Ralph Silver and Nancy Silver—Jan. 28, 1976

… Build a house, and the same process over ten years; he'd constantly work on it and improve it because that gives everybody a chance to discover themselves.

SITARA: What house?

RALPH: A house.

WALI ALI: Were you here when he opened up this house?

RALPH: Oh yeah, I was here—I knew him over on Clementina.

WALI ALI: I know you knew him over on Clementina—

RALPH: And when he opened the house—it’s kind of interesting how it all came about; this house fell into his lap, just bang, there it was, it just happened to him. It just fell right into his lap. He had to leave that other place.

WALI ALI: Why’d he have to leave that other place? Some trouble with the landlady?

RALPH: No, I think it all corresponded with the fact that he was making it; that he was in touch with his work, finally really in touch with it, with other people.

WALI ALI: We are now officially starting. This is Jan. 28, 1976. We are here with Ralph Silver, Sitara and myself.

RALPH: Let's pick up where we were before.

WALI ALI: We were over on Clementina St.

RALPH: Right, and before, during that time he was in the hospital—

WALI ALI: This was 1966?

RALPH: —Yeah, he was in the hospital several times when I knew him.

WALI ALI: When did you first meet?

RALPH: I met him—must have been 10, 15 yrs. ago, when was it? '65, '66 was when I met him. And I remember I met him because I got a reading of my chart from Gavin Arthur and I was at loose ends in myself, really at loose ends, and I'd heard about Gavin and I went to see him. And I’d also heard about this eccentric Sufi, who lived over in the Mission. People whom I'd been doing some work with—spiritual work—told me that there is this eccentric Sufi living over in the Mission and you should get over to see him. They mentioned his name to me and they mentioned it always in a way that was never phony—there was always a ring of reality about it, but it was always non-verbal, that ring of reality. You couldn’t verbalize it. And I was always rather attracted to find out who this man was, but I didn’t want to make a move because you can only make a move when it corresponded to something, where there was a line to it; but the line wasn’t there yet. So you wait. And then I had this reading with Gavin Arthur and Gavin Arthur was, of course, a very close friend with Sam Lewis, which I didn’t know. And he looked at my chart and after it was over he said, “I’ve got just the man to help you.” And he called him up and he said, “Sam, I've got a man here who needs help and he deserves it and I’m going to send him over to see you.” So he packs me up with my chart, gives me the address and says, “Go see Sam Lewis.” So I said, “Okay,” and went over there to Clementina—and it’s awfully hard to find because it's in the Mission district. The Mission in those days was different than the Mission in our days. There wasn't any building going on; there were all these old houses—

WALI ALI: What do you recall about what that a apartment was like?

RALPH: I'm going to tell you. So, I go to Clementina, get out of my car and walk up these stairs and it's a very old house with creaky floors and everything; and old, very old and going up the stairway there’s no greeting room, just these dark stairs. You’re walking from the darkness, and you are going down this hallway and trying to meet this man; and it smells like an old elderly tenement home, it has that old smell to it. And he opens the door and there he is, Sam Lewis.

SITARA: You mean before you knocked he opened—

RALPH: Yeah, he just knew I was coming. He opened the door and there he is, Sam Lewis, and he didn’t have a beard then—he was always unshaven.

WALI ALI: He used to shave every day, I think, but he just never did a very good job of it—

RALPH: He was kind of disheveled; his shirt was hanging out, baggy pants and his sock was half off. The kitchen sink looked like it had never been cleaned, and he had cards all over the table, and he asked me to come in. I sat down and there were books all over the floor, and manuscripts all over the desk, and the bed was unmade. And I said, “My God, what the hell is this? What is this?” But somehow I, sort of, I had to stay because there was something kind of authentic about the way he was. I kind of liked the fact that he was so involved. It looked to me that he was very involved in what he was doing, and I was very impressed by that. I didn’t particularly care what the place looked like—I had resistance to it—but when I saw how involved he was—and then he did something very peculiar. He sat down on the bed and he started playing the flute that he plays; but it wasn’t a flute—that imaginary thing he plays. I just said, “God, what is this?” But he did it with himself; did it with who he is. When he was doing this, you had the feeling that he was expressing his inner being. And it came to me—I was able to recognize the truth of what he was trying—although I’d never seen anything like that before—but there was this inner ring to it which corresponded in him, and, to make a long story short, from that time on I related to him as a man who knew. I always asked him questions, which he always answered, but he never answered. But he always gave me an answer, and I would always bring him my personal problems. So I always looked upon him almost as a father—

WALI ALI: Yeah, I think he always was kind of like a father figure; much more than like a spiritual teacher or guru or something like that. He was, but you never had that kind of formal relationship.

RALPH: Never. And never, even when there were certain problems on Sun Seed, did it become very formal. He hung up on me a couple of times, and he said a couple of things to me which were true. But he always did knowing what the future would bring from that contact. In other words, he would say something. He would say something because he knew that in four or five years from now you would be able to see what he meant—as harsh and as brutal as it appeared at the moment—but he did have a rather shocking personality. Very shocking!

WALI ALI: This was part of the real picture to try and explain, you know, and I think that is what makes him a fascinating study; it’s because he had such a shocking or brusque type of personality. Of course, he was very changeable, the fact that so many, that he could be very gentle with women.

RALPH: He was remarkable with women. Remarkable with women; I've seen some other people good with women. Of course, when you are a master and a teacher you have to be good with women because in today's society women need people who are good to them, but good in the right way. And he understood how to get to the inside.

WALI ALI: Let’s try to take things up a little more chronologically, because then we’ll be sure we won't miss anything.

RALPH: Okay.

WALI ALI: Did you go to meetings over at Clementina Street? Did he have meetings over there at that time, or did you just go over there mostly informally?

RALPH: Actually it was more informal than anything else. I went to a few meetings, but it was mostly informal. I looked upon him as like a father figure, basically, in the beginning, and I’d bring him all my problems—girl friends and all.

WALI ALI: I think I remember him saying something—

RALPH: Believe me, every time I had a girl friend, I would say—

WALI ALI: Bring her over to Sam’s; checking her out—

RALPH: And Sam would do exactly that. He would check her out in his own strange way.

WALI ALI: Do you recall any of those incidents?

RALPH: When I brought over to him—he was responsible for that marriage, by the way. He arranged it for me on other levels; he arranged that marriage. When I brought Nancy over to him, the first thing he did, was he had her take off her shoes and he was examining her feet, and he said, "Your feet are cold." By the time she left the room, her feet were warm. He did a whole number on her, and it was all in relation to a connection that they had at that moment. They had a very deep connection, it was very deep, it was extremely moving. I wasn’t as awake as I should have been. It would have been much more interesting for me had I been more in touch with my own possibilities.

WALI ALI: I know. He always said that when Nancy came into the room—he had a God-daughter and she had just sort of broken that connection with him. She had left his life just some weeks before and when you brought Nancy into the room, he heard a voice from the Heavens saying, "This is your new God-daughter," or something like that.

RALPH: Right. So they had this very strong bond. She was going to a psychiatrist at one point—I’m not sure this should be in the book.

WALI ALI: It’s up to her.

RALPH: Yeah, you can clear it with her. I wanted to get her out of that, because I knew it wasn’t the right way for her. Just by insight I knew it wasn't the right thing; and that our relationship couldn’t go anywhere if she kept seeing this psychiatrist. So I introduced her to Sam. That was my reason. And he broke it, she left. But she didn’t leave because he told her to leave; she left because of some transference that took place between them. So they had this connection, and it was very good that they did because it made my relationship with her—at least there was a possibility of something, because she was an awfully difficult person when I first met her. She was looking for something. We were both very difficult. But in any case, she had come from a big background of New York artists and everything; and here I came into her life, and everyone was saying, “Don’t have anything to do with her.”

WALI ALI: What were you doing at the time? What sort of work?

RALPH: Public relations.

WALI ALI: Where were you working?

RALPH: I was working independently; night clubs, restaurants, that kind of seamy type of life.

WALI ALI: When did you get involved in doing public relations work for Rancho Olompali? Did Sam have anything to do with getting you that job?

RALPH: They were scared of him. They were scared of anything that was real, and that’s why they were involved in all their R. and R.; recreation and all this physical activity, which didn't have any direction to it. They were involved in a lot of drugs and stuff. I wouldn't go out there because they were involved in drugs. I was doing public relations for them but—

WALI ALI: How did you end up doing public relations for them?

RALPH: That's another story. I don’t think people would quite believe me if I told you how that happened; but that’s another story.

WALI ALI: I just didn’t know whether Sam had anything to do with your—

RALPH: No, he didn't have anything to do with it. They really resisted him.

WALI ALI: I know he and Don McCoy had a real—

RALPH: Don McCoy was very much into taking all these different kinds of drugs; LSD and things like that. They smoked a lot of pot.

WALI ALI: They were doing everything: PCP and—

RALPH: They were doing everything, the whole trip. And when you do the whole trip, when you take those things; you get into a state and the state says to you that you are working spiritually or I have found—

WALI ALI: I am God.

RALPH: And there was no reality underneath that. It wasn’t practical. It wasn't based on anything practical. There were a few people like Shirin there, who were doing the work. She is a solid, very solid, type person, she was one of the strongest people around and she was doing the work. She was committed to it. But they didn’t really have any inner connection to knowledge that I know of; any real knowledge. Sam was the only one who went out there. A man called DuRoc went out there, and Don McCoy couldn't see it, because he felt he knew. And the problem is that when you feel you know, you can't be open to what you don't know. So, people who know, like Sam Lewis, and DuRoc, people like that who come there, and they are immediately confronted with someone who knows; that person cannot receive the impression of this finer substance, that coming through. And it was there. God, Don McCoy had a great opportunity—

WALI ALI: Oh, he had a tremendous opportunity! Sam was very anxious to make that into a sort of model community, based on universality or whatever—

RALPH: It would have been a real breakthrough. And it would have come at a time that would have gotten all the publicity and it would have been one of the number one communes in this country at that time, had it really hit at that moment.

