.

WALI ALI: Okay. The first question I have is: what was your first meeting with Murshid? What was your first impression of Murshid?

MANSUR: He had just moved into Mentorgarten, perhaps the day before he had stopped carrying things from his place on Clementina Street, which I never visited, to 410 Precita, and I was taken there by Moineddin and Fatima who had bid for my attention when I had asked them to come to the World’s Fair in Montreal that summer, by inviting me to California to meet a man whom they felt could take them where they wanted to go the fastest. And since Moineddin and Fatima and I had been together in Iowa City and had gone the route of wanting to stay high all the time, and failing to do so with drugs, we were open to a higher solution to that problem.

WALI ALI: Right, and so you came out here. I’ve heard this the story about what you guys did and how things happened that way, but what I want to get is when you actually met Murshid what was he doing? Was it in a class, what was your impression? Was he a Sufi teacher or a Zen teacher or a little old man in a rocking chair?

MANSUR: Yes, he had the ordinary old man’s pants and the sport shirt open at the collar and he sat in a chair by the door with a lamp by his hand and he would always turn the lamp on so it would shine in your eyes.

WALI ALI: Oh I remember; I’m glad you mentioned that. People used to think that he did things like that on purpose.

MANSUR: I thought he was.

WALI ALI: I do not believe that he ever did anything like that on purpose.

MANSUR: I thought he was shy and didn’t want everyone to see how bright his aura was.

WALI ALI: If that was the case, don’t you think it was entirely unconscious? A lot of people believe Murshid did this or that trip in order to show some lesson, and I think very often it was just what they said, only in his mind it was much more innocent behavior.

MANSUR: Yes. If you would like me to discourse on Murshid’s mind—

WALI ALI: Yeah, I would, that would be a good place—

MANSUR: At the time, or at least as I understood it fully in retrospect, he needed the light behind his shoulder because he would frequently read from books and there wasn’t a sufficient overhead light if any. The only lighting that was available, I think, was the lamp.

WALI ALI: And he wasn’t one to think about his surroundings in order to get a proper lamp and a proper shade; he would take what was there, and if somebody else brought something that would have served the function better, he probably would have accepted it.

MANSUR: Since then I have been in his condition several times and his condition could be described as a sort of absence from the body, and the resulting manifestations of this are that you could very easily get dressed and forget to zip up your zipper because you wouldn’t have the presence of mind to stand in front of the mirror and check yourself out, which you might have at another time, so Murshid was frequently disheveled because his mind was occupied in other places. This was perfectly apparent. Other people were fond of remarking about his appearance; I was in such close scrutiny and attuned with his mind that I just became as neglectful of his appearance as he himself was.

WALI ALI: Right, I know, because some people with more social consciousness would be embarrassed by his appearance in public, or they might he embarrassed by his singing Grace in a restaurant in public or some other public thing that he did. Did you ever find yourself embarrassed by anything that Murshid did when you were with him in public, and what sorts of things?

MANSUR: I was pretty broad-minded and I always took anything Murshid took as a test to flow with, and I always trusted him completely, and so I was never embarrassed.

WALI ALI: When you were in situations where, even if you took it as a test, you felt like you should oppose what he was doing, right?

MANSUR: Never!

WALI ALI: You never felt that.

MANSUR: Never!! I never felt in opposition.

WALI ALI: You never felt in opposition? What about the typewriter—that day when Murshid suspended you—it was in Novato, and at that point you had been having some money problems with him before or something, and it came into the question of the typewriter.

MANSUR: The situation was this: I was moving it from the Garden of Inayat to the Alhamdulillah Ranch across the street, and I indicated to Murshid that I wanted to take the typewriter and he indicated somehow that he expected me to leave it in the office there, and I just rapt out to Murshid that if he recalled, he had taken my old typewriter down to the typewriter place, and he had—using it as a trade-in—bought a new one for me so that I could do work for him, and I recalled this for him and told him that I felt this was my typewriter to do with as I wanted to do and as a result of that, he suspended me as a disciple.

WALI ALI: You wouldn’t call that opposition? What was that?

MANSUR: What would you call that?

WALI ALI: I would call it opposition over a money matter or something—when he came over afterwards, I have rarely seen him like that—he was very upset, and we were right in the middle of a Three Rings meeting. After he left I had everybody sit in the chair that he had sat down in because he was giving off so much energy I wanted people to pick up on it.

MANSUR: Wow!

WALI ALI: He just came over to announce what he had done. I am interested in this case; that’s an incident, but somehow it came—I want to circle around and come back through it another way—because to me the crucial thing in describing the last three or four years of Murshid’s life is his way of dealing with disciples, because he was extraordinarily effective as teachers go. One maybe didn’t even realize it at the time how his genius of communication, but here was a situation where, as I saw it, you had been for years making financial sacrifices to work as Murshid’s secretary but were beginning to feel less and less like continuing to make financial sacrifices because it was beginning to wear thin in your life, and you had your own needs that you were beginning to feel that you had to meet, and that you couldn’t any longer just constantly overlook your financial interests.

MANSUR: That’s a view of a scholar attempting to sum up a situation, and it reads very good, but it is not in the least bit true, at least it has no reference to any particular mental set that I was going under at the time. I was never in a financial crunch, I think it was the reason why Murshid made me an Nakib way back even. He said, "I can make you Sheikh or make you a Nakib" way back before he gave me his robe, and I never learned until I read spiritual architecture what a Nakib [one who acts as an external spokesman for the mystical brotherhoods] was. And I was always very interested in not paying any taxes and checking out angles like this, and I went to Boston and published a newsletter with tax angles for anybody who dedicated their life to God; this was a culmination of that work which continued as the empire expanded, so to speak. I earned—my first year in Boston I earned $7,000, the next year it jumped to $12,000, the next year it jumped to $l9,000, the next year it went to $23,000, and last year it was $29, 000.

WALI ALI: Right, that’s peanuts compared to U.S. Steel or something.

MANSUR: But it’s one man.

WALI ALI: Right.

MANSUR: It’s one little person.

WALI ALI: And how does this tie in with what we were just talking about? I mean, this is a retrospect view, isn’t it? Is this what you would understand as being like the seed that was being worked through to manifestation? What was coming down between you and Murshid?

MANSUR: I don’t have a clue of what was coming down.

WALI ALI: Alright, here’s my view, to put it in the overall context of things, just somebody trying to understand events and actions. I felt that when Pir Vilayat and Jemila got together it was such a tremendous shock to your being that you were at that point…

MANSUR: …Illuminated.

WALI ALI: Emotionally shattered in some way.

MANSUR: Illuminated!

WALI ALI: Yeah. Murshid felt like it meant that you were chosen for some special role in the world. His point of view was that when a person suffers needlessly it means that God is preparing him for some kind of blessing.

MANSUR: Yes. And he made that known to me too.

WALI ALI: Yes. He made it known to a lot of people that he communicated with. At the same time he had your own being to deal with. I recall, and I could be wrong, but around that time was the time of your first trip to Lama with Murshid, is that right? Or there were things that were coming out shortly after that?

MANSUR: This is a whole history. My esoteric journal which I am going to present tonight is really a portion of what I call my book of impressions; it’s like Walt Whitman’s "Leaves of Grass." And I don’t know, if someone goes through it, sometime they will find it just full of ecstasies like just of the line in the prayer Nabi, "Thy thought giveth me unearthly joy." Someone might call it "Visitations from Murshid.” But, it’s what that guy in Atlanta felt, only he identified it as Hazrat Inayat Khan, but ecstasy is ecstasy, something like that.

WALI ALI: What did Murshid say when you suggested that he do what he had been threatening to do at different times, or mentioning as something which was a possibility which is to form the Sufi Islamia Ruhaniat Society? To break away from Pir Vilayat at that point? Did you make that suggestion to him around that juncture

MANSUR: I can’t buy it, when you say break away from Pir Vilayat; he was never in favor of breaking away from Pir Vilayat.

WALI ALI: Murshid was never in favor of it, that’s correct. What I was saying was that at that point—because you had been hurt by Pir Vilayat, that you felt that that should happen and it made it clear to me and to a lot of other people that Murshid was not that kind of a person to change his friendship or his way of working with somebody based on those kinds of matters, that where he was coming from when he said "yes" to somebody, it was from a much deeper place.

MANSUR: Yes, I think I remember we were driving, we had just finished crossing the Golden Gate Bridge in Marin county and I put it to him just like you said, would this be enough to make him change that, and I had no emotional interest in its adoption or not, but I remember putting that question to him and he indicated an interest in solidarity in spite of that action.

WALI ALI: It always seemed to me that the things that he cared the most about having happen, even though he talked almost incessantly, these things he rarely talked about in the way in which he was trying to shape events from within.

MANSUR: I don’t follow you.

WALI ALI: For example, he used to hint about the Farm being taken over by Pir Vilayat and bought and turned into a school. It had to be some joint effort for a real school of Sufism and meditation and so on. I know he was very interested in that happening, but he rarely mentioned it, you could only see that occasionally it would come out and he would pretend to himself that it was happening even though that nobody that had anything to do with making it happen ever indicated that there was any possibility that it was going to happen.

MANSUR: That’s what you would call a positive thought concentration. And that’s exactly how people in the hierarchy shape the events of the world: by becoming beacons of positive thought solution.

WALI ALI: This is a method that certainly one finds a person like Shamcher using all the time.

MANSUR: Yeah there seems to me to be a difference between assuming something is true and holding that thought in relation to events that are happening and also in trying to influence events.

WALI ALI: Yeah, right.

MANSUR: I found out that I had the authority to influence events at the Canada camp because I told Shamcher that Pir Vilayat made me  Hadim [guardian] of the Maqbara at Lama, and again it is like a Nakib, I didn’t know what it was, but it turns out that he said, "Oh yes, Hadim, he can go up and knock on the back of the Emperor,” and he told the story about how there was an Emperor named Ataturk in Turkey who had translated the Qur’an into Turkish and the Hadim went up and tapped him on his shoulder and said, "The Prophet wanted the Qur’an to be in Arabic," and the Emperor made some answer, and  I can’t remember the rest of the answers, but then I began to contact Nixon and Carter with this because the solutions to the energy thing, the time for it is right now, right now is the Kemal moment and I am working furiously to influence events in that. Nixon has now been—has three communications from me, and it up to him to contact me through Ayesha, and I have feelers out now in two directions to Carter, and I hope to contact him, as well as speak before the Clamshell Alliance in Boston on July 6th, on Wednesday night, and this is such a crucial issue on the news today. They had a demonstration taking place yesterday in Manchester, New Hampshire of unions that are in favor of nuclear energy because they see 3000 jobs, when in fact OTEC will mean millions of jobs.

WALI ALI: And OTEC is what Shamcher has been pushing in relation to the differential of the water temperatures?

MANSUR: That’s the project that Shamcher brought to America. I’ll give you his address to the Canada camp. If I have a lighter carbon, I’ll give you the lighter.

WALI ALI: You said something before about how working for something in the world might be tasawwuri Murshid, working for some cause.

MANSUR: Yes, I just have many memories of chauffeuring Murshid over on missions, to call at offices, at universities, and businesses, and I could never see any effect coming from all of these innumerable visits and letters, I could never see the effect.

WALI ALI: Do you think there was any effect?

MANSUR: My own secret feeling was that I couldn’t figure out why he didn’t try to be more effective, and why he was satisfied with just this planting the seed, so to speak. Shamcher said that he did die early, and my own picture of him was that he was going through a transformation like all of us were, and he used to describe his transformation by saying, "I am not used to all this love," and he was being transformed by the love, and the transformation—I feel in retrospect—was just beginning, and just as all of us have been subject to Pir Vilayat’s example and manifestation of love, which if anyone doubts, they can see the first pictures that I took of him back at the Ranch when he came there in July 1963 I think 1963

WALI ALI: Were you talking about tasawwuri Murshid in terms of the transformation of his being that was taking place?

MANSUR: Yeah, I feel that he would have travelled more and—this is a just speculation now—he would perhaps have narrowed his interests down, he might have concentrated on the Near East, he might have concentrated on agriculture in India, he right have concentrated on any number of things. If Pir Vilayat was concentrating on establishing Sufi Centers, Murshid would have been perhaps free to concentrate on worldly solutions because he felt he had the solutions to all problems and the only thing that stood in the way was men’s egos. And I refer to that constantly as I embrace further my coming into being as a Sufi teacher, because I am working directly with facing men’s egos, so to speak, in a gentlemanly way, and to me this is the highest possible work for the betterment of the world. But it doesn’t prevent me from trying to see Nixon and Carter and give them information and data. I have a newspaper here that I got on the airplane coming down to Albuquerque, and it is an interview with John Stetson, the new Secretary of the Air Force, and he says that he thinks that the key problem that we have, and the rest of the world has, is oil and gas, and most of it is concentrated in the Middle East and he predicts a war and he doesn’t know anything about OTEC, or he wouldn’t think that oil and gas is a problem. But this is in the highest levels of government; they don’t have the information, and as Sufis—who carry water in the desert, and impress people with their generosity—we’re going to give them the solutions and make them look good in their jobs. And I’m giving it to Nixon, see, as an opportunity to clear his name. I am giving Nixon the opportunity to buy a half an hour of prime time on television, just like he was president, and give an address to the nation, to tell the nation where it’s at on energy, and make the commentators look at his facts and check his facts and he can make instant headlines. And if he can get on and he can produce this plan, in eight years Shamcher and all this can give us everything we want, Nixon is going to turn out to be a hero. And it is in the Sufi teachings that the last note that we strike in our life is the important note, it doesn’t matter how much of a villain or a criminal we have been. If we turn out to be a saint, that’s what counts, and I am giving Nixon this opportunity. And it is up to him to call me, because I know him and I felt his heart when he went out and—I studied Plutarch and the examples of the noble Greeks and Romans—and I just feel that Nixon is a potential great one, who, if he can strike a really positive note will not only clear his name but bring a new era or prosperity to America.

WALI ALI: That would be great for Mr. Nixon.

MANSUR: And America.

WALI ALI: Yeah, right. I don’t care who gets it across, just read this book, A Man called Intrepid, which I certainly recommend to your attention. Paul Reps called it to my attention.

MANSUR: Peter Tompkins, was reading it in Cartagena when we were there.

WALI ALI: It is a good example of how individual initiative and vision changed the course of the world and, and made possible the victory over the Nazis. It is the story of what really happened to especially one man who was head of the whole Secret Service. A lot of these facts have never been able to come out because of the very strict British.

MANSUR: I want to read it, it sounds like Sufi Work, like the work of a Qtub, like the work of the Hierarchy, like the work of the beneficent Forces, like the work of the Forces of light over darkness.

WALI ALI: It was all these things, and there’s about eight pages on Madeleine, Nur-un-nisa Khan.

MANSUR: Alhamdulillah!

WALI ALI: And pictures too. It made Reps say that, "Quantity congeals and conceals and why are you folks so interested in building up this organization and centers and making people weak. Inayat transmitted directly to his daughter, Nur, and it is proved by her life and as soon as it gets bigger it gets inefficient." What do you think of that?

MANSUR: The second to last time that I wrote to Reps he wrote back, "Don’t ever write to me again." And so I wrote to him again, and I said, "Like it or not this is the second golden age of Sufism,” and he hasn’t responded.

WALI ALI: You said that when you were at Lama that you found some feeling about what ground it was that you were standing on, what we were, so to speak—when Nur was making his stand and his charges.

MANSUR: Yes.

WALI ALI: Could you say what that is.

MANSUR: I could just give you the speech that I gave at Lama. The person that had spoken before me was a guy named Zim, whom you probably know, and he had suggested that Nur resign as a permanent member so that he couldn’t intimidate the people who lived at the ISC [Intensive Studies Center] and constantly be dropping the consensus blackball on every single positive proposition that they had for the going ahead of the community. And I stood up and there was a long list of people who wished to comment, because the subject on the agenda that we were discussing was the ISC. I hadn’t said a word until then, and Ram Dass and others had stood up and used this point in the program to make their one speech, and like Ram Dass, I was also leaving tomorrow, and so I stood up anyway, and I told in response to Zim’s comment that Nur [Steve Durkee] should resign as permanent member and I seconded it, and I said, "Yes, Nur can do that," I said, "because when I first came here in 1969 to do a story on Southwest U.S. communities, I interviewed Steve Durkee, and he told me at the time that he was a pioneer and that Lama was the only thing of its kind at the time, and that as soon as other people started doing what he was doing, he would go on to other things." And furthermore when I was here last summer, he said, that he was going to go down and get some land in northern Mexico in Sonoma so he could work all year round and not have to leave for the winters. And then I made five other points and two recommendations, that said—if you want them I can make them now.

WALI ALI: It’s all right—I’m interested in it, Mansur, but I don’t feel like to get it on tape. I can get it from you.

MANSUR: I told them who we were. I had to realize from his definitions that Islamic Sufis were different from New Age Sufis. I find the posters here are saying, "In the Sufi Order of Hazrat Inayat Khan," and I think this is adequate, because the vision is so broad. I heard Shamcher discourse on this in Canada and it gave me a sense of the vision. He said, “Hazrat Inayat Khan represents all the Sufi Orders and Sufi Orders include the Sikhs, the Hindus, and so—it’s just that the idea of having an Islamic Sufi community is a fantastic idea, but Lama isn’t the place for it, and Nur has a fantastic role to fulfill, and being a home away from home for all the visiting Sheikhs to come and they can go to his place. There are people connected with Nur who have been to Ajmer, who say that Chistis deplore what is going on in their name, that Hazrat Inayat Khan’s followers are promoting it. Well, this man’s name is Moineddin; he should be heard in some suitable forum. But it’s just deplorable, at Lama, where these people have certain missions that they sincerely feel, and they are involved in that local politics, so to speak, and it is just giving Islam a bad name. And people said as much, they laughed, but they are very naive in a way, too, they don’t even realize but I’m not letting their naiveté lay. I told Harun that what they are doing is immoral and inconsiderate, and also asked Harun a little Zen koan at dinner time.  I asked him what was more important, that Jelaluddin Rumi and Shems Tabriz reach God or that they were Muslims, and he said, “said, "Well, uh, uh, uh," and he got all confused and he said, "it’s the same." So they are just children and they are playing an old religious zealot game and being inconsiderate and immoral and it will blow over like any little stupid thing blows over. Say Allah and leave them to their devices.

WALI ALI: What do you think Murshid’s role is in relation to Islam?

MANSUR: In my final speech, I referred to the letter that he had read from the saint of Salarwala who was Murshid’s teacher, and in this letter he called the dances merriment, and I said, "I have 80 witnesses who danced with me in Toronto and did a love dance that reproduced love,” and I called it "Is love pleasure, is love merriment; no. Love is longing constantly, etc. etc." And I also told them something else about that relationship. I said, “Murshid was supposed to be his student, and he was supposed to be their teacher, and Nur read this letter from this man, but where’s Murshid’s response?” And Nur said, "Oh well this wasn’t to Murshid, this was after he died.” I said, “Yeah, why don’t you read some of Murshid’s response to this man?” I said, “If you look at his response very carefully you would see a very interesting phenomena, that the student was trying to teach the teacher something. The student was trying to broaden the viewpoint of the teacher.” And if you don’t see that and you don’t understand that in relation to Murshid, you are just fooling yourself, that was one of the points that I dealt with because Nur had been presenting all this evidence, right, so I just stood up and knocked it down one after the other. Then Harun stood up, he used to be my chief associate in Los Angeles and now he is Nur’s, he is Nur’s authority, right, and he’s been to a whole bunch of Sufi centers all over the Sudan and everywhere and he’s met real Murshids and he used to be an actor and now he’s got a perfect role, he’s got a beautiful little beard and he’s got the movements of the Sheikhs and he quotes Qur’an and he thinks in Arabic probably, and he’s the one I told the moral in the Shemseddin question to—and why did I bring him up?

WALI ALI: Well you said that he got up to speak after you had spoken—

MANSUR: I answered him as follows, he talked about how Sufis have an inner science that is blah, blah, blah. I said, "Science is not owned by the scientists, there are three esoteric schools in the East, and I named them and I said that they basically have similar inner sciences, but science is not owned by the scientist. No the Muslims can’t claim a science; it is also owned by the Buddhists and the Vedantists. This is all in my final speech at Lama. And I was so grateful to Nur for helping me to clarify all these things, but I did have answers to everything he said, but the fact that no one was listening to anybody made it difficult for the truth to win over. People had cotton in their ears and that was a sign of the immaturity of the meeting, of Nur and his gang.

WALI ALI: I think that question of Murshid and Sufi Barkat Ali is a very good one because the fact is that people think of Murshid as being very Jelali and at the same time he was able to be very receptive, but even when he was receptive, he said, "I won some of my greatest debates by surrender,” but he always knew that the result of it was unity or union and that whatever was going to be exchanged between the beings would be exchanged by a kind of entropy process, and that his acceptance of Pir Barkat Ali was based on Mastery in the spiritual hierarchy, and not based on form and the ways of the teacher in reward to the forms that he had himself learned. But the way in which a person can teach by being on the receiving side was certainly a most important side of Murshid’s character; it was the kind of impulse that made him go to all these classes in universities that he already knew the subject matter better than the teachers, but he would sit in the class—through the student role—in hopes of being able to bring up something that in the interest of truth would move the teacher and the whole class forward. At least this was my reading of it.

MANSUR: Yeah. I’ll buy that. I went to many classes with him, Huston Smith at Berkeley; Beatnik poetry [taught by Lew Welch] at San Francisco extension.

WALI ALI: He had lots of people go to lots of classes.

MANSUR: F. Hecker Colonna just for one visit.

WALI ALI: What about Saadia, how would you describe that relationship? In trying to understand Murshid, in the way in which he could function in different roles and different situations, he used to say “controlled schizophrenia is my secret.” Do you think Murshid was many different people in many different situations? Or that he had one consistent view that could be put down? About such questions as this one or whatever; for example—

MANSUR: Yes, I think so, the latter.

WALI ALI: He usually found that his remarks seemed awfully disjointed at first, but the more that you would see his remarks you would see that he was encouraging you to make a synthesis that he had already made. He wasn’t concerned with verbalizing it, simply the synthesis, but to keep expanding what was being integrated into, it. But I had the impression, for example, that when he went to an Islamic culture he was able to simply become part of it.

MANSUR: Yes, he had. He convinced Saadia that he was a perfect Muslim, and she was so finicky, if he had made any mistakes she would have caught them, but he was no doubt a perfect Muslim at Saadia’s house, performing all the ritual prayers etc. etc.

WALI ALI: How would you describe Murshid’s way of working in terms of his highest function? Could you describe Murshid’s way of working, or something about his function?

MANSUR: Yes. I told this story in Canada how Murshid gave me an insight as to how he functioned. During the war he got it from inside that Hitler was going to bring in psychic forces to help him win the war, and he asked God what to do and God said to bring in higher forces. He would also tell, in conjunction with that story, how, if you had vision, you had to be so strong because when he apparently would visit an astral body or something in concentration camps and witnessed telepathically the murderers and executions, consequently being in that space you experienced all of the anguish. How he may have assuaged the pain I don’t know, but what his function was, besides witnessing, I don’t know. And that brings up his whole work in G-2 which I don’t know anything about.

WALI ALI: Yes, I always felt that what Murshid was able to do in the other world was the prem, or the mastery or the very end result of it; it was just the tip of the iceberg because he was working full time in the next world, and for him to come down was an accomplishment. And the fact that he was so grounded was a super accomplishment because his real being was in ecstasy or gone, and his hardest test was always to hold himself down onto the earth and to have enough consciousness in the body to see things from the point of view of people in the world that they would be able to understand what he was trying to communicate. And the fact that he had this kind of madzubiat realization or you might say that he was one of the hidden ones of the spiritual hierarchy for so much of his life that this makes a lot of things clear in terms of how he functioned. When he actually became functioning as a spiritual teacher he said, “A lot of these things I got by default because others at the time didn’t take up the blessings that Hazrat Inayat Khan was offering or rejected people in their proper roles.”

MANSUR: Yes, that’s it, I’ll put in a yes.

WALI ALI: To me Murshid was a God-realized being who was functioning in the spiritual hierarchy and at this point in his life it became his dharma to take on disciples and prepare them to carry things forward, to continue the message of Inayat Khan, which he always resisted being made into something particular like Inayatism or something of that kind.

MANSUR: I have a vision of the New Age—it’s so radical, it’s the manhood of humanity. People asked yesterday about the universal worship being some religion or something, and it was just what it was and I just told them the Sufi view of religion and how God has spoken to these different individuals with big ears with a hand toward humanity delivering the guidance according to the evolution of the people and their needs in the language of the time. It is all a part of one vast evolution which is centuries down the road but where people are friends with each other and people are friends with everyone and that the sacred relationship that we play at between teacher and pupil is just this perfection of humanity, which all of humanity will evolve and reach somewhere down the road.

WALI ALI: How do you think Murshid felt about his disciples?

MANSUR: I was such a hard-hearted disciple; I never felt anything for Murshid emotionally. I was in the soul attunement and there was no emotional expression, so I didn’t feel anything, besides being so hard-hearted. It wasn’t until I got a heart awakening in Geneva with Swami Ranganathananda that I feel that I got the love awakening, and then maybe I still didn’t feel anything because I was still too hard-hearted, but you can have ecstasies that aren’t of the heart—I was having those all the time with Murshid—I called them soul ecstasies—my journal is full of times when Murshid said, “Alright, now—now you really are going to go upstairs!

WALI ALI: I think that’s a very good observation, because I know, especially with women too, that Murshid gave them more of the emotion they might have needed to, or gave them more of the heart transmission, or gave them more that they could perceive was heart-transmission because it came in a way in which they understood it. And with some people more than others, maybe with people that did have hard natures, or from an alchemical view their substance was very dense to get through. Murshid was so much the person that had to bring it out in the situation which he was in. Are there things that stand out in your mind?

MANSUR: There was the children’s kissing game. It was a lesson for me on vulgarity, obscenity from Murshid.

WALI ALI: What was that? I don’t recall a children’s kissing game.

MANSUR: Murshid got the kids together at a birthday party and there was a kissing game, and he just said he didn’t like obscenity and that’s relevant because somebody the other day asked me, “Do people swear in your Khankah?” They wanted to find out if we were regular guys. Well, Murshid didn’t like obscenity, so “No,” no we don’t swear in our Khankah.”

WALI ALI: Murshid didn’t think too much of pot.

MANSUR: I’ve got Murshid on film talking about grass.

WALI ALI: I was there the day that you were filming. I was in the office; I heard him after the film.

MANSUR: I was trying to bend Murshid into shape; he didn’t want to be bent, that’s the long and the short of the film interview. It was beautiful.

WALI ALI: You were trying to get him to say certain things that he didn’t want to say?

MANSUR: He just made it clear, he said he didn’t care if dope dealers had shiny faces, he wanted to know what we were doing to feed the hungry people in India. It was just another thing. You can work for good or you can work for better.

WALI ALI: Did you see a change in his attitude towards psychedelics from the period when you first started coming? Most of the people who were coming around then were on psychedelics when you first started coming around.

MANSUR: Murshid never had any axes to grind about psychedelics.

WALI ALI: No, the only thing that he ever said was Joy without drugs and he said, “That definitely is not against psychedelics, you can have Joy with drums, you can have Joy with all sorts of things that are called plants that have a natural vitality." There is a lot of stuff in the Gathas on Everyday Life Series I on some of these subjects, and in other places in his writings. I talked to Brian Carr and Akbar and Brian’s perspective was that when things began to get more formal, then he began to get more self-conscious and less interested. Murshid himself went from Sam to Murshid, and that marks some sort of transition in relation to the way in which he was dealing with people. Do you remember when he wanted to be called Murshid instead of Sam?

MANSUR: Yes.

WALI ALI: I just mentioned that of kind of a symbol of something that was taking place.

MANSUR: My reaction to your talk about drums a minute before, Joy without drugs was the theme. I didn’t feel Murshid had any axes to grind. I felt that his vision was as strange to him as it was to anybody that he was spiritual leader to the hippies. Because he had done all the other things—he had put on suits and gone to the universities and talked to Hayakawa and gone to Mr. Chaudhuri, so why not go to the hippies because he was a little crazy anyway, and he’d been always a freak anyway

WALI ALI: He found some sympaticos or something.

MANSUR: And then this vision came and he wrote about that later that publically in Towards Spiritual Brotherhood, how psychedelics were lesser mysteries and you could consider them as a scientist and he inspired us to stop smoking and we were willing to change our habits because that was his example, so we did.

WALI ALI: Did you find Murshid a demanding teacher?

MANSUR: I began to feel restricted after about three years with Murshid. I began to feel a little uncomfortable in my role as the secretary that he dictated his business letters to, and so it seemed a natural concomitant because of this that he would push me out of the nest, which he did on the way back from the Lama Foundation. This was a story that I told in Canada, a very pointed story I feel because I feel in retrospect it was Murshid pushing me away to protect me from his death, but at the same time I don’t think that he even consciously knew that this was what it was, and I gave this as an example of bad consciousness, sort of like a puppet. I felt that Murshid had gotten a message from the unseen to “Make a fight with Mansur,” and he made a fight with Mansur over no particular reason, over no apparent reason, and as I told people in Montreal, the way between the teacher and the pupil is such a sacred, subtle way that the grossest thing that a teacher can do to a pupil is to tell him what to do, and if this mere suggestion doesn’t affect it and if this thought doesn’t affect it, that the pupil is much lacking, something else is needed. So when Murshid started a fight with me, this was a very clear sign to split, to make a distance, and I was inspired to begin with a marijuana movie, and I took up smoking again, and this was about six months before he died. And when he died I felt that this was the culmination that I had prepared for, and I was ready with Chinese dinners to feast everyone, but everyone was not willing to join in the feast except Banefsha, I think, and a few people. And I agree with the people that say that he did die too young too. He fell down—he slipped on the stairs on the carpet which wasn’t nailed down, and I had a foretaste of this because one time when we went to Marin County and we got out at the poet-lady’s house, and he started to dash across the street, and I just flashed, “Wow! He didn’t look both ways to see if a car was coming,” and perhaps his ears told him that no cars were coming, but I had a thought, “Oh Murshid is going to die accidentally with this kind of behavior and kind of intoxication in life,” and so several times when we were in London I kept him from getting run over by a bus.

WALI ALI: I wonder if he ever drove a car himself.

MANSUR: I never asked him.

WALI ALI: He was a most aggressive back-seat driver, though.

MANSUR: He had a bone to pick with me that was real because I kept driving by the exits off the freeway. I would get spaced out, and he didn’t like that at all, and it was plenty of a good reason to be testy with me. We would sail by our destination. My thing was not getting high; my thing was getting me grounded. Murshid got me grounded.

WALI ALI: We had just an hour talk with Murshida Duce; it wasn’t anything that she said because I knew, pretty much what she was going to say. She filled in some details from her point of view. To her Murshid was one of the greatest disappointments of her life because he didn’t turn out the way that she wanted him to turn out. And he was such a source of problems for her, and she felt to get her karma straight in some sense or another she had to put something on the record, but all that is just immaterial. She gave me some pictures of Rabia Martin that are valuable and some copies of letters of Inayat Khan, though she’s got a lot more that she won’t turn over, even though I suggested trades of certain materials that I know that we have copies of but she says that these things are privileged communications between Murshid and disciple and contain practices and for that reason it shouldn’t come out.

MANSUR: It’ll come out later—

WALI ALI: Oh I’m sure it will come out. Everything will come out, but what I am saying is that it is filling something in that made me understand how desperate he really became at one point in his life, how utterly hopeless he must have felt about the task that he received from Inayat Khan in those interviews. Because you see what those people did was, they finally got through to him to the place where he questioned his whole sanity, his whole basis as a human being. He felt that he had some supplication or humiliation that he was supposed to have to go through. Ivy Duce felt that those flaws in his personality, which he never overcame in one sense—certain impressions of having been wronged, for example—he just built new areas, he didn’t necessarily ever wipe all those things. They would come up in different ways and they gave him a lot of energy.

MANSUR: They would have if he had lived longer, he would have had to drop those things, because everyone’s now growing, and he would have had to drop that. That’s why, when I look at Murshid critically—he used to talk about his faults—and I could never see anything. Now I see his faults like he might have seen them, and I know that he would have evolved with the rest of us, because that’s what we are doing; we are evolving.

WALI ALI: How would you say who he was, what role he had to play in the world, and what his real being was or is?