WALI ALI: That’s right, because Lama was still in its incubation.

RALPH: That’s right, and the press were up here. And anything new like that. So what finally happened was, it got press, but it got press in relation to its negative aspects.

WALI ALI: It got press. It was the strangest thing; they were certainly in a strange place, space. Now, Sheila; did you know her very well at that time?

RALPH: I knew her and I always wanted to keep away from her. Not because I didn't think she was of sweet essence; a sweetness about her. But only because you couldn't talk with her about real knowledge—real knowledge is a whole other thing. We all know how difficult it is to get to it.

WALI ALI: Now what about Sam's relationship with her at that time?

RALPH: It was interesting, but there was definitely an attraction, I think, real attraction. Sheila and Nancy were very close—

WALI ALI: Maybe I can get more from them.

RALPH: From Nancy. She knows much more about that relationship.

WALI ALI: What about the ranch? You had some part to play in it and it certainly played a part in Sam’s own life.

RALPH: Sam and I had a very strong thing, very strong. I was never able to join the community as such and become a vibrant, lively member that took on responsibilities. He had in mind for me to be treasurer; to take over the business; and that was absolutely right, because that is my whole administration. That kind of thing is my thing. I wasn’t quite ready to do that with him, for some reason. I still held back inside, I wasn't prepared.

WALI ALI: Here's a suggestion. Your relationship with him was always on a personal basis. His personality, being the way it was, in a sense it would be very difficult for anybody that had such a personal relationship with him, with his present personality to then just relate to the spiritual teacher side of him.

RALPH: I can always say that a lot of people were putting him down, because he would do outrageous things.

WALI ALI: I'm sure. Can you give us…?

RALPH: I remember we went to see Dr. Chaudhuri one time—from Russia (?)—and we looked around the room, and Sam was really right there. He had him on the edge of his chair; he had his attention, he really had his attention. He was right there, he heard everything, he saw everything, and he was ready to respond. And he could respond; he was alive; you could sense a real liveliness in his body. His eyes were very alive and he was right there with you. Any movement you’d make, just a silent movement, he'd pick it up and be able to relate to it. That’s how lively he was; he had credits in those situations. You look around and everybody has degrees of presence, but not that quality of concentration which he had. And, of course, Chaudhuri was no comparison to Sam in terms of initiation or in terms of knowledge. He had a lot of the superficial knowledge. He kind of resented Sam in a way, because Sam would often come up and say things and Dr. Chaudhuri wouldn't quite meet him. He was the sort of person that, in a room, he had more than most people. He sort of made me feel that he had more. That was one of the things—

WALI ALI: Dr. Chaudhuri?

RALPH: No, Sam. He knew that he had more and he didn't—

WALI ALI: He didn't apologize.

RALPH: No, he didn't apologize for having more; he just did and he could prove it. He did prove it, all the time. The thing about Dr. Chaudhuri was that a lot of people were jealous of him because he did; because he could be on the spot with a question that no one could answer. No one had the training or the knowledge; the connection to this whatever it is, these realms—

WALI ALI: Are you speaking about Chaudhuri?

RALPH: Yeah, he wasn't any match for Sam. I didn’t know many people who were as a matter of fact.

WALI ALI: Did he go over to Chaudhuri's very much during 1966 and 1967?

RALPH: Yeah, he did, and I'm not trying to put Chaudhuri down, he's not with us anymore, so that doesn't help. I was just saying that Chaudhuri married Nancy and me; they were close friends.

WALI ALI: It's important to go into this relationship with Chaudhuri or Alan Watts because of the fact that it gives a perfect example of something that was uniquely Sam, a kind of relationship like that in which at some point they’d been friends. And underneath all this criticism that he would throw their way, he would still feel that he was only doing it because he cared about them, somehow; like he was disappointed that they didn't make the next step. And, whereas, from Chaudhuri's point of view, Sam had been a student at the Asian Academy—this was something that Sam could do—he could go in, and go in like a student at the University and be receptive and take his notes and turn in an examination paper and not have to be anything more in that context than a student. But what happened with people like Chaudhuri and Walt Baptiste is another example—people under which at certain times Sam studied, they always felt that while Sam was really their student—he didn't give them any credit. They always wanted to keep that relationship, that he was a student.

RALPH: He reminds me of the Zen story—and it is very difficult when a person thinks he is a teacher, which is the biggest mistake of all I've found with anybody. The Zen story, where the Zen Priest encouraged his students to run over his leg with a wheelbarrow—he put himself at the mercy of the students. The thing is, that the teacher rarely likes to put himself at the mercy of the student; to learn from the student, and Sam, as odd as this may sound, did that.

WALI ALI: I find this very odd, but it's true.

RALPH: It's very strange, but he allowed himself to be at the mercy of the people who he worked with. And it's very strange how he did it, he wouldn't do—from an outside point of view you wouldn't see it, but you would see it in a very—if you were around him. Because he did it to me a couple of times, and, of course, I fell right into the trap.

WALI ALI: That's a very perceptive observation, Ralph. I think most people never saw that, but it was very much a part of his way of doing things.

RALPH: And that was the way that he opened people up. He used that to open people up, and it worked. It certainly worked after he left Clementina. He was really ready to go from there. He'd been told when he had been in the hospital. He even told Nancy and I this—he'd been told; he'd had this vision as to what he was going to do in relation to the hippies. After he came out of this coma, that's when he moved from Clementina. This house came to him, and it was just very easy. There he was, he just went right into it; right into the house. From there it all started. It started very fast and it had a very quick pace to it. He was fortunate in finding people who were very disillusioned, very depressed and very unhappy with themselves and with what they were finding out about life. They were through with the social and the political and the economic; they were finished with a certain ordinary perspective of things. They were really kind of ripe for someone like Sam. He came along and he played all the roles with them, with everybody; he played all the roles.

WALI ALI: He recharged a lot of negative beings. Before we get into that period of, let's say, when he moved into the Mentorgarten—according to our records, he was hospitalized in April of 1967—

RALPH: That's about right.

WALI ALI: What do you recall of anything leading up to that? Did you visit him in the hospital? Did you see him, or were you there during the period immediately prior to that?

RALPH: I was very selfish about my relationship with Sam at that time. I was only thinking about myself most of the time and so there were a lot of things that were happening and because of my selfishness I wasn't able to see; which is very curious. But he was ready for something and he knew he was ready for something and he was moving with a certain assurance in himself. The thing about Sam at that time was this: you came to him and you were just absolutely about ready to die and everything was—nothing was right. You walked away from him feeling that the impossible was possible; that your possibilities were possible, that you could find a way to live a decent life, that you could have relationships with people, that the urge that you had to contact yourself was possible. He gave you a lot of hope, and how he did it was the mystery. Of course, as I think of it, at that time—it was like being in the presence of a real being. He just had being, and he could transfer—a person who has being is not positive or negative. If you were somehow in a relationship to him, you received something and he gave hope at that time.

WALI ALI: How many people about were attracted to him during that period when he was—?

RALPH: Very, very few, as a matter of fact. I think the reason was—he said this at one time, you don't have to repeat this—I think the reason Sam was always rather open toward me and he tolerated a lot of my stuff for a long time, was because when I came I was a symbol for what followed. I was the first one to come, of my particular young years. After me, the whole thing happened. Moineddin came, and it all started after that. And he said that at some point to somebody. He told me that that's what happened; when I came it all started for him.

WALI ALI: Did you know a man named Clark?

RALPH: Yeah.

WALI ALI: He should have been around, around that period.

RALPH: Tall.

WALI ALI: Yeah.

RALPH: Clark and then there was another guy—

WALI ALI: The first man he initiated in America, he said, was Clark. Then Clark later got busted for pot or something and ended up in jail. Then Akhbar was around at that time, wasn't he? And what about some of Murshid’s early people that were his disciples or were attracted to him?

RALPH: There were some of the old-timers which I never met. I remember that, because I never went to his meetings.

WALI ALI: Howard Mussel, did you know him?

RALPH: Yeah, I knew Howard. Howard was into Gurdjieff work and he'd been a very interesting guy. Then he was into Gurdjieff work. Then he was into the Rosicrucians. He was very attracted to Sam; he was very serious about what he was doing, and he's the one who told me about Sam Lewis one night. That's how I knew when I went to Gavin Arthur—bang! It clicked into place, and Gavin Arthur was sending me over and I just went. I didn't ask any questions, I just went.

WALI ALI: I'm trying to get in touch with him to do an interview, but I haven't been able to reach him.

RALPH: I don't know where he is. He inherited some money, quit his job, and I don't know where he is now.

WALI ALI: What I was going to ask you was, some of his early disciples and people that were attracted to him were homosexuals?

RALPH: Yeah, he was a homosexual and so was Clark.

WALI ALI: And some of the other people at that time were too. Do you recall anything about what Sam’s feelings were about homosexuals and how he worked with them, or whether he gave any cognizance to that?

RALPH: He was total accepting on his part, he accepted the whole manifestation of it and I think that is one of the reasons we just kept coming back. He didn't make anything—as far as I know he didn't—for they may have had private talks with him, but when I was with him and they were there—he was just very alert and he'd use those situations. I remember one time, I was talking with Clark. Clark and I got into an argument and Sam was moving his eyes so fast that he wanted us to know that something was happening. He was going like this—moving his eyes from one to the other—and it got to be like one would think we were in a circus room, you know. He just bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang, bang and you kind of had to remember that this wasn't a game, when he was doing that. He had some interesting techniques. He had his own code—you were around more than I was—a code. I knew people who met him and were putting him down all the time, and I could never understand that, although I know he was awfully difficult.

WALI ALI: Socially he lacked all the graces. I know you had parties during this time, often very fine parties, and Sam came on a few occasions.

RALPH: He was great. I was always like him socially—an outcast myself, so we had that in common. He was more outrageous than me because he knew something. I was thinking about him coming to those parties. He was great with children, loved children and he would always tell these stories. A lot of people who'd never had any contact with things that were outside the ordinary kind of life routine in our society—which is deadening in every respect, because it's all about business and money and greed and fame. Ordinary family kind of living, nine to five job, that kind of stuff—so when Sam would come on the scene, there'd be these people, who lived their lives in a certain way. He came in his robes and he—and by that time he had a strong beard and his hair was long—he looked like a saint, the way he walked around; the whole demeanor.

WALI ALI: The patriarch!

RALPH: The patriarch. He really was; he would sit in the middle of the living room, and he would tell these stories and people found it very hard to listen to him.

WALI ALI: Because he was always inserting the word “I.” He was always saying what he was doing, he had those kind of mannerisms.

RALPH: That sort of thing—when he said "I am this and I am that,” that always put everybody off, and yet he always did it. He always said it, and I found that very interesting. Other teachers wouldn’t do that, they'd never put "I" in; that's for you the student. The "I;" he put in "I" all the time, but boy—

WALI ALI: It sure did cause reactions.

RALPH: That's right, all the time brag, go to lunch, he'd brag about all his initiations, what he is and—

WALI ALI: How do you see all that now in retrospect?

RALPH: I see that bit was awfully hard to take because you didn't know why he was doing it. Of course, if you asked him about it—you couldn’t ask him about it.

WALI ALI: You could have. That's the funny thing, you know.

RALPH: But nobody did! I remember on the phone, one time, I had an argument with him. It was actually about you. We were having an argument, and I said, "Now come on Sam, we're friends aren’t we? You don't have to keep on like that. I know you can teach me." And he said, "I've got my disciples to think about now," and then he hung up on me. So he'd said, "I have my disciples to think about now and that's the only thing I'm thinking about. I'm not thinking about anything personal anymore." So he had an aim, in those situations, but who can speak for a man's aim? That’s a personal thing. I think that one of his aims was that he had work that he had to accomplish. It was a question of him sorting the wheat from the chaff very quickly, for his own work; not saying that you were particularly his disciple. Like me, I'm not particularly his disciple, it didn't work out that way. We were friends and I had a real love for him and he helped me. And oddly enough he helped me without my doing any of the spiritual exercises. To this day, there is something of him in me; which is interesting. But he would do these things. I think a lot of the time he had to find out. He had to get to the core of something very quickly and those people who were going to be able to forget that aspect and go; would already have gone past a certain resistance. The resistance is always the difficulty in any situation. He used that over and over and over again; it got to be like a broken record.

WALI ALI: I really think you are right. It agrees with my own ideas, so I have to be careful, but that's the way I would interpret it, it may or may not have been a personality fault. It could very well have been a fault as well as a teaching method, because he was not above using a fault positively.

RALPH: Absolutely not.

WALI ALI: It was definitely like a protection; it was like a test people had to pass through. If they were going to react to his personality, that was okay.

RALPH: I think he just used his personality because that was just the aspect of what he was. I think he had to make a choice of how to use it. He had to use it in a relationship with people who were really going to respond and with whom he could work. A man is molded and he comes out a certain way, and he has certain things. He has to decide how he is going to use what he has been given. When the light is brought into a certain manifestation, he has to find out how to use that. He is conscious if he can do that; he has a real intention if he can do that. In my opinion that is what he had. Look what happened; it wasn't an accident what happened with him. For people to go around thinking that what happened was accident is not true. What you are doing now is a real manifestation, whether or not people can say, "They've done this, maybe they’re deviating, maybe they are not quite true, maybe they're doing this," but that's interpretation. The question is, what was the actuality? What actually happened from those experiences? So he had intention.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I think you are absolutely right. He had this intention and great power inside and he just chose to express it through the way he'd been molded already. It came out with great power; and if you could get behind the surface then you could feel the power of that intention.

RALPH: But he understood that the people who could respond to that were the people he could work with.

WALI ALI: Yes, I think you are right.

RALPH: And I think that is what happened. Then, once he got into those people, then he started working on them. And he would get your attention, because he would do outrageous things. For instance, he would call me in the middle of the night and he'd say, "This is Sam," and I'd say, "Yeah, I know." "I want to say one or two things, that's all I wanted to say," and he'd hang up.

SITARA: He wouldn't say what he wanted.

WALI ALI: He would say it, but the thing is he would hang up.

RALPH: He would get your attention. We were having dinner one time and he came over to the dinner, and he did a whole number. He had a few of us come in there; we all sat down in the living room and he started walking around the table telling stories. I had a whole bunch of dinner guests. Nobody knows who he is; these are all alien and they know nothing. He comes in, plops his shoes down in the middle, starts walking around the table and starts giving these stories. I was sitting there looking at him. I had no idea what he was talking about, absolutely nothing, no idea. And he says; “Okay, that's all.” I said, "Are you going to go?” He says, "I'm going to go." He picked up his shoes and he walked out. I'm sitting there trying to figure out what the heck—but he got my attention. I was always aware of—

SITARA: Did you ever find yourself in the position of having to, or wanting to, defend him from the remarks that people would make after he'd left?

RALPH: I found myself defending him inside myself, and I found that you couldn't defend Sam Lewis, he was undefendable. Unless a person could see something for themselves—what could you say? What could you say about the way he manifested, the way he was crazy on the outside, absolutely nuts! But, if you were sitting there with him, in context, not just coming in from an oblique point of view, for a second or a minute, it was in context, you could see that he had—that he was doing something—he was working. He had a real work going for himself. He was practicing something, and he was active inside, he had an activity going on; he had an idea of what he was trying to see, and what he was learning and what he was seeing and receiving. He had a life inside. If you just identified with the superficial thing, that outer manifestation, which is a problem that we all do everywhere, all the time. Somebody had to be more prepared; the people that worked with him had to be a little bit more prepared, more disillusioned, more aware of the lies that we had been telling ourselves. And being brought up under the conditioning, all these lies that we'd been living with, and so, therefore, this other was possible; for Sam Lewis to come in with a certain real truth. The truth was non-verbal, in his case. It had nothing to do with what he said, hardly.

WALI ALI: He was a natural in that sort of thing.

RALPH: In the mystical side he was a natural. In terms of what Inayat Khan talks about and Pir Vilayat talks about, he had it all the way down the line. He could communicate this in non-verbal parts. Only one thing he had, this verbal connection, that’s with the mind or the thought. That there are other parts, intuitive or instinctive, and he could move too, he understood how to move his body. That was another interesting thing about him. If you watched him move down a street, you could see that he could move, that he could get there, really get there. He had a real presence in his body that made him get there.

WALI ALI: Did you notice anything different about his body before and after that hospitalization? He said he went through something like a death and a rebirth. I was wondering if that was—

RALPH: Whatever Sam was, I didn't have. There were lots of things I lacked in terms of my perceptibility, in terms of being able to be practical about seeing something about these things. I was still too abstract. So for me to look at his body at that time and know where he was at, I can just talk generally. He seemed always to have a great flexibility in his body, that’s the thing about it. He had an awareness of his body, which I found was rather unique for a man of his age.

WALI ALI: He had a very unusual body; big hands—

RALPH: Yeah, huge hands. Those hands were just enough to make you wonder. Huge hands and a huge head and he could discourse on almost anything. He gave me the Bible one time and said, "Here, you want me to talk, open it up, anywhere, anything." I would do it and he'd sit there and talk for an hour on one sentence. When somebody can do that, you are absolutely kind of astounded, and don't know what to make of it. How can you refuse somebody that can sit there and take one sentence out of anyplace in the Bible and talk for an hour? By that time, you are tired, you can't take it, because of the intensity.

WALI ALI: He had a sense of that, too, which I think made him an effective teacher. He didn't overdose people in a certain way. He would teach in bursts of intensity and then lapse or go into his human sort of consciousness and not try and be consciously a vehicle for giving teaching. I think, looking back on his methods of teaching, I think that was one of the most effective methods that he had.

RALPH: I would say, too, that he was not. I don't know what you would call him. I guess the word Sufi would be appropriate for him, rather than any other title, Zen or Taoist or anything, because he wasn't, necessarily. He could do something with a Zen intention; he could have that concentration on something, but he was more of a Sufi. He had this outwardness about him, a real outward humanism. But there was also this craziness, too; real crazy wisdom. There were some people around him that would say he would talk about crazy wisdom. But Sam Lewis really exemplified crazy wisdom, in my opinion.

WALI ALI: Me, too. It's a real matter to sort it out, you know. He seems to have lived many different lives. As a young man there is little indication of this whole thing.

 SITARA: How young was he at Kaabah Allah in those days?

WALI ALI: I don't know. Kaabah Allah was in 1926, or something, or 1930.

RALPH: There are a couple of things I'd like to put in here.

WALI ALI: Alright, go ahead.

RALPH: There are a few notes, but there was one thing that really stood out. One was that he was always making the impossible seem possible. And two, he never turned away anyone, never. I never saw him say, "No," to anyone.

WALI ALI: He wasn't a snob in that way.