MANSUR: Murshid was my friend, he was someone who was kind enough to give love to a little orphan in the world who nobody had ever loved—maybe someone had loved—but no one had ever been grand and given me a vision of grandeur. Murshid was as great as me, and all the time he felt so great, and I’d never met anyone great, and then to meet Murshid was to meet myself. The friendship that we shared was and is something that I don’t even think about that much, because he told me to think about God, and so I went crazy for God, and lost my first wife in the process and found love. I began to go through the experiences that are necessary for spiritual souls as—according to Hazrat Inayat Khan—the way that spiritual personalities are developed is by going through it. God doesn’t give anybody burdens that she can’t bear, and women can hear the Divine Voice sometimes clearer than men, and if you can do what your wife wants and make her say that you'll fulfill all of her dreams and be satisfied with the highest of the hierarchy here on earth with your lady—if you can satisfy your lady and still hear your own inner voice and your lady can recognize that you are hearing your inner voice as you ride your high horse off in all directions, and you can get your lady behind you, then you are free to join forces with Shahabuddin and his lady, and Wali Ali and his lady, and Moineddin and his lady, Amin and his lady, and Abdul Rahman and his lady and together it is a manifestation of the Wisdom of God here on earth as a manifestation of life fully manifested with all consideration for every living being. Then the world is at your feet and you work in whatever capacity you are placed in, produce whatever effects you can produce, acting as if your own impulse were good, and right and justice, nobility, and friendship the wish of God, and then you encourage people to make documentaries about Murshid in the form of his disciples, as I’ve done in Canada. Then you manifest it anyway you can manifest it, and it is all because of friendship from Murshid.

WALI ALI: I just want to say, "Yes."        

MANSUR: And all the books of my ecstasies will outnumber the books of Rumi’s ecstasies , or I’ll just sign my name and cross Rumi’s name out of all his books, that’s the same thing and just cross out Shem’s name and write me, and I’ll put Shamcher in the place of Rumi. Yesterday at the Universal Worship I read a poem which I would like to read now, I don’t even have to read it all. The last line has to do with the last dance of Mansur at the Canada camp, and Shamcher joined in, and we did the Murshid dance, Ya Hayy, Ya Haqq, Allah, Allah, and instead of doing Ya Hayy, Ya Haqq I wanted to give the blessing to everyone, and so instead of having one at a time come out, I had five at a time come out in a crescent. So Shamcher came out one time and the line is, “I asked with this affliction, but when Mansur you came, all my youth comes back to me.” And Shamcher, all of his youth came back to him as he did Ya Hayy, Ya Haqq—91 years old, all of his youth came back to him because I love him.

WALI ALI: One more final question before we adjourn.

MANSUR: That is it? What is your final question? Who was Murshid? That was the answer to that.

WALI ALI: That was really the answer to what was Murshid to you. What was Murshid to himself?   

MANSUR: Me and you, and Pakistan and gardening and Dr. Chaudhuri, and Dr. Hayakawa, and Hazrat Inayat Khan, and the aura around the plants in Golden Gate Park, and the spirit of the universe, the soul of the world, our best friend, our guide and mentor, our beloved.

Shabda Kahn—on Murshid Sam—6/3/76

WALI ALI: I think you’ve probably prepared some things; I see you have a list of things, so why don’t you start?

SHABDA: I put it into three categories: New York, Boston, and then just around here—experiences with Murshid, so does it matter where I start?

WALI ALI: Why don’t you start in terms of experiences—chronologically?

SHABDA: The way I came to meet Murshid: I met Baba Ram Dass in N.Y. and he gave a talk in a church, and then a week later Pir Vilayat gave a talk, and invited us all to a camp in the summer of 1969. The talk was in ‘68 in December, and then he invited us that summer of ‘69, and so I arranged to come to the camp; I quit my job and gotten clear with the draft, and I had a few weeks before I was supposed to meet Ram Dass and live on a community with him, so I came to the Colorado camp. Even at the time Pir Vilayat offered me initiation and I decided against it, because I was going to this other thing with Ram Dass. I met Murshid Sam’s disciples and they invited me to come to California for two weeks before I went back to New York—actually it was in New Hampshire, for this retreat and I came out, and Ayesha was the one who introduced me to Murshid, and I met him at the Khankah the first time, and I went to one of his Wednesday night meetings, and I think that is what drew me back, because I’d never been to a meeting with so much joy.

WALI ALI: Oh that was what drew you back, you brought Charlene back here? Yeah, I remember that time; I was here when you came in. Your story about your first interview with Murshid, was that the first time you came out here?

SHABDA: No, the first time I came out here, he just said, “hello,” and this and that. He told me later that he knew at first glance all his disciples except for one, and I never found out who that was. But he says he knew all his disciples at first glance, so he must have known already then. And then I went to New Hampshire and that happened for three months and after that I came back out here with a girl named Charlene, and by the time we got out here we were really far from being together. We were as far apart as you can be, but we owned this bus together, and we got a free place living at Omar’s house in Larkspur, and we started going to Murshid’s Wednesday night meetings. Charlene started going to Murshid’s house and doing work, and I think that that had an effect on me because I thought that she was getting to him quicker than I was, so I—it gave me a kind of a spur to get closer to him quicker. Apparently she had made all these complaints to Murshid about what I had been doing, saying I’d been nasty and this and that—I don’t know what she said, but it must have not been very nice. So he called me in one meeting—this wasn’t actually the first interview—and said, “Charlene told me all this and that, and I meditated and asked God and He said it wasn’t true.” I was just going to—I had only been to four or five meetings, so I had some feeling as to who he was, but he had completely gotten my case covered.

WALI ALI: I remember that first time you brought Charlene back over here, and you came over and you came into the house and you had dinner.

SHABDA: That first day we arrived—that’s right—

WALI ALI: You came right straight in from the bus I think there is somewhere that Charlene wrote about that—

SITARA: In that letter—

SHABDA: Every time I came into Murshid’s house from a trip, he would say, “Okay, I’ll give you a shower and a meal, and that’s all I can do for you.” But he had that sense that when we came in, I remember, he sat down and he received us for almost an hour. I know that if I consider my work today, if someone comes over and wants to hang out, I’ve got to really surrender to that, if I feel they are really—that they need the space to hang out in. But when we came in, I’m sure he was busy, but he hung out with us for an hour, and then said, “Take a shower, take a nap, and have dinner,” and then I think either we slept here or we drove to Ayesha’s. The first time I came here I slept here, but Murshid was at Lama, I guess. I was staying with you, and you took me over to see Master To-Lun.

So, the first interview with Murshid: so I scheduled an interview; I hadn’t really caught on to anything, let’s say, and I went there and I just sat down and, “Hello, how are you, what’s your name again,” and this and that, Murshid asked me. And then, he says, “Do you have any questions, why did you come for an interview?” And I said, “Murshid I don’t have any questions, or anything in particular; I just felt like I was supposed to come and see you.” And he said, “Very good, thank you so much for coming,” and he walks me out of the door. That was it, and he says, “Here Mansur, give him some papers to read,” and actually at the time I think he gave me “notes on irfan,” with some other things to read.

WALI ALI: So then did you go back or stay here that trip for a while?

SHABDA: I stayed out here at Omar’s-

WALI ALI: You stayed at Pineal House?

SHABDA: No, that was later. I stayed at Omar’s house; we were evicted and I was looking for a place with John Roshek and these two girls; this harp player Thea, and some other girl. And we couldn’t find a place, and my date for initiation was coming up. I had asked Murshid later on if he would give me initiation, and he said that he would be glad to—that he felt I was real seeker, and I didn’t have to have probation or anything like that. So that was scheduled for February 15th, I guess it was 1970. So at the time Jim Fellows, who wasn’t a disciple, and who I’d lived with in New Hampshire, came by and said, “Listen, there is this place to live for free down in Southern California; they are building an ashram for this guy Sai Baba who is supposed to come in April, and I haven’t heard anything about him really; he showed me this record of him and the record said that he was an avatar and that he hadn’t come to be a guru or anything like that, that he was already the avatar, and so I thought, “Far out, I’ve been looking already for a month for a place and I couldn’t find anything and here someone comes along and says you can live here for free.”

I went to Murshid and said to Murshid whatever happened, and I said, that I wouldn’t go there without his blessing, so he says, “You have my blessing as long as you don’t make him your guru.” and I said, “Oh well, he said he is not a guru, and all of that.”

WALI ALI: you were pretty naive, right?

SHABDA: Yeah, really—I just didn’t catch on.

WALI ALI: You were very Neptunian I remember when you came, very touched somewhere in your spirit but not too tuned in to—in a certain sense to what was going on in human beings and—I think Shirin gave you a really rough time at the Colorado camp. As I recall she was sort of giving you a bad time, but you probably didn’t notice.

SHABDA: I didn’t notice. I think what happened was that before I got into any type of sadhana, I probably wasn’t as spaced out but I got the idea from being around Ram Dass that that was the way you were supposed to be. I must say I got a lot of wrong ideas from that work at the time. And I am sure that he has changed his approach too, considerably—

WALI ALI: So you were off to—

SHABDA: Yeah, so the day after I took Bayat, if you can imagine, I left the area. I went with Jim Fellows who took in this girl Heidi who was with us; you met her at the camp in Colorado. The next morning we left for Southern Calif., and to this place, Tecati, and it was just a house right near the border of California and nothing special was happening down there. The people were trying to have their idea of what an ashram was which means they got up at 6AM and they did chanting and then they did pranayama and this and that, but it was all very routine, and I was down there, and I did some fasts down there, and we went and visited the shrine of Yogananda and we went to hear Krishnamurti speak. Those are some of the things we did for one or two days. And then I had been fasting for about five days and I just got this strong message to drop the trip and come home. And so my plan was to go and fast for nine days, so I just went to town and got something to eat, packed my bags and put my thumb out and I got one ride from there to San Diego and another from San Diego to the door here at the Mentorgarten. And I opened the door and there is Murshid at the top of the stairs and he said, “You are lucky, Marsha is not here for dinner, so you can stay for dinner, but that’s all I can do for you.” So, over dinner, you probably remember this, I do anyway—Murshid says, “What did you do down there?” And it takes about a minute to say, “Well you get up at six to do this and this and this and this,” and so then I started spacing it out and saying, “And we went to see this disciple of Yogananda’s and he was all full of light and all this jazz, and we went to see Krishnamurti,” and later I understood that both of them he didn’t get along with very well.

WALI ALI: He didn’t think they were particularly deep.

SHABDA: Anyway, I went on and on, and “Oh Murshid,” and he slams his fist like this: “What the hell are you running around for when the Kingdom of Heaven is within you, the Kingdom of Heaven is within you!!!”—slamming his fist on the table, and when it was over, he just went back to eating, as far as I can remember. Is that how you remember it?

WALI ALI: Yeah! I remember it; he was trying to break through your fog. It was kind of like Nataraj used to be—because he is a little closer, you can remember, because as a person changes they forget what they were like—everything is so wonderful and spiritual and everything—it was beautiful but it was from an angelic place or something. And then he did give you a real blast, I remember—I don’t remember the essential. I was just waiting to see how long he was going to hold out because after all he had been very tolerant in a certain sense—just giving you a lot of rein. He knew before you left, “I’m going to go down to this guru,” but he just let you play it out and then at a certain point…

SHABDA: It’s funny but I always appreciated getting busted, in fact I still do—I feel that it’s so much quicker instead of carrying it out yourself. So I came back and by chance I met these girls who lived on Pineal Street who turned out to be Majid—who is Majid now (Joan) so I started living at this house and there were ten or twelve or thirteen—

WALI ALI: It was beginning to be the—everybody was beginning to live there right?

SHABDA: They hadn’t been, but they all started living there after the camp.

WALI ALI: Oh I see! That was before; that was when the scene was more together.

SHABDA: Yeah, right; it was before any trip happened and before Frida was coming in for counselings, and before it was a big trip.

SITARA: You were the only man there, right?

SHABDA: There was one other guy but he was totally spaced out.

SITARA: Oh yeah!

SHABDA: He was crazy!

WALI ALI: He ended up committing suicide right?

SHABDA: Yeah.

WALI ALI: That was after you left?

SHABDA: Two years after I left. So I lived at this place in a tent with Majid and we had this two week romance and after that it was hell. After that it was how to live in the same tent and not be together. But we lived right outside this garden and we were doing gardening work and just to give you a sense of how Murshid cared for his disciples—the kind of interest he took. I came in and I said to Murshid, “We have aphids on our plants—on some cabbage or something we had planted that we’d been growing. So he took it in. Later I came into a crowded Monday night meeting, and he used to be upstairs in the Mentorgarten, and he’d walk in and he’d take his big finger and he’d say, “Come here, come on up to the front of the room,” and when I got to the front of the room, he says, “Follow me,” and I followed him out to the kitchen, and he opened the ice box and there was an enormous bag of asparagus ends, and his advice was to boil the asparagus in water, and take the juice, and spray it on the plants, as an antidote against the aphids. This was printed up in the book, In the Garden, and they missed the point of it because the idea was to give people the antidote for how to get rid of aphids. But it never got too clear in the book, they mentioned it but—

SITARA: Did it work?

SHABDA: It worked pretty good, but then, see, then we left for a camp and so I stopped taking care of the garden; but I started coming to the house and doing cleaning work and trying to help Murshid out. I remember one time I was vacuuming down here, downstairs, and Asa was here (Leslie and Asa, right?). And so Asa came downstairs and I started playing with him and I wasn’t doing much vacuuming, and then Murshid opens up the door and he sticks his face in. And I don’t know if I said anything, but I know I got very worried that I wasn’t doing the right thing because I wasn’t vacuuming. And he says, “Oh no, you’re doing the right thing, you’re doing the right thing,” and so that’s always stuck with me. And so from there other things I remember that happened in that period were that we had a nice May Day celebration out at Deer Park in Fairfax. And I remember it was a very hot day—

WALI ALI: That was the day of Shibli and Vashti’s wedding, right?

SHABDA: Was it?

WALI ALI: Was that after Shibli and Vashti’s wedding?

SHABDA: It could have been, but I was at both things and I’ve never connected it in my memory. It was May Day; it must have been May 1st, of course you could find out.

WALI ALI: It was real hot, I remember—

SHABDA: It was about 90 degrees and I remember that—

WALI ALI: Because Murshid kept dancing and everybody else was just too tired—they were stretched out under the trees—

SHABDA: Murshid said, “Now everybody up” and everybody was sitting down, and he was just dancing away. I remember it seemed so remarkable that he had all the juice and everybody else was flaked out at age 20.

Let’s see what happened next. I remember one time—I think this may have been before we left for that camp in Paradise, the first Paradise camp—Abraham came by. He came visiting this area, and so I—

WALI ALI: He’s coming by again soon, I understand—

SHABDA: Really?

WALI ALI: This week I think; his band is playing somewheres—

SITARA: Is he coming with Karmu?

WALI ALI: No.

SITARA: I thought Karmu was coming—

WALI ALI: He is.

SHABDA: Anyway, I brought him to a meeting, and the meeting used to be upstairs; we’d have the first part of the meeting upstairs and Murshid would give a little talk and maybe read from one of the volumes depending on which night it was. If it was Sufi night or Dharma night—and then we’d come downstairs and do dancing. So Abraham came in—and when you bring a friend you always are wanting that Murshid should like him. Actually it was more important that he should like Murshid—from where I was sitting. And so Murshid picks him out with his eye, right away and he says, “What’s your name?” And he says, “Roy.” His name was Roy. And Murshid says, “Where are you from?” He was also from the Ram Dass group, he was living on the East Coast with Ram Dass at the time too. So he says, “Where are you from?” And he thinks and thinks, and he says, “The Universe,” and Murshid, “No! No! Where are you living?” He said, “Where are you living,” not where are you from, I should correct that. “Where are you living?” “The Universe.” “No, where are you living?” “The Cosmos.” “No! Where are you living?” And Abraham says, “uh, uh....” “No, damnit! Where are you living?” “My Volkswagen bus.” “Very good!” I imagine by this time he was ready to crawl under the carpet.

WALI ALI: Oh I remember; this interrogation went on because he was—actually he asked him, “What have you studied?” Do you remember that?

SHABDA: “What’s your favorite poet?” I think.

WALI ALI: Right, and it was just like pulling teeth to get him to say anything. He was so indrawn and so self-conscious and introspective and withdrawn that it was really hilarious and painful. The interrogation was all in that same vein. He’d been to Yale or Harvard or somewhere and he wouldn’t talk up when he said it. Murshid said, “Where did you study?”

And he said, “That’s alright,” or something like that. ”What did you major in?” “English,” Abraham would mumble. “Who was your favorite author?” And every question was like that. He would cringe.

SHABDA: Right! I remember that. He would always say that meetings were always like that, like one day I walked into a meeting and he—Siddiq and Shahida were there (Hans and Frances). He calls him up, “I want you to meet these people and talk to them,” because they were friends of Ram Dass when he was at Lama, and I’d known Ram Dass before so that type of thing would go on.

But then it came time to go—I had to go to the Paradise camp, and I had to go back to the East Coast because my father was having a pin put into his hip, and I was going to go to be the nurse, or just be there for support; and the feeling was always in me—I wanted to become more and more a part of the family. You could feel how much love always poured out of Murshid naturally; especially to the people he loved. And so I remember coming for an interview and Murshid had that feeling like he was really opening up the doors with me, or was starting to open the doors—he gave me a dance manual to take with me, and he said, “Is there anything else I can do for you?” And I said, “No, I just like to sit here and hang out.” And he said, “That’s okay, too." He’d be playing solitary, or something like that. So then I left for this camp in Paradise, and we had this camp with Pir Vilayat. I think there were about 100 people there. You helped organize it, right?

WALI ALI: Yeah, that was the first one—

SHABDA: Right! Then I went back to the East Coast, and I was seeing friends there and getting a house, and seeing and visiting all of the spiritual circles of the people I had known in New Hampshire and so on. I got up one weekend to New Hampshire—they had a reunion and actually led Sufi dancing which is that dance that’s on Sunseed—it didn’t seem to me that way at the time—

WALI ALI: You didn’t remember how spaced out and loosely strung out you were.

SHABDA: That was it, I didn’t have the feet-on-the-ground-understanding yet. Even if I said it, I might have announced it, but I didn’t understand it yet. So I thought the idea was to try to get high and get out of your body, or something—

WALI ALI: Fall on the grass?—

SHABDA: I wouldn’t have ever done that myself, but I didn’t stop it or anything or think it was the wrong thing. People were having a good time but about that particular dancing. I wrote a letter to Murshid and said—somebody had given me a photograph—so I sent the photograph, and the letter, and said, “Dear Murshid, this is the scene of the Sufi dancing that I led in New Hampshire.” And Murshid wrote back, he said, “Your picture made me cry; the dancing made me cry, I saw the picture long before you sent it.” In the same letter—I’d been in downtown New York and I saw a poster which said, “G. van Essen (?) Sufi Master will give a talk.” It had this Heart and Wings symbol, so I didn’t really know if that was the Sufi Order that we belong to or a symbol for all the Sufis or what, so I wrote Murshid and said, “There’s this Sufi Master, G. van Essen who wants to give a talk,” and Murshid wrote back—this is all the same letter—and he said, “A Sufi is one who sees from the point of view of another instead of himself,” and I went to this guy’s meeting and he was—he gave some talk on—he was a disciple of Inayat Khan’s—and he gave some talk about his experiences with Inayat Khan. And then very soon after that—of course all the while, I am taking care of my father who had had a very strong operation, and the fact that I was there gave him some—we had a very strong communion. We’d sit in the hospital room and cry together, or laugh, or this type of thing. And Murshid wrote me a letter saying, “I’m coming to New York for five weeks or so, will you be at my aid, can you help?” Or, “What can you do?” I don’t remember exactly how he said it, but you can look in the letters I’m sure. So I started setting up talks—

WALI ALI: Was there another man who was supposed to set something up too? Bob Kaufman or something?

SHABDA: He must have met Murshid; he never did anything, I don’t think he ever materialized; I think he met Murshid here and then he was going back—

WALI ALI: He met Murshid at the Temple of Understanding conference, and then he ended up coming here, and so Murshid always took that as a sign, because he was the youngest person at the Temple of Understanding conference—

SITARA: He showed up in New York, he was there—

SHABDA: He showed up, yeah, but he didn’t materialize as a worker.

SITARA: Oh!

SHABDA: And he didn’t set anything up. But the odd thing about Murshid, at the time of Murshid’s visit, cosmically or whatever—New York at the time was pretty dry—this woman Hilda Charlton was giving her meetings and that was very small at the time. Maybe it was at a private home and 15, 20 or 30 people as opposed to now where she has 500 people a week, I would suppose. She was announcing every week the arrival of this Swami from India who she said was very, very great and everyone should come and meet him and so on—Muktananda—so when he came the whole entourage of the spiritual movement which in New York at the time was more like the nexus of one group with little mixtures here and there—there weren’t all those other movements yet. And so they all went to see him, and were going there week after week for his lectures and meditations and he had a retreat up in Big Indian. And so anyway, I set up these programs for Murshid Sam; the first program was at this Theosophical Society on 72nd Street or something like that—is that where it is?

SITARA: Yeah, the Philosophical Research Society.

SHABDA: Philosophical Research Society—run by these two old ladies; one played gongs.

WALI ALI: These were the ones that you got through Pir Vilayat—he’d done some talks there?

SHABDA: Right. So anyway, it was arranged, and Murshid was to stay at Shahabuddin’s house and I remember reading Shahabuddin’s interview—anyway they arrived, and we looked out the window and they had arrived in a VW. We ran down and hugged Murshid and he came upstairs and more of less the way I remember it the first thing he did was he went to the Yellow Pages and looked up R for Restaurants. I was sitting there, and most of all my eye was on Shahabuddin seeing what he was going through, because I couldn’t imagine it. Here was his first take of the spiritual Murshid, of a spiritual teacher—and he was looking up R for restaurants. Later on along with all the things we did in New Work, Murshid would somehow always go to the Yellow Pages with his intuition open—he connected many far-out things that way.

WALI ALI: Alright, let’s get into New York now; let’s take it up chronologically.

SHABDA: I have a long list; I’d just as well just go down the list although it may not be chronological. There was a meeting arranged at the Theosophical Society; the first meeting was set up and because it was Murshid’s first meeting and I had been advertising it at all those other meetings with Swami Muktananda, everybody came. We had a real nice audience, probably about 50/60 people, do you think?

SITARA: Yeah, Saadia was there, or was that later?

SHABDA: I think she came, I’m not sure; but Murshid was just electric. He sat up on this little stage on a chair and he gave a talk and he told all his stories about meeting the Dervish with the haircut, and this Dervish and that, and the one about the taxi-cab—he told all of them, and then he said, “I want to show you my astrological walks,” and he got up and did walks one by one across the stage walking back and forth. I think this may even be on tape—there is one tape that Don Miranov made.

WALI ALI: Don Miranov, Do we have that tape?

SHABDA: You have that tape, or Carlos has got it. Anyway I scored it a year later when I went back to New York Carlos has got it.

SITARA: Maybe you could get it from him.

WALI ALI: It would be a good idea.

SHABDA: And also that was when I started playing for the dances, because my sister had given me a dumbek she had brought back from Israel—she lives in Israel—and so I brought it because there were no musicians there. So I started playing dumbek for the dances.

WALI ALI: Did he do dancing that night?

SHABDA: He did dancing, and he did real well. And it was a large group so we did about half and half: this group sit down and this group stand up—not too much dancing, though.

SITARA: It was a great audience, they loved him.

SHABDA: It was fantastic, and I think Hilda was there too that night? Anyway, she came some later night. But the odd thing about the meetings that were set up at that 72nd. Street place was that the first meeting they loved him but then nobody came back except for a real small group because they were all plugged into this other trip that was happening, and they had been plugged in for over a month, so just a few people, either who were free to start with or who were just really drawn came. So, along the lines of this Swami Muktananda, this girl had arranged a luncheon, and from her point of view it was a very special events this great saint Swami Muktananda would come to her place and have lunch, so everyone was invited to come a half-hour or an hour to her place—before he was supposed to come, including Sitara, Murshid and myself. Remember that? And Murshid would never say anything, he just went along with it all. He never said that I should come or this or that. So we arrived at this place, and Murshid was wearing his sport jacket and he looked pretty straight, and he walked in, and apparently—it wasn’t obvious to me—but apparently he walked in and sat down right at the guest-of-honor’s seat! This was just a bench, a window seat type of arrangement, but it was the higher place in the room or something, and he just sat down because he was used to sitting in chairs I think. And some guy in front of him was doing his tasbihs, his mala, so Murshid said, “If you’re going to do it, I’m going to take mine out too.” He was so outrageous that day.

WALI ALI: What else did he do?

SHABDA: He wasn’t going to just sit there while 20 kids were just sitting around doing nothing, being bored—so all these pictures of the Hindu pantheon were around: Ram and Sita and Lakshmi and so on so he says, “Does anybody know who that is? And somebody says “That’s Ram and Sita.” “Anybody know who that is?” And so on until he gets to Saraswati. And then he says, “Anybody know who that is?” And somebody says, “That’s Saraswati,” and one guy, I think, was the only one who knew them all, and he was giving all the answers. And Murshid says, “That is actually who I worship,” and then one guy in the audience put the question, “Who is Saraswati, Murshid?” And Murshid said, “I’ll show you,” and he rolls his legs up—when he sat cross legged, it looked pretty funny—and he starts going “Hu u u u u uuuuuu” and he did it for about a minute or a really long  time and the whole atmosphere of the room was really affected by that. And then he snapped out of that into the next thing as if very little had gone down, and that’s all I remember because Muktananda came then.

WALI ALI: Do you remember anything more Sitara?

SHABDA: If you want to add things, please do—

SITARA: I just want to add that I remember that when Swami Muktananda walked into the room, a cat jumped on to Murshid’s lap, and he leaned over to me and ,said, ”That’s a sign that God is with us.”

SHABDA: The room, I tell you, it was…

SITARA: Very hot.

SHABDA: This girl didn’t realize what she’d done by—like everybody was sweating it—there was no peace in the room. Everybody was afraid that this electric person, Murshid Sam, would punch him in the nose, not literally but that—

WALI ALI: That he was going to blow the scene!

SHABDA: Right. It was supposed to be very peaceful.

SITARA: A man did ask him to leave the seat; there was a lot of whispering going on, but nobody told him—

SHABDA: Yeah, I only found out afterwards, nobody even told us, and we didn’t know; but everyone was scared they were going to argue or have a fight. So he came in and they embraced and they threw some questions back and forth to each other, and I remember that Murshid said that his guru was Papa Ram Dass and that he went with Mother Krishnabai, and Muktananda said he went to visit her every year on his birthday. In fact the whole conversation between the two of them was real—how would you say—the air was electrified, it wasn’t real mild like when two friends meet; they didn’t just embrace and feel real close. Everybody in the room was just petrified that something would break out—

SITARA: They were very happy when they discovered that they had Ram Dass in common. SHABDA: I didn’t think that they were overjoyed; I didn’t feel anything more than that they both somehow accepted each other, but they didn’t join somehow, their hearts didn’t meld—or maybe they did on some plane, but I didn’t feel that kind of closeness. I don’t know if you did.

SITARA: No, I just felt that that was the point of relief, and that was a step.

SHABDA: Yeah, they both had a connection there.

SITARA: Murshid was very pleased to see.

SHABDA: Murshid told me afterwards that he accepted Swami Muktananda, and he said that he had one shortcoming and that was that he couldn’t speak English, and he was going to have trouble with that.

WALI ALI: He told me that he is one plane above most of these Hindu teachers. He said that most of them are on the third plane flying around with the angles.

SHABDA: So we went and had something to eat, and we went into the other room. It was interesting because if there was anything that the people were receiving some kind of talk from, or lessons, or living examples, Murshid was just in there all the time. Like if you went to eat, he was talking with everybody and just getting to know everybody very closely; and Swami Muktananda was sitting in the other room all alone, being served on a special plate and a special this and a special that, away from everybody else—it just shows the difference of approach so strongly. Like here is this one person, he wants to be as visible as he can so his heart can touch everybody; and the other one sets himself so far apart nobody can come in the room, or the disciples set him apart.

SITARA: Murshid said, “This is the Hindu way, the Hindu guru eats alone; the Sufi way is that he eats with his people.”

SHABDA: Right!

SITARA: Do you remember what happened when Muktananda left Murshid and all the kids were in the room, and Muktananda got up to go and everybody sort of rushes to the door and Muktananda pushes his way through and brings a bunch of flowers to Murshid.

SHABDA: I remember another incident sitting in Shahabuddin’s apartment, we were sitting, probably over lunch I think and Wahid, whose name was Tom Miller who wasn’t a disciple yet—in fact I think he actually became Murshid’ s disciple.

WALI ALI: No, Pir Vilayat’s later.

SHABDA: But he came out here, and he was asking Murshid—as I remember this conversation—”Murshid, how is it to get jobs out in San Francisco?” And Murshid said, “Oh, it’s very easy, all my disciples get jobs!” And I said, “Murshid!!” I’d been trying to get a job for months in San Francisco! And he says, “Oh, don’t worry.” When he said that, I just knew that I’d get a job at New Age Foods. It was like a it was somehow a click, because I had wanted to work there at the time.

WALI ALI: Did he mention New Age? He always used to mention it—

SHABDA: Yeah, my friend Fred Rohe, and we go over there with our vegetables, and the damn fig tree, and he’d be yelling at people, “We have too many figs,” and there’d be two or three figs on the tree or something.

SITARA: “When we’ve got a natural food store in San Francisco—”

SHABDA: Right. I also remember him reading people’s charts, when people would come with their charts; I remember him reading my own chart.

WALI ALI: He went to that public event, but how many people were drawn to seek him out at that time?

SHABDA: Not too many, maybe ten or fifteen or so. All the people were very glad to get together with him because they knew when they were high but not too many were attracted to him as a teacher exactly—I remember that.

WALI ALI: How far away were you from him? Were you with him every day?

SHABDA: I was in Queens, and I think I came out almost every day from Queens.

WALI ALI: By this time you weren’t taking care of your father?

SHABDA: By this time my father was out of the hospital and it was the perfect way to be weaned because I had this other work to do. I was walking him every day up and down the block, fifteen steps, he was off all the drugs so he wasn’t so emotionally loose and that kind of trip, so friends lent me their car and I drove in and did whatever was asked. But I remember that either I’d take a nap, or sometimes we slept over, and I would always wake up about ten seconds before Murshid would open the door out of his room. So I asked him, “How come we always get up at the same time?” And he said, “It’s just attunement.” So that kind of thing was going on. We would go for walks in Central Park. And we’d be walking and he’d say, “Now what walk is that guy doing?” And you’d stop and say, “He’s doing the Sun or Mercury or this or that.” And he’d say, “Right,” or “Wrong,” there was always something going on, if you weren’t saying something, he was! And then every now and then he would be quiet but mostly we were—I remember particularly discussing people’s walks as we walked in the park. We went one day, also to somewheres in the ‘70’s, to Meher Baba’s book store.

SITARA: It was Meher Baba’s center.

SHABDA: It was the Center too, yes? Murshid wanted to check it out apparently, and so we walked in, and in the background in another room you could hear some arguing going on. And there was a young boy, he was probably a new recruit, he’d only been there a few weeks or so. He was selling the books, so Murshid is picking up the books off the shelves and he is saying, “Oh I know this fella, I know this one,” and we started talking to him, and one of us must have addressed him as ‘Murshid.’ So this young guy was very surprised, and he goes and tells the lady in the back room, who apparently was the Murshida there, and also in the interim Murshid said he wanted to meet this woman. Right?

SITARA: Didn’t the boy say, “You’re a Murshid from California? I want my Murshida to meet you.”

SHABDA: Yeah, that’s right, that is how it went. So he went—he really liked Murshid, I thought, he was really moved.

SITARA: Right!

SHABDA: So he went into the back and they finally finished arguing—and Murshid is sitting in a chair pretty much like you are, with his arm over the leg of the chair and his foot in the air, and she walks in and she starts gelling! “Get your foot off the chair, this is terrible! I’ve never seen anything like it!!” and Murshid looks at Sitara and he says, “That’s all I wanted to know, let’s go!” And he stormed out! Is that how you remember it? He had also bought some books.

SITARA: Oh! That’s right, he had bought some books. Did he have to pay for them?

SHABDA: No, but it took a long while to find his shoes or something like that.

SITARA: Oh! Someone had taken his shoes; they weren’t where he had left them. So it took a long time and she started yelling and yelling, and all I wanted to do was to protect him.

SHABDA: There was always—

SITARA: The shoes mysteriously disappeared.

SHABDA: Just like at Swami Muktananda’s; travelling with Murshid you always had to be ready for some—I can’t think of the right word—some events where he would start doing something outrageous, and whether you agreed or not you would have to stand there and support him and be ready to help him however. So he also started doing some work with the Three Rings, and in this connection I remember a letter came one mornings “Dear Murshid, we have been doing our work very hard and Abdul Haqq has come over and done filing work and Murshid blew up. He said, “This is terrible, I don’t want him working on this project; he isn’t supposed to, he should be in the garden!” And I think that in a matter of seconds you were at the typewriter and he wrote some letter back which I am sure you could look up. Tell Abdul Haqq to go work in the garden and you do the rest. I think they had some kind of meeting and they invited all these people, nice people to help them: Amin and Amina and—and Murshid was really made about that. And also at the same time he was writing Commentaries while we were there on the prayers Saum and Salat, I think, or on the other three prayers.

SITARA: It was Saum and Salat—in fact I think it was just Saum.

WALI ALI: It was just Saum, because he had done Salat years before.

SHABDA: So he was writing the Commentary there? Along with this same thing with the Three Rings, he said, “Alright, I want to go down to the UN, so in this case he took out the Yellow Pages and we went down, and I tried to remember the name, and you might have it the place we went to from the phone book. Was it Dr. Mehdi?

SITARA: Oh yes! Arab Information Center.

SHABDA: He was still in contact with them in those days?

SITARA: I think so.

SHABDA: So we went to visit this man—

WALI ALI: He is a very big political activist in the Palestinian movement, Dr. Raymond Mehdi—

SHABDA: I’ve seen his name since then—

WALI ALI: He has gotten some international publicity. He used to have a newspaper that we used to get, but I doubt if we still get it.

SHABDA: I think that is why you got it because we subscribed to it that day. I remember his office wasn’t too much bigger than this one and it was piled up with papers. I wasn’t too tuned in to what came down there, but I do remember just walking around the streets there near the UN and trying to feel what was happening.

SITARA: Mehdi wasn’t at the U.N.

SHABDA: That’s right, it was two or three blocks away.

SITARA: But that was the same day you went to the UN?

SHABDA: What did we do at the UN?

SITARA: I think you went to the UN alone with him. The day we went to see Mehdi I was with you.

SHABDA: I don’t remember—

SITARA: The day we went to the UN—

SHABDA: Oh we did some dancing at the UN? No, I don’t remember him going to the UN, but I do remember him seeing this guy Mehdi.

WALI ALI: What happened there, do you recall anything? Was it any angry exchange? SHABDA: No, no, it was a good exchange; Murshid said he was working for peace, and they had a real nice exchange. I don’t remember anything coming down.

WALI ALI: Do you remember anything Sitara?

SITARA: I just remember that I was disappointed; I thought that something bigger was going to happen. It was very matter of fact, enormously matter of fact. Mehdi just greeted Murshid and they exchanged some ideas and talked and then it was finished. I expected something different, and Murshid didn’t seem overjoyed at the results—

SABIRA: Did he show him his Peace Plan?

WALI ALI: He admitted he was writing it—

SITARA: That’s right, he was writing it—

SHABDA: He was writing it at the apartment—

SITARA: That’s right.

SHABDA: That’s right

SABIRA: Because Shahabuddin said that they had gone to the UN with the Peace Plan.

SHABDA: I don’t think he was along—I don’t know, maybe we should ask him more particularly if this is what he meant—

WALI ALI: Of course Murshid was always talking about his Peace Plan, but nobody had ever seen anything on paper. It was always, “My plan,” and nobody ever knew exactly what he was doing—

SHABDA: Right, and Gunnar Jarring said it was the best—

WALI ALI: Right, Shabda, and that was the thing, and you see this in Shahabuddin’s interview, Murshid would, wherever you’d go have the same stories that had the same themes—just like the different tides: there is a day-to-day tide and a month-to-month and a yearly tide—so there was the yearly theme and the monthly theme and the themes were always going on.

SHABDA: At the same time Pir Vilayat was coming to town and at the same time we received a letter from Fazal—I guess Shahabuddin mentioned the letter. I didn’t really—

WALI ALI: We have copies of that correspondence-

SHABDA: Was it about the Gathas, is that what it was? He wanted some papers? That’s what Shahabuddin said.

WALI ALI: It was much more than that—Murshid had written a letter to the Sufi Movement headquarters in Geneva which had been read by the then Secretary General, an older man who wasn’t too well and Murshid had pointed out some things about the order (Movement)—I can’t recall exactly, but it was something to do with his relationship with Inayat Khan and sacred papers and all that stuff and he and this guy forced Fazal’s hand apparently because he had read the letter, and he gave the letter to Fazal to answer. So the answer—the first thing that came from Fazal was rather more courteous, though, there was an underlying tone underneath of challenge—

SITARA: That was received here or in New York?

WALI ALI: No, that was the first thing that came and then Murshid wrote a very—I’m not sure whether it was here or New Work, but the letter that came back from Fazal the second time was very—

SHABDA: I think that’s the one that we received in New York—

SITARA: I don’t think so—

SHABDA: We can check it out, but I do remember that Murshid wrote a very strong letter back, but at the same time he kept saying, as I read the letter, “I’m leaving him room to change his mind. He kept leaving him room to change his mind; if he wanted to change his mind it was cool.

WALI ALI: Yeah.

SHABDA: I thought that—

End of side ones

SHABDA:—for Fazal to get a little bit more humble and finish what was happening.

WALI ALI: You were taking all this—

SITARA: Yeah, I just wanted to say, he dictated two letters to Fazal.

SHABDA: That’s right, the first one he tore up—

SITARA: The first one he tore up—the first one was mild. He asked me, “How shall I answer this?” I said, “I think you should make room, leave enough room.” He said, “Do you think I should get angry or do you think I should just leave the way open?” I said, “I think you should leave the way open, and Inshallah it will open.” So he writes a nice, quick, short, mild letter; Shahabuddin walks in the room, and Murshid shows him the letter from Fazal, and Murshid says, “What do you think of this?” And Shahabuddin says, he got very angry, “Murshid, this is horrible, it is so discourteous, it is so disrespectful.” And Murshid says, “How do you think I should answer it?” And Shahabuddin says, “I think you should get tough with him, tough!” And so Murshid says, “Okay, that’s from God,” so he tears up the first letter, and he writes a very strong letter—

SHABDA: Right: Because I remember that the first letter was too strong and Murshid felt he couldn’t send it. Isn’t that strange, I just remembered it.

SITARA: I was disappointed; I just didn’t think it was right, but I just had no way to change it for that was how it was coming down.

SHABDA: So in that connection we went to Pir Vilayat’s for an interview. That’s it, he wrote one letter, and then he saw Pir Vilayat and then he rewrote the letter; wasn’t it something like that?

SITARA: I think it was the very same hour.

SHABDA: Jemila was there with Pir Vilayat and we went to Shems’—Ira Friedlander’s apartment, and it was very odd because I always felt that Pir Vilayat had no idea who Murshid was. He treated him like a very nice old man, who was a little off the wall, but they discussed it.

WALI ALI: They discussed what? Fazal?

SHABDA: They discussed this letter to Fazal and I guess in his Diaries Murshid said that he had gotten this message that he was supposed to work with Pir Vilayat, that Vilayat was, the “Rumi” and he was the “Shems i Tabriz,” and I was amazed how Murshid would always work; he was so understated. He wouldn’t really say what his deepest thing was.

WALI ALI: An outward bluster and actually there was something very subtle going on that most people could easily miss—

SHABDA: Really! So I think that’s what it was: that he got Pir Vilayat’s okay on his letter, and at the same time I remember that they discussed Pir Vilayat had just been to India with a film crew, that was it—and he was saying that he had visited Neem Karoli Baba and he’d had a terrible meeting with him, it didn’t work out. Pir Vilayat said—and I remembered Murshid responding, (slaps thigh), “I don’t think very much of him either.”

SITARA: “Just what I thought.”

SHABDA: Yeah, alright, something like that, which was another blow because he was a first connection for me since Ram Dass was his disciple.

SITARA: Pir Vilayat called him a magician—

SHABDA: Yeah, I didn’t remember that but the meeting was just so disappointing when you read, when you have this romantic idea of Murshid’s meeting, and Murshid’s description of Senzaki’s and Inayat Khan’s meetings, or different meanings like that. And here he is sitting with the man who was at the time the head of the Sufi Order, and your Murshid, and the more I served Murshid, the more I became attuned to him, and so I was staying to get closer, it was just disappointing. It was less than he would have wanted it to have been. And so we also went to a meditation of Pir Vilayat. And it was five o’clock in the afternoon for some odd reason—and it was over at this same Philosophical Society, it was terribly hot and Pir Vilayat gave one of those meditations—he was probably dead tired from his plane ride—and he talked the whole time, “Now we’re on the fifth plane, the blue sky with the green this ... now we’re on the…,” and after that we went out to a restaurant to the Maharaja on 98th Street and we were sitting around, I think a few other people came with us—Sitara and Shahabuddin I know were there—and maybe a few other people, and maybe Wahid, I don’t remember who else, and before dinner was served—you have one description of it from Shahabuddin already—we sang “as salaam aleikhum” and all those other songs. Those things didn’t bother me, I loved them. That’s funny, because living with Amin—he couldn’t stand it. I loved it when we would sing grace and have some sort of personal relationship going with the restaurant. So I said to Murshid, “Murshid I didn’t get anything from that meditation; I couldn’t follow it at all.” And then he said, “How’d you do?” (asking Sitara), and you said, “I didn’t do too good,” and then he asked Shahabuddin and he said, “I didn’t do too good either, and I don’t know if he asked the others or not—so Murshid said, “That’s not meditation, that’s bunk!” So that was what he said! It just wasn’t meant for us or our time, I guess.

SITARA: He said, “The man doesn’t understand that you have to teach meditation from attunement and not from words. If he would just work from breath and from attunement, he would bring everybody with him, and this way he doesn’t bring anybody.” Then he mentioned counseling to him, and Murshid was very interested in what was counseling. Remember that, you said, “Frankly I prefer counseling, when Pir Vilayat does counseling and not meditation.

SHABDA: I don’t remember that.

SHABDA: I remember also in the same stream with Fazal we were going to several meetings that were going on at that time. One I’d gone to, this meeting of Fazal’s group to check it out—in that letter I’d written, that one I talked about before, I’d visited that group when I went to hear that Sufi Master. I gave them a very beautiful introduction. I said, “I am a disciple of Murshid Samuel Lewis and he has received these wonderful dances.” And I spoke to them about it, and so this man who was leading the group, I think he was a younger man, do you remember his name, about 40 years old?

SITARA: Nathaniel?

SHABDA: Nathaniel or something.

WALI ALI: Nat!

SHABDA: Yeah, Nat. Anyway, I offered about the dances, and I guess he must have written to Fazal to check it out and I wrote to Murshid. So I asked Murshid, “I met this Sufi Master and I went to this group, can I teach them the dances?” And his reply was what I’ve already said about the Sufi Master, “The dances are for the world, you can teach them to anyone. Just keep it high with love and devotion." And so I went back at the time and he said, “We aren’t supposed to do those kind of dances,” I guess he must have gotten the “no” on it. But we went, Murshid and myself—and did you go to that meeting?

SITARA: Yes!

SHABDA: We went to their weekly meeting which was on a Tuesday night, I think, with this guy Nat. And it was a group of 8 or 9 kids, in a small hall; we sat around in chairs; he read from

Inayat Khan, lit some incense and said, “We’ll meditate now,” and that was the whole meeting. And Murshid dug it. He said—

WALI ALI: It was just silence?

SHABDA: Yeah, He was reading from Inayat Khan and silence and there was no real discussion—

SITARA: There was about a half hour of reading.

SHABDA: Yeah, he read from some lesson and then did about five minutes meditation—

SITARA: It was only five minutes though—

SHABDA: Yeah, that was even more like Murshid’s style than sitting for an hour probably. And at the same time we were going to these meetings that Pir Vilayat—they were in his name, he was the head of the Unity,—not the head of the Unity Church but the Unity Church was sponsoring a series of weekly talks by leaders of different religions. And Pir Vilayat was the president of something like that.

SITARA: Yeah, it was his own organization.

WALI ALI: International Meditation—or something; I know just what you’re talking about—Hugh Dandrade was connected with that.

SHABDA: Right. So we went to several talks about it at the same time and Murshid kept saying, “I’m very embarrassed, I’m very embarrassed, this talk we went to, this little meditation we went to at Fazal’s was rea1 and the other talks we are going to are not real.” I remember we heard some Rabbi talk.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I want to get into that because I remember getting letters from him on that subject how he just stood up and said that the Rabbi was a liar.

SHABDA: Yeah, he stood up and—and talk about feeling funny in a room—here’s this room with maybe a couple hundred people listening to a lecture by—he’s a younger man—in his forties I guess. Some Rabbi, I don’t know his name, but he gave some kind of talk which had its little package of hate and indifferences—and Murshid got up and blasted him. I tried remember the content but….

WALI ALI: Did he interrupt the talk or did he stand up at the end of the talk?

SHABDA: I think that near the end he interrupted and then sat down, but afterwards he zoomed up to the front, and stood about two inches from the guy and just blasted him for about five/ten minutes, yelling back and forth—and this guy, he was doing alright, because he was yelling back.

SITARA: But he did bring everybody in the room in on it because he yelled at him right in the middle of the talk—

SHABDA: Oh yeah, he let everybody know what was happening.

WALI ALI: Was Pir Vilayat there?

SITARA: Oh yes:

SHABDA: Was he there that time?

SITARA: Oh yes. That was the complication. That was like his Universal Worship in those days was to have a representative from—

SHABDA: Wasn’t it that every week there was a different talk and this week there was the Rabbi’s talk? And Pir Vilayat came to a later talk and then later made a big introduction?

SITARA: You’re right; there was one other time-

SHABDA: You’re right, and Hugh Dandrade at the end, after Murshid had yelled at the Rabbi, came up and gave a nice closing talk or something. He made it all nice.

WALI ALI: You don’t recall any of the particulars do you?

SHABDA: I really don’t.

WALI ALI: I remember one thing that happened and maybe it will trigger something else. Apparently the Rabbi said something about that no one could right a single instance of any Christian politician who’d done anything against anti-Semitism, and Murshid stood up and said, “Everett Saltonstall in Massachusetts,” or something like that.

SHABDA: It was something like that. The guy kept saying, “Nobody helped us out, nobody this kind of bitter. And I guess Murshid was in a very funny place because he had all the facts when he went to the Jewish people in San Francisco and they threw him out. This was during the wartime. There was another talk we went to, too, wasn’t there? A different topic?

SITARA: There?

SHABDA: Yeah, a week before on some other topic?

SITARA: There was a lesson—Dr. Rauf was speaking.

SHABDA: Right. And I think that Murshid didn’t yell at him, or anything but I don’t think it was especially good—it was just kind of a dull, drab talk. But that’s what this thing—

WALI ALI: It didn’t have anything of the mystical element, just a sort of religious time.

SHABDA: Right, it was impossible; it didn’t make any sort of impression, let’s say. I don’t even remember what he spoke about, but I do remember Murshid saying that he was very embarrassed because the head of his order was sponsoring them and they weren’t happening. The little meditation group he thought had a lot more juice, a lot more power.

SITARA: He was very disturbed because there was never a mention of Hazrat Inayat Khan in any of the meetings under the aegis of the Sufi Order. Whereas the meetings under the aegis of the Fazal group was all Inayat Khan.

SHABDA: I remember at the apartment being disturbed with you because you were always sleeping in until 9:30AM and Murshid would be like when I’d be staying there—I don’t know if you remember this, or if you remember it the same way I do.

SITARA: That’s quite an exaggeration, Shabda, I never could have gotten away with 9:30.

SHABDA: 9AM, anyway, whatever the time was—I don’t want to embarrass you—but it is just the way I remember it.

SITARA: That’s alright.

SHABDA: Murshid would get up at 6:30 or 7AM, right? He’d go out for a walk, buy the paper, get some doughnuts or some white flour cakes, bring them home, eat breakfast, write two or three letters filled with mistakes—it was just his style of typing—just kind of hitting the typewriter. And by this time he was just bursting with all the kinds of stuff he had to do; I guess he wanted to dictate all his letters, or Commentaries—and I remember him blasting you a couple of times. “Get up or get out!” That came later in Boston.

SITARA: It only happened once, and it wasn’t over that.

WALI ALI: I do recall that when you lived here it was always a problem, because Sitara wanted to sleep late—

SITARA: I’m still not quite over it.

SHABDA: But I remember in the same connection that I came over one afternoon, and there was a bunch of dishes to be done and Sitara was doing something else and I said something like, “They made the dishes dirty, they should clean them.” Murshid picked it up and he blasted, “Wash those dishes and shut up.” It wasn’t like that, but it was that kind of sentiment. If Sitara had made them dirty than Sitara should clean them. And Sitara had some work for Murshid. And so I had some kind of thought like that and he picked it up and blasted me.

SITARA: I was very glad you did that—

SHABDA: Do you remember that?

SITARA: Yeah, I remember it well.

SITARA: I was staying home alone with him. Shahabuddin would come in from time to time and would take walks with Murshid. And to Murshid I was his Wali Ali, Moineddin, Mansur, laundress, valet cook etc.

SHABDA: That’s true, you worked hard.

SITARA: And it was murder!

WALI ALI: And you always said that you never forgave me for not letting you know what you were getting into.

SITARA: I used to say, “How could Wali Ali not tell me what to expect here?”

SHABDA: While we were in town in N.Y. we had to set up Sufi dancing in Central Park by Shahabuddin, and at the time some kids were making a film, and probably there is some footage of Murshid Sam doing Sufi dancing in Central Park. Do you remember that film, of the kids taking films?

SITARA: Yeah, was that the day Ram Dass was there?

SHABDA: In fact I think I know the people. Do you know that Ajathan, that fellow Ajathan and his brother’s name is Sudarshan and they are disciples or students of Baba Hari Dass now. They were the ones, I think, that were connected to that film making.

WALI ALI: Did they put up notices about the meetings in Central Park or was it just whoever he caught out there?

SHABDA: No, we made notices and we let as many people as we knew know about them. SITARA: There was a small corps of followers who came—ten/fifteen people.

WALI ALI: And then did he just draw people out of the park?

SHABDA: A few, not many, but we were dancing with about 15 people when they were taking films and Ram Dass was there, Baba Ram Dass, and to see them next to each other—

WALI ALI: Oh: Ram Dass tells that in his thing In the Garden. Apparently those were the people who were doing a film on him, on Ram Dass, and they just happened to follow him on that day—you must have arranged for him to meet Murshid in the park or something like that?

SHABDA: Right, I think we might have known he was coming, but the thing that stands out about it to me was this. Here we were dancing, and we had just gotten done with the dancing—Ram Dass was trying to figure out what the dancers were doing—Murshid walks right up to him; Murshid was about 5’2” and Ram Dass is about 6’2” and looks up as if very funny and says, “Okay, we’re going to say Ram for this next dance; is that okay with you?” And this is his principal mantram, Ram Dass—he used to say Ram, Ram all the time—and he just kind of adjusts and says, “Oh sure!” He was very surprised. It was a nice day of dancing and it really got a family feeling. There is a photograph of it, of the Krishna dance—the two lines where Murshid would be Krishna in front and it looks almost identical to looking at a photograph in San Francisco. And it was one of the few times that there was a nice family feeling. Along the same lines I remember Murshid saying, “This is the first time in my life I am homesick.” And he felt, maybe the same time he was sad at being homesick, he also treasured it because he felt it was first time in his life that he’d had a family to feel homesick about. It was such a moving thing, and I remember him telling me about Moineddin being in the hospital when he’d left San Francisco and what he had done—his description to me which is probably one you’ve heard before is that he went in and said he hadn’t visited Moineddin the whole time he was in the hospital, and that he felt that Moineddin was on his way, that he had already kind of half decided to split. He went in and he blasted him as hard as he could. He said, “Get the hell out of this bed, or I’m coming in with my Zen stick and beat you, and I don’t care if the nurses call the police or whatever, I’m going to beat you!! If you think you’re going to heaven, you’re not, you, you’re going straight to hell!! And if you want a job in a mattress factory, that’s okay. You’ve got a mission, and a wife, and a child, so you get out of this bed or I’m going to beat you!!” He said to me that it was the hardest thing he ever did in his whole life.

While we were there, also, I remember walking with Murshid once in Central Park, and I asked him about Hilda. He had just met Hilda, and he also said about her that he didn’t think she was that great. I had been going to her meetings—

WALI ALI: That must have been awfully difficult for you because you were the person who would always see the best side of all these teachers, what did you think when Murshid would say things like that.

SHABDA: Right. I asked him about it several times; I kept trying to get him to say why he would say that; and finally he said to me, “She’s a nice person but she’s…

SITARA: …“Not as high as she thinks she is.”

SHABDA: And he says, “I have very high standards.” From the answer, whether it was in the words or not, I started to get a glimpse of what he meant. It wasn’t all or nothing; they weren’t all either enlightened or not, and they weren’t either the greatest of nothing. He took every person as a human.

We also visited the Cloisters in New York, and you were with us. I’d had a very unusual experience there. Just when I’d met Pir Vilayat a year or a year and a half before, he told us about meditating by seeing a beam of light coming out of your third eye. So I went up to the Cloisters, with someone, and it was my first experience ever in trying to meditate, and I sat down and concentrated on this and finally it seemed as if absolutely nothing had happened, and I got up to leave. Then this woman comes up to me, and she says, “I can’t believe it but I saw this glow, like a beam of light coming out of your forehead.” Like a beam of light. And I just went—like I stood back and right away the other side of me steps in and says, “Yes, I was concentrating etc,” so anyway I don’t know who she was; you feel that some people are given assignments or something.

WALI ALI: There are those unicorns at the Cloisters with that thing coming out of their heads—

SHABDA: Right! There’s a beautiful tapestry and I got tuned in to it and some nice poetry form tapestry. So we took Murshid there to see this place and we got as far as the front and the guard was there, and Murshid looked at brick and said, “I’ve already gotten the message from here.”

He said, “This one rock is speaking so much to me. I don’t want to go any further, or it will jam the system.” And we stayed there for ten minutes or so and we left. He said it was like that poem. “I see books in running brooks.” And I don’t know how that poem goes but he said it was that kind of entranceway and that was just—

SITARA: He did sit down and go into a state, I remember that. He said, “I don’t have to look at any of tapestries, the rocks have it all.”

SHABDA: Yeah, it was so brief, and we just sat there for five or ten minutes.

WALI ALI: You went to other museums too?

SHABDA: We went to the Roerich museum.

WALI ALI: Yeah, he had a thing about Roerich.

SHABDA: In the earlier days he thought that Roerich really had a chance of getting something out.

WALI ALI: Of course I think that Roerich was probably the Bubba Free John of his time: he had a lot of money and the media behind him and he had the great pretensions of all sorts of stuff, and they had the whole art-set working. The analogy breaks down, but Roerich had the museum and Murshid tells the story of how he went to New York in the twenties, and being a social-nobody, they had this little secret thing, he was going with the Buddhists like with these Buddhist Tankas and so on, Murshid was going to try to explain all this stuff. He felt that he knew something about the whole universal experiments in Roerich, and the pretensions of individuals and it was a theme of….          

SHABDA: I remember we walked in there about five to five or something, just before they were going to close, and we made a three-minute skirmish of the three floors of paintings. And Murshid, mostly what he concentrated on was buying about ten copies of the Mother of the World which he distributed to—

WALI ALI: The women in the Ladies Dance class.

SITARA: And he said, “There’s nothing here, there’s nothing left; the baraka’s all gone.”

SHABDA: Right, I remember him saying that. And he was very nice to the old lady who was managing the museum—

SITARA: Who was very rude to him—

SHABDA: That’s right, she was very rude, “We don’t want to stay open late.” He had that kind of rough exterior that people didn’t tune in to who he was—

WALI ALI: People in New York are rather rude anyway.

SHABDA: So we also visited Cleve Backster in New York and he was, to give some background on him, he used to work for the FBI and he was their expert on lie detectors—another name for them is galvanatic skin response, they measure change of potential. And while he was in his office, this was maybe five years before we met him, he said that “was now going to hook up the machine up to the leaf of a plant, and I’ll water it and see how long a reaction will take to show on the needle.” And that is how he started. So he watered it; right away the needle would show in the leaf that there was a change in the temperature—a difference in temperature in the leaf in the electric field, and he said, thought to himself, “I wonder what will happen if I burn the leaf?” And right away the needle goes off the edge of the machine, and so this led to five years of research in to what has now become, I guess, the psychic world of plants. And he dropped out of the FBI and started his own research projects and did some very far out experiments. Murshid went there, and I just remember their discussing Murshid not so much giving him information, but just giving him all the juice he could. You were there?

SITARA: Yeah!

SHABDA: Just poured it and poured it, as much love as possible, positivity, saying, “What you are doing is fantastic,” and he kept turning, and I remember—we’d be on the side—he’d day, “I knew this years ago, but God told me to stop, I was too far ahead of my time.” And I don’t remember.

SITARA: And he likened him to Jagadis Bose—

SHABDA: Right.

SITARA: Some Indian—

WALI ALI: Indian scientist, right. He had done similar work.

SITARA: And every time Backster would go out of the room, he would turn to you and me and say, “This is better than I ever would have believed.”

SHABDA: Right. He was just overjoyed, and he just showed him by giving a lot of support by listening too.

SITARA: And finally he discovered that his father, Backster’s father had been a preacher, and that Backster had turned away from religion because it seemed phony to him or something, and then when Backster walked, into the room, he said, “This is better.”

SHABDA: Yeah, I remember that

SITARA: But do you remember that you hooked Murshid up to the machine?

SHABDA: No, I don’t remember that.

SITARA: He hooked him up to the machine, and he sat watching the needle and Backster is just going out of his mind-

SHABDA: Oh yeah, the needle kept going off the edge—

SITARA: He said, “I can’t believe it, it went off the edge of the top, and off the edge on the bottom, and the needle just kept jumping back and forth.” And I thought it meant that Murshid was upset, but, I later realized that it was just his juice, it was the measuring of his energy that was coming through. And Backster said, “My God I’ve never seen anything like this,” and he kept circling it in red where it would go off.

Let me give you a sense of the work he was doing; he would be giving a talk, and he had this one plant that became his subject that he would use a lot, so he’d be giving a talk on this plant 1000 miles away, and the plant would be in New York, and he would be giving a talk and showing photographs, and the plant would be showing a reaction in New York. And his evidence would seem to show that his distance didn’t play in the receiving of thoughts to the plant. They tried encasing it in a lead shield and that didn’t seem to help—they would take brine shrimp and pour boiling water on them—and if anything in the room was being killed the plant would show a reaction. Somebody would come in to the room who was uptight, and the plant would show a reaction—the most amazing things happened. How sensitive the plant was—just what you would have expected if you thought of it or considered it from the correct point of view. And he had done it in a scientific way so that the evidence was demonstrable.

SITARA: I remember Backster making a big point about if they killed a life in the next room that was of lesser evolution than the plant, the plant would not react—would react the first time but its reaction would decrease each time.

SHABDA: Yeah, because they noticed that the first time there was a reaction; what they did was that after awhile they left the machine on all the time, and they connected it to a sound, so they wouldn’t have to watch the meter to see what was happening, so every time the plant would react above a certain amount the sound would go off, and they would know that something had set the sound off and then they’d have to backtrack and figure it out. Like when they poured the boiling water from the coffee down the sink the plant would react the first time, so that was what led them to investigating killing different life forms and having the plant react, because the bacteria in the sink would get burned up. Murshid was really pleased with that. I remember that. I remember also—you might know more about what happened there but I remember we went to Weiser’s while we were there and he bought that book by Shahabuddin which led to Shahabuddin’s name.

WALI ALI: Awarifu-l-Ma'arif.

SHABDA: Right: And he also said that he’d used that book on a retreat, I think, on some retreat he had taken that book in with him.

SITARA: That was the June 10 Fairfax retreat.

WALI ALI: In any case it had been one of his early studies in Sufism because they didn’t have this great availability of literature then.

SHABDA: I went back to Weiser’s and they said they remembered him—when Murshid’s book came out—I was in New York the next year—

WALI ALI: Which book is that? “Toward Spiritual Brotherhood”?

SHABDA: Yeah, and I took a bunch of advanced copies there—20 copies or something, and they said, oh yes, they remembered him. I was kind of surprised because he had only been there for ten or twenty minutes or something like that.

SITARA: He spoke to Weiser himself congratulating him on publishing—it was his own publication and he was very glad that he was publishing these books which had been out of print for years. And he spoke to him about his own works that were coming out, and Weiser was very interested and said, please “Contact me when they come out and I’d love to sell them.”

WALI ALI: I remember a story he told about this, he said, “I went in there and there was one shelf all full of these books on Zen, and the next aisle full of these books on Sufism, and he pointed to the books on Zen and said “these are all worthless.“ He said, “This is all very good.”

SHABDA: Yeah, I remember him making things like that, and there were things that I just didn’t have any understanding for and I just kind of let them go through; I never knew what he was trying to say about those types of things. We also did some dancing at Columbia, didn’t we? We went up to Columbia where Shahabuddin later led the meetings? And it was a very small meeting I remember.

SITARA: Yeah, there were only about six people there. Tom Miller, Wahid, was one of the regulars.

SHABDA: There was this very beautiful, high, high, high ceiling like a chapel—St. Johns? Shahabuddin can give you the name of it. I always felt like when we were there—even when we were there at the time that it was much more like seed-planting than anything; he was planting the seeds for the work in New York. Shahabuddin said that he made him his New York representative;  that he’d said, “I want you to be my New York representative, do you want to do it?” He said, “Okay.”

WALI ALI: Did Saadia come in to New York?

SHABDA: She came in twice; she was with her husband at the time.

WALI ALI: They were to be married—

SHABDA: Right; and I remember that she had made some appointment to come at a certain time and she was late and Murshid was very disturbed with her. I remember he got very angry with her for being late.

SITARA: He was very hard on her that trip, very hard; she was arguing with her husband all the time about Gandhi and Islam, and she was saying that Gandhi wasn’t real because he didn’t read Koran, and Ata, her betrothed was saying that he was a good man. Murshid just lit into her a lot. He’d say, “You’ve got to listen to your husband” (inaudible). He said he lit into her about Islam and said, “Mohammed said, ‘seek wisdom even unto China,’” and he said, “You can’t stop with Qur’an, you can’t stop with the Holy lines of Islamiat, you have to go further than that, and Saadia was … he was very hard on her.

WALI ALI: I recall also—you have Saadia on your list?—I want to discuss this while Sitara is here. What about his relationship with Ata? He never took him on as a disciple? Was Ata attracted to Murshid, do you recall?

SITARA: Yes: very much, and Murshid loved him very much. After we met him we took a walk—this was still in Ithaca—and he said, "This is better than ever would have hoped for, he is almost a perfect man." He loved him very much and he said he was just the perfect man for Saadia, and I told this to Saadia and she said, "Please have him write a letter so I can show it to my family in Pakistan," which he later did, and we gave it to her to take with her. He loved Ata very much.

WALI ALI: He was—of course it is curious what happened with him. Of course now Saadia has arranged it in her consciousness, she has it all set up, she has a way of doing that.

SITARA: What does she say?

WALI ALI: Well now he's—          

SITARA: No good?

WALI ALI: No, great!         

SITARA: Ata?

SHABDA: Didn't he commit suicide?

WALI ALI: He committed suicide and went through all sorts of numbers. A lot of pressure she put on him too without a lot of psychological understanding of how to work with somebody. There are a lot of explanations that there is no point to our going into. I never met him myself. No, I was just interested in what you had to say.

SITARA: I have a lot to say about it, but I can do when we tape my interview.

SHABDA: I wasn't real tuned in because they did most of the meeting in Ithaca, and then they just came back

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, you went to Ithaca with Murshid?

SITARA: Right.

WALI ALI: And you said something about that Saadia wanted to go shopping and Sitara had to take her….

SHABDA: Right, oh yeah, that was terrible, she kept saying, “ Won’t you come with me, I want to go to Macy’s,” and Murshid kept saying, “I need her here, I need her here,” and I couldn't understand it. This was my first meeting with Murshid’s Khalifa god-daughter and she was about as tuned in—she wasn't very tuned in—at the time.

SITARA: She was kind of bossing.

SHABDA: Yeah, it was like when he would meet with Pir Vilayat, they were missing each other. One would go one way and the other another. I remember just to tell a funny, story, I never told this to Majid and Saul—but I told you I was living with Majid before I left and when we went to the camp together we were finally working our trip out and we were getting close again, and then I went off to New York and so we were writing letters back and forth to each other, and then there was no answer after a couple of weeks, so I was suspicious that something was going on, when this girl Ellen Blum, who used to live with us, came to New York to visit her parents, and she told me that everyone had gotten kicked out of Pineal Street; this was when all that stuff was happening that I wasn’t around for, and that Majid who was Joan was staying over at Saul’s place so I put two and two together and I wrote her a letter, said, “Don’t worry about whatever is happening; if that’s what’s happening, great! And I had the letter and I was driving Murshid somewhere in Central Park or near Central Park, I remember where we were even, I think it was in Central Park West. And I said,

SITARA: That’s it!

SHABDA: You were in the car too? It was in Central Park West around the 70’s, and Murshid said to me, “Who is that letter to?” And I said, “To Joan,” and he said, “I have two disciples named Joan, which one?” There were three.