RALPH: No, he was always available. When he said he'd be there, he was always there. He was always practical in things in his life. He wasn't living abstractions. He was very sensible, very practical about his life. He could function, he could give you his attention. And when he saw somebody needed something, he always would find a way to try to give it to them. If a person was late, he wouldn't hold it against them. People were always late because—

WALI ALI:—He was always early.

RALPH: Yeah, people were late because he wasn't well known. He didn't conform to societal understanding; of what it is to be a man, or to be a teacher, or to be respected. But if you notice how he lived his life, he lived it with an impeccability. He didn't lie, he didn't cheat, he always did what he said he was going to do. He never said no to anybody's request. He was there to help people when they needed help. He never turned down people who needed help, never! Even toward the end, when he was upset with me, probably, or didn't quite feel that I was living up to my possibilities, it was obvious, because he would go out and buy toys for my kids. And the last time I saw him was when he bought a toy for Natasha. There was something that should have been said between us that wasn't said; and that was the last time I saw him. He was rushing very fast. It was almost as if he had an appointment with his own death. He was moving very quickly toward the end.

WALI ALI: I remember that period.

RALPH: There was this real gap between us. It was almost like saying, "You didn't make it with me, Ralph, there were things between us that didn't quite happen," and we left it like that. I knew that that was the way it was going to be left between us. But even toward the end, when I would call him about something, even though there was that gap between us, an apparent gap. I couldn't quite be of help to him in the way that he needed help. He needed a lot of help in those days, organizational help. I could have been very helpful to him, just from an organizational point of view. He was still available to the end, as busy as he was, I could call him up and there he was! To the very end. From my point of view, that's the mark of something because it's practiced; it's not just when something somebody says, "I love you"—he practiced love.

WALI ALI: One thing he told me, speaking a little about his morality, to use some word, he always grew up with this very strong sense of the code of right and wrong and he always found it relatively easy to, let's say, practice the Ten Commandments or some code of morality that was given by the Bible. One of his biggest tests in life was to overcome this training that he'd found so natural, in terms of judging others who weren't on that same path.

RALPH: He had a lot of compassion, very great compassion. Let me tell you a story about Sunseed. When we made Sunseed, There were a lot of problems in that film. We were arguing and arguing about the problems. But I showed this film in New York to Oscar Ichazo of Arica. I figured you have to use the film for your own work and to try to find out more things; get more knowledge. Oscar Ichazo of Arica spent two hours with me. He's impossible to get to these days. I said I wanted to show him Sunseed, so they set the screening up and we had two hours, and Oscar's a very unusual guy—        

WALI ALI: I know who he is.

RALPH: Oscar Ichazo really has something, he's an exceptional person. He saw Sunseed and he loved everybody. When Sam Lewis came on he said, "That's it, that's what you work for." Of all the people in the film, he said, "That's the example of it, but you don't get it for nothing, you pay a price for it. That man paid a very big price for what he got."

WALI ALI: He did pay a big price and part of the price he paid was reflected in the recurring theme about the rejections he received in life. He was always talking—

RALPH: I know about that, because that’s what I shared in common with him. I was rejected. Oh God, have I been rejected. It’s only this last year that I made my own breakthrough. I’m 39 years old, and he made his breakthrough late in life. We’re very much alike, Sam and I.

WALI ALI: Yeah, he had to wait a long time.

RALPH: And I had to wait a long time for my thing to come through, so I know what a rejection can do. But rejection is very interesting, because what the rejection did for him, was that it made him stronger. It gave him more compassion. Then when his opening came—because you can’t demand the opening, you can only be ready. You can only work to be prepared. What he did was he worked to be prepared, and when the opening came, he knew exactly what to do with it. He knew what to do with it, and he did it. You know, here you are, you guys are here and you're doing your work. I don't think that he would be dissatisfied with the way a lot of things are going. I think he'd be overjoyed about it, as a matter of fact. Different things would happen.

WALI ALI: There's no question about that.

RALPH: Everybody would still be astute for one thing. The roles probably would be going back. He'd be shaking things up all the time, and the way he always did. I was at the Garden of Inayat. I came in there one night because somebody invited me over and I brought some friends. He took one look at them and he said, "Get out!" He used that as a shock for the commune. In other words, we were the sacrifice for the commune. To have any experience of something that he was looking for, an opportunity—he used it as a shock and he woke everybody up.

WALI ALI: You were going to show a film on playground equipment; was that the time?

RALPH: Yeah, something like that.

WALI ALI: I remember, Drew said that that was the first time that he'd ever come over there.

RALPH: But he knew that I wasn't going to—he knew where he had me. He didn't kick me out, but I wasn't going to judge him one way or another because of all the things that had gone on with him before.

WALI ALI: You knew he was crazy.

RALPH: Yeah, I knew he was crazy and I knew the way he worked. I knew I could walk into a room and I knew he'd sit there like, you know. He'd type letters to you; and I never understood what the hell he was doing most of the time. But I accepted it because I knew that it was true.

SITARA: And you knew that it was done in love, too.

RALPH: Oh yeah, he never hurt me. He used to call me—six or seven years ago he did something on the phone. He said, “No heart, no heart, no heart.” He did it about five or six times and then he hung up on me. But he was right. At that moment, I didn't have any heart. It pissed me off and really got me angry. But he never did it with hate. He always did it with your welfare in mind because he didn’t have much time at the end. He had to move very fast.

SITARA: When you first met him, was he laid low at that point?

RALPH: Yeah, pretty much. The opening hadn't occurred yet. He was in preparation.

WALI ALI: That's it. Some fellow I just met, who is now connected with the Hassidic community, knew Sam in '64. Apparently they lived together in an apartment with some other people in '64/'65. He said that all they knew about him was that he was a gardener and he used to do jigsaw puzzles all the time.

RALPH: But anybody who walked into his apartment on Clementina could not think that he was a gardener. There was just no way. If you looked around at the activity that went on in that room; he worked his butt off in that room.

WALI ALI: Writing, especially—

RALPH: Oh my God, but everything. He lived in that room.

SITARA: He wasn't writing for the particular courses or anything?

RALPH: No, I don't know what he was doing, but I know he wrote a lot of letters. He was always writing letters.

WALI ALI: He was probably one of the most voluminous correspondents of the last fifty years.

RALPH: The guy really wrote. He just wrote all the time. I don't know why he did it. He wrote letters to Art Hoppe. He was getting letters from Sam almost every day, at one point.

WALI ALI: That was his morning meditation, or whatever it was. Before breakfast, I would be in there having breakfast and he'd be there, he'd already eaten, and he would be in there writing his morning letter to Art Hoppe.

RALPH: I tell you, I do all my writing in the morning, when I get up. I do my sitting, I do my Tai Chi and then I go right into my office and I write and then I'm at breakfast. It's a great time to write because it's settling. It really settles me and it gets all that stuff that you need right out. So he probably had a real aim.

WALI ALI: Yeah, but he would write all day long, Ralph. He had the energy to just write. A man like Paul Reps, this is one of the things that he couldn't understand about Sam. He said, "Do you realize all the energy that that man puts into his letters?" He said, at one time, "I just started sending them back to him unopened, and I said, 'save your energy.'"

RALPH: For how long?

WALI ALI: I don't know, but Sam was all letters.

RALPH: Sam was very disciplined. The fact that he could sit down and be able to write that much was a great discipline. Anybody who creates his own work inside of himself; who has his own shocks, pressures like he did, in other words, an ordinary person in that same, environmental situation as Sam Lewis, would die, wouldn't do anything. Would watch television all day. But Sam had something else.

WALI ALI: Tremendous inner drive.

RALPH: It was his work, he was practicing the Sufi Message. I think that was it, in terms of what his own possibility was in relation to that.

WALI ALI: I think it tells you something about his personality, too. Behind this tremendous exterior of power and presence that he built up, I think, that if one digs deep one finds a real, vulnerable, innocent type of man who trusted. Who gave his trust, let's say, to Inayat Khan. Who really took some things to heart. That was the secret of a lot of his power and conviction, was that at a certain point in his life, he really took things so to heart that he just couldn't bear that pressure inside of not accomplishing something. He took it all to heart. It helps, also, to explain other sides of his being. That he could make himself very vulnerable to his friends and to his mureeds. At the time, he would just lay himself wide open.

RALPH: At the end, when everybody was really in awe of him, it was hard for his disciples to let him do that. Because he wouldn't have done it. I remember walking into the room and there were his ”mureeds.” They were all called mureeds; he never even had that word when I knew him. They were all laying around at his feet. I walked in and started laughing. Of course, he just smiled. They didn't make any demand upon him; he would respond to the demand and obviously they needed to experience that. They needed to be open and receptive and—

SITARA: Reverence?

RALPH: Yeah, they had to have that reverence. They had to have that experience; so he didn't interfere with it. So he let them experience that because they needed that. Of course, I didn't understand that at all at the time. When they started doing that I would go into the kitchen, I would get out of the room.

WALI ALI: He did respond. He was very receptive to people; whereas people would say, “Sam was just so proud." But he was very receptive; like the whole way that “Hallelujah, the Three Rings” thing started, for example.

RALPH: I was a little skeptical of it, and look what's happened to it. He had vision and he could see—

WALI ALI: What happened was that he'd had these visions before, he'd had this idea, but it was in response to the pressure of human beings coming into his life who were deeply concerned about this area. His receptivity to their concern triggered a lot of action, on his part. If he hadn't met certain people who had been really concerned about Israel and the Middle East, I don't think he would have made that move in that direction.

RALPH: I don't see how he could have made that move. He had to use all of the material that was presented to him for work, because how are people going to work on themselves useless they have projects they have to work on? That's the thing about a creative and lively teacher like Sam.

WALI ALI: The difference was those were his inspirations. He just sat there in a circle and said this is what you are going to do.

RALPH: I think, in relation to that, I want to mention one thing. I remember coming over here before he worked with individuals on Clementina. When I knew him, he was with individuals. He would have groups also, but not groups that had consistent work that was any real line. It would just be kind of sporadic. As the need appeared, it would occur, and he'd be very loose about it. But when he came in here, the whole story, complexion of his work changed. He understood that this was the age of group work and he was one of the first people in the country to start working with groups in this particular way. So, the dances came to him; that was the thing that happened. That was a group work. It was a consistent group work that he could pass on. It was one of the things that he could use to make it work more cohesively. He found the power of music, he used it and it worked for him. He made this thing really work. Then, he would ask people to meditate and they would say, “why meditate?” And he would say, "don't meditate, just do this.” Just get them to break their ordinary habits; and that's what he did. That’s one of the things he was working on. He went from the individual work to the group when he got in here. The dances were a perfect example of group work because everybody experiences each other in a different way when there is dancing, when there is music, when there is song. And when he’s in the presence of that, it's all different. Remember when he would give the movements, as opposed to when someone else would give the movements? How the whole dynamic changed? Like an extra-sensory experience for everybody! It was interesting how when he would get in the circle and do something, the whole circle would be unified.

WALI ALI: Let's talk a little bit about Sunseed.

RALPH: It's a real document of him, in a way; certainly he's the central figure.

WALI ALI: What part did you play in the inauguration of the idea?

RALPH: I think you’d need to speak to Fred Cohn more about that. I think that Fred got a certain contact with Sam. It more or less went from him to Pir Vilayat; then he came to me. Then I stepped out of the picture to say, "Look, you just can't do a film on Sam Lewis. If you are interested, there are a whole lot of other things that are available to us.” I just wasn't interested, at that time, in getting involved in just a film on Sam Lewis.

WALI ALI: I think that was the first problem in Sam’s relation to Sunseed. His initial idea of what the film was going to be was a film on Pir Vilayat Khan, Sam Lewis, Ajari and his friends, you know, right here.

RALPH: I said to Fred that I could never raise the money based on that triumvirate thing. People want to raise money in relation to a whole phenomena, if that was possible. And that is exactly how we raised the money. But now, of course, that he has the footage, he can make that other film because we got more footage on Sam than we got on anybody else.

SITARA: He put together a little film for the anniversary of his death.         

RALPH: Oh, he did?

WALI ALI: Just some assemblage of the footage, you know. It was just pieced together, just a few pieces.            

RALPH: Sunseed was a complicated experience. It was, I think, a destined experience. There are still a lot of lessons that are being learned from that film.

WALI ALI: It's amazing how long whatever lessons and trips connected with it have endured. When was it started? About six or seven years ago. Everybody gets a hit; everybody has some kind of work in relation to it. People who have just showed the film have experienced this. It’s a learning kind of film. A lot of people who only see the film, even, have a learning experience. We started it six years ago; I think you can get the story from Fred Cohn.

WALI ALI: I just want to talk about some of the problems that came up. The first problem was the different conception of the film. Did you have any encounter with him at that point?

RALPH: No, absolutely none. The only encounter I had was in relation to the Zen Center. I just blew my stack over that one. Whether he was right or wrong, I just blew my stack.

WALI ALI: That was another—

RALPH: That was a whole other thing; but then I approached him about it at Lama. That was the last time I was able to speak to him about it. I mentioned the Zen Center, and my feeling after my talk with him was that he didn't really care if the Zen Center was in it or not. That’s not really what he was after. It was based on that experience with Sam Lewis. When I had my talk with him I realized that it wasn’t the Zen Center. That wasn’t what it was all about; it was something else.

WALI ALI: What do you think it was about?

RALPH: I know what it was about and I’m trying to put it into words. I can't put it into words, but I'll think about it. Maybe we can get together and talk about it another time; but it wasn’t necessarily about the Zen Center. It was a very mind-blowing thing because Sam would always do things like that. We would always come up with obvious things that you would just scratch your ear about. He’d say, "You can't do this," you know, it was a physical manifestation. It was something out there.

WALI ALI: It was a barrier.

RALPH: Yeah, it wasn't about the thing out there at all; he didn't care about that. He wasn’t attached to the Zen Center, he wasn't attached to what you thought, he wasn’t attached to any of that stuff. He could be unidentified, but he always used things for his disciples. He was always trying to stir people up; to get people, maybe, more identified. Maybe he'd have to teach them a spiritual lesson; maybe it would be a very long term spiritual lesson. He was always working on short term and long term. Moineddin is a great example of that. You are an example of that. He would do things; something on somebody. They'd be carrying the baggage around for four or five years, and all of a sudden, they'd see that that wasn't what it was about at all. That's the way a spiritual teacher works. But I didn't know that, I took it literally. I was really upset about it, so I went down to Lama. He forbid me to come there. It was a whole trip—

WALI ALI: I remember the whole trip because I was right in the middle of it, in a lot of respects.

RALPH: I went down there and I had this thing with him. I said, “Okay, Ralph, just be obedient, just give in to him, do what he wants and wait for your opening. Ask him about the Zen Center, because that will be the opening. There won’t be that much, but there will be an opening. He doesn’t like anyone to question you, but he will give you a few seconds.” So, he gave me a few seconds and I saw that it wasn’t about the Zen Center.

WALI ALI: It was about the spiritual development of the people that were involved.

RALPH: But he couldn’t be concerned about the entire spiritual development of the United States. He could only be concerned about the people who were his disciples working with him. There are all kinds of things going on. How could he solve the problems of all the other spiritual communities?

WALI ALI: He did feel, at one point, that Suzuki Roshi never recognized him.

RALPH: Suzuki Roshi was a very strange Roshi, a very strange guy. And anybody who was around him, it was brutal, totally brutal, but there were a lot of things that were very similar between them, Suzuki Roshi and Sam, if you were there.

WALI ALI: For example, in the book Sam wrote, The Lotus and the Universe, in '66 or somewhere around there, he had nothing but praise for what is going on at the Zen Center. So, in a sense, part of it is about Baker. The old Rinzai-Soto game—you’re too passive, you’re too active, you need a shock. Just sitting isn't enough, you’re too active, Zen is being in the state of silence. That kind of game.

RALPH: I agree.

WALI ALI: I know he was attached to it personally, even though he was also using it as a lesson, because he talked about it incessantly.

RALPH: When he got on something he never stopped, he’d bring it up all the time until you were sick of it.

WALI ALI: Right, and it was his power of concentration—

RALPH: And you would be so sick of it that you would do anything to please him so that he’d finally leave you alone. He was on Fred’s back, I’m telling you, he got on Fred’s back. I thought Fred was going to have a nervous breakdown, as a matter of fact, he had a nervous breakdown. Then it went up to Pir Vilayat Khan; I finally took it to Pir Vilayat Khan. That was that, Sam passed away. Pir Vilayat Khan said that was ridiculous. So what he was picking up on was, at least what I felt, it was more of a lesson for somebody. Who knows who it was meant for? It was awfully hard to know who it was meant for when it was all over the place. Some people would take it literally and some people would say, “Maybe that’s not enough, maybe there's other things here. What’s the physical manifestation all about?”

WALI ALI: Let me ask you this. Do you think that Sam, in some mysterious way, his vision was related to the financial success of Sunseed and he saw problems that were coming up and that he was trying to solve?

RALPH: Let me tell you something about the financial. We opened Sunseed. He was against Sai Baba, that was the only thing that I know he was really against. I understood that, I understood why, and I didn't push the Sai Baba at all. Let me tell you about the film. We opened without the Sunseed in it—

WALI ALI: Without the Zen Center in it?

RALPH: Yeah, at the Palace of Fine Arts. It didn’t go well and I knew we had to change the film. We would have to put narration on it. We have to put the Zen Center in it. We’ve got to give it another dimension. It’s got to be brought down somehow, in certain ways.

NANCY: You think it was too Bhakti?

RALPH: Yeah, the big problem with the film was that it was too much of a Bhakti film. I wanted it to have another aspect, which didn’t really fit in away, but when we put another aspect in it, the film was more successful. The interesting thing is this. I don't know if it was fair to have taken the Zen Center out of the film of not. The film has been shown in certain places that I’ve heard, and I’ve heard the Zen Center isn’t in it. People who see the first version and then the Zen Center; when they re-book the film, say, “Get us the one with the Zen Center.” I get more requests for the film with the Zen Center in it than requests for it when it is not in it. The film is more successful with the Zen Center in it.

WALI ALI: But the film has not been a financial success?

RALPH: No, but it’s more of a financial success because the Zen Center’s in it. When Dick Baker saw the film he said, “The Zen Center doesn’t really belong in the film, in a way, because, you see, Zen isn’t Bhakti,” and I said, “But it does belong because it presents a totally contrasting element.” It works, strangely enough it works somehow. Sunseed is not a great film, it is not made that well, it chops from one thing to the next. The Sam Lewis sequences and the Zen Center sequences are the best sequences in the whole film. It’s very interesting, you know, that which caused the most conflict came out the best. And the Zen Center caused so much conflict in Fred Cohn—he made that Zen sequence. That was the best editing job he did in the entire film. He sat down and knocked out that Zen Sequence like that, and he couldn’t do it on any of the other sequences. Very interesting that he had the ability and the concentration to be able to make the best editing job on the Zen Center. The Zen Center was the first single film that was made from the film.

WALI ALI: Everybody has flipped-flopped a lot on their feelings about what was right or wrong about this film.

RALPH: I don’t think it is just right or wrong. I think it’s a whole other level that has occurred here. Sam may have known that this was going to happen and may have realized that this was a way of having it happen this way. Who knows?