SITARA: I was a Joan.

SHABDA: Maybe he meant the two back there; there was that, what’s her name now?

SITARA: Anjani

WALI ALI: Anjani, yeah, Anjani O’Connell.

SHABDA: And so, I said it was to Joan/Majid. And he said, “What did you say to her? “ So I said, “I was living with her and this and that, and now I understand she is staying over at Saul’s,” and this was a big thing for me because I had to go into my heart, mind and give it up, right? “And I wrote her a letter that everything is okay whatever she wants to do; I’m not going to hold on to anything.” And so Murshid’s answer to me was, “Oh don’t worry, Saul doesn’t stay with anyone very long!” This is what he said, so that really put me through a change, for here I’d given her all up and he comes and says, “Don’t worry.” And thank God they have a wonderful trip going together.

SITARA: I think later that day or maybe that moment he said, “If she succeeds in softening him, they’ll stay together.”

SHABDA: Maybe he said that to you, but not to me, or I didn’t hear it.

SITARA: Yeah, it was to me.

SHABDA: We visited Rye but that was when we came back from Boston, right?

WALI ALI: Oh, you went with him to that conference in Rye?

SHABDA: I don’t know whether we should talk about that now or after the Boston trip?

WALI ALI: We'll take it up chronologically.

SITARA: I really don’t remember, it may have been on the way to Boston.

SHABDA: To Boston? I don’t think so, because I didn’t drive with you, I flew to Boston remember?

SITARA: And you drove up to meet us?

SHABDA: Let’s talk about Rye since we mentioned it. We were invited by a guy named Charles Berner.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I just heard him on the radio; now he is Yogishwarmouni.

SHABDA: I knew he got some name and I couldn’t believe it! Yogishwarmouni! Great! I hope he has a better line now; he was really off the wall. Anyway, we were invited along with Swami Satchidananda, Rabbi Gelberman, this guy—

WALI ALI: Had Murshid met Rabbi Gelberman at that point before?

SHABDA: Ni, We met him there , and then we went back to his place and we went to a Kabbalah seminar.

WALI ALI: Right.

SHABDA: I've heard it said about Murshid in other places that he was so fantastic that he could always be person’s student. He wasn't always trying to be the big teacher, just the student.

WALI ALI: So there was Satchidananda and?

SHABDA: And this guy from Pennsylvania, Amrit Desai—

WALI ALI: Who was a Sikh?

SHABDA: No, he was a yoga teacher; he had a little group in Pennsylvania. Hilda was there?

SITARA: Yeah.         

WALI ALI: Who else?

SHABDA: Charles Berner—

SITARA: Oh another young girl from Pennsylvania who was teaching yoga; do you remember her a real sensitive girl?

SHABDA: The first day was spent—

SITARA: And Yogi Bhajan—

SHABDA: Yogi Bhajan, right! Yogi Bhajan and Murshid were getting along, because just before he had come to New York, that trip came down—

WALI ALI: In Golden Gate Park—

SHABDA: Right! There is a story about that, he says, "This one guy gets on the microphone and says,”—I wasn't there, I am just telling you how I heard it—this guy gets on the microphone and starts putting down Yogi Bhajan, saying, "You have beautiful girls for your secretaries, and you take them with you on the airplane," and this and that. And Murshid says, "I grabbed the microphone—you're telling us all his good points, if you want to put him down, at least tell them the bad points!" He said, "That shut the guy up pretty quick."

WALI ALI: That was a funny encounter.

SHABDA: So the first day we spent, everybody was supposed to tell about their guru. And it was just ridiculous, it was really ridiculous; here you think that all these people who are spiritual leaders should really get together and it was really—it wasn't very get together. Anyway, along the way when everyone was telling about their teacher, this one guy, Amrit Desai is praising—"I have this great guru," and this and that and this and that guru, guru, guru, my guru is great—everybody told something. And then in the afternoon session, after lunch we all met in the conference room with Charles Berner and he is putting forth this plan and he says, "I called you here because we want to have a world enlightenment festival," and he didn't get more than into the second sentence when Murshid just blows up. He says, "This is ridiculous! All we are here are: one Rabbi, two Swamis and a Yogi, and you are calling this the world, I won't take any part in it until you get eight Japanese, eighty…." and then he starts naming who—"and beside it is not from Divine Guidance," and he was really—just like that and Swami Satchidananda didn’t get the message. I guess he’s like you said, in the third plane—he’s real angelic. And he is going, “Oh well, Mr. Lewis I don’t think it is quite so bad,” and Murshid says, “I do!” He was trying to be very nice, and then Yogi Bhajan in the same time would say—at that time he was acting the mediator, I guess this was his role. And he was saying, “We should listen to the Murshid, he has some real wisdom.” He was trying to play both ends, right? But Murshid just blasted them and he said, “It’s ridiculous, and I don’t want any part of it.” And I think it is very interesting that later Swami Satchidananda lost a bunch of money on some conference.          

WALI ALI: Oh, he ended at the place where he wouldn’t even—he got so burned by this Abilitism or Charles Berner trip down in L.A.—I haven’t heard all the details of it—it was many years ago, that for years he refused to participate in all sorts of programs, everything he just pulled back—it’s real funny.

SHABDA: I don’t know what his memories of Murshid Sam are.

WALI ALI: It’s real funny in a way that karma brings so much that happens.

SHABDA: I remember that evening some girl who was a newspaper reporter asked Murshid if he would write up an account—if she could meet with him for the newspapers to—and this guy, Amrit Desai shows up—and he just kind of sits in on the conversation and takes over the whole interview with the chick—and he is saying, he writes up this very mushy thing from Krishnamurti, and the day before Murshid was just steaming at him because….

WALI ALI: Because he was talking about his guru.

SHABDA: Right and Krishnamurti says, “Oh there is no such thing as a guru and all this other jazz,” and Murshid was really pissed off at this guy. He just kind of—I don’t think he even bothered giving it to him, it was that far gone. And I remember that night saying “goodnight” to Murshid and he was in a hurry to be in his room and he was just sitting on his head and he was doing his practices silently—and his head was going—he was probably doing the Zikr practices. And I remember I was really moved by the feeling that there he was, and he was making himself nothing before God. He wasn’t going to his room and sitting there like the great king, or anything like that—because we were staying in some other room there was a dormitory type of thing for the helpers of the teachers. To us also, he said, “All these swamis and everyone think they are so great, I think this Rabbi is the best man here.” Do you remember him saying something like that? Anyway, he liked Rabbi Gelberman, I don’t know if he thought he was anything great or less but he appreciated him because he was honest. What were you going to say?

WALI ALI: I was going to say that he said something about how Yogi Bhajan could see that Gelberman had something going and that's why he tried to get him involved in this conference. Yogi Bhajan later told me, "Yeah, I wanted him to be the chairman of the whole thing," but he could sense Murshid's energy. And Swami Satchidananda was so put off by the outer disharmony.

SHABDA: We left there the next day.

WALI ALI: How many days did that thing last? He also said something about how that conference was like going to kindergarten, and he said, "And it was so offensive the way the people came on to say, “We'll meet without your disciples so you can open up and talk and put together all of these inner teachings," he was just so rebellious about it—

SHABDA: Yeah, it was just one of those disappointing facts of life when you go there and you were hoping that something nice would come down and it was just a waste of time. The time was spent revealing to you what wasn't happening, so either before that or after that we went to Boston. I think I flew up there and you drove, right? I was still connected with helping my father all this time, and he needed me to drive him to the hospital for checkups and things like that. So in Boston we stayed at Sally Ann's Schreiber—now Azimat.

WALI ALI: Azimat Dowla.

SHABDA: At her house on Speridakis terrace.

WALI ALI: We stayed there when we went there too.

SHABDA: And she still has the same place. There was also a cat there, I remember Murshid happy that there was a cat and

end of side two, reel one.

Reel two; side one:

SHABDA: I remember one of the people who was tuned in up there was a fellow named Ronnie White who is still up there and is one of Karmu's students. And I remember he was in the School of Divinities—and he set up for us the use of this room because at the time—was Abraham there?

SITARA: Abraham was still—

WALI ALI: Patty Martin—

SHABDA: Patty Martin was there; there's a great story about that since we've just mentioned her. We were at Patty Martin's house visiting, right?

SITARA: You were there; I think you stayed there—

SHABDA: No,—

SITARA: Yes, you stayed there one night—

SHABDA: Maybe—I was there—

SITARA: Yeah, and then we visited them—

SHABDA: The way I remember it, we were sitting in their house, Sitara, and Patty and Murshid and myself, and in walks this guy who is coming to visit who is a stranger, and Murshid jumps up from the couch and says, "This is perfect, there are five people, I can show you my new Ram Nam for five dance," and I don't know what the other fellow's take was on the whole thing. It must have been very unusual, so he showed us his Ram Nam for five dance.

WALI ALI: When I was in Boston this time, I saw her and she said that her father really loved Sam, and he would say, "Sam, you are too old to dance, "and Sam would just laugh and keep on dancing.

SHABDA: There are some things I remember, let me go back to New York for a second. I took my mother to meet Murshid and we went out to dinner together and we went to another Indian restaurant way downtown, which was certainly not her line, but she wasn't going along for the dinner, she didn't mind that, and we sat around, and I think that Murshid paid about one second's worth of attention because there were all these young people.

WALI ALI: He could ignore parents like anything.

SHABDA: He just ignored her and then it came time to pay the bill and she wanted to chip in and she gave him this ten dollar bill and I think she was expecting some change back or something; he just took it and he didn't even say thank you, or anything, and he just went—

SABIRA: Shahabuddin was there too—

SHABDA: And then we had a meeting downtown in this church in Greenwich Village, which was a medium sized meeting, ten/fifteen people. I remember it was on 8th. Street or something—yeah we had a meeting down there.

SITARA: Alright, that was where we started having meetings—

SHABDA: Right, we used that room and the Columbia room, those two rooms, and I asked him later. I said that I didn't understand why he was like that.

WALI ALI: About the dinner?

SHABDA: No, about to my mother, why he was so—I said, "Murshid, how come you were so nasty to my mother?" He said, "I don't have to act any way to anybody." That was one thing and also other times he would say, "Sometimes I try to make a bad impression on people, because if I made a good impression I would have to live up to something."

WALI ALI: Did he say that to you?

SHABDA: I don't think he said that in connection to this experience, but he always said to me in response to my question, "I don't have to act any way," so I just took it in as another facet of Murshid. So back to Boston, I remember sitting around this room, we had gone there earlier to see what room we were going to use for the meeting and meeting with Ronnie White and Murshid saying to Ronie White, "I'm giving you my dance manual and if you like I will make you my Boston representative." And he decided against it. He didn't decide at that moment but Murshid made the offer again, "I'm making you my Boston representative," and he said he didn't want it later on. And we had this meeting there, and we had gone out to dinner that night with Khadija's parents, and we ate in some Chinese restaurant.

WALI ALI: Were you there for that?

SITARA: You bet!

SHABDA: And we sat around and we were talking about—

WALI ALI: Did her mother try to dominate the conversation or was she listening?

SHABDA: It was a nice balance! When we got there, she had told him that she was working for cancer research so when we got to the meeting after we had done some dances Murshid starts giving his talk. He says, “And all this bunk about cancer research and they think it is cigarettes and alcohol, it's—how did it go? “And cigarettes are the scapegoat. I think it is a lot of bunk, beef and alcohol are just as responsible, really it's just because people are uptight, "and she, she had been doing—she was the vice-president or something in charge of cancer research, she was just outraged. And she started getting up and yelling and they stood about two inches away from each other and they yelled at each other for a good five minutes. And he had been invited at dinner time to go up to their cabin on the coast and play bridge and this and that so that was the end of that.

WALI ALI: Did he ask her to leave—did he kick her out of the meeting? No, she left.

WALI ALI: She left in the middle?           

SHABDA: She left in a huff!

WALI ALI: He said something like, "I won't go on with this unless this woman shuts up—

SHABDA: Probably, something like, "Will you shut up?" He wasn't nice to her and she wasn't nice to him, either, they were having an argument, they were at it tooth and nail, so she left in a huff in the middle. And it was always odd because all these people who were around had to be there for this encounter, right. Here's this spiritual teacher they are just meeting, and he is just yelling!

SITARA: They didn't know who she was; they didn't know she had just been out to dinner with him—

WALI ALI: Apparently at dinner—was that the dinner where he wouldn't let people order what they wanted? He ordered for everybody or something?

SITARA: Yeah, he had sat down after me had and the Halls started ordering,

SHABDA: And he got very badly disturbed because here he was—

SITARA: Yeah, but he blew at me actually, and said, "When you eat with your spiritual teacher, you let him do it."

SHABDA: Right, but he actually took us out to dinner maybe twenty five times—

WALI ALI: And he always paid for it.

SHABDA: He always paid for it, yeah, and in New York we went out to eat a lot—

SITARA: Right: Lunch and dinner.

SHABDA: And I was 80% vegetarian at the time but I sure changed fast. I guess Shahabuddin said he ordered a salad, but I wasn't in to that anymore—I caught on.

SITARA: Yeah, one correction about Shahabuddin's tape; do you remember he said that Murshid used to tip small and it used to embarrass him but he learned to accept it? But before he learned to accept it he used to come back to the table and add to the tip from his own pocket change, but then I guess he realized it wasn't necessary.

SHABDA: We did—because as Shahabuddin said, where we went we would sing Grace and Murshid would go back in the back and talk to the cooks—

WALI ALI: Did he insist in ordering for the Halls too?

SITARA: I think he ordered for the whole table, there were about six of us at the table—

WALI ALI: He always used to do that at Chinese Restaurants—he didn't do that at other restaurants.

SITARA: Right.

SHABDA: We went to eat in a Greek restaurant and he ordered retsina once in Boston—

SITARA: Oh yes, and he drank quite a bit of it. It was wonderful, I had a great time there—

SHABDA: So we had that meeting and we also had an interview in that same room with some girl for a radio show—

WALI ALI: In Boston?

SHABDA: Right. You have the tape of that too? Right?

WALI ALI: Somewhere:

SHABDA: I remember also that whenever we went to a restaurant he'd always take a doggy-bag home to the animals. He was always tied in to the animals. Also while we were there, we went to this meeting called Dance-Free, and Murshid was really happy with that. This was a meeting that some dancers were putting on and every week they would put on different music and everyone would just dance-free! There would just be a room of a hundred people dancing and they'd put on music from Rock and Roll, Middle Eastern, Indian, drum music, African, they just tried to be as universal—in the sense of music from all over the world—as they could. And they invited Murshid to come, and I remember he was telling us on the side, "This group is very advanced and I am going to give them my Elements walks." And we had a line, there were a lot of people there—

SITARA: I remember—

SHABDA: What it was, was that we went there in the middle of a meeting and it wasn't a meeting but he was invited to come and when he came everyone came and sat around—

SITARA: After he had done something at a church—

SHABDA: Right, that's right, because there was the same … that happened to have been scheduled the same night as we done our own meeting and he had everyone walking behind him and doing the walks of the Elements, and clapping the fire walk and he was very happy with that meeting I remember.

SITARA: He said after that that Boston was the San Francisco of the East. And "These people had it," and more than any other place he'd been. And all I saw was a room full of Uranian crazies—I can't tell you I was so blown out by what I saw I just wanted to get out of there. I finally saw what they were; they were just free, they were free-flowing.

SHABDA: Yeah, I remember that was the one place where he really blew up at you, Sitara, in Boston, about tuning in to what he wanted. I don't know if it was just getting up or what, but you can probably say better what it was about—

SITARA: It's a long story—

SHABDA: I was just sitting there and I was just feeling terrible for Sitara because he was really pulverizing her and then he gave me a little blast, like a mini-blast and I felt very happy to get that, to get in on the energy. Because I was just sitting in the other room just listening, and he said, "Either get it together or get out." It was that heavy, "Either you get it together now or forget it."

SITARA: He didn't even give me a choice; he just told me to leave!

SHABDA: It was really heavy, and so I think that that day, either that day or because you were out on some other mission or errand I was his secretary for interviews—

SI: …

SHABDA: And I guess you must still have it because we kept a record of what he said to everybody that he saw for interviews.

WALI ALI: I think I've seen it, yes.

SHABDA: I remember this one girl, I don't remember her name, that one who married Ronnie White later on—what was her name? She had been coming around and she was a very sweet person but she was a little bit Neptunian, I guess. It was easy for me to see being of that type, and she said something, "I think they are very sweet," and he said, he blasted her and she left crying, and I felt very sorry for her. We went to Karmu's—

WALI ALI: Who was very sweet?—

SHABDA: I don't know, there was some conversation, I don't remember, maybe it was about Yogananda—

WALI ALI: Oh I see, something like that?

SHABDA: Yeah, something like that—and she was just going around saying things like, "isn't that nice?" And he was saying, "It is not nice! shut up:" And he was very gruff with her.

SITARA: He got gruffer and gruffer—

SHABDA: He also was having some hives type of things and he was scratching, and I think he tried to get it cleared up when he got back too. Because I remember when he was in the hospital he was always scratching—

WALI ALI: He never got rid of that—

SITARA: He was also constipated—

SHABDA: Oh yeah, but when we got back to New York he wasn’t, because he was running to the bathroom every minute and his pants were just as wet.

SITARA: That's because Karmu gave him those pills.

SHABDA: Yeah, he said, "This is impossible," because he'd be trying to dictate and every five minutes he would run to the bathroom to take pooh. So we went to Karmu's and he gave us the dope on who Karmu was—about the pole,

WALI ALI: How'd he happen to meet Karmu?

SHABDA: He met him with Mansur the year before, I think, at the conference.

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, he'd been to Boston the year before, he had been in Boston.

SHABDA: He went on his way to Geneva, or something like that. So we went there and Karmu was very happy to see him and Karmu worked on him—I remember that Murshid had just his tee-shirt on. And Murshid was just giggling and giggling, the whole room was just getting all this bubbly air.

WALI ALI: Karmu is going to be here this weekend.

SHABDA: Just coming here or coming to town?

WALI ALI: He's coming here to San Francisco for a few days. Paul Stein is taking him around to a few places.

SHABDA: And then he had Karmu work on me, I remember, and my whole back was just flaming red, remember that? He just—yeah, Murshid was laughing all the time, so that was our introduction, I remember it well. You were really tied into it too, and after that you started going to him.

SITARA: He had actually brought me to Karmu to be healed, because you see the reason I wasn't getting up in the morning was because I had mononucleosis and then this tooth-ache. I was a mess. So he brought me to Karmu.

SHABDA: Another interesting experience is when we were there it was Murshid's birthday—Oct. 18—

WALI ALI: In Boston?

SHABDA: And so Siddiq came by (Hans) who was in to—

WALI ALI: His parents lived around there—

SITARA: Right, and they were in town and they took us out to a Russian hot-bath—this was his birthday present to Murshid and so here we were—you didn't go to this one because it was only for men, we were all sitting around with towels around our waists sitting in this steamy hot bath with all these fat business men—and it was great because the business men would be saying—they'd be talking about their girls, right? So Murshid started perking up and says, "I've got some girls, and I've got a ladies dance class, and I’ve got a….” and I was getting a little worried about him too, because it was a little much for an older. And I remember there these special guys with these oak-leaf brooms and they would come and rub you down, and Siddiq said, "You have to have this guy do it," and I had him do it to me and it was a real trip that he had taken us there.

WALI ALI: Did Murshid dig it?

SHABDA: I think he dug the fact that Siddiq was giving him some juice, that's all. I don't think he cared at all about the baths or the guys there at all. But he did tell them what he was doing, and that night we all went down and had dinner together—

WALI ALI: I would think that—Azimat has the same birthday as Murshid—

SITARA: That's right, they planned a dinner—

SHABDA: Yeah, we had a big birthday dinner at that Orson Welles' place.

SITARA: Orson Welles, right, which he loved; it was a new restaurant.

SHABDA: It was a new-age restaurant because they had vegetarian food, they had fish and they had meat, and they also didn't have the same menu every day. They had—every week or every day they would change it to some different nationality type of food, so he really liked it. They had a big birthday party, there were about 20 people all ate dinner together.

WALI ALI: He was going to go to Washington but he called that off, right?

SHABDA: Right, for some reason.

SITARA: Yeah, he called that off when he got back to New York—

SHABDA: You asked me if he liked the hot bath. These two girls who had been coming to the meetings, who I think later came out here for awhile, took us to the Hippocrates Health Institute and this woman there was doing work with wheat grass, sprouted wheat for healing, and I don't remember too much of what he said but—except that it was alright.

SITARA: Oh I know, he came back and he ran a whole spiel. He said, "Raw foods, I’ve evidence whatever that raw foods are the best thing for you.”

SHABDA: Yeah, I've heard him say at other times that he felt fire was a gift from God and that some raw food was okay, but cooked food was important too. But anyway I always felt like he was going there and he was taking pleasure in the place because these girls were there—like he was going to the place of his students, saving then. When we went back to New York, he had started taking Karmu's capsules, and he'd constantly be running to the bathroom. He was really a mess, like he'd always have pee stains all over his pants; he was just really funky, running back and forth to the bathroom, and he had these hives that had started. Remember anything else about that, washing?

SITARA: Just that you left, and we drove down and stopped at Dinny and Chris Brigg’s house and—

SHABDA: And I had to fly back, that's right.

SITARA: Oh yeah, the radio interview; did we discuss that?

WALI ALI: He was generally comparing the response of people in Boston and in New York. They were more responsive in Boston?

SHABDA: It was more innocent—honest and innocent, all those people all those people in New York were sophisticated because they already had Swami Muktananda coming so they were all looking at it from a different point of view; they were already on someone else's bandwagon, and it was more like that kind of thing. So we spent a few more days in New York, I think, another week, I don't remember—I think that was when he was doing that Commentary on Saum—

WALI ALI: When was he writing the Peace Plan?

SHABDA: Before then, and that's when the letter came in the middle of that, wasn't it?

SITARA: I don't remember.

SHABDA: He was writing that day to day, he didn't write it all at once, he wrote a few pages one day and a few pages the next, I think—it came out over a period of a few days. And one thing he'd always do when you got there is he would always show you the letters he wrote and say, "Read this," and I remember the same type of thing he would say, "You are serving me by reading my Diaries; you are helping me by reading my Diaries." I remember reading his Diaries—it took a lot of reading. Then we flew together back to San Francisco; you stayed in New York. Right?

WALI ALI: In New York, when you went back there what did he concentrate on when you went back? Was he more—I recall that there were more things to do with the peace thing—

SHABDA: I think that that is when the UN thing started happening.

SITARA: Wasn't that when he contacted somebody at Columbia?

WALI ALI: Ambassador Badeau.

SITARA: Ambassador Badeau—I can't remember when that fit in—but that was a wonderful meeting, he was very pleased—

SHABDA: There was a father in N.Y., Father O'Malley was the guy’s name?

SITARA: Oh, in South Orange?

SHABDA: We went to some guy in New Jersey, who was a Father—

WALI ALI: It wasn't O'Malley—

SHABDA: I don't know, I tried to remember—

WALI ALI: It was somebody who had been at the Temple of Understanding conference—

SHABDA: And Murshid showed him the movements to the Lord's Prayer.

SITARA: My uncle was working for the American Jewish Committee and I called him and said, "Who should meet this Murshid that I have with me—and I told him about the work he was interested in in the Middle East—whom should he meet that you know?" He said, "He should go out to Seton hall and meet this father," which he did, and his name is in a letter somewhere. It turned out that this guy had stacks of papers on his desk all about proposals for peace in the Middle East and scientific studies on salt-water conservation and this sort of thing. It was quite a meeting and it was very high. I don't remember much of what was said, and it ended with Murshid—he just simply started sating the Lord's Prayer and doing the movements and putting his head on the floor, and this guy is sitting there at this big massive desk and Murshid just…. (three conversations—inaudible)

SHABDA: Yeah, it was always the feeling that if he'd meet with someone he was so far ahead that you never felt that it was like a normal conversation. It was like he had this enormous thing to get out and he'd say a few words and if you knew all the history you could hear him saying it, but he would say a few words, and you knew the other guy kind of maybe caught something or  maybe he didn't. I remember that feeling that it must have been very frustrating for him—maybe if you'd ask some more questions about New York—

WALI ALI: Weren't there other things: Like the UN Plaza—there were people that were—

SITARA: No one went with him that day except Shahabuddin on that UN trip.

WALI ALI: Oh, I see!

SITARA: I was very disappointed about the whole thing, so you'll have to ask him.

SHABDA: That day I didn't go with him—

SITARA: What about the UN?

SHABDA: I don't know, we could have done some dancing at the UN plaza, but I don't remember because I think I wasn't there for that, I just heard about it, otherwise I'd remember it  seems.

SITARA: I know I had to drop him off and I had to watch them walk away.

SHABDA: I do remember visiting your friend Sindoori—

SITARA: Oh yeah.

SHABDA: On thirteenth st.

SITARA: Did you go over there with him that day?

SHABDA: Yeah, he went over to Sindoori's shop, he bought some Tasbihs, the plastic ones.

SITARA: The shiny ones?

SHABDA: Right—

SITARA: And then he said that Sindoori had the biggest heart of anyone you'd met in New York.

SHABDA: He must have said that to you because I wasn't that friendly with him. He'd say that about Sindoori, but Sindoori didn't think that Murshid had the biggest heart.

SITARA: He might now.

SHABDA: Yeah, he might now, but he didn't when they met.

SITARA: There was one contact that he met at Columbian University that was sponsoring a trip to the Middle East and they were going to award one free one to someone who wrote the best essay, and I remember he had me send it to Banefasha, and said, "If she doesn't go, you should go"

SHABDA: We went to a recital, a music recital at Columbia, I remember: a vina concert and some dancing, it was lovely.

SITARA: Oh yes!

SHABDA: And Murshid liked that a lot, he was very moved by the vina thing.

SITARA: Yeah, and they had presad and it was a real totally Indian thing—

SHABDA: Yeah, right, he enjoyed that.

SITARA: It was wonderful, it was the only time I remember that he was very…

SHABDA: South Indian vina—

WALI ALI: So did he initiate any people in New York? He initiated Shahabuddin.

SITARA: That's right, he initiated Shahabuddin.

WALI ALI: Did he initiate any people in Boston?

SITARA: I don't remember, but he had an esoteric notebook—

WALI ALI: Did he initiate Azimat?

SHABDA: Wasn't she already initiated?

WALI ALI: Oh well maybe he'd met her before.

SHABDA: I don't know, maybe he didn't initiate her.

SITARA: Harry—what's his name?—he initiated. And gave him practices, I remember that, and he invited him to a few dances—but he never turned out.

SITARA: He wasn't in the space to turn out.

SHABDA: I remember that Wahid was coming around; he came around a whole bunch of times, Tom Miller, and also that other lawyer friend of Shahabuddin.

SITARA: Yeah, Murshid liked him very much.

SHABDA: What was his name?

SITARA: His name is Vakil now.

SITARA: Richard, I think?

WALI ALI: Okay, let's go on and leave N.Y. behind. What else?

SHABDA: We came back to San Francisco.

WALI ALI: You flew back with Murshid?

SHABDA: I flew back and he was very definite that we should fly TWA because that was the one that served the best food—

WALI ALI: I remember meeting you at the airport; there were a bunch of people there, I think it was that trip—

SITARA: He said he didn't want a bunch of people there.

SHABDA: No, there weren't a bunch of people there—

WALI ALI: There were a number of people there, and he just came up to me and said he didn't want to see anybody, that he just wanted to go home with me.

SHABDA: I remember it was interesting for me. Here I was being Murshid's assistant for so long, and I knew that when I got back here it would be a position that wasn't as close to him—or even just physically, so it was like a kind of withdrawal symptoms thing. I came back and I stayed up at Joan's—the other Joan's place.

WALI ALI: Joan O'Connell—

SHABDA: Joan O'Connell which was across the street from Murshid—

WALI ALI: Across the street from Murshid's?

SHABDA: Across the street from Saul's up on Ripley street—and I was coming down here, and I guess I was trying to find my work again—what I was supposed to do. And in that interim  Murshid was always saying that his secretary left him and that he didn't have enough typists. And I would say, " Murshid I'll go to typing school," and he would say, "No, I don't want you to type for me," and this kind of thing, so he never wanted me to be his secretary. I later did that work for Moineddin for two or three years. I remember he started a men's dance class.

One thing before the men's dance class. I remember we went to an arboretum in Boston, remember?

SITARA: Yes, oh yes.

SHABDA: And Murshid really gave me the sense there—like he told us that—a story of going through an arboretum in England and he said that the manager was taking him around, or the head gardener, and he said, "Oh I wish you were here in the Spring when all these were blooming," and he said, "Don't you think that I can see them blooming now?" And he said that when he looked at his disciples, he always saw the flower and not the seed, and I got that sense when we were at the arboretum. Remember anything else?

SITARA: Oh that was a very personal day for me which I will have to describe later some other time.

SHABDA: Also I remember asking him if he would ever teach an organic gardening class. I guess he just never had the time. So he started a men's dance class. He said, "I only want my men from the city." You probably remember more about it than I do. There was you (Wali Ali) and Mian and Saul, and I think Farid was in it.

WALI ALI: Saul was in it?

SHABDA: Maybe he wasn't.

WALI ALI: Farid was, Frank Welch—Halim—

SHABDA: Halim, right! I would sleep over Sunday nights after Dharma night because it was on Monday night and he said, "This is going to be a very short class and very intense." And we right away started taking up the walks of the Prophets, I think it was in the order presented in Salat.

WALI ALI: I don't remember that at all. I remember his teaching the number one and the number two, I remember those movements, and I think we got up as far as five, I don't remember doing the walk of the Prophets.

SHABDA: We did the walk of Rama—

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, we did Rama—

SHABDA: And Shiva, and I think we did Krishna too, but I'm not sure. We only had like two or three classes, right?

WALI ALI: Yeah. I do remember us doing something with the numbers—

SHABDA: That's funny, I don't remember anything about it; I must have not received it—and we did some breathing and some walks of some kind I don't remember what they were. At that time Pakistan had a big tidal wave—

WALI ALI: That was in East Pakistan.

SHABDA: And Murshid said, "I want to do something about it"—this was a few weeks later, by this time I had moved into the Garden of Allah. I asked Murshid if it was okay and he thought about it for a minute and then he gave me his permission. I had taken up weaving and Basira wanted to take up weaving too so we got this room together and Basira made me this longee—those things that they wear in Pakistan—it's like a skirt—

WALI ALI: Right, a wrap-around skirt for men.

SHABDA: So finally, Murshid, who had been trying to figure out some way of getting something—some money or supplies or food to the Pakistanis, came up with the idea that he was going to buy a bunch of cloth and have the girls make longees and mail them to there because they needed clothing, and one night I came into a meeting, and it was the same thing as with the asparagus, he puts up his big finger and says, "Come up to the front," and I came to the front and in a very soft voice he said, "You are the first one I am telling, I want to get longees for the people in Pakistan and I want to give you the first one of them." And so we went downtown to try to find some way—we went to places, the Red Cross and this and that, to try to find some way to mail them over to Pakistan and then I think that before the plan had ever finished out, Murshid left his body. He had that accident.

WALI ALI: He was—he also wanted money to be raised from the Whirling Dervish Bazaar and from the record of the Sufi Choir or something to go to Pakistan, and I think that $100 was actually sent, from the proceeds of the Whirling Dervish Bazaar, maybe more. And I don't know if the longees were ever sent or not, do you?

SHABDA: I don't know, no. I think something was sent because he had bought the material already and I ended up getting Murshid's longee as one of the pieces of clothing after he died. But to go back before we get to that period, when we came back from New York—all the time that we had been in New York I had wanted to have an interview with Murshid just to straighten out my practices and that sort of thing and so when we got back to San Francisco—

WALI ALI: He just never had time to give you an interview—it just never happened because the people who were close to him were the ones he found it difficult to interview with—

SHABDA: I think it was like that but I also think—

WALI ALI: You did not want to impose, because you were in a place of service and not wanting to take more of his time than necessary—

SHABDA: Yeah, so when we got back he gave me the interview, and I came in, I think it was around 9:30, and he was wearing his tee shirt—it must have been a warm day—apparently he was in quite a high state because he was dictating some letters to you—I don't know if you remember that day but it obviously stands out in my memory. We went in to the front room and he sat on a chair, I think you were there, and I was kneeling in front of him and this time I had a list of questions, I wasn't going to space out, and he answered them like (clicks fingers: 1, 2, 3): Question/Answer; Question/Answer; Question/Answer; it was really something! He initiated me into the third grade then. One of the last things I asked him was, "Sitara told me that when you were on the plane going to New York that you had a vision or something and that you got a name for me, but you never gave it to me, and I don't know if I necessarily want a new name or not. I’m just reminding him, and he said, "All I can say is Jesus Christ saying 'why would someone with a name like Peter want to change his name?'" So I felt like I had gotten my name certified—which was Peter at the time. He gave me a new set of practices to do.

WALI ALI: I remember there was a picture of you and Iqbal (Jemaluddin) which was taken at the Arizona camp, and he liked that picture.

SHABDA: Yeah, I remember Iqbal and I were at one of the meetings, and Murshid was very tired that night and he said, "Iqbal, kiss the girls goodnight," and Iqbal kind of winced, and Murshid said, "Okay, you do it," he said to me, and later on he said, "You passed the test and Jemaluddin failed!" And so also that night, I was living at the Garden of Allah, I got tuned in to Murshid coming there on Thursday night Githa class or Sangatha Githa class, and he used to take you into my room and the Khalifs and Sheikhs into the back room for the later part of the class, and I just remembered that he would lead Zikr from that big chair in the front room of the Garden of Allah.

SITARA: How was Murshid on the plane back from New York?

SHABDA: Nothing much was happening, he was just anxious to get back. We didn't have anything special, he read the newspapers. I do remember one time that he called and he said, "I want all my Jewish disciples to come to a Sunday night class, and he said it several weeks in advance. And that night he gave us all in a very strong way what he felt about saying the Shema.   

WALI ALI: We did a dance of the six-pointed star—the stanza for the six-pointed star was Ain ke loh hey nu—

SHABDA: Ain ke loh hey nu—that was it—

WALI ALI: Some of those dances were so un-rhythmical, there were so many different words that people just couldn't, nobody ever could dance them.

SHABDA: Yeah, every word was new and there was no repetition—I'll just go on and later on we can always backtrack. So I'd slept over on a Sunday night after a Dharma night, and Monday morning—in fact I'd had Jemaluddin's car.

SITARA: Is this the Dharma night when the Jewish disciples were here?

SHABDA: No, I don't think so; this was after Christmas, we had had a Christmas party at the Garden of Allah, Frida was invited, and Murshid said that this year instead of giving Darshan he was giving out cups, in the form of Baraka, and he was giving all of his disciples cups, and we did some dances and some meditation—I don't remember exactly. But I do remember that and there were an awful lot of people at the house, and always at the Garden of Allah parties there were the people who went downstairs to get stoned—they would do it on a different floor or something. So this must have been Sunday night the 27th. because I think it was the 28th that he fell?

WALI ALI: Yeah, that was the last meeting, I recall that it was a day that we had a meal here because we had a class in the afternoon—we used to have a class and then a meal and then the Sunday night class.

SHABDA: I didn't describe any of those things—

WALI ALI: You didn't have to.

SHABDA: It wasn't necessarily outstanding—but we had had a meal, and watched Perry Mason and had the night Dharma class and so I had Jemaluddin's car because he was, I guess—

SITARA: He had gone to Israel

SHABDA: Israel. And he had loaned me that big yellow Chevy Impala, and I think Halim woke me up, because he was sleeping over too.

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, right, I remember that—

SHABDA: And we had both slept over—

WALI ALI: You were sleeping in the front room.

SHABDA: I remember that I always had very far-out dreams in that front room and he woke me up and it was about 5:30 AM and he said, "Give me the keys to your car," "What for?" "Murshid fell:"

SITARA: Whose car?

SHABDA: Jemaluddin's car; that was the only car that was here! And so in a matter of minutes we were all up, and Saul came down from Ripley St., and all I can remember was putting my clothes on and getting the car started. I don't remember who had had Murshid wrapped up in the burnoose, and apparently he had tripped on his robe while he was taking an early morning bath—

WALI ALI: He didn't have any clothes on—

SHABDA: Like he—after a meeting sometimes he would sometimes leave his robe on and fall asleep like that—

WALI ALI: He didn't have any clothes on—

SITARA: He was naked—

SHABDA: He was naked? So he must have been in the bath and—

WALI ALI: I think he was under some kind of medicine. He had gone to see a Chinese physician—

SHABDA: For the hives—

WALI ALI: It wasn't for the hives; it was real difficult to ever get Murshid to do anything in terms of being in a place to do something about his health, because he was always trying to deal with it from another space, but Saul convinced him to see a doctor and Murshid went to see this Chinese doctor that he had seen before, but he had died in the meantime—but he saw his brother or—anyway he went down there and he saw the doctor. He wanted to get something for his skin condition, but the doctor said that his blood pressure was up too high, and so he gave him something for his blood pressure first, that that was the first thing he should deal with, so he gave him something for his blood pressure, some sort of drug, I don't know, and I have no idea what it was.

And that was sometime—I don't know how many days prior to that that this was—the Whirling Dervish Bazaar had been that previous week and it had been very high. And when Murshid would get high he would just forget about his body, and how it functioned, and he would come back down to his body which was giving him a lot of problems. In any case, the best we can put it together is he probably hadn't been able to sleep—his skin had been bothering him—he'd gotten up and taken a hot bath and the heat had been up too high or something and he was maybe dizzy from the medication, he went to the top if the stairs to turn down the thermostat, and either tripped over a rug that was at the top of the stairs and fell. I heard him fall—

SHABDA: I didn't, I was fast asleep.        

SITARA: You were awake?

WALI ALI: I heard the sound.

SHABDA: You were sleeping in the—

WALI ALI: In the room that Karima has now, that was my room—

SHABDA: I remember in connection Murshid used to say—

SITARA: Who discovered him?

WALI ALI: I think Halim was the first one to get to him—     

SHABDA: He used to say in connection that every two weeks he had to check his body because he didn't feel physical pain anymore. God took away his pain for the pain of the world, he said. I remember him saying that to me.

WALI ALI: Yeah, things would happen to his body that he wasn't aware of—

SHABDA: So anyway we drove off and Saul I think was in the car and you were—

WALI ALI: We called Dr. Alan Dattner who was a friend of some of the Sufis, and I don't know—he recommended that we take him to the hospital—I don't know why San Francisco General was chosen, whether it was Alan's suggestion or what—

SHABDA: It is so close by, it was the first one that Saul thought of probably; isn't it just over on Potrero Hill?

WALI ALI: It’s close but it’s no closer than St. Lukes, but anyway that’s where we took him. I don’t recall and it’s no point in my getting into now—

SHABDA: Yeah, right. It must have been that you and Halim took care of the official business, Saul and I, when he got there Murshid was put on a stretcher, and he was like—I remember he was in this state that he would be—

WALI ALI: He was totally in a state of shock—

SHABDA: Right, so I had his legs pinned down, and he was lying flat on his back—

WALI ALI: Yeah, he was in a state of shock but he was still very active.

SHABDA: Yeah, he was still a roaring borealis! I had his legs pinned down and Saul was pinning down his arms, pinning down his shoulders and he would say, “Allah, Allah Allah” (or Allaho Akhbar), let’s get the hell out of here! And Saul would say "Murshid, where should we go” "Shut up! Let’s get out of here, what the hell are we doing here? Shut up!" "But Murshid, where else should we go?" "Shut up!" And I remember that one time Saul relaxed his grip on his arms and Murshid went like this—and with his arm punched him square in the face. And Saul must remember this. And this went on for a long time and then he went up to x-rays, I think and he had his arm x-rayed—or the x-rays might have come later I think.

WALI ALI: He had a broken arm—

SHABDA: He had a broken arm and he had a cast put on his arm and I think that they put a strap, a canvas strap—

WALI ALI: The thing that he resisted the most was putting the catheter in which was painful, obviously—

SITARA: What's a catheter?

WALI ALI: That's the thing that they insert into the end of your penis so you can urinate—

SHABDA: Yeah, it was just terrible at the hospital. He was going between this kind of yelling, and I just remember him saying over and over again “Allah, Allah, Allah” (?) and he went into that emergency—they finally took him to that emergency room and he hated it and he was right in the middle of the floor and he used to—everybody who was either dying or on the edge of it—and I do remember that they moved him over to another section where there were only four beds, a semi thing latter on, and at that time at the hospital, Joe Miller came by, Ajari came by and all these people, and then this set up was made to have someone on the post all the time. We had to settle it with the nurses at first. I went there one time with Basira and Murshid must have gotten very excited at that time and I remember he would say, "Scratch my back" or this or that, but he wasn't—but he would never talk to you with more than a sentence that was in his normal day talk. It was always like in and out: "scratch my back, hold my hand," and you would just sit there for fifteen or twenty minutes just holding his hand. He had this really strong hand, but then I wasn't allowed to go visit him anymore. Do you remember that?

WALI ALI: That you weren't allowed?

SHABDA: Oh yeah, I don't know who decided it, but—

WALI ALI:  Saul was in charge of the crews at the hospital and it had something to do with the healing circle, I'm not sure exactly how—

SHABDA: Anyway, I don't know what it was but it seemed very odd to me.

WALI ALI: He didn't want a lot of people there and he wanted people whose concentration was healing; he didn't want—I don't recall exactly his reasoning—

SHABDA: I know but I really had—

End of side one, reel two:

Side two: Reel two

SHABDA: I think he felt somehow that Murshid had gotten very excited—

WALI ALI: Oh, I see; it was something specific—

SHABDA: Yeah, right, and I didn't feel that I was involved in it, but anyway that's the way it was and I couldn't visit him anymore in the hospital and I was barred from going and then I remember that Murshid was moved to the Chinese hospital and we were working at New Age I think. Hassan was there, and Michael Suleiman and myself and maybe Amin was there—it was a Saturday and we got a phone call around 12:30 or 1 o'clock, "Murshid has left his body." And I remember that I wasn't willing to believe it until I saw it, because that letter had come out a few days before, "I'll live on as God Wills," and I always had the feeling that Murshid would live 25 years more. So we went to the hospital and there he was lying there out of his body—and Moineddin came over, and I think Saul blasted Moineddin and said, "Now you have to take over.” or something.

WALI ALI: Saul was real wasted by that time; he had been in charge ever since Murshid had been taken to the hospital, he had some kind of general authority—

SHABDA: And now he was passing this on and saying, "You take over," and I remember driving home in his Volvo—I guess Moineddin was working that day too—we were all at New Age—

WALI ALI: Moineddin couldn't have been working—he was just barely out of the hospital—

SHABDA: Maybe we just met at the hospital, but we came over directly from New Age in Hassan's bus, that's right—but Moineddin gave us a ride home in his Volvo. Amin and I were over at New Age—I did get the job at New Age later on—

WALI ALI: I guess you have given a lot of details and that's going to be very useful to us. Maybe the thing you can do now is to kind of sum up Murshid as you knew him and his influence on your life, who he was for you.

SHABDA: Alright, for me he was my first real teacher, and he showed me the meaning of what a real teacher was—somehow his life was for his mureeds and not for himself anymore. He was a total outpouring of love and he was an example to me always of what he was teaching. I still feel as if I am just getting to know him, and I feel like I learn more about Murshid all the time—it is not like after he died there was less and less. I think his impact on my life was tremendous, and I think will be the focal point of my life for the rest of my life. All my other Sadhana and whatever else I am doing now with other teachers I feel is under his umbrella. I feel that when, for instance, I went to study with Pandit Pranath—and Pir Vilayat had suggested I study with him, and I took it up. And Pandit Pranath asked me if I wanted to be his disciple. I told him I was already a disciple of Murshid, and he said, that that was alright that he didn't mind. And I asked Moineddin, and Moineddin said, "It is like this, when Amin asked Murshid if he could study with Ajari, Murshid said, 'I wish I had time myself, I’m glad you can do it.'" So I feel that all those things are attuned and are under Murshid's umbrella. Murshid, one day he did say to me—we were at Swami Muktananda's—he came in and he said, "This is Peter Kahn, my dance teacher," so he wanted me to be a dance teacher, and he never said it to me other than that, but he said it then right up front, "He is one of the people who is going to teach my dances." And I just try to make reality or whatever I got from him—in a way I'm still waiting to get to know him, it's just that a part of me yearns for the time when I'll have a real personal relationship going  again—just like he said that at a certain time in his life Inayat Khan appeared to him and then he did see him every day, and I haven't reached that stage yet. And I hope someday it will come down, but I'm not quite sure that it will, but I'm not longer anxiously awaiting it, I feel very much that I am just trying to do my work, do my Sadhana, and that this is the right thing and not to worry about right or wrong but just go ahead and do it the best way I can.

WALI ALI: Okay. Do you have any questions Sitara?

SITARA: No.

WALI ALI: This is quite extensive and very helpful, so we'll shut it down.

SHABDA: To no one: here are some experiences that came down after Murshid's death. I was put in charge of the gathering together of the tapes of Murshid—which were very few—there were a series of ten talks that had been recorded—which everyone knows now—The Corinthians, which have become a book. And I was asked as part of my work on this project to go over to Father Blighton's and get them. And I had a very devotional feeling in going there. Father Blighton, as I understood it, was a close friend of Murshid's and that they had gone through several things together. And I got there and arranged to get the tapes to copy them, and Father Blighton called me in. And the Sufi Choir was just about to sing with The Grateful Dead—it was a benefit—and I told him about it, I was very excited. He said, "Don't get into that Rock and Roll, it is evil," and this and that, and then he said that Murshid had appeared to him and told him that he was supposed to take all of Murshid's disciples. He just laid this heavy trip on me. I’m telling about how Father Blighton had said that Murshid had appeared to him and that he was supposed to take all his students were now to come to him—

WALI ALI: Did Father Blighton speak to you about that?

SHABDA: Yeah! So after  telling me that all of Murshid's disciples were supposed to go to him  and he was taking over, and then he said, “I offer you this teacher,” and he called in Master Andres, and he said, “I would like you to meet your new teacher, Master Andres.” I just couldn’t believe this whole trip and I wasn’t about to start yelling at him, so I just said, “Oh think you very much,” and took the tapes and left. And then later on another experience very similar to that, one was that I went with Selik as a drummer to a retreat in Santa Cruz with Yogi Bhajan, because they had asked if we would do Sufi dancing at their retreats in Santa Cruz. And interestingly enough it was coming at a time when all the people who where Yogi Bhajan's disciples were doing everybody else’s Sadhanas but their own. And they had Sufi dancing coming to their ashram and they had massage, this, and that. Anyway, Yogi Bhajan greeted us in his usual manner, put his arm around my shoulder with all his weight, and said, "I know that your Murshid is dead, you don't really have a suitable teacher anymore, I know the right Murshid for you—and Pir Vilayat, well, he's a nice guy but—" And he laid out this heavy trip. I don't know, there were just several of those trips. The one guiding light in the whole thing, I think, was Joe Miller, who just said, "If you want any help just call me, 3AM or 3PM, it just doesn't matter."

WALI ALI: I remember this too—

SHABDA: I remember this with Yogi Bhajan—anyway I just told him that I wasn't interested, and that I was all set up, thanks, and that I felt that Murshid was still alive. And interestingly enough, when Murshid died I had been reading the papers Akibayat, his Commentary on life after death, and every other sentence was, he says, "The relationship between the mureed and the Murshid is not broken because one or the other leaves their body." So I'm still trying to realize this, and inshallah, I—

WALI ALI: Did you have any kind of definite visions or dreams after Murshid passed away where he manifested to you? Or where he gave you instructions or anything?

SHABDA: I've had very few dreams with Murshid, but in one he said, he came to me and said that I needed more discipline. I've had some dreams about him or with him that were just very normal, not visions. I had one dream right after he died: we were all living in a big three story house, and I remember that Yasmin was there—for some reason I remember that—and the one thing that I remembered about it was that in the dream I realized that Murshid was already dead and that he was walking around still alive, and I realized that there was very little change—that feeling that he was still just as much in our lives as he'd ever been.

WALI ALI: How about some soup?

Stories of Murshid Samuel Lewis, Tape 2

SHABDA: The first interview one had with him—I went to the Khankah and I didn’t have any questions for him, I just felt like I was supposed to go see him and I walked into the Khankah and we sat down on the couch and he said, “Hello, I’m glad you came to see me. Do you have any question?” And I said, “No, I just felt like was supposed to come and see you. I’ve nothing to ask or anything like that.” And he says, “Oh well, thank you very much for seeing me.” Then he walked out of the office and went back to work.

I was way down in Southern California, in Tacotti, California, in a type of place that was being built into an Ashram, when I felt … I was doing a nine day fast and it was about my fifth day and I felt this very strong urge to come back home and to go eat dinner at Murshid’s house. So I stopped fasting, I had some food, packed my bags and started hitch hiking, took two rides, one from San Diego to L.A., one from L.A. to Murshid’s door. I got there about three in the afternoon on a Thursday afternoon. I opened the door and Murshid was at the top of the stairs. He took one look at me and says, "You’re lucky Marsha’s not home for dinner, you can stay for dinner. There’s nothing else I can do for you but you can stay for dinner and take a shower.” So that was the first thing, and then I did take a shower and he came and talked to me for a while. Then we were sitting over dinner and Murshid said, “What did you do down there?” And so I described one day of Ashram living, which was pretty it seems, because you just described one period after another and it took about two minutes. So I thought I should tell him more, so I was telling him that I traveled from there a few times and I visited L.A. I heard Krishnamurti speak and then I told him on way back from there, I visited Yogananda Center and met one of Yogananda’s disciples and had a nice experience with him. And Murshid put down his fork and started slamming his fist on the table and says, "What the hell are you running around for? The Kingdom of Heaven is within you!” He slammed his fist on the table several times and yelled it again and again and just went back to eating.

I was in New York with Murshid and we were invited to a luncheon which was set up for Swami Muktananda, and everyone was asked to come at eleven and anyway we didn’t know there was this difference. We got there and Murshid wasn’t about to sit around, and first thing, someone was turning his beads and so Murshid looked and says, “If you’re going to use your beads, I’m going to use mine.” And he pulled his out of his pocket. And there were maybe ten pictures of all the different Hindu gods and goddesses on the wall and so he started going around and saying: "Who's that, anyone know who that is?" And they said, "That's Rama," and so on. Finally he got to the picture of Saraswati and pointed to it and said, "Does anyone who that is?” And someone said, " That's Saraswati." And someone else raised their hand and said, "Who's that?" And Murshid says, "I'll show you." And he sat up cross-legged and did a pranayama and then he started playing the vina making a very high-pitched sound, giving the sound of the vina. He did it several minutes and everyone got very high and then came down and then got into something else.

When Murshid arrived in New York, I was waiting at Shahabuddin Less' apartment with him and he arrived with Sitara in a Volkswagon. We greeted him out in the street and we walked up to the apartment and the first thing Murshid did was he got the Yellow Pages, and what do you think he looked up in the Yellow Pages but the list of restaurants. Shahabuddin dug it, he understood it and he really enjoyed it. Then I saw that I knew that Shahabuddin would be his disciple. We also made Shahabuddin his New York representative.

On a Sunday night after Sunday night meeting, I slept over at Murshid's house for a Monday morning men's dance class in the city and I was sleeping in the front room and someone woke me up and said, "Give me the keys to your car, we have to take Murshid to the hospital." So I got dressed very quickly and he was wearing a robe and he had fallen down the stairs and we drove him to the hospital and he was admitted to the emergency room and he was on a stretcher. Saul w3as holding down his arms and I was holding down his feet and his conversation was, "Let's get the hell out of here, what are we doing here?" And Saul would say, "Murshid, do you … where could we go? We can't go…." "Shut up" he was yelling at Saul. Saul didn't want to hold his arms too tight, so one time Murshid, when he got his arm loose, flung and punched Saul right in the nose. And then different times being in the hospital, right in the beginning when he was taken in, he would go in between this and a deeper state where he would be saying things like, "All powerful Creator, All powerful Creator, All powerful Creator … Shut up! Let's get out of here!" He'd go in between these different kinds of things and then he had to have his arms x-rayed, and the nurse thought he was one of the strongest beings they'd ever met. Seemingly he'd ripped part of the canvas on the table that was supposed to hold him down. They put a cast on his arm which was apparently broken or something.

BANEFSHA: … thinking, like how horrible I am, because I'm sure all his disciples… I had this big idea of all his disciples, or his "higher disciples" or however you want to say it, and I thought they were so wonderful. And here I was thinking, who am I going to talk to at nine every morning, because that's what we did, nine o'clock every morning, like clockwork, the phone would ring and it'd be Murshid. He'd say, Oh, if you're stopping by Haig's, pick me up this or that, and we'd gossip for about half an hour or yak or something. I found out, first he'd call Ted Reich and then me and then Joe Miller. We'd talk because we lived in the city and it was free. And I remember thinking that, who am I going to talk to, it wasn't a spiritual though. I just got real personal.

I remember a story about Shabda though, when Shabda came and I remember him looking at Shabda and it was at a meeting with Charlene and I remember saying, "Say Allaho Akbar, say Allaho Akbar." I think he got up and … do you remember that, Michael?

MICHAEL: Sort of, I think I remember him getting up and Shabda walking with him.

BANEFSHA: Yeah, Shabda walked with him. He just walked over to you and said "Say Allaho Akbar." Because you see he never taught … I was dying for him to tell me something spiritual. He never even gave me a practice until the very end, it was four years later. I said I didn't receive Bayat. Four years later Moineddin called me in—this was when Moineddin was all bloated and ready to go to the hospital—Moineddin said "There's a mistake here, I the files of the disciples, you've never received a practice." I said, "You’re right, I kept asking him, but he wouldn't give me one." he'd brush me away and say, "later." So Murshid got really embarrassed because his Khalif caught him. He said, "Ahh, she didn't get any practices, what about all those Jewish practices I gave you? I said, "You never did, Murshid." He said, "Oh, yes I did, you remember the Shema, don't you, with Yahuva?" I'd never heard of Yahuva in my life, it shocked me, but that's when I heard about Yahuva. And he said, "Say it for fifteen minutes a day." I felt weird because I didn't receive Bayat from him, but he would just laugh. I'd say, "I'm not your legal disciple." And he would laugh and say, "All disciples up." And I'd be a stick-in-the-mud and sit down, and he'd say, "Why aren't you up?". I'd say, "I'm not initiated." And I'd scream it across the room. But you're supposed to get bayat. Then he said, "Let Pir Vilayat do it." This was two and a half years later or something, I don't remember exactly.  I think I got first year bayat when I was in third year Gathas.

SHABDA: He said at first sight he knew all his disciples, except for one. I don't know who that one was, but he said he knew who his disciples were at first sight.

BANEFSHA: We discussed stuff, like personal stuff, about the war and really got … and poetry; we both loved Edna St Vincent Millet. I used to go shopping with him a lot, but we—what did we talk about? He used to tell me how wonderful Amina was and I used to think I was the biggest piece of shit in the world, because he would ever acknowledge that I could dance or anything and he'd say, "Isn't Amina so wonderful?" Fatima and those girls weren't in the ladies' dance class with him, it was you (to Amina) and me and Basira and Susan Morton and Vashti and Patty and Majid. Ayesha (is patty) was in it and not even Jamila was in it.

AMINA: Jamila was in it.

BANEFSHA: No, she was with Pir Vilayat then I think ---I don’t remember. Who else was there? Majid, she came in at the very end. And Rhada, and Khadija, but not at the beginning—oh, there was Byate. At the very beginning, you mean when he used to come in and—(to Amina). It was before I made him that crazy robe? Because he used to wear that. And when he used to come and wear that green robe and sit on the couch and do Saraswati?

SHABDA: Wasn’t it at your wedding – the first women's performance? BANEFSHA: Yes. It was at my wedding that first women’s performance performed. It was her and Amina’s and Byate’s, they all did it. Selima was in that very first thing too. Yes, it was, and I wasn’t allowed to dance of course, even though it was my own wedding. He was so weird.

That was a funny story, that wedding too. It was the first Sufi pageant, and we’d both planned it to a tee. I was so mad at him, I was really mad, because he promised me he was going to chant and we were going to have everyone pass incense and they were going to hold it and light it and it was going to be real somber. He blew it, didn’t even light the incense. And I was mad at Michael because Joshua was up all night screaming, and I asked him if I had rings under my eyes. I was so nervous.

Oh, Ladies’ Dance Class, I used to drive him because he said nobody from the city could go except Banefsha. So I used to drive him all the time and then he used to go to the Khankah from here and get dumped off. Saul used to drive him to my house, with his little suitcase. Ladies’ Dance Class started at 9:30 in those days, Murshid used to show up at eight o’clock. I’d be in bed. He used to run around the house making—being overly noisy, and we used to talk about going to class. He’d used to just rave about Amina, and I remember, he always used to say that she knew how to walk almost better than anybody. And I thought he was crazy, I didn’t know what he was talking about, but he’d say, “Amina can really walk.” And he’d tell me exactly what he was going to do that day. Then he’d tell me that he couldn’t sleep cause he was up all night having these dreams of dances and he’d say, “They don’t have to invite me.” He used to say this every week in the car to me. He’d say, “Do they really want me to come this week?” I’d say, “I don’t know if they really want you to come.” But he was sort of insecure about it, I think he felt like he was imposing.

AMINA: I think he was afraid he was going to stop other people’s inspiration.

BANEFSHA: Yeah, although nobody had any inspiration when he was around, it was all him. He was a grand monopolizer. Ok, he used to look at me and say, “I can’t dance with you.” I’d say, “Why?” He said, “You’re too tall.” I said, “You dance with Amina, and she’s tall.” He said, “That’s different.” I said, "That’s no reason.” Then I’d get real mad and he’d say, “Because, when you’re dancing with a lady, you can’t be in a personal consciousness.” Then I’d say, “You mean I bring you down” He’d say, “You could put it that way.” But then he’d say, “I can’t dance with Zeinob either, because I get too personal. When I dance I have to be totally impersonal.” He used to say that his most favorite person to dance with was Jemila because she would become so impersonal he didn’t have to worry, he was real afraid that he might touch us or—he didn’t want to come on sexually is what he was trying to say. In anyway or anything he really wanted to be really clear of any of that. And he wanted to be Divine Father and Divine Mother and Divine Muse. He thought we were all beautiful, and he was always real—we used to talk about that—who was really beautiful, and I remember it like it was beauty parlor talk, I’d say this one’s really beautiful and that one’s really beautiful. I remember the last ladies’ dance class he came to, he talked to us all in your dining room and we talked about eyes. About which eye was more beautiful than the other eye. Do you remember that Amina? The last Ladies’ Dance Class I went to, and it was right before Christmas time, before he fell; he talked to all of us in your kitchen (to Amina) and I remember him … there were three people in front of me, Ayesha was one of them and he was looking at their eyes and he’d say “Your left eye is brighter than your right eye.” And he came to me and said, “They’re both kind of … well, your right eye, work on it … no, your left eye.” I didn’t know what he was talking about. Were you there for that one?

But anyway, I used to drive him to class all the time. He would just talk about his visions and that he… oh, when two girls were fighting, I was always guilty, because I was always fighting. Not always fighting, but there was usually one person that I was working out a trip with and it was usually very healthy, of course everybody was. But that really bothered him, like when women got…. He just couldn’t handle it and so he would say to me, “We have to humor this person because this person is in a bad mood today.” And I would say. “Why do you have to humor them? Why don’t you just kick them out, or….” I was real brave; just kick them out. And he’d look at me and say, “What if it were you? Would you want me to kick you out? I’d say, “No.”

I asked him once, I was very confused about Susanne Morton. I said, “How come you appointed her as sort of a teacher?” I said, “She’s not even an initiate.” He said, “But you’re not either.” So he never answered my question. He was a funny teacher.

I remember him saying that Amina was Kemali, that I had a tendency to go from Kemali to Jelali, and that was all right. I remember him talking to me about the Butterfly Dance and I was freaked out of my mind, I told him, I said, “I don’t know Murshid, why do I have to do it with Amina?” He said “Because you’re both tall.” I said, “That doesn’t make any sense at all.”

AMINA: It made a lot of sense.

BANEFSHA: It made a lot of sense.

He loved the flower dance. Oh, God, when he got a flower dance in the car at eight o’clock in the morning, he’d come running up my steps, and it was a flat in San Francisco—the top flat with a lot of steps, and he used to come bouncing up these steps, two of a time, and say, “I got it.” And it was this flower dance.

I didn’t know what he was … did you Amina? Know what it was all about then. Really? Or that inspiration coming out of him? Because sometimes they seemed kind of corny. I hate to say it now. I don’t know … but now they’re wonderful, but sometimes then they seemed kind of corny. But he’d say, “The Chrysanthemum dance!” and I’d say, Oh, that’s wonderful, Murshid.” Just like I was talking to Joshua Rama. “That’s really wonderful, Murshid.” And he’d say, “I was up all night!” I’d say, “That’s really wonderful, Murshid.” And he used to say, “I don’t even have to take a nap today.” But he loved it, that was the joy of his week.

He was so nervous, we used to park the car down there … he was always telling me how to drive. We always used to get in fights on the ways over my driving. He’d say, “Turn left, turn right.” I’d say, "Murshid, it’s the same exit.” And right as we were pulling up he’d say, “oh, I’m so nervous, I hope I remember it.” And he was like a little kid. I’d say. “it’s all right Murshid.” And he used to come up here, he used to go into your room then, which is now Shabda’s room, and he used to get dressed in his robe. We would all be out there yacking, clucking, and Murshid would come out and beeline for the couch. He couldn’t even look at us. And he’d just go into this incredible state and channel and invocate, invocate Saraswati, and then we’d have class, and it wasn’t real, sort of, here we were being petals and Allahs and the thing I really remember the most about him being in our class is at least once at every class he would do some kind of a Krishna dance with us. Usually the kind where you advanced, and he would advance and each lady would dance with him. I always used to get mad at him because he’d never pick me. I’d say, “why don’t you ever pick me?” and he’d say, “you’re too tall.” He used to really get me mad.

One day—I’ll tell you this story—this is the last story, we were coming to the Ladies Dance Class, but Banefsha and Mansur, the night before, were very bad and had taken psilocybin, Murshid knocked at my door. I wasn’t going to go, I was going to cut Ladies Dance Class, as a matter of fact, I was going to sleep all day. Murshid knocks at my door and I was just coming down, I was really tripping, hadn’t touched anything in three years like psychedelics. I don’t know where Mansur got it from but I remember him running around in his red pajamas playing Ram Nam in the middle of the night and Moineddin was furious. We both got busted royally, I think I had my clothes off, I don’t remember. Anyway, I said I can’t go to Ladies’ Dance Class, Murshid, I don’t feel well. He’s in the car honking, honking. I said, “All right, all right!” I couldn’t have the heart to tell that I was smashed on acid. How do you tell your spiritual teacher that you’re totally stoned out of your skull? He said, “All right, first we’re going to Ladies’ Dance Class, then we’re going to Marin County, then we’re going to Tiburon , then we’re…. I said, "Murshid, I can’t even move, I don’t feel well, I’m dizzy.” He said, "that’s all right, I’ll drive the car, you just have to….” I said, "Murshid, come on, I don’t want to go.” I said, “I’ll call Marty, maybe she’ll go.” But Marty was away or something, she wasn’t there and Fatima wasn’t going to the Ladies’ Dance Class. It was just Marty and me. She didn’t want to go or something. I said, “All right, I’ll drive you.” I was so stoned, I remember, trees were jumping out on the highway and I finally told him. I said, Murshid, I’m on a Psychedelic. ” He said, “You don’t think I know, keep going.”

So we got to Corte Madera and he made me perform that day. We did the first time the Mother Krishnabai walk and he made me do it. I couldn’t even think straight. I wanted to hide in the kitchen. Anyway, we left Ladies’ Dance Class and he said, “Now we’re going to Elsie Gidlow’s house.” I said, “Where’s that?” “At the top of Mt. Tamalpais.” Oh no, so we’re driving alone this little road and I said, “Murshid, I can’t, I can’t.” and I started to cry—Me, cry. He said, “You’re going to do it.” So we drive and really, the road was narrow—it was like going up to the Mt. Tam. Then, I don’t know, this little dirt side road for miles and miles, until we for to Elsie Gidlow’s house. I’m still stoned out of my skull , get out of the car and the first person we see is Allan Watts, all poised with a bow and arrow, dressed up like Merlin the Magician. Murshid gets out and starts screaming at him about how many disciples he has. I was ready to crawl in a hole. “I have ten disciples…” blah, Blah, Blah, I don’t remember what he said. And we had this lady, Elsie Gidlow, who started organic on gardening magazine or something and who had this incredible garden. And he talked about Van, who was his gardener, and talked about his garden. Meanwhile, this lady had the prize cherry tomatoes in the world and he’s talking all about his garden. Then he totally alienated Alan Watts and then we left. I said, “Could we go home now?” He said. “No, we’re going to have lunch in Tiburon.” I said, “Murshid, I have got to go to bed.” And he said, “No, we’re going to have lunch.” So we hit two restaurants that day. We first went to Mill Valley, and he ordered. He said, ”I’ll order.” I was ready to throw up. I said, “All I want is coffee.” He said, “No. I’ll order.” So he ordered me this chicken cacciatore thing. I was ready to die, and he made me eat it and lemon meringue pie. Then I said, “Can we go home now?” And he said, “No, we’re going to Tiburon.” So I said, “Why do we have to go to Tiburon?” And he said, “Because we’re going to go to the wine tasting room.” I said, “Oh no.” So we went to the wine tasting room and I got totally drunk. So did he, a little bit. He just said Johannesburg Reisling and we just started tasting every Johannesburg Riesling in the place. Then he ended up buying me a whole case of it. He said, “Do you want one?” and I said, “Yes.” But he got a little tips and ended up buying me twelve bottles. He said, “Aren’t you hungry?” I said, “No, I’m ready to throw-up and die.” And he said, “Let's go have abalone and shrimp at Sam’s at the wharf.” I said, “Please I want to go home.” He said, “No.” So we go and have a shrimp sandwich—he ordered it—and abalone. Then guess where we went to [?] to Julie and Fred’s house. He said, “I have to see Julie.” I said, “Murshid, I’m going to die. You’ve got to let me go home.” He said, “Nope.” So we went to [?], I don’t know what we did there, I don’t even remember driving there, I just remember, we started out at eight o’clock in the morning and we got back at seven-thirty that night and I was dead. He said “Thank you very much.” He got out of the car and went into the Khankah, but that’s how Murshid cured me of—I never touched it again. I was always afraid he’d come after me and take to him some place.