WALI ALI: I don’t know. I have a feeling that if he had lived, he wouldn’t have allowed the film to come out. He wouldn’t have allowed his footage to be on the film with the Zen Center.

RALPH: I think that that is one thing we would disagree on. I think he would have. That is the thing I got from him when we were at Lama; that it would be alright. And it was alright.

NANCY: Very irrational.

RALPH: It was totally irrational. On the one hand he was doing this and he was calling me all kinds of names, and then, when I went to India, he writes all these letters and gives me copies of them. I don’t know what the hell he's talking about in these letters. I got to India and all of a sudden somebody writes me and says, "He adopted you in a meeting as his godson.” Do you think I knew what the hell was going on with that one?

WALI ALI: He was under the impression that you had surrendered to him at Lama. I know that he was under that impression; that you’d agreed to do it his way. He thought that was the most wonderful thing.

RALPH: We had agreed about something, but I’m not quite sure what we had agreed to. I knew that I had to do that trip at Lama; I knew it for my own posterity. It was important for me to go down there. He said, “If he comes here, I’m going to leave,” and all that other stuff. I met him in town, and I said, “What’s going on?” He said, “I’ve gotta do what I’ve gotta do,” and he turns around and walks away. It scares the shit out of me. What the hell are you doing that you gotta do? So he’s doing his thing, and I don’t know what he’s doing, so I write him a long, long letter before I get to Lama. I said, “Let’s try to iron this thing out a little before you get there a little bit.” I write this long, long letter and he writes me back an answer. He is very sweet and nice, so it was an openness, right? So I went and there wasn't any problem at all. Jonathon was sitting there, watching the whole thing. He said, “I’m going to be there, I’m going to be watching the whole thing.” He said, “You two were putting your arms around one another.” It wasn’t quite like that, but he wanted to demonstrate a straight spiritual power to me at the level of awareness that has the authority. He wanted me to understand that that level is what you give yourself to. You need a certain preparation to do that. Obviously, I wasn’t I wasn’t able to do it, but I was able to agree with him that that was right. Then he allowed me to talk to him about the Zen Center. I understood from him, and I really understood it. I may be screwed by blocks, but inside that is what I got. I told Fred and he didn’t agree with me. We fought through the whole film anyway, so it didn’t matter. We never became real close buddies. It was a strange alliance, he and I doing this film. Our life styles were different, our temperaments were different, everything about us was different.

WALI ALI: Did Sam ever give you any warnings about the money side of the film? Did he feel that there was too much spending ?

RALPH: Yeah, I know that he thought that I was the one who should have been handling all the money. We went over the budget by $200,000. There’s a lot of personal things that both Fred and I were inexperienced in when we started. He felt he had expressed things about himself that weren’t quite true and I expressed things about myself that weren’t quite true. But we did the film and we got the money for it.

WALI ALI: The curious thing is that I think that film, as much as any single thing, has gotten Sam Lewis known in the world.

RALPH: There’s no question about it. It’s a film that’s going to live on for an awfully long time. No one has made a film quite like that. It is, in a way, a sentimental Bhakti experience. Of course, Fred is very sentimental. The thing about it is that it has other things in it that are real and true. When Oscar Ichazo of Arica can respond like that to Sam Lewis, there was a grace. Whether Fred wanted it or not, or I wanted it or not, it was destined to be made, and we were chosen to make it. As ill-equipped as we were, as imperfect as we were, that’s how it’s coming down for people who have to take over certain things in life. You are ill-equipped, you aren’t ready, and you are given a task, and there it is, a mountain descending upon you.

WALI ALI: Did you hear Trungpa comment on the film?

RALPH: He said something about it; about the film.

NANCY: Spiritual pornography.

RALPH: Spiritual pornography, he called it and they used it in the promotion of the film. It drew a huge crowd.

WALI ALI: I didn’t hear that remark. I did hear someone, I think it was Surya reported it to me, that Trungpa said that he was embarrassed through the whole film until he came to Sam Lewis; and he said, “That was the great one.”

RALPH: They all responded to Sam Lewis. Everyone who has seen the film responds to Sam Lewis. The other ones they respond to, like Oscar said, “Oh Baba Ram Dass, he’s a nice boy, he’s so happy and smiling.” Then he gets kind of apologetic with me, “they're all good teachers, but Sam Lewis—!”        

WALI ALI: He had a way of teaching that was uniquely his own because he was just being himself.

RALPH: Essentially he was being himself and he didn’t—the thing about Sam was that he didn't play roles. I think what he did was, he had intention with respect to what he understood and he and he used it. It came out in a certain way. He understood how to use that as it came out, and that’s what he did. He used material that he had available to him. That’s all one can do, in my opinion. He had very good teachers, and he was destined for what he did. He was able to move with it. To this day, there is a lot more that is undiscovered about him. Maybe the book that you are writing will help people understand. To look at these manifestations of his in another way.

WALI ALI: What did you think of this? Did you take much of a look that this book? (In the Garden)

RALPH: I didn’t read it too much.

WALI ALI: It’s doing very well. Sales wise much better than anything we’ve done. It’s got that kind of Lama touch to it.

RALPH: I want to say one thing about this book about Sam Lewis, which I’d like you to look into. This word “heart” is dandied about a great deal and Heart, not small h; big H. Not heart here, but Heart. The whole heart through the whole person, which I think is really the manifestation of what he did. He expressed the heart; but the heart as it is exemplified from the overall point of view of what man can be. I think it is important for you to try to define that. It’s like mind, not intelligence, you know, mind! Through the whole mind, real mind. That’s what he really did with people and that’s why people found that they could move, they could change, because he lived it. He was able to live that. It wasn’t little heart, it was the whole man. It meant a lot of things. It is very complicated to be able to understand what all of it is. I don’t have the academic background that you have, so maybe there will be a few things that you could put in there to make people understand what that really means. This is not a fragmentation with Sam. Most of us are just a fragmentation, we get it in bits and pieces. Heart, a bit here, a bit there. A real thought we get a bit here, a bit there. We get our energy, a little here and little there; some more and some less. But he had heart and he had the whole thing. How he got it I don’t know.

WALI ALI: Grace! He said it was Grace!

RALPH: I’ll tell you something. I think Grace has an awful lot to do with it because Sunseed could not have been finished, or made, without Grace. Grace was in that footage. I said to myself, “With all that Grace in that footage—” You just looked at the rough cuts, and it was just incredible what was coming off that film. I said, “They’ve got to be able to make that film because of the Grace in that footage.” It was just right there. With Sam Lewis, there it was—bang, bang, bang, bang, bang—that’s interesting.

WALI ALI: I really want to thank you, Ralph, for your time and also for your very perceptive remarks. I think you saw Sam very deeply.

RALPH: I’ve been trying to say this. Call me again if you want to talk.

WALI ALI: I will. I tell you what we’ll do, after we get the transcript done we’ll send you a copy.

WALI ALI: We’re talking to Nancy now.

NANCY: Relating to machines is real hard, I just have to get past self-consciousness. It will just take me a couple of minutes—

WALI ALI: Don’t worry about the machine. Let’s start at the beginning. Ralph already described his account of when he brought you over to meet Sam.

NANCY: Oh he did?

WALI ALI: I would be very interested in hearing your account.

NANCY: I think I have to digress a little bit because it is like Kismet, and the whole thing is enshrouded in a mystical flavor and I haven’t had many real experiences like that. I could imagine an awful lot, coloring everything in an illusory romantic gauze, but this one was the turning point of my life. I think I should mention I had taken acid although I was not a drug freak. I had gone down to L.A.—this was 1966 I think, or ’65. It’s probably ‘66 and it’s March. I’d had this little tiny bit of acid and I am all alone at this friend's, my movie-maker friend’s, fancy house. I’d been suffering terribly for a year because I’d left N.Y. and I was here. I’d been working as an actress, and I’d come to this place where I began to fulfill a dream I’d always had which was to be an actress; to be well- known in fame and glory and all this stuff. I'd sort-of had a taste of, it because I was working as an actress, and I was completely empty. All of a sudden, the world was empty. This kind of gnawing hunger that I had was completely unsatisfied. In fact, I was enraged by this taste of something false. I was in this no-man’s land; I didn’t know where to turn, I didn’t know what was happening. I was going to a shrink, I had tasted acid, I was in a terrible inner pain, for which I am very grateful. I took this acid and I saw very clearly a man walking toward me from the unknown. It was like looking at my image coming forward. It was like looking at a radar screen in which these two blips collide. He was coming from this dark, mysterious unknown. I didn’t know who he was. In my mind, I rushed to interpret it. and I was wrong. I had seen a friend of mine who was a homosexual, whom I loved with all my heart, but it was in a different connection, and I waited. He was in N.Y. at the time and I waited for the time to change. I went out and I called him by the swimming pool, it was very Hollywood, and he said, “It’s very important, your visions.” I said, “I had a vision that I am to be married and have your child, and something is coming to me from the unknown” He said, “You know I’m homosexual; it’s just not possible.” He was very loving, but he rejected the interpretation of my experience. So I went home and I went to sleep. I woke up, and a friend of mine came to see me. He took me down the stairs and someone honked the horn and waved out in front of my house. I turned around and said, “Who is that?” He said, “That’s Ralph Silver, he’s a Sufi.” I had no idea what Sufi was. I saw Ralph in this car that had always given me obnoxious vibes. It was always parked kind of illegally or snuck into some tiny little space; it was always in the neighborhood. I was always saying, “Who is this guy, this clown? He had this beat-up little Morris Minor. So, I went to the movies with Dan and said “hello” to Ralph; he drove us to the movies. I came home and see Ralph in my door, writing some scroll or something. He said, “I’m doing your numerology and you’re number 9. He engaged in this occult stuff. I didn’t know anything. I’d never heard of astrology, numerology, Sufis, spiritual teaching. I’d heard of nothing. I was totally innocent.