MARY: I didn’t meet Murshid right away when I was already singing in the Sufi Choir and everything. He was in New York and I was very turned on by the meetings and everything. I was waiting—when am I really going to have contact with him? I went to all the meetings, but no personal contact. I didn’t want to go have an interview, didn’t know what to say, the whole thing. At the first Whirling Dervish bazaar—we’d given a concert that night and it was wonderful and everybody was very high. Just hanging out of the hall afterwards, just leaning against the wall, talking to people, Murshid comes down the hall, and he starts talking—he gets that smile on his face—totally in Krishna consciousness, which I vaguely recognized at that time; he comes over and he grabs my hands and squeezes my hands and he leans over and kissed me on the lips and I just went through this thing for months about, well, how—a spiritual teacher? This seventy very old man coming over and—ever since then I’ve had different feelings about that moment, recognized it for what it was. At the time it was a heart opening for me, but I had to go through a lot of trips over it.

SIDE 2

SHABDA: I remember one meeting he was real tired, Iqbal was there, and so was Jemaluddin. And he says to Jemaluddin, “I’m too tired to kiss the girls goodnight, would you do it Jemaluddin?” And he said, “I’m off.” Then he said, “you do it then, Shabda” (then I was Peter) and then I did it and he said, “Jemaluddin, you failed the test.”

I remember one thing that I didn’t mention, when we came back from New York, and Murshid started the Men's Dance Class. It was only for people in the city. I was staying upon Ripley street across the street from Saul's. So it was a small class, I think Mian was in it (who was Wayne), and Wali Ali, Saul was only half in it and Farid may have been. But he said, “This is going to be very short and direct.” The first thing we took up were the walks of prophets, we started with Rama and Krishna and the class would be about twenty minutes every Monday morning. There were only about three or four, maybe three classes and the fourth class was the Monday that he fell.

BANEFSHA: At the Christmas party here, not the one at the Mentorgarten,

but the one here, he called me over to him and he said, “This is it.” I looked at him, I said, “What do you mean?” He said, “This is it, I’ve had it, I’m tired.” And I did not know what he was talking about. Frida was there, she was sitting next to him. He grabbed my hand, and he said, “Do Hanukah now.” So we did Hanukah. I remember he screamed when we were doing the Rock of Ages Dance because we said, “and tyrants everlasting” and that blew him up, he didn’t like that line. He said, “How could a country who persecutes their own talk about tyrants?” Then I don’t know what …. he was in a really hyper state that night and it was really hard to tell, until the next night, which was the party in the city. I knew he was really hyper because he came over to give me a cup and he said, “Nobody from the city gets a present.” And he would never do that. Then at the city party he ran upstairs and put on a robe, the crazy robe I made him, and he was watching TV and he came running down and said, “it’s it, this is it, this is it, I know it, it’s really it, I just saw Schlomo Carlebach and Steve Gaskin on television.” Then he called over to him and said, “This is really it.” And he put on this funny had that’s in the picture that Fatima has of him—a knit, crocheted hat. He put on this nutty hat, he looked like the Fool in the Tarot deck, in the robe, and he went running upstairs and said goodnight, and that was it, that was the night he fell. Sometimes I guess we feel a little guilty. What could you have done anyway? This is what I keep saying. Let’s say I had known consciously what he was trying to say me … this is it…. Do you remember the time I called him

in New York and he started screaming at me? No, but I remember, I called him up in New York and he was really mad on the phone, sort of, and he said, “Don’t waste your money.” And hung up and Sitara said when he got off the phone he cried like a baby and said, “I’m homesick.”

SHABDA: He said when he was in New York, it was the first time he was really homesick.

AMINA: I sent him a card when he was in New York and he wrote a letter back and he said he cried when he got the letter and that was the first time he was ever homesick.

BANEFSHA: We loved him so much; it was the first time he ever went from us except for that conference in Geneva and that was over the summer. It was weird having Moineddin lead a meetings—no, Moineddin was in the hospital.

AMINA: Maybe it was Wali Ali.

BANEFSHA: No, Wali Ali never lead a meeting until after Murshid died.

SHABDA: While we were in New York—I just thought of another funny story—we were dancing in Central Park, and they were making a film of it—someday we’ll probably see the film—Ram Dass was there and we were doing these dances and Murshid walks up to Ram Dass and says. “I’ve got a dance, is this OK with you, we’re going to say Ram.”

We also went, one day, to the UN, somehow we didn’t know where we were going and we went from one place to another and every place we went was right. We went to one person’s office and they were working along the same line and then this other persons office and it was quite something.

BANEFSHA: He got out three weeks before Murshid fell, Moineddin, and he barely made it to the hospital, he looked like death when he walked into the hospital. It was his first public appearance—no, he had come to one meeting on crutches. We did that dumb Butterfly Dance for him and Moineddin sat in the chair and they had to take him home early.

SHABDA: That was the first meeting Moineddin came back. Murshid, when he was in New York, told me of what he had done when he’d screamed at Moineddin. He said it was the hardest thing he’d ever done in his whole life.

BANEFSHA: I know the other end of it cause Fatima was at my house. Fatima, when she went to the hospital to visit, dropped Nurunissa off at my house, for weeks on end. She was very cool behind the whole thing, I never saw her emote for one minute. As a matter of fact she used to come with her crocheting. One day she came and she was really uptight and she said, “I’ve got to speak to Murshid now!” And it was the first time I ever saw Fatima emotionally upset—in those days, anyway. And I remember her calling Murshid and saying, “you better get to the hospital cause this is it. He’s not going to make it.” And I was standing there and I thought, Oh no. I remember Saul come over and picked her up and away they went. And I guess that was the day he yelled at him.

SHABDA: He said he walked in with his Zen stick and he said, “If you don’t get the hell out of this bed, right now, I’m going to come in here and beat you. I don’t care if you call the cops and they put me in jail, I’m going to come in there and beat with you with my Zen stick if you don’t get out of this bed.”

BANEFSHA: He said, “If you want to stay in bed, go get a job in a mattress factory.” And he said, “If you think you’re going to hell, you are in hell. You’ve got a beautiful wife and daughter and you’d better get up.” Wali Ali was there too, I think. Fatima said the nurses thought that he was the most horrible old man in whole world. He didn’t visit Moineddin until then. He didn’t believe in being sick. I remember when I was dying, literally dying, after childbirth, he would not relate to the dying, to the hospital. He was very nervous about anybody sick. Nancy Silver—I remember when she got sick once, he was just very nervous and upset but he wouldn’t go visit her. And Nancy is the only person I know on earth that he would get up at three in the morning to see. It actually happened.

I was having trouble at the school. I was teaching at Bilboa High School and I was very successful with black kids. Overly successful and as you know, there’s jealousy in the teaching profession, and they wanted me out—can you believe it—because I had total success, I didn't have any problems. That year they had riots at the school and in my class you could hear a pin drop.

So one day I was almost getting axed and I remember running over to the Mentorgarten, crying my eyes out, saying, "Murshid, they're going to … I was hysterical. Murshid took one look … Murshid didn't even look at me, he took you out back and taught you how to pick cabbages or dig potatoes. Then he came back and said, "OK, what's the matter?" I said, "They're going to kick me out." And then he said, "You? You're the best teacher in the whole world!" And he wrote thirteen letters. He went right to his typewriter and wrote everybody he could think of. He said, "This girl brings peace to black students." And he called Willie Brown and he said, "You go talk to him." he went nuts. I said, "Murshid, calm down, I'm only to get fired from my school." He said, "We'll go to the Governor, we'll go to the President!" I said, Murshid, "come on, we've just got to get the principal of the high school." So he wrote a letter anyway and he made me go to Willie Brown and I remember I went to Willie Brown and I told him they were going to axe me. You see, Willie Brown is a black congressman. I said, "They're going to axe me because I'm really good with black kids and they're jealous." So anyway, I didn't get axed, but Murshid was very concerned about that.

Murshid also sent me to the black Muslims—talk about Hallelujah, The Three Rings—he loved Malcolm X. Malcolm X's sister was in town for a conference. He loved the black Muslims; as a matter of fact when I used to drive him somewhere we used to always go to by Fillmore Street, stop at Arrantes and he used to make me drive by the black Muslims temple and he used to go, "Allah" and of course, nobody was in the street except for a bunch of drunks.  But anyway, he said, "You go to this." And I said, "All right." So there I went. He wanted Jemaladdin to go with me. Jemaladdin chickened out, Michael chickened out, I went. There I go in this auditorium, like Masonic, I was the only white person there, filled with black Muslims—militant black Muslims. The back door locks, they come on stage with guns, rifles—Murshid, get me out of here. I couldn't get out, they had the salute and were standing and they were talking about the—it was really during the racial tension in the Fillmore, and the wars between the blacks and hippies. And I was scared out of my skull. I'm sitting there and people looked at me, and I said, "I'm an Arab." It was the first time I ever said I was an Arab, because they were talking Arabic and they were going, "Allah as-salaam aleikhum," so I went, "salaam aleikhum, aleikhum as-salaam." They said, "How come you know that?" I said, "I said I'm an Arab." And they liked me, I think it saved my life. I don't know, because I was so scared. There were about 25,000 people, they were all black, and they were so incredible.

I remember this one incident which freaked me out—this little baby got up, it was just a two year old baby, got up and walked to the front of the podium. The black mother proceeded to pull a whip out of her pocket and beat the child. This was totally accepted in the auditorium.

AMINA: Where was Murshid?

BANEFSHA: Murshid was just waiting outside in the car with Jamaladdin. I went in by myself, everyone was so brave. He said,

We'll be back to get you." I said, "OK, great." He said, "You just have to go in, I can't go in, I have to go to Fields." (or something, bookstore, I don't know) So they dumped me at some auditorium and said, "We'll pick you up in an hour." When I got out I was so mad, I said, "Murshid, they're all nuts in there, they have rifles and everything." And he said, "What did she say?" I said, "Who?" He said, "His sister." I said, "I don't even know, Murshid." But he really liked Malcolm X. I think I know why. Did you read his autobiography? At the end of his autobiography He becomes universal and he says that the spiritual language of the New Age is Arabic, so I'm sure Murshid liked that. But he really sent me into a lot of situations, boy, I can't believe it.

SHABDA: That also reminds me of the extra personal attention he'd pay to each of his disciples in some special way. I remember the first time, before I'd even met him. Charlene, she went in and complained about this and that, and said I've done all these things wrong and whatever and he said he asked God about it and that everything was OK. So before I even showed up for an interview he knew all about me. But there are so many little kinds of things.

One time we had a garden where we were living and we had aphids and the next time I walked into a meeting, it was upstairs in the Mentorgarten, he said, "Come on up here, follow me." And we walked into the kitchen and he hands me this enormous bag of asparagus ends. He says, "Boil these and spray the vegetables."

Then there was this, Basira had made me this sarong because I really liked them. I had just moved into the Garden of Allah and Amin had loaned me a sarong and I liked it so much that Basira made me one. Someone had told him that I really liked sarongs  and they'd just had a tidal wave in Pakistan and it was very difficult to send money or anything like that.  So he said, "We're going to have the girls sell sarongs." So I came to the meeting and he called me to the kitchen and said, "I haven't told anyone yet, but what we're going to is go buy some material and make sarongs and send them to Pakistan and you're going to get the first one."

And another thing came to me while we were talking, when we were in New York, I led some dancing up at Ram Dass' gathering. It's in the film and when I watch it now, it's one of the most horribly spaced out dancing scenes that you can imagine, but it seemed to work then. Someone had taken a photograph of it and I sent it to Murshid and he wrote back this letter and said, "  "The pictures of the dances made me cry, I'd seen it long before you sent it."

There were meetings in New York, I saw a sign on some poster—Sufi master talks, come to this meeting—and it had the same symbol so I thought I'd go and check it out. It turned out to be a disciple of Fazl that had a group in New York and this man, van Essen, came to the meeting and he spoke and then I told this man, I told the younger guy who was the leader, about the dances and said I was willing to teach them and I wrote a letter to Murshid—is this OK to share the dances? He wrote back two things, specifically, one was that a Sufi was someone who saw from the point of view of someone else, not only his own point of view.  Then he said the dances were for the world, I could go ahead. But actually what happened is that the guy wrote a letter to Fazl and Fazl said you can't do any of those dances.

We did go to one of their meetings while we were there and the funny thing was that we also went to some meetings that were setup  under Pir Vilayat's name by the Unity Church where some person from each religion would come and talk. We went to one, a Rabbi that was really off the beam, but Murshid went up there and really yelled at him sometimes because then he lit a stick of incense and said, "We'll meditate as long as the incense is burning." He says, "I'm really embarrassed here because this was a real meeting and this Unity Church thing is a bunch of crap."

BANEFSHA: I remember the first dance we used to do: As-salaam aleikhum. He said my partner was Akbar, then Akbar quit and the my partner was Krishnadas, and then I quit for a while. Do you remember that Saturday afternoon class?

AMINA: That was the first time we did that dance.

BANEFSHA: Yes. As-salaam aleikhum, I remember when he brought it. I remember it was quite shocking to me as As-Shalom. He looked at me and said, "You know what it means, huh?" I said, "Yes I do."

AMINA: I hardly remember the dancing, it seems I was always in the kitchen. I remember him leading a dance, that was the first time we'd ever danced, and it was really special. It was a new kind of coming together, it was coming together in a whole really different way. What was the first dance we ever did? Was it the HU spin?

SHABDA: Or was it Ya Hayy, Ya Haqq?

BANEFSHA: That was sort of later.

AMINA: I think the HU was the first. It's the first one I remember. I just remember we always used to have feasts at that house and it seems like I was in the kitchen always.

BANEFSHA: Did you ever have any help, Amina?

AMINA: Sometimes there were ten people in that kitchen. We always fed—sometimes 75 people go into that house—that kitchen was about one yard square. I always figured it was Murshid calling miracles because it couldn't have ever come off. One time we had Thanksgiving, the over broke early in the morning and we had 4 turkeys to cook and it was just incredible. A hundred people came to the house, everybody always got fed.

BANEFSHA: Tell them the brown rice story.

AMINA: O, the brown rice story. Murshid didn't ever bust me, he was always very gentle, his relationship with me. Somehow the lessons were always in simple ways, like in the kitchen. I learned a lot from Murshid in the kitchen. I used to really want to learn how Murshid cooked. He always cooked these curries and somehow fed all those people. And who knew how to do that? So I decided to learn the secrets of Murshid's cooking by going in the kitchen and he was going to teach me how to cook curry, and he started by opening these cans of Campbell's soup. Campbell's soup!! I was sort-of into macrobiotics and what not. And he says, "Man can live on Campbell's soup." He was into people not being emotional about their food trips or garden trips. It was like in the garden, asking Murshid what to do about the snails and hoping to get some real organic secrets. "Snarol, that's what I use." Or Covey's. But anyway, I used to go to the Mentorgarten, and when was it? Was it Sunday nights we had feasts? Sunday afternoon we'd go in and then we'd have a big meal and then the meeting. I used to cook and for about two weeks in a row I burned the rice and he'd get so mad. It's real hard to cook a big pot of rice without burning it and I burnt it every time and he got furious and he yelled, "We cannot have this burnt rice." So the next week I was really paranoid because I wasn't used to Murshid yelling at me or getting mad at me. It was really shocking, especially over something I felt I had a certain mastery over. The cooking, I thought I knew what to do. So I was not going to burn the rice. I was really going to do it right. So I got there really  early and I had people helping me so I could focus all my attention on the rice. I cooked this perfect pot of rice and set it out in the back room to wait until it was time to eat and somebody came along and tuned the burner on under it by mistake and burnt it black. There was like two inches of burnt rice on the bottom and Murshid never said a word.

It was so amazing because you never knew how many people were coming and there'd always be these sort of rotten vegetables. He'd say, "This is what we're going to use." And there'd be this kind of rotten zucchini or whatever. And it was always a feast, it was always just enough, it'd always run out. I'd always serve because I was always afraid somebody else would dish up too much and we'd run out.  And there was never enough and it was always plenty, and it as always a miracle.

SHABA: He always used to go to that bakery on the corner, those white flour…

AMINA: It used to shock people.

BANEFSHA: Murshid wanted me to marry Wali Ali. I told him—this is true—he had it all figured out, as a matter of fact, he had me bring over my astrology chart and Wali Ali's. And he said, "His Mars is on your Sun." And I said, "I don't care." Michael didn't meet him because Michael was sort of a devotee of Schlomo Carlebach for a while when I was going to Murshid's and had really little interest in meeting Murshid. So for about three months I was going to Murshid's and going to Saturday dance class and Michael wasn't in it, in anything, really. And Murshid decided I was going to marry Wali Ali and Wali Ali proposed to me and wrote me beautiful poetry and stuff. And I said, "I can't, I'm living with this guy. He's Jewish and I met him in Israel in a trench." Murshid was unimpressed. I said, "Not only that, Murshid, you'll love him because he's kosher." Murshid said, "Invite him for lunch." So I said, "OK." And Murshid served shrimp, and shrimp is not kosher, you see. Michael walked into the house, set down with shrimp for lunch, Michael wouldn't eat. Murshid kept talking about the delicious shrimp all during lunch. Michael wouldn't eat a morsel. Michael and Murshid yelled at each other. That was the first confrontation they yelled, and Michael said something about Deuteronomy and Moses and Murshid looked at him and gave it back to him. The Michael stormed out of the house and Murshid came over to me and said, "His eyes are funny." I said, "Murshid, you're just prejudiced, because you want me to marry Wali Ali." Murshid wouldn't even recognize Michael. Then Murshid would invite me to dinner, he'd say, "You can come to dinner tomorrow night." And I'd say, "I happen to be busy." He'd say, "Well, come." And Murshid wouldn't be there, it'd be Wali Ali and me, I don't know why. But that didn't last very long. Then I remember when Murshid started to not accept Michael—when he got something in his mind, it was like, he got it in his mind—Toward the One. He just went on how wonderful it would be if I would marry Wali Ali.

Kanya Kekumbha April 15, 1976 (was Norman McGhee)

KANYA: Let's see if we can try to put together a little information about Brother Sam if we can. First of all, I don't perceive that Sam is dead at all; so if he were to walk in the door right now, I wouldn't evince any surprise, because my consciousness and his are still in tune—not in any mystical, spiritual sort of community sense but just the realization that man does not die. The spirit within is eternal; you just take off your coat from time to time and change coats and things like that, and everything is mellow. Sam and I have known each other for many lifetimes, so our consciousness when we met was the same as when we split. I was just the same as it always has been, so we recognized each other.

SABIRA: When did you meet?

KANYA: I don't know; I'd have to sit down and analyze it; when you know somebody, how do you remember when you met them—last night, the day before yesterday? I suppose there had to be a chronology, because it had to be in the fifties, because that is when I went to California. It was probably '57 or '58.

SABIRA: Do you remember what he was like then?

KANYA: He was like the same as he always was with me; he was kind of an eccentric, young/old man. Eccentric because he wasn't going downtown and working as a junior executive; he wasn't a corporate executive, he wasn't a bum, he wasn't a dummy—he had a lot of information—but he wasn't "normal." So that's how I met him and that's how he has always been to me.

SABIRA: Do you remember what he looked like?

KANYA: Yeah, he looked like a Jewish gypsy!

SABIRA: You just ran into him on the street, or you went to a meeting or what?

KANYA: Oh, I don't know, you run into a certain group. I was out there studying at the American Academy of Asian Sciences, where Alan Watts was the dean—and there was a nice Jewish man by the name of Ginsberg who changed his name to Gainesborough, and they were into the politics of having an Asian thing to wait until trade with the East opened up. And then they had all of these interesting, quasi-bizarre types like Alan Watts, and Ernest Wood and a couple Indians and a Chinese, and a Japanese—so I fit right into that group because I was living there. So one day the vibrations were being dispersed and there we were, and I can't really recall when I met Sam; it wasn't like, "Hey, I'll have to get to know this guy, it's going to take me 20 years." No, the same relationship that exists today if he were to walk in existed then when I met him; so it was obviously a segment of a circle. And then for some reason he kind of like adopted me, because obviously I might have been a little different in that I was interested in things that a lot of people weren't—particularly a lot of black people weren’t interested in—in studying, you know. I can't think of more than 2 or 3 black people that were studying at the Academy at the time. So as a result of that, we became friends. He must have also been attracted by the fact that I have since corroborated that I've been Jewish in a past life, so I've got a Yiddish-kupf; I'm a schwarza with a Yiddisha kupf, as they say, so that's an interesting vibration too, particularly so as Sam must have known—I'm sure he knew—that the ancient Hebrew people were black, and that the Jews of present-day America have actually purloined the history of the ancient Hebrews and re-made the history so as to make it read the way it has, but the Jewish history and the Christian history—if you think that Watergate was a bunch of bullshit, wait until you read the true history of Christianity and Judaism. And the books are finally out now; he had a mind that knew things like this. And I had a mind that knew things like this, even though I didn't know that I knew things like this.

SABIRA: He claimed that he came in knowing those things, and you probably did too.

KANYA: Of course! But we forget them! Schools put us to sleep, Yeah, after 12 years of school, and 13 years of college, I knew nothing, absolutely nothing, except I knew that what I had learned in school was not what I wanted to know, that's all I knew. And now that we have opened up a little bookstore, and a school, we changed our diet, we began to meditate a little bit, and now the balance is coming back up. You're an old soul yourself, you should know that. Who are you?

SABIRA: I don't know; I haven't found out yet!

KANYA: Oh, well you should find out; I could help you.

SABIRA: Were you aware that he knew that you had had all these lives?

KANYA: No, we never got into it; I never talked to him about it; I never even thought about it—but now that I am beginning to remember some of my past lives, it seems obvious that this is the case. Like even today there can be people—like you and I are not strangers; we have a rapport going that I don't suppose is normal—so we've known each other in past lives, and as a consequence, what's the point of sitting down and introducing each other all over again? Does it have to take 20 years to get to know somebody?

SABIRA: So were you into astrology then, and was he talking about his ideas, which were at that time very unusual—of how you combine the breaths and the walks and put all this together to find out what one is.

KANYA: Sam did a horoscope of me somewhere in that period of '58, '59 or so. And he always impressed me in a double way. First of all, I never felt that he had ever studied astrology; but second of all, he acted as if he had. You know what I mean, there are people who don't seem as if they know very much, but they do.

SABIRA: He had a lot of theories when he went to the Far East in 1956 and his theories were corroborated. He would meet people, and they would recognize the particular ideas that he had—where no one in America had recognized them.

KANYA: Have his ideas all been corroborated? I doubt it.

SABIRA: No.

KANYA: He had billions of ideas! I'm sure there were some that did happen, and some that didn't happen.

SABIRA: We have files of things that haven't been published yet.

KANYA: How could you publish them? He used to live at the typewriter. He would type night and day, typing a little bit of everything.

SABIRA: Yes, and did he ever discuss with you the particular ideas of his of using breath, the elements, reading a chart and telling a person what their walk was just by reading the chart—that was phenomenal.

KANYA: He sat right there on that same couch you are sitting on when he did that, right here in this room.

SABIRA: Can you relate some of the things that happened here then?

KANYA: No.

SABIRA: Did he tell you who you were and what your astrological walks were?

KANYA: Yeah, he told me astrologically what they were, but Sam and I had a kind of existentialist relationship, we just would—it's like if you walk by a tree, you are friends with the tree, right? But you don't necessarily stay for a long time and talk to the tree. Sometimes you do, but usually you just meet in passing; and I myself am perplexed as to why Sam used to write me so much. I don't know if he wrote everybody with equal vigor, but I know that I never have received in my life that many letters from any one individual, and I kept them. Do you know anybody that he sent this many letters to?

SABIRA: A few.

KANYA: That's unusual for me, because that's all I can tell you.

SABIRA: There were certain people that he wrote to that he valued their opinion; he also was interested in them, and he got something out of writing and receiving letters back.

KANYA: I never could figure that out; I am only now appreciating the fact that I wasn't aware of it. But I never had actually figured it out. Now you say there are others—I never knew whether he wrote like this to everybody or if he only wrote like this to a few. Who were the others?

SABIRA: Oliver Reiser, Dr. Huston Smith, Saadia, Paul Reps, Shamcher Beorse—

KANYA: Oh, that many; There are a lot already.

SABIRA: There's a lot, but there are more that he didn't write that many to.

KANYA: Like 4 billion more maybe?

SABIRA: He said of himself, "I am known as the man who writes the longest letters and makes the shortest speeches." When did he make you his godson; how did that come about?

KANYA: I don't think we went into it formally; I just think I was his godson, that's all. We just sort of had that kind of relationship where in some strange way he was sort of watching over me; and in some kind of strange way I was picking up on some things he had to say.

SABIRA: What did you talk about?

KANYA: If I had to analyze it, we'd actually just be talking about everyday things—"hey, listen, this is some strange weather we are having out here” and then he might explain to me how the weather is the function of the crops and the fertilizer and all that sort of thing. You do have Scorpio rising?

SABIRA: Yeah, but—

KANYA: That's beautiful; you know, Scorpio is represented by the eagle—which is the only bird that flies directly into the sun—and you have that capacity—you used to be a wizard.

SABIRA: I was told I was a monk.

KANYA: Then you were a wizard-monk.

SABIRA: What about these things on possible romances in Sam's life?

KANYA: I believe Sam to have been a celibate, although he never gave off the vibrations of a sexually aggressive man. If he wanted to grab a woman, it was a grab like you’d grab a piece of furniture and move it over to the other side of the room. I've never seen him amorous.

SABIRA: In one of your letters you said, "I was of the opinion you were going to be married."

KANYA: Oh, I was actually sardonically speaking—like, hey man, what's happening, like I just thought you were going to be married—he would always talk about things like marriage, but almost as if it were a political occasion rather than a romantic one. And I never heard him honestly and truly mention that he was going to get married; it was always sort of figuratively speaking. Am I making any sense here?

SABIRA: Yeah, a great deal; that fits in with everything we know so far. we've been trying to find out if he had any sexual needs—

KANYA: I never felt the vibrations that he was even interested.

SABIRA: The stories of his early life with his parents are really something— it probably would have been difficult for him to relate—

KANYA: But of course he chose those parents, don't forget.

SABIRA: Right. He felt that that was how he could learn to bridge the generation gap for the work he had to do later.

KANYA: And bridge the Jewish gap.

SABIRA: And the Jewish gap.

KANYA: That's a very important gap. You have to go through death to become entirely human, and that's the job we all must do.

SABIRA: He was 70 years old before he was really recognized—maybe a few "Kanyas" but there weren't many who could see into him or understood him. A few of the older people like Gavin Arthur. Can you say something about him?

KANYA: Oh yeah; Good old Gavin: Gavin was like a throw-back to the '30's or something; he would always be living in the '30's, or somewhere around there. And he had all these relics: symbols, and astrological signs and pictures pasted up in a most colorful manner—standing in old milk cases, standing up—that sort of thing. And a few homosexual lovers lying around, and picking up old wine bottles that they had just drank them all the night before. Gavin was quite a character. And you know, he was almost the fall of the Roman Empire personified in the Western world.

SABIRA: Did you and Sam and Gavin get together?

KANYA: We did; Gavin used to have a house out there in the Haight-Ashbury district before it became the drug district in which I lived. It was called the global house and Sam used to come by—he might have even lived there, I'm not sure. I know at one time I lived in a house on Fulton Street where Sam lived—I was on the third floor and he was on the second floor.

SABIRA: We thought maybe the family lived on Fulton & then moved to Harrison?

KANYA: No, but he lived on Fulton Street, he rented a room from a young girl; there used to be 3 or 4 young students living about—or young adults—and we sort of had a commune, sort of a semi-type of non-sexual commune.

SABIRA: What was Sam doing in those days?

KANYA: He was just typing there?

SABIRA: He wasn't into gardening?

KANYA: Oh yeah, every once in awhile he'd go out to Marin county and get his hands dirty—you know, he liked to scruff around, get his hands dirty— he had very strong kind of hands. He used to kind of dirty his fingernails so that they looked like they had been into the dirt, and they had been.

SABIRA: There's a story we have about Sam going to his boss and saying he'd figured out how the problems of the world could be solved: "Clean hearts and dirty fingernails."

KANYA: That's it; that's what he had. And he was friends with nature; she was his girl friend—you know, plants have certain vibrations, and there are those that are in tune with them and those that aren't. He was in harmony with them.

SABIRA: Did he ever talk to you about this?

KANYA: We talked silently—words are not necessary for a certain kind of communication. We could converse without saying a word.

SABIRA: What kind of politics did you talk about with him? What views did you and Sam share?

KANYA: We shared an Aquarian interest; we recognized without really going into great detail that mankind is mankind—and let's get everybody together, please; That's all; we were aware of all the stupidities of both the Jew and the Black, and all the racist groups, you know; Sam did not see what color you were, it wouldn't have made any difference; you could have fifty people all black, fifty people non-black, it's all the same—so that's the way I feel too.

SABIRA: Did you have any ideas about the Tree of Life when you met him?

KANYA: In a nascent stage, I'm sure. You see for a long while I was always trying to find out what my role in life was, and school was of no use to me and the careers that I chose were actually just stop-over points in which I could only last the maximum of two years, and I'd wreck it and have to leave that. And so I was into trade when I knew Sam, but I knew that what I was doing was not what I wanted to do with my life. And so Sam maybe saw further—in fact I have a tape-recording of a record, a horoscope that he did for me.

SABIRA: So you weren't actually initiated? Were you a joiner?

KANYA: No, it was more one of brothers in work, you know. I wasn't going to irritate him so why would he initiate me? (much conversation follows).

SABIRA: When was the last time you saw Sam?

KANYA: I don't know; it seems like yesterday. Maybe 10 years ago; of course I can show you the last date on the last letter, but it must have been here somewhere because I do recall him coming to New York around 1970. But I just don't remember things like that.

SABIRA: Do you remember going to restaurants with him? Did he make you angry at any time? What were some of the things that happened? Some of the things he did were outrageous—

KANYA: Yes, he was certainly outrageous—but you see "outrageous" in my context is normal; You see I don't see it because I'm outrageous myself. I suppose just being here would be outrageous—this apartment and here I'm smoking funny cigarettes and things like that—that would have been outrageous—can you imagine what your parents would have done with that information? Right now or twenty years ago? You are outrageous, so since they think you are outrageous, they've given up on you, right? So that's the way Sam would act—and essentially we did things outrageous all the time, (much conversation)—hey, look at the letters, I'll think of something.

SABIRA: Are there any of the letters that we can have?

KANYA: The whole thing of one's personal correspondence is a gray area; we kind of analyzed the letters for you there—dates and stuff—you can have a copy of that—

SABIRA: These are amazing—

KANYA: Yeah, it's amazing that I would keep them like that, but I only keep things that are unusual; and I thought it was unusual that he would write me so religiously, so I kept them and before I knew it I had all those letters.

SABIRA: How did you feel when a letter would come?

KANYA: In some cases, I would feel, "I wish Sam wouldn't write so goddamned much. He is drowning what he has to say, and it is almost a burden to get a ten-page letter from Sam." Then I have to answer it, and read it and try to understand what it says, and he was super loquacious, to put it mildly. But I read everyone religiously, but there are some parts in his letters that I have to leave for future generations to interpret. They are very interesting to me, too, because they mark my own path of development. And so as I read the letters I can remember where my head was at.

SABIRA: Have you read the things that he has written, what has been published?

KANYA: What has he written?

SABIRA: Oh, "The Rejected Avatar," "This Is The New Age In Person," "The Lotus and the Universe," "Towards Spiritual Brotherhood," "The Jerusalem Trilogy."

KANYA: Any in paperback?

SABIRA: Oh yeah, the last was "The Jerusalem Trilogy."

KANYA: Have you read them?

SABIRA: Oh yeah.

KANYA: Do his books read like his letters?

SABIRA: Some of the poetry—how can you put it into words—some of it could tear your heart out, some was ponderous, some showed his erudition—they had to have been channeled from a Higher Source. They became books after he died; Wali All had a lot to do with publishing them. Did you ever participate in Sufi dancing?

KANYA: Maybe. I remember he was always trying to get me to dance, but I have always been one who is very reluctant to dance—you see being a triple Virgo we have difficulty doing anything but mental work. I shouldn't say being a Virgo—being me—so I've seen him dance. As I said, he danced right in this apartment.

SABIRA: Can you describe that?

KANYA: It was sort of like marionette dancing a little bit, kind of like Pinocchio; in his cute, little childish way he would hop and skip around. Like a little marionette, puppet, no, a  leprechaun. Sam was a leprechaun, is a leprechaun, and you know, from one level of consciousness it embarrasses you to have a leprechaun dancing around.

SABIRA: Did he just get up and do it?

KANYA: Whenever he felt like it, yeah.

SABIRA: Did he ever talk to you about his trips to the Far East?

KANYA: He told me about the work he was doing on world hunger. Exactly what he was saying I can't recall, plus the fact that I was so heavily involved in my own little whatever it was, I didn't have time to think about these things. I haven't spent any time at all thinking about things relating to Sam other than the fact that maybe occasionally he might wander into my consciousness, because I might see something that he gave me or some book or something. I have several things around here that he gave me—as a matter of fact, a beginning astrological library that he sold to me for $100, that was books that he had inherited.

SABIRA: He got you interested in astrology?

KANYA: He didn't got me interested in it, but he made it available for me to read a tremendous amount of books on astrology, rare books, for very reasonable amounts. He had all these books that he got from someplace—inherited them or something—and he sold me a whole astrological library for $100—so I had a chance to read some books and get into astrology further. He used to read hands, too, if I remember correctly.

SABIRA: Did he read yours?

KANYA: Oh sure.

SABIRA: What did he say, do you remember?

KANYA: No. Before you came, I attempted to prepare myself by looking through all that material, but it has just slid by my head, because I'm immersed in my own mshugena.

SABIRA: Did you ever meet Saadia?

KANYA: I don't know, I might have. Who is that, a man or a woman?

SABIRA: A woman.

KANYA: Does she have another name?

SABIRA: Saadia Khawar Chisti—she is a woman whom he knew that became his god-daughter—he met her in Pakistan.

KANYA: Have you interviewed her?

SABIRA: No, we haven't been to Pakistan. (much conversation). You don't happen to know the whereabouts of Bill Hathaway do you?

KANYA: No, He (Sam) was pretty good friends with Claude Ehrenberg. Do you have his name?

SABIRA: We don't have that name. What was he into?

KANYA: Claude was the custodian of the academy. And so they probably talked about pruning the flowers in the back and Mill Valley, and maybe about money. Claude had a little money and was going to put it into something, and Sam had some contacts with some the money people around, because he had a brother who was in business, isn't that true?

SABIRA: As far as we know, the brother didn't actually work, but the father worked at Levi-Strauss for 65 years.

KANYA: Wasn't the one of the founders?

SABIRA: He was a vice-president; I don't know if he was one of the founders, there was a grandfather who was supposed to have been the man who invented the copper rivet that helped Levi-Strauss Company become famous. That has only been corroborated by the family, however.

KANYA: Sam was the most ego-maniacal man that I've ever known, he really was—and that, if anything, I think, is what made Sam the kind of person that turned people off—because unless you were talking about Sam—but he wouldn't ever shut up. He would be like an airplane flying over; you can't turn the drone of a jet engine off. It just drones one, right? And that's the way he would be, loud.

SABIRA: You said that you could communicate silently—

KANYA: I'm into meditation myself, but we really admired each other's audacity. (much conversation).

SABIRA: So he was an ego-maniac was he? Did he bore you sometimes?

KANYA: Sometimes. It was very interesting; there were times when I didn't know if he was a jackass or a genius; I'm still not sure.

SABIRA: Could you say how he might have influenced your own life?

KANYA: First of all he helped me to recognize that there were other crazy people too, and that is important to know, because you think along these lines and you cannot find anybody else who does, and then you more and more suspect that the people are right—that you are out and out crazy. So you need people like Sam to help you know that you are sane; And California of course is full of nuts;  you walk down the street in San Francisco and people say hello to you, but in New York that is insane, completely crazy; you can't do that here, but I do it anyhow. I was sorry to see that Sam had passed on because I've always had a feeling that he and I had work to do together. You see, I am building my commune, you might call it; I see myself getting involved in getting a large piece of land and people-ing with people that I choose. See Sam would have been one of the ones that I would choose. It's like a communal idea I've had in a tropical land where people can live like nature designed them to live, just like brothers and sisters, and then like humans—meditating and working together, teaching skills, etc—I have some information about it, I'll give you some. I want to go to Brazil, get several hundred acres of land; I already have the people picked out from all over the world to put on this land to demonstrate to the world what living together could be like.

SABIRA: There are some communes like that in the U.S.

KANYA: Not like this. Most of the communes you go to here—the vibrations are very strange; there is not much love in these communes—there is a lot of hostility—it's really very interesting—people so angry— and we want one where there is nothing but love. We have that vibration up in the store, among our family that works up there—and I have at least 125 people already picked out that could live together demonstrating to the rest of the world what communes are all about. Now I have to get back to the store (much conversation). We have problems with the store; it is falling down around our ears and the state is trying to take it away and get a parking lot there, so we have a psychological problem of putting money that we don't have into a building that we don't own and maybe still be kicked out—so now we are going completely crazy and are fixing it up just as if we were going to keep it, on a slap-desk low budget. So we are spending a couple of thousand dollars trying to fix it up, and we’ll see what happens. Sam would definitely have been one of the people—

SABIRA: Sam himself lived the impossible dream—

KANYA: We are very similar in that respect, and I just knew that at some future time we would have been working together on something. We were straight across the board, we were equals.

SABIRA: He probably used you, in a sense, as a sounding board in his letters, because you could answer from a different place than the others he wrote to.

KANYA: Yeah, what I got from Sam was that was somebody that I could tell my wildest ideas to and it wouldn't knock him down; he would just relate to them, "Yeah, that makes sense." So that would be good for my head, and I suppose that in some other way I was good for his head, because he couldn't say anything to me that would flabbergast me; what could he says, "Let's fly to the moon." Come on, then, let's go, man.

SABIRA: He used to tell people to "do something, and if you fall flat on your face, pick yourself up and do it again." That's why people loved him, and also found him controversial too—he would do, things that they couldn't understand—

KANYA: Do you know how he died? He was so wiry, you know.

SABIRA: He fell down the steps in the house he was living in. A lot of people don't know why he died—his family was a very long-lived family.

KANYA: How old was he?

SABIRA: 75. Nobody knows just what he died of: uremia poisoning or whatever.

KANYA: Any foul play suspected?

SABIRA: There are some, who feel that the hospital might have been inept.

KANYA: No, I mean involved with the fall—

SABIRA: Not in a sense of anyone being there—there are lots of stories. Maybe he was supposed to leave so the Sufi Order could come together, so that he could do work on the inner planes—we don't know. Everyone has their own story of what it was like when he passed.

KANYA: Was anyone in the house when he fell?

SABIRA: I don't think so.

KANYA: He was alone?

SABIRA: I'm not sure.

KANYA: I never saw him fall down.

SABIRA: It doesn't fit with what we know about him, since he was so light on his feet and sure-footed, and always knew what he was doing. (Talk about being in hospital).

KANYA: Was he conscious?

SABIRA: Partially conscious.

KANYA: Oh, he had a brain concussion then?

 SABIRA: We haven't seen the autopsy report; no one knows absolutely sure. The family was angry, they were thinking about brain surgery but that didn't happen because the family and the Sufis didn't want it to. He was in two hospitals: S. F. General and Chinese, and he died at the latter. And people would experience light and peace when they went into his room after he passed. And certain members of the Sufi Order received a very strong transmission from Sam and were able to carry on the functions of the Sufi Order.

KANYA: And now it is really going!

Fiona, Michael Ricketts, Mubdi Poppen—on Murshid 6/29/76

SABIRA: Let's start with Fiona; let's start with how you met Murshid or whatever you recall about his life.

FIONA: Actually, as I was going to say, the first time I ever heard about him was when I was in London before I came to America, and I was very new in the whole Sufi thing. I had just met Pir Vilayat in a place called Hastings.

SABIRA: What year was this?

FIONA: Oh, I have no idea.

SABIRA: Approximately?

FIONA: Approximately I think about 8 years ago; it must have been about that because I have lived here now for 6 years—6 or 7—and it was about—say about 8 years ago. I can check on that if you need it. anyway, I had met Pir Vilayat and in those days, our meetings—I was meeting with a group of Sufis in London, and it was very—the meetings were very sedate, they were very quiet and a lot of meditation. He used to do an awful lot of meditation, in fact that was practically what the whole meeting was. We would go in and there would be total silence, we would sing some songs, and we would do these lengthy meditations that Pir Vilayat was wanting to give out in those days—those very long meditations that I certainly couldn't follow at all. It was just awfully dull, and that was my orientation towards Sufism plus the writings of Hazrat Inayat Khan that I had just begun to get into. And then I—was that the year?—I think that was the year that I came to—I came to New York and not really forgot about Sufis but it didn't occur to me that there would be Sufis in New York, and I had no contacts in New York. I was just coming without knowing anybody, and I came to New York and I worked there for about a year. Then I went back to London and that was the year I went to Suresnes and Chamonix, and I met somebody there—then Reschad had been in contact with all these Sufis that had been coming through London at that point. This was before he was made a Sheikh in the Sufi Order, and he came with us to Chamonix that year. And we met an American—in those days at Chamonix they were very—they were mostly Europeans, though very few Americans came to that camp, I remember. The majority were Europeans and Pir Vilayat was giving all his meditations in three languages, and he would turn around and do the same thing all over again. And it was very small; I can't remember how many people, but I seem to remember there were only a hundred or something, it was very small. They called that the year of the big transition because just the year after that it went from 100 up to about 250 I think, and we were caught in this transition point. And I suppose because the Americans weren't organized with the camp (?) it seemed to be a complete shambles. We ran out of water, there was no water, and we had no buildings at that time. There were just tents that were pitched on the side of the mountain. And you had to find a place to sleep amongst all those rocks and stuff but anyway—this, this man called Bernard, I don't remember what his second name was—he'd been in San Francisco and he'd met Samuel Lewis, and he described the dancing that had been done, and you see, the only way that I had of relating that to any kind of Sufi dancing was with dancing from the Middle East, doing the turn which I had seen done, which was very sedate, yes, very sedate—and this fellow Bernard—the first time I had ever heard about Sam, or Sufi Sam as he was called—at least that's the way I first heard about him—was in Chamonix. It was approximately eight years ago—and we heard—I was hearing him from this English point of view—and that he was this crazy man that people seemed to be very divided about. They were either absolutely crazy about him or they thought it was very undignified what he was doing. That was the British point of view, but it was very undignified—how could you possibly get up and start stumping around a room shouting Ya Malik and all this kind of stuff and put actions to something that we were certainly very accustomed to sitting in an upright position and repeating over and over in a very sedate kind of way. So really he was the first introduction that I had to some of the walks. He would show us, and we thought, "My it is incredible, I've never seen,"—and I always enjoyed dancing a lot so I could see what he was doing, putting—

SABIRA: This was Bernard, you mean?

FIONA: Oh Bernard wasn't a dancer at all—

SABIRA: He was just showing you?

FIONA: He was just showing me, and showing my friend, a girl that I knew that had been an old friend of mine called Aeolia (sp) that went to the camp with me too, and we thought that it was something, a way of being able to feel in your body what was going on—at least that was the way we saw it at that time, what the different mantrams of the Sufis were. It was, of course, very interesting, but, of course, it didn't go down at all at the camp, not at all. People just absolutely could not—they were far too self-conscious to get a whole group of British and French and Germans all doing the dancing was absolutely no go at all. It was one dismal failure; they were much more comfortable sitting in anonymity, God forbid they should get up and perform. It was very funny, very funny, and also, at the time Pir Vilayat was very uncomfortable with it too, he isn't/he wasn't then the kind of man that could feel comfortable doing dancing of any kind.

SABIRA: Had he met Sam at this time?

FIONA: I don't think so, I don't think so, I might be wrong about that. But anyway, and then of course we all went back, and I went off on another retreat and then we all went back to London, and then Reschad started talking about him. Reschad of course the way he would talk about him would be, “Don't be deceived,” he said, “by the outward appearance of the man, but he is a very wise man.”

SABIRA: Excuse me for interrupting, there was one person who did a tape that the first time they saw Sam he had his pants unzipped, and he come with shaving cream under his ear—and they thought, "This is a spiritual guru?”

FIONA: Right, we couldn't see him (?)

SABIRA: "If he couldn't even zip his pants, what kind of teacher could he be?”

FIONA: Right, I know. Of course, we knew that Reschad was very much in those days—he laughed about him himself, but he felt that robes and beads and incense burning and all that stuff was very important, and someone that would, as you say, would come out with unzipped pants and stomp around the room yelling whatever he felt he had to yell, was just absolutely not home, but—And then about the same time I met this man—when I came back to New York I didn't know then, but I was due to come West. I left N.Y. and started driving West, again with my friend Aeoli and Tony, and we started heading West, and we came out here. And actually Reschad by that time had given me the address of the Mentorgarten. He told me that that was where Sufi Sam lived, and that I should go and introduce myself, as Reschad put it, and say that I was from the Sufi group in London, and I don't know what would have happened if I'd ever done that, but anyway I didn't. It took me a long time to get in contact with the Sufi group here, and I remember in the meantime I made friends with this lawyer who lived across in Berkeley at the time, and he was—like a lot of lawyers—very much into containing his emotions, being very objective and intellectual about all kinds of things that happened, but one day he told me the story about meeting—going to this meeting, this Sufi meeting on the beach here. Do either of you ever remember meetings on the beach? Do you ever, do you ever remember that? It is something that happened out of curiosity, do you ever remember? Did he used to go down on to the beach with a group of people?

MUBDI: Sure, he did, why? (inaudible) a lot of meetings were outside (several conversations here).

FIONA: Yeah, this was not him?

MUBDI: In Golden Gate park—Walks, lots of walks, we would walk up and down the hill just to walk. That was one of the first things that I remember him having me do “Learn how to walk.” So some of my first meetings with him were not really—though I did meet him first in a meeting in 1967. I had been in General Hospital and had met a girl there who was coming to meetings and also a very good friend of a girl who had been a very close friend of mine in college, and at the time I was married, and my husband had met Sam on Mt. Tamalpais through somebody that he had known at work, it was very interesting, who runs a book store in Berkeley,

FIONA: Shambala?

MUBDI: Yeah that's right, Shambala. Michael Fegan. I really did have problems then at that time. I could hardly talk, I was very nervous, everything, that you were saying about the people, the German and the French being very shy to show themselves in any way, maybe—that was something that was going on in me then. Sam had started maybe helping so many people with that. One of the things that I remember, though this isn't in order, he said that he ran—he taught classes where you couldn't fail. And he used to split (?) the spiritual walks and the walks—just that idea that something that really—that really brought the love out in me right away, because I could then trust everyone, You see, everybody in their light, really where they shine. The first time I saw him was his hair was still short. He was, let's say, conventional Sam, compared to what he turned into. This was a little bit before the dances. He—I went to one of his—he used to divide them—at that time Zen Buddhism (?) —he had his gabardine pants on and his old Wool shirt, and two mismatched socks, and there was a little bit of incense and five very stern pictures on the wall, in the Mentorgarten that's what I saw.

SABIRA: They're still there too. Shaku Soyen and Senzaki I think.

MUBDI: I didn't understand him at all, I didn't. For me the experience was still very intellectual, partly from where I was at, partly because of where the people were at, they—finding a teacher or getting involved in yourself at a level at where most of us had only read about before, or come from the most rigid types of disciplines maybe.

SABIRA: Do you remember—

MUBDI: I wish I could talk in colors and pictures because that is what is coming to my mind right now—then I went to several meetings. I wanted to find out more about myself then—I had an interview with him and in the living room there. And he said, "You must learn to listen—listen to yourself, and breathe, breathe like a baby." I had children. I was very shy of the group. I felt older, I felt in a very different place, I was married and had children and it wasn’t until the dancing started that I began to feel that I could be a part of this group, because he was showing me myself and showing me the other people too. It was. Michael, you talk for a little while.

SABIRA: It's hard to remember isn't it?.

MUBDI: So much in a certain way, where—because this man changed my life; he gave me life too, he gave me life that I wanted to have. It was like he took me back to if there was a purpose, he just made it, and it wasn't in any one thing, or one, it was thousands for me of little looks, or one time over at Nancy’s house, I guess I was feeling that I had a little bit of a problem or something a little down and the next thing we were doing—holding on to each other and on a line just saying "Allah, Allah, Allah," and just going more and more—and hundreds of these little things, plus the classes which were a major part for me. One thing I want to say while I am looking at Fiona. He introduced the most wonderful world of women for me that has carried on after a year. I haven’t been an active member of the group now for three years, but I can say that my relationships with women were deepened beautifully, because of some of the things he started and the women’s dancing classes.

SABIRA: That's what's important to find out; it's not just the living being but what part of it is assimilated, and that which you can carry through and use in your life.

MUBDI: Practical. That's right there, this is another thing, in an extremely disorganized, very matter-of-fact person. I have a lot of energy, I have a lot of energy but I didn't know how to use it practically, like a tremendous—a realization that I had everything that I needed, absolutely everything that I needed, and I came—I wanted so much to have something special to be able to give to the group—this was right about the time that I was going to be initiated and so I sat down next to him one night, “What can I do for you and this group?" And he said, "What can you do?" I thought about that a while. I couldn't type, I couldn't garden whatever, I said; he said, "The house-keeper needs some work—Leslie come over here, what needs to be done?" "The laundry." I knew how to do laundry, so I did the laundry for quite a long time. In that example you have what you need to do, no matter what circumstance you are in if you can open yourself to do that. And if you can't open yourself to that, maybe that isn't the right place for you right then, and in that circumstance. And you don't see it and need some help in finding it.

SABIRA: Yeah, let's find out how Michael met Sam and then we'll get on to some other stories. Okay, you're on.

MICHAEL: I met him at Pineal Street.

SABIRA: You were living in that house?

MICHAEL: Yeah.

SABIRA: And who was living there at the time?

MICHAEL: Joan, who is now Saul’s wife—

SABIRA: Majid.

MUBDI: That's right, yeah.

MICHAEL: Stephen who is now—oh he is with Saul, he works he's into medicine, a little fellow, long hair—

SABIRA: Oh, I know.

MICHAEL: Has a wife and baby.

SABIRA: Khalil, is he Steve? Oh I see. (Several talking here)

MICHAEL: Then there was Abraham—

SABIRA: He was here last week, did you see him?

MICHAEL: Is that right?

SABIRA: Yeah, he stayed here for three days.

MICHAEL: I didn't realize that.

SABIRA: But anyway—

MICHAEL: Charlene, who is now somebody else, I don't know.

MUBDI: That name is familiar too.

SABIRA: That was a lady that Shabda came with—maybe, maybe not, there was a Charlene that Shabda was with for a while.

MICHAEL: Yeah, Shabda was there as a matter of fact—

SABIRA: Then it was probably the same Charlene then.

MICHAEL: Was that—

SABIRA: I don't know if she is here now.

MICHAEL: There might have been two.

SABIRA: Was John Deederick there then?

MICHAEL: I don’t think so.

SABIRA: Anyway go ahead.

MICHAEL: I had come back from a trip down to Big Sur Land; a little thing happened down there, and I was with a couple other friends and someone had cut their hand on a honey tin—they were eating honey—and they were trying to heal it with the honey, and they were laying back in a yoga position. This other friend and I looked up in the sky, and there was a cloud, exactly his duplicate above him, and God that’s far out (?) and there was one other cloud in the sky, and it was an arrow pointing North, and the next day we went North, and we were at Pfeiffer beach, a very windy beach with a lot of energy, a lot of prana. And this fellow was talking to me, we were—I met him on the beach and he asked me what I was doing and I was gabbing a little bit, and I asked him what he was into, and he said, "Sufi." And I said, "What's Sufi?" He says, he really couldn't explain it, I couldn't have explained it either. And that was it, that was the conversation, but he said, "It's just really, it’s really something." So the next day we went North again and we came back, and I went to Pineal Street and I was going there with the intention of trying to get some attention from my friends, proving my existence, and there were these other people in the house, and I thought, "It's not so easy,"(?) I was going there trying to get attention and here were all these other people getting attention, and they seemed pretty far out, but I wasn't going to recognize that was happening—who were these people? And it turned out to be Shabda and some others and they were just really enlightened at the time because they had just been to some meeting or the camp—maybe the camp it was that they were just at.

FIONA: Which one was that? Was that the—

SABIRA: Probably Arizona.

MICHAEL: (two talking) Yeah, it was around that time.

SABIRA: Shabda was Peter then? wasn't he?

MICHAEL: Peter, yeah, and they were just talking and talking about Sam, and they were like really fun. That was like just the first hit, and about a week or two later, somebody said, "Hey, do you want to go to a Sufi dance?" "Oh okay." So I went, and it was at the seminary? in San Anselmo. Very beautiful place—and I went there. I was pretty lost at the time in a different way than I am lost now, and there was Sam, and he just hit home. I think maybe because he was very radical and very different from anything that I had ever pictured a guru to be. He wasn't a guru to me, he was something else, I wasn't real close to him either, but I watched every move he made and I listened to every word he said and a lot of things didn't strike home then either, they struck home after he died. But when he opened his mouth, it was just, that was it, and I knew then that I wanted to be in that place, that I wanted to hang around the Sufis for a while and do that. So I did. I was probably the happiest I've ever been when I lived at Pineal Street right around that time, that was really a very neat time. But Sam said some far out things, far out—that's one that I remember a lot. People would say "far out" about something that was happening, "Wow, isn't this far out?" And. Sam would say, "It's not far out at all, it's real, it's right there, it’s not far out,” and that used to strike home. I used to hear that a lot. And I’ll always remember how we danced the Krishna dance—that was really something special, and I remember his hands—he had the strongest—they were so earth. They were like bright—they were trunks; they were like the fire meets the earth. They were so wide, and they really, they really had something.

MUBDI: Do you remember … watch (inaudible) … he would pour a great big blotch on his arm and he would lift up his sleeve like this and right in the middle, almost that was part of the comedy of his life—

FIONA: Yeah, part of his way of saying, “yeah, don't get too spaced out because we have time left—

MUBDI: He was always in touch—he was always there at just about any level you would—certainly any level I was at—and if the contract at San Anselmo said it was about time to be over he was aware of it rather than the light just being burned out.

MICHAEL: Once there was a Siva-Ram dance and the energy was really high. And I was at the Seminary, all of a sudden Sam says, "Stop!" and he just blew up on the floor, and everybody just stopped; I don't know how he finished it, what he did then, but he got into something else. And his reason was that people were not going to be able to handle the energy after they finished the dance—they were going to have all this energy and what were they going to do with it? It was going to be nervous energy and so he brought them down right then. Now he was into doing that—all of a sudden Bang! he'd zap on you, and he would just come out of nowhere with a heavy real movement.

MUBDI: He never let you forget that you were in the group; this was a group activity and anybody who wanted to be the star in some kind of way—you realized that you were the star in the constellation and I felt that that was what you were talking about of stopping something if somebody wasn’t letting their energy get out of control in a dance, let's say, because you are right, it would get so high. You would be aware and come back, and then it would soar even higher.

MICHAEL: Yeah, right.

MUBDI: That is—I thought of a funny story. Coming home, on the way back from San Anselmo one time—I had a car that really did not have much energy but that night it died, and Wali Ali was in the car and there were a couple of other people—what were we going to do, George do you remember George, I don't know if he has anything to do with … he was black—

FIONA: Yes, oh Omar (several talking) he married a Scottish girl—

MUBDI: Right,—

FIONA: Miriam—

SABIRA: We are going to do him Thursday.

FIONA: Her name was Jackie then—

MUBDI: I believe he had a little motorcycle; he stopped by riding in it (?) What were we going to do? So I believe it was he and Wali Ali got out and they started giving that car some energy

FIONA: Really!

SABIRA: That's neat, I haven't heard that one yet.

MICHAEL: It worked! It was great. I remember George with his motorcycle—how kind. But his energy going round the car in a circle helped it get going. It got us back to the city.

SABIRA: How about stories about initiation? Did you have something else you wanted to add?

FIONA: No, all I was going to say was that that was one thing that constantly—there was something very nice about being able to sit down and do lengthy meditations, but the one question I always had about that after our meetings—and I know that it had to do with our own limitations. But we would get up and leave the building—and everyone could simply—it was like going to church on Sunday. In Scotland everyone goes to church and you wear your best clothes and then the rest of the week you can be an absolute idiot, as long as you go to church every Sunday. And for myself I would see people come and go from the group and do their lengthy meditations and then leave the building—and they were no longer in their posture or in their state, and they would just become—sometimes less than what they ought to be, and I don't know, but it didn't really make sense to me, because the thing that kept going on in my head was that if it is really going to work than it has to work in everything you do. Now maybe that has something to do with my Scottish practicality too, but I don't know. When I started, the first time that I saw these dances or the walks being done, I realized that that was something that throughout whatever you were doing during the day you could remove yourself from and see something working through you that had always been there and always is there, and it is a way of removing yourself from yourself, if you see what I mean. It's like, if you are very caught up in being self-conscious or being a fool or being depressed or whatever it is, you can see something else working in you. At least in those days that was the way that I saw it, and it made tremendous sense to me, and then after that, of course, I started doing a lot of Zen, you've done a lot of Zen?

SABIRA: Yeah, some—

FIONA: And it was very much the same thing, in a way, of being able to remove yourself in that particular aspect to see something that continues, that never ever goes away, that is just continuous and has nothing to do with you in a way, and catching a glimpse of that I found to be very helpful. But coming out here was very strange, because what happened was that I kept on dogging in his footsteps like those pictures in the Zen book of the Oxherding scenes? And I kept on seeing his footprints; I saw his impressions on everybody I met—and I thought "Good Lord," —and sometimes I would think, "Oh let me out of here, I just can't stand another minute of this, this is gross," and I would see someone get up and do something, and I thought "Good grief, has he no delicacy at all?" And then—and then another time I would see someone do something in the midst of the most mundane action, and I would think, "That's absolutely beautiful." But the one thing that was really impressed on everybody that I met was that they weren't making a distinction between being meditating, being in a state of meditation and a state of living—they were very conscious of that. And I think that actually at the time that a lot of people hadn't done any lengthy meditations as such.

MICHAEL: That drew you too him?

FIONA: Yeah—it made infinite sense to me and obviously again, depending on our limitations, we were carrying it into our lives. And that was the thing I think that finally cinched it for me was when Reschad came from England and made his first visit out here.

MICHAEL: Oh I remember—

 FIONA: Do you remember that. And he decided, "Okay, Fiona, come on dear get into this car, we are going to do a great tour of all the Sufi Centres in the Bay Area and in LA and all over the place. So we got in to his car and we went up to the Khankah up in Novato, and Pir had met Jemila at Suresnes, the first time that she and Pir Vilayat had met each other, or got together after the Arizona camp and she came to Suresnes, and Pir Vilayat and she were together, and so Reschad had met her there. So then he came up to the Khankah, and he had a long chat with her, and I remember him. Reschad was just absolutely blown away by the Americans. It was the first time he had ever been here. And at the time communes were hot on the scene. People were all living in them, and there was a lot of inter relationships and there were babies from all different mothers and fathers. I remember Reschad sitting at the table having dinner with all these people and all these children would keep coming in and calling different mothers and fathers, and he would say, "Wait a minute now, whose little one is that," he would say, and someone would say, "It is mine, but his father lives over there, and I am now living with this man," and Reschad just couldn't, he just couldn't get over it—he just said, "How do they keep it all straight then, I don't know how they do it dear."

MUBDI: They were concentrating elsewhere.

MUBDI: (laughter/inaudible)

FIONA: It was just so funny in one way, but then of course again there was this aspect of everyone would get up and dance before dinner, and then that was the Invocation to do those dances, and Mansur was still living at the house at that time. And he was hot in to Greek dancing and that was his concentration because Murshid Sam had said that he was to do that, that was to be his concentration, and he did it, of course, with a vengeance. We all got up and did Greek dancing, I remember that, and that was when Reschad was made a Sheikh by Pir Vilayat who was living in the small house at the back of the Khankah. So again there was this—the meeting of the two had already come together and that really clinched it for me, because in a way I'd been oriented towards Pir Vilayat and when I first came here one of the things was that I was the only person in that class that we used to all be at that wasn't a disciple of Samuel Lewis.

MUBDI: I also remember that you gave us some neat meditations.

FIONA: Yes, Wali Ali had actually suggested that I come to this dance class because he thought that since that was happening anyway it might be a good—I don't know—he obviously had his own reasons, but it seemed to me that he thought it might be good for us all to work together, since that was the way it was going to go anyway, as it turned out.

SABIRA: This was the original ladies' class then? You were in that too?

FIONA: in San Francisco —

MUBDI: At Banefsha's house; it wasn't the original ladies' class—

SABIRA: It wasn't the calendar ladies?

FIONA: No, oh no,—

(two or more talking)

MUBDI: Second generation.

FIONA: It was the San Francisco one, the original was in Marin, Wednesday night in Marin.

SABIRA: So what about in initiation?

MUBDI: I was elected for initiation and was initiated in the group—and it happened that we were to be initiated the night, or the night after Murshid fell, so I was in the first group initiated after he passed away, and I have a very special feeling about that initiation. Maybe not for myself, but in feeling the—Wali Ali was the one that I remember in that initiation, and I know that Moineddin maybe performed the thing, it was a very strong connection there between Murshid and Wali Ali for me, and can’t put it into words, how strange it was and still is, though I see Wali Ali coming into his own right, but that doesn’t in my dreams, whatever, I don’t know if there was one of us that didn’t feel that we hadn’t already been initiated by him.

SABIRA: Who was in the group that was initiated that night?

MUBDI: I know Khalil’s wife was—

SABIRA: Subhana—

MUBDI: Subhana. I don’t know whether Khalil himself was; Mary—

SABIRA: Mary Shaffea.

MUBDI: Oh huh—

FIONA: Was it Mary Shaffea? I don’t think it was Mary Shaffea—

SABIRA: She probably didn’t have Shaffea on it—

MICHAEL: No, no don’t you mean Mary who is now Jamshed’s wife?

MUBDI: No, I don’t mean her, I mean Mary Shaffea.

SABIRA: Alright, sorry.

MUBDI: I can’t remember—

SABIRA: So, let me ask, did the initiation occur then right—the same as planned even though he had just died?

MUBDI: No, —

SABIRA: You waited—

MUBDI: It was too late and he was in a transitional state for quite, what seemed at the time, for quite sure time—

SABIRA: About two weeks—

MUBDI: Yeah, a couple of weeks—and it was a kind of desperate time for us, because there was a feeling of being close in one way and not in another. I felt very close to Saul at that time, coming from a medical family myself, but Western medicine. I felt maybe there was something there that could introduce into the situation, but there wasn’t much other then energy coming from my father who didn’t really know what he could do, or if there was anything to do.

SABIRA: Oh, was it your father that they called the night he died to find out what to do? There was some doctor they called. What is your father’s name, last name?

MUBDI: Parker.

SABIRA: No that was another name, there was another doctor.

MUBDI: No, I don’t think it would be; my father is in Boston, and I know that he called a doctor out here—

SABIRA: Alright, then your father is a cardiologist?

MUBDI: No, he is a neural surgeon—

SABIRA: OK, then there was that doctor too; that’s it.

MUBDI: And—I remember something about a—shortly after that there was a very large—I don't know the purpose of the meeting but we got together to go over to Winterland—did you go over to Winterland? I think the Sufi choir was there—the Sufi Choir was going to sing, and we started dancing. It was the first time I had ever been in—

MICHAEL: Was it Winterland?

MUBDI: Yeah, The Grateful Dead—that was it, The Grateful Dead were there, and that's when they were—

SABIRA: Even Frida was at that; she told me.

MICHAEL: Frida was there?