WALI ALI: I’d always assumed you had been into it for years and years.

NANCY: I’d been into nothing; occult nothing. With Ralph, this was my very first encounter with the occult and spiritualism; anything. He said, “Why don’t we have dinner together?” We just struck it off. I was shopping and he lived alone and I lived two doors next door alone, so we had this dinner together and the phone rings. I heard him say, “Hello Sam, oh yeah, oh yeah, hi Sam.” I figure that Sam is some, you know, 28 yr. old dude, and it was Sam. I’m talking to Ralph. He has a fireplace, he smokes a pipe, there are all these books on philosophy. Meanwhile, I’m looking around. I’m at an address in San Francisco and I don’t know where I am. And I have some strange connection to Ralph; it feels very karmic. I’d had this experience with the acid, with this man coming to me from the unknown—and I don’t put these things together at all. He says, “There is somebody I’d like you to meet, Sam.” I hear a couple more words, “Yeah, bring her around.” So he says, “There is this friend of mine, Sam, and I think you should meet him tomorrow at so and so,” and I say, “I’m seeing my shrink.” He says, “We’ll pick you up outside the shrink. I have an interview with Marlo Zellerbach.” (Did Ralph tell you about that?)

WALI ALI: No, he didn’t go into the details of that.

NANCY: I just have to go into details.

WALI ALI: That’s good.

NANCY: This feeds my imagination. I go to my shrink. The whole shrink thing is weighty, it’s been off and on for ten years with that whole ethos, shrinksville. I come out and I see Ralph in the car and there is this man in back. In the front a man gets out and lets me come in the back and I know him, I just know him. It’s so familiar, I just remembered my heart lets down, like your milk lets down when you have a child. All of a sudden everything lets down. I’ve been lonely and isolated in the West for a year, over a year, and I had no connections. Ralph was a connection. All of a sudden, there is this strange connection with this man; we were laughing and talking and chatting. He was clean-shaven and looked like a nice Jewish man. We went to Marlo Zellerbach’s house; they were interviewing him. They quickly got fed up with him and went right to me because they knew I was with The Committee. “Oh, you are with The Committee,” and I was noticing that he was the one that was supposed to be interviewed.

WALI ALI: Who was? Sam?

NANCY: Sam! It was the opposite of this P.R. interview; and then they are dropping him like a hot potato! I thought that was very rude. I wasn’t encouraging them, because that wasn’t why we were there. I knew why we were there. So, when we got done, he said, “What did you think of that?” I said, “I thought it was ridiculous, you were there to be interviewed, not me.” I didn’t have anything to say to them. I didn’t understand what was happening. He said a couple more things, not too much. We took him to Clementina. He said, “Do you want to come upstairs for a second?” When they were interviewing him, they weren’t saying that, “You are a spiritual teacher, or you are this or that.” I don’t remember what they were interviewing him on, but it was all very ordinary, and I knew nothing more about him than what we’ve said.

WALI ALI: Ralph didn’t tell you anything about him?

NANCY: Ralph said nothing. I’ve told you everything—just Sam and some guy—I had expected a 28 yr. old that I should meet.

WALI ALI: How old did you think he was?

NANCY: I thought he was middle-ish sixties. I didn’t really think of age when I saw him. I had this tremendous relief when I saw him. I had lost my father when I was 22, and here I was, 31, and I had a certain feeling there—I couldn’t quite name it. Anyway, we go up the stairs of this kind of rinky-dink boarding house and we walk into what looks like either a really poor, dirty, room—I notice in the living room. I’m not taking things in because I’m really following him, he is leading the way. But I notice it is kind of shoddy and run down. We go into this room, and he sits down on the bed and says I should sit down in a chair. We are about this (indicates) far apart. He sits on the edge of the bed and I sit on the chair and he looked at me and I looked at him. I don’t know where Ralph was; maybe Ralph was sitting there, too. All I know is that I went off somewhere; I went on a flight. I had no idea where I went, but I know I was with him, and I knew it was nothing I could interpret. There were no images or residue experiences. I really went off with him somewhere. When I came back I realized that I’d gone off somewhere, and I looked at him and he was no longer this man, this sixtyish man in the car. He was someone with whom I had an incredible bond, just because we had gone away. I could never name it, I just knew. No words were said and nothing was laid down. We were friends; there was this connection made.

WALI ALI: He didn’t say anything about your being—that he’d gotten some inner direction that you were his new god-daughter?

NANCY: No, I’ll tell you when that came down. This is the bare bones of it. This is all that I can remember. And Ralph—of course, Ralph and I are in terrible trouble with this relationship, because it’s just kind of wild. Right away we’re into it, he wants this from me, and he’s bringing me to Sam. Sam’s kind of acting in this capacity. I begin to see he is in the capacity of an advisor, a helper, a teacher. Ralph has told me that Sam had always saved his life and had always kept him going. When he was down and desperate he could always speak to Sam and Sam would always give him hope. Then Ralph sent me to Gavin Arthur, he called him Gavin Arthur. I kept calling him Gavin, and Ralph Silver calls him Gavin and he said, “If you call me Gavin once more—” (imitates Gavin)

WALI ALI: That’s a real good imitation.

NANCY: Oh, it was just wild, and still he didn’t say too much about Murshid Sam. It wasn’t Murshid Sam, it was just Sam.

WALI ALI: No, he wasn’t called Murshid then.

NANCY: It was just Sam and nothing was defined. All I knew when I went to Sam’s place was, it was very, very empty, it had an empty quality. There were one or two people occasionally, maybe washing the dishes, that were stacked for days at a time. And maybe we’d go around the corner with—who’s this old, tall, big man he loved—Hathaway.

WALI ALI: Bill Hathaway.

NANCY: We’d go around the corner and have a ham or eggs or something, it was very low key. That just reminded me—I would just say, it’s terribly empty. It had a Buddhist feeling to it, I don’t know why. There was no talk of Sufis. There was no talk of anything. There were no books brought out, there was nothing handed around.

WALI ALI: But he was having some meetings here at that time, wasn’t he?

NANCY: He might have been, but I was not going to them. The only people that I met at that time were Akhbar and Carl and Pat.

WALI ALI: Howard Mussel, did you meet him?

NANCY: No.

WALI ALI: And Claude ?

NANCY: I don’t remember. But, David, I think I met David, with the German name—

WALI ALI: Hoffmaster.

NANCY: Hoffmaster, yeah, I’m not quite clear—

WALI ALI: It could be, he was around then.

NANCY: One day Murshid was moving and we all got him moved. I had no idea of anything happening. Wait a second now, I want to digress a second because my chronology might be wrong. In the middle of this, where he’s acting kind of like a counselor and adviser. Ralph had been helped with his problems, and I come, too, because I have gotten rid of my shrink and I don’t know exactly what is happening. He gets sick, Murshid gets sick, I don’t remember what happened.

WALI ALI: This was around April, 1967?

NANCY: Right, I met him in March, so this is April, so it’s very close. He goes to the hospital and I go up and see him with Ralph. There is nobody in his room. There are very few people around him at the time. He’s basically unknown. He said, “God has manifested to me, and He has told me I am to be the leader of the hippies, to be the leader of the young people.” I think this is when he told me, “I’m to take you, I’m to take you as my god-daughter.” It was the same visit in the hospital, and this was the first hit that I’d had of his being a teacher or anything.

WALI ALI: That’s very interesting.

NANCY: It came together with the thing about the god-daughter, I believe. He’s in the hospital bed, and he tells me that God manifested to him. Nobody ever talked to me that way before except my father who was on the path of—although I cannot say what it was I’ve done, this is a mystery to me still. But it made complete sense to me when he said this to me. It was the first time he’d ever talked to me this way. It came right into me, just as if we had talked that way before, it was part of our language and he knew that I would understand. There was no space between us. There was this tremendous intimacy, and it made all the sense in the world. And when he went home, he said he found his doorsteps flooded with young people. Then he moved to Precita. He moved from Clementina to Precita, and we all helped him move. I forgot how we got his stuff. He had 1 ½ things, and the rest was all papers. He used to talk, I remember, the one thing he used to do. I knew that he was involved in writing letters all over the world, about ecology and politics and nobody could ever agree on anything. I knew he was a genius and was involved in all those things. But in terms of anything esoteric, I had absolutely no idea. It’s about this time that I begin to interpret that vision that I felt that I had had, and I realized that it was Ralph. Ralph did give me a child. And the guy that I did call up, who was a homosexual, a year later got married and had a baby and moved out about twenty minutes away from me, and met Sam, too. So, you see, it all came together is why I reported the story, because it has a relevance.

WALI ALI: Did you have much contact with the Rancho Olompali, that whole situation out there? I’d like to talk about that some.

NANCY: I’m glad you brought that up because Murshid had moved and he had all those disciples around him.

WALI ALI: Did he ever actually initiate you or did he just assume that you were initiated?

NANCY: Just quickly, the story was—

WALI ALI: “—All disciples stand up.”

NANCY: “All disciples stand up,” and I’m still sitting down. I’m noticing that Murshid is getting annoyed but I’m not quite sure why, and he is getting very impatient. He said, “I said, all disciples stand up, please,” and he is looking glowering at me. I said, “Murshid, I’m not.” I couldn’t even get the words out.“Up, up!” Then, when I questioned him later about it, he said, “You are a disciple. I asked a question only a disciple could answer and you answered it.”

SITARA: Which was—?