MUBDI: Right, she was still blind then, that's right—

SABIRA: Yeah, Frida told me she went to that (two talking) —

MUBDI: That's right, she was there—

SABIRA: It must be that one, it couldn't be another one—

MUBDI: Because it was very shortly after that—

MICHAEL: I remember her going to that—

MUBDI: Because it was very shortly after he died, and the atmosphere and the kind of feeling was very high. It was the first kind of appearance without Sam, and without our shepherd and the lights were so bright, and the energy, like you said, had gone up, up so high after the Grateful Dead had been on—the Choir had not been received so well and I remember somebody from the Grateful Dead saying, "These are our friends, we respect these people, they are our guests, or we invited them here," and we started dancing afterwards, the snake-dance—the only one I can remember. People kind of ramming, they needed to get something but they couldn't really be in the group—it was that same energy that I was talking about before, only this was a perfect example of the way theirs had gotten out of control. And some of the people in the audience were very, very high—you could see it all around them and the energy that they had picked up at the concert. And when we started the dancing it became even higher, but confused—I just remember this kind of grabbing sensation. People kind of wanting to get in, but they were didn't know whether they should break in and couldn't—but there was that something going in the chain and they wouldn't let them in. And I know—several people mentioned afterwards that they just had that—that Sam was still so close—that they could feel him and they could almost see him—laughing, happy.

SABIRA: Did you get your name at the initiation?

MUBDI: No, I didn't get my name until the—it was a couple of months before I started coming to meetings.

FIONA: Because I know that you were Elizabeth when I first met you.

MUBDI: For a long time I was Elizabeth; as a matter of fact, my name is Mubdi Elizabeth, so for a long time Sam felt I should be renamed, and it still is part of my name.

SABIRA: So, he actually gave it to you before you were initiated?

MUBDI: No, Wali Ali gave me the name. Do you know what Mubdi means?

SABIRA: No.

MUBDI: It’s the beginner. Another thing that I wanted to say that came up, something about meditation—I remember Darshan. Sam said “The whole point of this is joy,” screaming out joy, and of course for that minute, and sitting looking at that face and Amin's face—like an angel, it was an angel face—there were these angel faces kind of standing around or you could feel being lifted to the highest angelic planes that feeling of joy. But then there is the next day and then the next day, and that is one of the things that Sam did in the dancing, and in the breathing, I suppose it's just natural, to me but he made these things, he made them so real and so true, that there isn't a doubt anymore, it is not that I don't get depressed because I do—it's that the depression isn't very often, and we know that you understand who Mubdi is. Then I see other people, and that's one of the things I have always wanted to do, it's really seeing the other people.

SABIRA: What memories do you have of initiation?

FIONA: Oh, I was never initiated by Samuel Lewis; I had been initiated by Pir, and through the years that's been who the initiations have come from for myself. And, as I said, the most impressive thing—the thing that felt so if there were no difference was when I saw it (him), so alive, and it just struck home and made such absolute sense.

MUBDI: Don’t ever look at the teacher; look at his disciples, do you remember him saying that?

SABIRA: Sam used to say that.

FIONA: The funny thing is, Reschad would always say that too. He would say something about—oh, because it was a quote from the Bible, "By the fruits of the tree shall ye know them," and so forth, and—anyway, so the fruits were wonderful albeit for me, very different. I had never experienced the kind of ways of living, the life style, and drugs of course, heavy drugs in those days. But again no one was saying, "Don't do it." They were simply saying, “See it for what it is," and that was very much like the Zen thing said too, so all this time as well, I was going off to sesshins and doing all that Zen thing (?) . The day would finally come, I met everybody, I met Moineddin, Shabda, all those people—Shabda, Vasistha, everybody in that tour that we did with Reschad, all the people connected with the Sufi thing, except Sam Lewis, and one day we were going to go to a meeting, a small meeting here at the Khankah and Reschad wasn't there, he had left, and I was going to go, and he had asked me to write and to let him know what had happened, my meeting and everything with Sam Lewis. And so I arrived at the Khankah and the first thing—not the Khankah, the Mentorgarten—and the first thing that struck me was the fierceness, everybody that night was particularly fierce and I thought, "Now wait a minute, what is going on?" I really didn't understand fierceness, I wasn't sure, and Wali Ali was there, and I thought of Wali Ali as being Sam Lewis—I really thought he was when I walked into that room, and I thought, "Oh there he is," and I sat down to start feeling Sam Lewis and there was no question in my mind but that Wali Ali was Sam Lewis. He looked like him, he just acted like all these people that I had met, the thing that I knew that all these people were reflecting, and as I say, he was particularly fierce. He shouted a lot that night, remember he kept stalking everybody and saying things like, "If you want to help, then," he said, "work, that's all I want out of you, work, I don't want your phone calls, I don't want to hear how unhappy you are, I don't want to see your tears, I want your work." And he was shouting, and I thought, "Oh wait a minute, I can see, I can see he is trying to get his point across." There was this—I was beginning to feel that there was something, very important going on, and I definitely wasn't in on it. I could feel it was very important but I just didn’t quite, I didn't quite have my finger on it—

[End of first side.]

—everyone got very quiet and Wall Ali said, "And now I’ll tell you how he is," and that was the day he had fallen down stairs, and he had been taken to the hospital and he was in very serious condition.

SABIRA: Oh, so it was Wali Ali who was doing the yelling, I see.

FIONA: It was Wali All who was doing the yelling, you see, and I had seen—I thought Wali Ali—he was—for me he had completely become Murshid—and I don't know, because you must have been at that meeting—

FIONA: He was incredible, he really was—(all talking here).

MUBDI: And that was…

FIONA: Hadn't he become, Wali Ali—hadn't he become Sam?

SABIRA: I never heard that story—

FIONA: And here I was—I was a total outsider, and all I was seeing was this man that had completely for me—was the reflection of all these—the footsteps, and I kept seeing them. I had met Moineddin, I'd met Jemila, I’d seen the union of Jemila and Pir and seen the whole thing beginning to come together, and I only had seen it from the European, but I hadn't been here, you see when that happened. I had seen it in Europe and I felt, "That's the Americans and Pir Vilayat getting together," that's what I saw it as, and that was the year that Chamonix had changed too. Lots of Americans came to Chamonix that year, no it was this whole union beginning, it was very interesting to me meeting all these people one after the other and finally going to the Mentorgarten to meet this man and thinking that I was meeting him. And then being told that he was dying and he was dead. Actually he died that night did he or the next day? Anyway, I don't remember—

MUBDI: No, he didn't die right after that.

FIONA: Anyway, I don't remember when it was, but I remember that that was the day that he had fallen down the stairs.

SABIRA: He didn't die for two weeks after that.

FIONA: Right—and so I remember thinking at the time—it was a strange feeling because I remember I had a feeling that it wasn't my time to be around just that particular time. But I kept on meeting those people and then through a whole series of circumstances I started working in Berkeley with the Sufi Group.

FIONA: This was the Mentorgarten that you saw this, when Wali Ali was really fierce?

FIONA: Yeah, yeah, very fierce that night,

SABIRA: How’d you—

FIONA: But I remember him being—you see you’d probably been used to that by that time, so you wouldn’t see—I don’t know (two talking here)

FIONA: I’m not telling you..

MICHAEL: He was definitely changing.

MUBDI: It began … there was a change—Wali Ali was not like that—

FIONA: See, I didn’t know that, I had never met that—

MICHAEL: He always, he got this, this, this Zen space—

FIONA: You see, I’d never met Wali Ali, he was the only person that I hadn’t met—

MICHAEL: Strong—

FIONA: Yeah—

MUBDI: Wali Ali was the teddy-bear, sweet.

MICHAEL: Jelal, Jelal, Jelal

FIONA: Isn’t that funny, that night he was just—and I thought that—there was no question in my mind that that was Sam Lewis, no question.

MUBDI: Wali Ali was definitely one of Sam’s disciples to watch and see a tremendous change come—

MICHAEL: Yeah, for sure—

MUBDI: He couldn’t say boo; he could say sweet things but not boo.

FIONA: Really!

MUBDI: And watch the voice (?) come, come, come, —not that he wasn't always powerful.

FIONA: Yes that night must been a real manifestation.

MUBDI: I’d have to say that time—because I saw it fluctuate—

FIONA: That’s right, because for me that was…. (two talking).

MUBDI: The practice that I liked the most that we did that was far out. We would refine our breath and breathe in all the joy we could breathe in and breathe out all the joy we could breathe out—

SABIRA: That's the three Jnanas—

MICHAEL: What is it?

SABIRA: Jnanas (several talking).

MICHAEL: They really did seem to work every time, they would really give us a feeling of more than I don’t know—When I heard that Sam died, how he fell down the stairs; I tried to remain unattached, and I was saying to myself, “That happened and here I am, this is now, and all that,” but it really hit much harder than I was counting on it to (?)—and later on I realized that I really had lost something that I was really following him and watching every move he made and being as close to him as I possibly could, and I know he was helping me. I wasn’t sure how; I wasn’t really in touch with what was happening inside of me, this body but I knew something was going on—and I knew I liked the people around him—

FIONA: Yeah, I was going to ask you that—what did you see in the other people?

MICHAEL: That's what I saw—I saw it in his disciples around him.

MUBDI: Yeah, it was remarkable to watch—you could tell it in numerous ways—

MICHAEL: I loved being around people, that is—

MUBDI: They were lovable—

MICHAEL: I kept on putting myself through tests of being with people who were not Sufis and I still do, but I guess we it's through the—(?)

FIONA: Oh, I like them too, though.

MICHAEL: But I do know that I really enjoy the Sufis, being close to them is really nice.

MUBDI: Were you initiated?

SABIRA: Yeah, right, did you take initiation, with Sam?

MICHAEL: Yeah.

SABIRA: Do you want to tell us a little bit about it?

MICHAEL: The initiation wasn’t a special one, I don't remember that much of it even but the initiation wasn't a special thing, it wasn't that important, there wasn't any special meaning. I knew that it was part of it and I looked forward to it, and I wanted to be initiated. It was just kind of part of the attention thing that I was into at the time, that I just wanted to be it, because—and then I was a disciple—

FIONA: Yeah, the "in" Group.

MUBDI: There is a very strong feeling there about that.

MICHAEL: That's what kept me separate from people because I wanted to be "in." The first time I went to the seminaries all these incredible angels dancing around in white flowing things. I immediately went out and from then on for all of six months I had worn nothing but white—and I wasn’t really there, I was trying to be but I wasn’t. It came to me in other ways, the compassion is probably what I….

MUBDI: It is funny how your body carries even though you have a certain perception where you are and how you are relating with your inner and your outer—or I guess as I see now as you are talking you have these attitudes but still how your body brought you and the amount of levels that he could work, really work on/in—I am saying this for me, I can't speak for you, but I can see it in you—that's my feeling, like I do remember your white face, and let me say, here is somebody else looking, he was one of the people, he's wearing white. That was great, that was a great kind of time.

SABIRA: Did you go to his funeral, Michael? He changed….

MUBDI: Yes, he changed, because he wasn't that way the first time.

MICHAEL: Yes, I went to the coroner's office and sat. I was sure that he was going to move, I was sure. That was a nice time like that.

MUBDI: Yeah, it was for me too, it was the first and only time I had ever seen just the body of somebody, who had left. I hardly recognized him because he had a harsh face to me, when he was smiling he was joyous but I felt it was foreign and hard and harsh and I was afraid of him. But when I looked at the body I just realized that he had a beautiful body. His face was beautiful.

SABIRA: Would you remember some things like about the quality of the ski for instance?

MUBDI: It was translucent, it was beautiful. I remember walking around to keep looking and I was impressed that the air in there was very still, something about being able to see very small gnats. I think they were fruit flies, something that you would never see around Sam alive because he moved so much. Not that they wouldn't be attracted but his energy was so all the time doing. Now I'm thinking it was kind of weird, what were those flies doing in there, but they were and they were kind of floating around and I didn't have any of the feelings that I thought I would have about death and Sam. I was a completely different way than I thought I would be.

SABIRA: How long did you get to stay?

MUBDI: I believe it was half an hour. I was there from midnight to 12:30, it was late at night and they had little flowers and incense; it was so simple and touching, that they had made this kind of cold morgue into kind of a shrine. I remember all the little candles. And everything was—there were little mats on the floor with linoleum with steel things and even your—the table was one of those carts, but he was—there were flowers on his body, they put flowers there—that again, I think, was just like a symbol of the times. We were crazy people not afraid of convention because he wasn’t afraid of anything like that. I think, I know that I certainly was very impressed with convention and all those kinds of things and he just blasted through that.

MICHAEL: One thing that kept on coming to my mind while I was watching him, watching his body—was that he had said, that the teacher is as strong as his pupils, or as great as his disciples, and I think that Wali Ali had mentioned right after he had fallen that he was giving his—that it was up to his disciples now, it was up to disciples to carry on, and I was really feeling this when I was there, and it was making me feel—it was an overwhelming kind of feeling—I can’t say it made me feel good, I think it made me feel good and it also made me feel responsible. And I think that that is one thing that he did for me, he made me feel responsible where I should be responsible.

SABIRA: Did he ever blast you, ever get angry at you?

MICHAEL: He got angry, I was upset; I was very upset that he did but he wasn’t directing it toward me, I am certain of it now, he was directing it toward someone else—no, I’m not certain of that, I’m just saying—

SABIRA: What happened?

MICHAEL: I’m not really sure, I had a question to ask, and he was really wrapped up in something, something that had happened just before the meeting, it was at the Mentorgarten—and something had just happened. When somebody would have called him and asked him how he was doing and he used to bring that up and say, “Why do they have to call and ask me how I’m doing?” He thought that that was very annoying; it was something like that, something that happened just before the meeting—somebody brought something up, and I asked him a question, and he was still centered on this other thing and he brought it up again—and it was almost as if he were yelling at me for what I had to say—I can’t say that he missed what I had said, but he was still angry about this thing. And that’s what I mean he knew—I don’t think he ever paid too much attention to me personally.

SABIRA: Did that get you angry?

MICHAEL: No, I know exactly why he wouldn’t because that was exactly what I wanted, and if I had gotten that, then I would have, I would have lost more than I got.

SABIRA: When did you discover that this was so in your personality?

MUBDI: Oh, I think all the time, I really can’t say exactly when I discovered that that was what was happening.

SABIRA: Because he seemed to know, from what—he knew each person—

MUBDI: He knew, I tried in so many ways to get his attention, and I couldn’t get it, because that’s been my whole life. I’m always trying to get attention from others, to say that I was doing the right thing, and I’m sure that he wanted me to say to myself that I was doing the right thing. The walks were very meaningful for me too, and practices that he would do. Everything seemed right with me with Sam. Everything seemed to fit into place. He was born in San Francisco; I was; he was into the dancing; I was going to be a dancer. Solitaire—I was always very intrigued by solitaire myself little things like that.

MUBDI: Nero Wolfe? Nero Wolfe? That was what not me.

MICHAEL: What was it?

MUBDI: That he loved to read Nero Wolfe stories?

MICHAEL: Nero Wolfe?

MUBDI: The detective.

MICHAEL: Oh really?

MUBDI: I was a mad women for … (two talking).

MICHAEL: I was amazed that he watched Perry Mason.

MUBDI: Yeah.

MICHAEL: And you know what Wali Ali said about that?

MUBDI: No?

MICHAEL: Somebody asked him, “Why do you watch Perry Mason? And he said that the only things that he used to watch were Perry Mason and the football games, because he claimed he saw astral beings on them.

SABIRA: I wouldn’t be surprised; he used to get signs from things—the solitaire was one of them—I don’t know just how it worked, but people told us that he would pick up a card, “Oh that’s a sign of that,” or he would read something in the newspaper, “Oh,” and he would get a sign form something, and then he would act or react, and that was sometimes one of the reasons why be got angry all of a sudden—the instance you remember—there is no way to know—things which had meaning for him.

MICHAEL: Yeah, right—

SABIRA: And then something would happen as a result, and somebody else would get the brunt of it. Did he ever yell at you?

MUBDI: No.

SABIRA: And blast you as far as you know?

MUBDI: No, as a matter of fact, I tried, as everybody was talking to remember if I ever saw him angry over a period of time. I saw him flare up on met things in order, I heard stories—but all the time that I saw him he was—

FIONA: Does anyone remember Frank—(?)

MUBDI: Frank?

MICHAEL: He used to ask the greatest questions, that I remember that he always used to ask the greatest questions. He was a friend of … the name means the wonderer—

FIONA: The wanderer?

MUBDI: Yes, the Sufi is, in Arabic it means—

FIONA: Oh yeah—he wanders form Khankah to Khankah and—he was in London, remember? And I gave you his number?

SABIRA: You did?

FIONA: Yeah, remember you called me up and he used to be at the Beshara center in London—

SABIRA: Oh yes, but I don’t remember who it is—

FIONA: A small fella?

MICHAEL: Yeah.

FIONA: Yeah, I know exactly who you are thinking about, —

MICHAEL: A small fella—

FIONA: Yeah, I know.

SABIRA: Anyway, so what’s the point with Sam?

FIONA: He had a friend named Greg, and Greg had very curly hair, Greg … I think.

SABIRA: Greg Ptomkin, I think; it must be, there is only one Greg—Greg Ptomkin—

FIONA: Right (several talkings).

MICHAEL: He used to ask the most fantastic questions; Sam was really in to this person. He really liked him, and he was radical. Greg was definitely off the wall and Greg was very attracted to Sam.

FIONA: Where is he now? What happened to him?

 MICHAEL: I don’t know.

MUBDI: I haven’t seen him, oh no I just remember him so vividly from camp and his friend, the wanderer—if you saw him—

MICHAEL: Salik!!

FIONA: Salik!! got it, see. (Several Talking)

SABIRA: Oh Sure, Salik Cholom now I remember.

FIONA: He and I were at Beshara together.

SABIRA: He’s been in New York, Wali Ali wrote him or something; we didn’t get an answer.

FIONA: Yeah, you didn’t ever a hold of him?

SABIRA: Wali Ali wrote him a letter but nothing came back yet.

FIONA: Really;

SABIRA: That might mean he didn’t get it, so I don’t know—

FIONA: Because he was out in L.A., he came to Los Angeles, and—

SABIRA: You’d hear about him, like he talks to everybody—

MICHAEL: He had (?) (two talking here)....

FIONA: He did the drawings for Reschad’s book—

SABIRA: Oh! Well.

MICHAEL: Sam used to say a lot of things to him.

SABIRA: Do any of you know how to reach Fred Rohe? Or Bill Hathaway? We just really want to talk to him. Fred Rohe too, he had a big part in Sunseed.

FIONA: No, Fred Cohn was the fella that made it—

SABIRA: That’s Amertat.

FIONA: That’s Amertat now, right.

SABIRA: I don’t know if he knows it or not.

FIONA: He must know, he made the film.

SABIRA: I could write him; he is at the Abode. How should we sum up, are there any stories that you can remember or anecdotes or anything that you’d like to add to the tape? Would you just like to sum up what Sam meant to you? Let’s see, you never actually met him, right?

FIONA: No, but all the same, but what he meant to me was the meeting of these two incredible forces, to me that was—

SABIRA: That was extraordinary, yeah.

FIONA: That I should travel, seeing myself in the whole puzzle of the thing and becoming—on the West coast at that time—I don’t know, I saw myself as being between the two, feeling very much submerged in the two within myself, because I was very involved on the West coast with Sufis here and still have strong loyalties to Pir Vilayat and then Reschad who is a Sheikh in the Sufi Order—he has since left.

SABIRA: He is Sheikh of the Mevlana order?

FIONA: Yeah, he officially resigned from the Sufi Order about 4 yrs ago, and because he felt that he had to be free of that.

SABIRA: This Sufi Order, there are so many.

FIONA: Exactly, and now he’s been made a Sheikh in the other, but anyway.

SABIRA: Yeah, we’d be interested in dreams too, or visions or anything of that sort that you might have had.

MUBDI: (from background—inaudible) It is something like I gasped because I hadn’t thought of it in all these years, and I’m sure it happened before I met him, it was right before I went to sleep, it was one of those things, you don’t know whether it was a dream or whether you were awake, but something different into your consciousness and I was very, I was a baby—somebody in this other plane who was about 4 yrs older than I was teaching me how to bouncer a ball, and I looked around and I realized that this was a very, very special place and this person who was teaching me how to play ball, was teaching me how to see something else, and I looked around, the people left, and we were surrounded by traditional leaders of religion, of the world’s religions: Mohammed, but I’m sure I could only say the ones about whom I knew the name at the time, but there was a circle of very enlightened beings around me and as I—you could see beyond them—and the light came down and through the spheres to the blue ball that was the earth and I said somewhere—some consciousness said, “there is this light falling” and it was falling on San Francisco; but I had no idea why this light that was coming down, it was everything, I won’t say philosophy or art or ideas, like that. There were tunnels like from a water-aqua-ducts, for the light to go through, channels for the light to go through, these were like vehicles that were used. To sum up, it isn't over but he did change my life; I said that at the beginning. He changed the life of a lot of people whom I was very close to and feeling closest to, and no matter what time or space in their life.

FIONA: It was really funny, because for a long time whenever I went back to Europe I would be quizzed all the time about the Sufis on the West coast, about Sam Lewis and his disciples, and about what was happening out here. Because everyone had a very strong sense and were being told constantly that there was some new energy coming from America, and I remember always having to be very clear in myself before I said anything, like when you are constantly defending somebody you can't, you can't defend them out of kind of a defensiveness. You have to be very clear, at least that was the way I always felt, I had to be very clear that what I was saying was actually what I was seeing, and that I wasn't being reactive. So it put me in a situation of of really doing a lot of searching, I think, in myself, to make sure that it was real—that it wasn't something that was an emotional reaction, that was probably also something to do with Sam. It was interesting being in that position for a long time, and now it doesn't exist, no one asks anymore, they know, because that's what's happening there too. The dancing still isn't done very much in Europe but there is most definitely that kind of non-duality of being in meditation or not being in meditation but trying—the emphasis of working it through, seeing it appear in yourself in everything that you do.

MICHAEL: I have something to say, now I noticed that because I wasn't really that I wasn't in touch with Sufis really, really, really, a lot after Sam died—I don't know for sure—but I feel that the dances lost so much after he died. They weren't anything like they were. The walks, the practices yes, okay, but the dances—those came to Sam in his dreams; those he carried out. They really had strength when he did them, but even the same dances weren't the same—they definitely were different—there was a different thing happening, more a social event, it seemed like—it really wasn't work.

MUBDI: There was a spontaneity that you often had the feeling that things that Sam would do in a meeting were coming to him right then and there, though they first probably had come before, but there was that quality that he had of. I remember I wanted to ask Michael if he remembered the choruses, the Allah choruses in the garage downstairs at the Mentorgarten.

MICHAEL: Alright, those were great.

MUBDI: We'll go "Allah, Allah, you over there—like, oh!—

MICHAEIL: Like that—

MUBDI: Oh, it was just—there—anything that was going to happen—

MICHAEL: That was nice in the Mentorgarten—

MUBDI: Yeah—mean, really, I don't know why.

MUBDI: All the daring started there, it started in the room around this size, I imagine 16 people, around and around. He was there, he was touching you, he was going from group to group, "Yeah, you are doing it right," joining this and then getting us all together—it's still like what's happening now, the meetings were—one of the things that I think is happening is that the meetings are very large.

FIONA: Yes, huge.

MUBDI: And it is much more of a responsibility—I think the need is different now, too. I needed his energy, that's probably the reason I was allowed to spend so much time with him—

SABIRA: You continued to work for him then after that first time he had you do the laundry—

MUBDI: I was definitely in and out—I was still quite sick—I went back in the hospital and, when I came out, I met him then—I don't know what his name is now—it was Daniel then—

SABIRA: Daniel Lomax? Abd ar Rahman

MUBDI: Abd ar Rahman that's right, and so Murshid Sam was close to me all during that time when my children were born, but like Michael said, he wasn't close to me in that way that maybe I would have liked for the glamour part but there was the other part I didn’t. I wanted to ask Michael—did you ever have the feeling, did you ever see Sam being your ideal? Maybe that's strange to ask maybe to a man, but I can remember why I used to be a good mother—I would see him being the mother, that's because you would talk about how he would dance in the Krishna dance with the ladies—his ability to be—all I can say is your idea the perfect thing. He taught me to be feminine.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I can see how he definitely could do that.

MUBDI: But I was wondering if he—

MICHAEL: I don't know—

MUBDI: If he did that type of thing.

MICHAEL: In certain ways, yes. I wanted to be as compassionate as he, I wanted to have the strength that he had, I wanted to have the will that he had—yeah—yeah, sure can I have it now?"

SABIRA: I go through this daily with Wali Ali.

MICHAEL: I love it, oh really!

MUBDI: You can look at it in another way too, you can look at pictures of when he was young—sure his destiny was probably very different than any of us—but he was worldly and I was sure that was one of the things, you could understand him as a person.

FIONA: Yes, yes.

MUBDI: Because he shared—

MICHAEL: Yeah, he was definitely real—

MUBDI: He shared with you, every time, almost anything that he said, he was right here: his grief, and the pain that he had to go through, his rotten family, feelings, and he didn't hide any of that—he didn't have to hide any of that—

FIONA: Yeah, yeah—

SABIRA: But that is the very reason he could communicate because he had gone through all of that understood it so that he knew what the generation gap was all about.

MUBDI: Was it awfully hard?

SABIRA: His parents didn't speak to one another for 25 years—they didn't speak; and they all lived in the same house together.

MICHAEL: You're kidding?

SABIRA: No, I'm not kidding. And that's just the beginning, what it was like for Sam when he was little/a young man—

MUBDI: I was thinking about—there was the story of the man who has all the books, and there is the time in some of these stories that he throws over the bookcase—Sam used to—that was always his reference, as I remember in the beginning, to Pir Vilayat, "I'm going to knock over his bookcase."

SABIRA: Oh yeah? He said that about Pir?—

MUBDI: Peace. Sam saw that as his relationship with Pir—

FIONA: That was what I felt when I said that I came out to the West coast and I saw it being—I saw that there wasn't the duality—but also I could see, because I love Pir, the sense of sacredness that Pir brought to people. He is very important too, and then meeting old Sam or meeting Sam really but not when he was in the body, and I could see how the two came from the same place. I was forced to see because they were so different and yet there was that sameness, there was that sacredness about both of them, that it made you see that it was coming from the same place and that it was two aspects of the same work, and I began to feel that very strongly and it stood me in good stead I think, because I found myself several times over the years in the middle of —

SABIRA: That's still happening, it's still happening many times—

FIONA: It's very good, because it makes you cut through.

MUBDI: It was reassuring when you were talking about the sanctity of people like Pir Vilayat and that feeling. And one of the feelings I had was that Sam was—he took it for granted, and it was also very reassuring to me—There was something about Sam—you don't need to worry about whether you are divine being or not a divine being—it is. "You don't, we don't believe, we know! We are…."

MICHAEL: Do you remember the stories he used to read out of those books?

MUBDI: The Chronicles you mean?

FIONA: No, no, you don't mean the Chronicles, the Bible you mean?

MICHAEL: Not the Bible.

MUBDI: He used to read stories from Papa Ramdas—

MICHAEL: No, I remember stories that he read, animal stories—they were about animals that were—

SABIRA: The ones that Pir Vilayat's sister wrote—or not that she wrote, edited?

MUBDI: I remember some fairy tales—

MICHAEL: Yeah, fairy tale stories like—

MUBDI: When he told them—I remember the one he told to my daughters when they were there.

MICHAEL: What was that?

MUBDI: It was about the sisters where one was beautiful and one wasn't so pretty, and she wanted to be pretty—and she was—the point of the story was that she had a big heart and she began to realize that she was feeling good about herself as she thought about other people she became beautiful.

SABIRA: That's nice.

MUBDI: Somebody may remember more details about it—it was very, there was much more detail of names.

SABIRA: Did your daughters meet Sam?

MUBDI: Yes.

SABIRA: Are they still around?

MUBDI: Yes, they are still here.

SABIRA: Do you remember anything about—have they told you anything about Sam, to you, that you'd want to put on tape, speaking for them of course.

MUBDI: If they remember him they love him, they loved him but that's—

SABIRA: Were they very young when he was alive?

MUBDI: They were quite young.

SABIRA: How old are they now?

MUBDI: Jennifer is 15 now—Jennifer doesn't really talk about it, I think she feels confused about it right now, some of those areas Sophie was never confused and never will be.

SABIRA: How old is Sophie?

MUBDI: Sophie is 13.

SABIRA: So she wouldn't remember—

MUBDI: And Don and … were babies—

MICHAEL: Who was the little—who was the baby that was around the Mentorgarten?

FIONA: Basira’s baby?

MICHAEL: He was a Virgo baby.

FIONA: Basira and James.

SABIRA: James, yes, oh Samuel Vilayat, the little boy?

FIONA: No not Samuel Vilayat? James was the father's name.

MICHAEL: No .

FIONA: But then Basira was living with—

MICHAEL: Leslie—

MUBDI: Yes, that was the girl I was talking about she was the housekeeper—

SABIRA: Leslie Gelder (two talking here)

MUBDI: She had curly hair—

MICHAEL: Yes, curly, black hair, boy the energy between that kid and Sam was really incredible sometimes—it was really high and every once in a while Sam would lay one on him, and he'd take it, it was incredible. (Several talking here)

MUBDI: He'd be a great one to interview.

FIONA: Yeah, he must be about twelve now—no, no, ten—

MICHAEL: Ten—

MUBDI: They are living in New Mexico still? I have no idea.

SABIRA: We get letters for Leslie Van Gelder or something like that, but I don't know where she lives.

MUBDI: I know they went to Lama.

FIONA: I remember Wali Ali telling me if I wanted to really hear what Sam Lewis was like I should listen to his tapes on the Chronicles—

SABIRA: The Corinthians?

FIONA: Yeah, I listened to them.

SABIRA: Shall we end or do you have some more?

FIONA: Wind up?

SABIRA: Memoires, recollections, or thing you want to add? We have about five more minutes of tape.

FIONA: You must be getting to know him very well through all these interviews.

SABIRA: Yes, and they are all different, that's what's so interesting. Every person saw him in a different way, experienced him in a different way, knew him in a different way—yours is very, very unusual because you didn't actual know him but you knew him.

FIONA: Yes, yes, that's what I find out all the time being in that position. It's a very interesting position to be in for me coming in yes—

SABIRA: Do you think Pir Vilayat has resolved some of his feelings?

FIONA: Oh yes, Pir Vilayat is very different now, he is a very different man—For a long time he and Jemila they would do these sort of meditations together and she really explained to him like she was his earthing she felt. I remember her once saying that she felt she was—she was instrumental in earthing him. Oh he is so different now, he is so different. In one aspect he has become totally his father; Pir Vilayat sometimes loses himself completely in his father. He makes mistakes, like he talks about about his sister and he'll say, he'll use the word "my daughter." And then he will correct himself, "my sister." He does that, he makes slips like that. He is really into it, especially when he is doing an intense seminar like at a leaders' seminar or something where he really gets into his father's teachings., and he'll sit right down and there will no stopping him, and he won't talk about meditation techniques and stuff, he will get into the Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

SABIRA: Do you think he eventually resolved his differences with Sam? What is your feeling on that?

FIONA: I don't know if he will ever feel comfortable about dancing, I really don't, I don't know, but I know that he—

SABIRA: Pir Vilayat dances, at the Universal Worship dances and he's wonderful—

FIONA: He definitely does , and he leads the Choir. Pir Vilayat is just open to—when I said that I meant that I can't imagine Pir Vilayat for instance leading dance groups. I feel that he feels that it is a very important part of the work. I definitely feel that he has resolved that conflict I think he feels it’s very important, very important.

MUBDI: There is one last thing I would—that I have been thinking about—you are talking about Pir Vilayat changing, and I want to say that I saw Sam change too in such a way I think, that makes him greater than ever. He really felt the effect of the people that he was with. He said, "Look at the disciples, don't look at the teacher and I was looking at him too and now tonight I am sitting here talking and really thinking about the first few times that I met him—I was going to a Zen meeting, and he was a Zen Master, he became…. I have to leave it at that, and people that know him more intimately, and can go into, say specifically some of the ways and instances in which he really changed.

FIONA: Yes,

MUBDI: I was thinking he was the gardener, right, and he already had the seed in, and he was cultivating us—

SABIRA: Mubdi, how did he function as a Zen Master, what way, do you remember:

MUBDI: I was just going to say his pauses; don't know anything about Zen, I remember his pauses, I remember—can't I just remember some of his—

FIONA: Is it like the feeling of concentration of forces?

MUBDI: He was just—I feel like acting it—

FIONA: You just did—

MUBDI: There was a very, very special—I just can't say (whispering).

FIONA: Yeah, it is a pity we couldn't see you on tape because—

MUBDI: And I was confused at the beginning with, as he—what's Sufi? Now it is something completely different. Sufi? That was going on Monday nights, and I was going on Sunday nights—

SABIRA: To Dharma night?

MUBDI: Yeah, Dharma night, and I know that there is/there were and still is—the differentiation and the meetings on different nights—

End of tape