NANCY: Let me get to the Olompali people. I know that in this period that there is a tremendous love that was between us, and it was always there. The funny thing about it is that I can’t interpret it. In one way, it was a selfish love on my part, because I was never aware of the burdens that he carried as a spiritual teacher. I was like a child who does not realize what a parent has to go through in order to service its needs. I had no understanding of the burdens that were on his back, until a certain point and I’ll get to that. But I did have a real love for him and I think that’s probably the seed of the first conscious love I would ever experience in my life, the beginning, the planted seed.

WALI ALI: I think it was one of his first experiences, too, with people. Certainly among the first where I think the love that he got from the young people that he came in contact with made him free to be what he was and that is something that I want to go into, too. Is how he changed.

NANCY: It’s very interesting how he changed. Not that I have it down pat, we’ll discover it. I had said, “Murshid, I want to give a party for you for Christmas. You just invite all your disciples and I just want you to do whatever you want to do. I want you to have a wonderful Christmas.”

WALI ALI: This was Christmas, 1967?

NANCY: It is coming around to December of ‘67. He says, “Okay,” and I said, “We’ll organize it.” One day, either he told me or Sheila USA calls me up. She was not USA then.

WALI ALI: —McKinney.

NANCY: She’s a nice, suburban, McCall's housewife, who has three children that are spick and span. She’s a perfect housekeeper and she makes pancakes and waffles for breakfast and has a nice husband. She calls me and says, she’s talking about Sam Lewis, obviously. She has come to Sam through Shirin. I don’t know how she met her. Shirin is in Novato, as I remember, but this is all in that period before the ranch is formed. She has met Don McCoy and they have introduced Don McCoy to Murshid. I’m giving the Christmas party at my house, so I’m inviting Sheila and Don. They introduce me to Don McCoy and Sandy and they all want to live together. They were all living separately in different places. Don McCoy is giving away all his money and Murshid meets Don McCoy at my house, I think, on Christmas. They were all taking drugs that night. I think they all took something, I don’t know what it was. Murshid didn’t take it and I didn’t.

WALI ALI: It must have been LSD or something.

NANCY: Or PCP. They were always on drugs, they were always stoned. Murshid looked like he was in samadhi the whole night because he was just so happy. He said, his “wildest dreams were coming true,” and he loved Don McCoy. He really loved Don, and the children were there. Everybody was all mellowed out on this drug, whatever it was. I was busy cooking, and he always said I spent too much time in the kitchen. I don’t remember too much about that night but I, know that that was the coming together of Murshid and this group that were trying to get the ranch. Of course, they were going to get it. Sheila was very attuned into Murshid. Murshid was everything. She was going there all the time. I don’t know how they found this building up at Novato, but they all moved into it. Buz (his name was Dara) was there, Shirin, at this point, and they were coming into meetings at Precita. Dara and Shirin were going together, and Sheila and Don, but there was controversy about Sam. Some of them had lots of questions about Sam. They thought he was bossy, that he didn’t know what he was talking about; he wasn’t free. They had this whole thing, I’m not quite sure what it was. They wanted to be free to indulge, that’s what it was.

WALI ALI: What was his relation to Sheila, at this time?

NANCY: What he said to me was, he was going to send Sheila and me to India to a spiritual conference.

WALI ALI: She was always talking about that.

NANCY: There was a spiritual conference in India, at Pondicherry. I remember he said it was somebody—

WALI ALI: Julie M.?

NANCY: —who had given him a very hard time. He’d had terrible, romantic difficulties with this woman. He wasn’t going to be able to go there, he was too tied down here. He was sending me and Sheila as his emissaries to this spiritual conference. What about—I’m trying to think—what about Aurobindo; is that where it would have been?

WALI ALI: It could very well have been.

NANCY: Auroville? Meanwhile, what happened is that I got pregnant and I couldn’t go because, I think, the baby was expected on October 18, Murshid’s birthday.

WALI ALI: Was he going to pay your way? Don McCoy ended up paying his way and Sheila’s way to go to this conference.

WALI ALI: There was one the following year, 1968.

NANCY: ‘68, yeah, because in a year everybody had changed, and I had gone to N.Y. in late January. We were already into the new year and everybody is talking about sending—and I go to Los Angeles to open a theatre, I went to see some friends of Murshid’s in Los Angeles and he wrote me and said, “I want you to go with Sheila to India and I want to talk about this when you come back.” Then he did talk about it, but it never cemented with me because I realized I was pregnant and that let me out. Then he sent Sheila.

WALI ALI: Did he say anything about going with Krishnadas to India and presenting dances or something? Do you remember that?

NANCY: No, I don’t remember that at all. I just knew—and Sheila said this. Sheila had a tremendous amount of energy, and she was, as Murshid said to me, “She’s either a very holy woman or she’s insane.” That seemed to wrap it up for me. Part of her attraction for me was I couldn’t, myself, distinguish when she was crazy because everything she said seemed to make sense. And she never made me feel good, she made me feel bad.

WALI ALI: She always made me feel uncomfortable.

NANCY: She made me feel very uncomfortable. She made me feel as if I were spiritually impoverished, that I was always making mistakes, fumbling and wrong and she knew what was happening. There were a lot of tragedies at Olompali that year; fires, and babies drowned in the swimming pool. The whole place seemed to—

WALI ALI: That was later, wasn’t it?

NANCY: When they came back from India?

WALI ALI: Yeah, that was later, I believe. I know there was a sort of peaking at Olompali, where Sam was very optimistic. He was really putting a lot of energy into it; and they went another route.

NANCY: After India, right?

WALI ALI: Yeah, after India. He brought Vilayat to Olompali, remember? Vilayat founded an International School of Meditation there. Sam had big plans that it was going to be turned into a big meditation center and universal commune. Some people there went along with it and other people didn’t want to have anything to do with it. There was a real inner turmoil there. I think, by the time that the babies were drowned and the house burned down, it had sort of been abandoned by the spiritual forces that were trying to make it into—

NANCY: Yes, I think so. I know you are right, because I remember that when they came back from India, my impression was that they had actually tripped out. They’d gone on their own and they hadn’t listened to the instructions that had been given, and they hadn’t done their work. What they’d done was that they had found a teacher there that they’d brought back.

WALI ALI: Father?

NANCY: Yes. Sheila never told me about Father’s powers. All he had to do was think about Nixon and Nixon would drop dead, literally. That’s how she described him.    

WALI ALI: He very much appealed to their imagination, and she always had a very lively imagination.

NANCY: Oh, tremendous. She was terribly magical. She had a lot going for her. She had a tremendous amount of love, she was very giving; but I felt she was, ultimately, on her own trip and couldn’t be called back. She seemed to be going all out of the way. I went to the Father thing to check it out, what little I could. I was offended, I think, is the word that I’ve always used. I was repelled. I had too many questions. I was too suspicious. I didn’t get a good feeling about it. At the same time, I didn’t say anything negative, because it wasn’t my business to. I didn’t want to do that. I wanted to see for myself what I felt. I’ve just remembered, there was something about Murshid not recognizing him at a meeting, a holy man jamboree. Father got up and Murshid said something about him not making any sense, or he couldn’t understand a word he said. Murshid didn’t put him down, but he said something like that.

WALI ALI: Certainly. Murshid was very disappointed and, in a sense, personally crushed. He took it very well. I think it sobered him up in a lot of ways about some of the ways in which he dealt with disciples. Ralph and I were talking a little bit about how he would go on a disciples’ trip. He would be very vulnerable sometimes. Even with all his external power and everything, how he would just tune in to somebody and just idealize that person. He could really idealize a person. He could be so uncritical when he looked at somebody sometimes, just as much as he could be critical. And I think it sobered him up some because he realized how ungrounded Sheila was, for example. And I don’t know. I know he was hurt by that whole experience. He didn’t recognize Shrinjema, Father, at all. In fact, I recall one time when Father was brought over here to this house and we were just getting ready to go out, I think, to see a Gilbert and Sullivan play. It was a whole group of people to see The Mikado. Murshid said he didn’t have time to see him.

NANCY: I think he must have been disappointed. I remember that he would express disappointment or anger or whatever, but it would be in a very—he was so direct that it was very hard to take in what he was saying, most of the time. He really meant exactly what he was saying, and there was something about the mind needing to make allowance for things. He couldn’t take it in all that purely and direct us; he didn’t really know what he was angry about, but he would say it. I wasn’t able to read it a lot of the times. I got the message somehow, but I was able to follow his inclination. I, of course, never felt—although this is hard—what does it mean to feel like, to be a disciple? He taught me. He was all the things, my guru, my teacher, I want to say that, but the way he was my teacher wasn’t thru the form of the teacher, it was as the father.

WALI ALI: Yes, no question about that, and there was something very clear that that was your relationship. He always had that very personal side which he opened up in his relationship with you. Maybe I’m jumping, but I recall he sent Banefsha to you at one point to put under your wing.

NANCY: And Basira; he sent them both to me at the same time.

WALI ALI: I think that both of them had something of the same kind of connection with him in a personal way.

NANCY: I know that Banefsha did. Basira’s I was never able to see as clearly. I hadn’t seen them together as much, but I think both of those women saw him, in some funny way, almost as their husbands. I know Banefsha did and Basira did and I never did.

WALI ALI: I think, maybe, that is why he sent them to you; to redirect some of that, but I don’t know. Maybe you could illuminate it.

NANCY: Okay. The three of us, although it’s not true so much with me now, just happened to be particularly psychic. Banefsha and Basira, I think, just idealized Murshid as representing all men. As a male figure, he was an ideal. He wasn’t an ideal just on the teacher plane, he was an ideal man. I think that psychically that’s how they also saw him. There was something wrecking to their personal lives in that because they felt, maybe, that it was reality for them personally. They interpreted it personally. Especially Banefsha, she has very high ideals and I wouldn’t say that she isn’t humble enough, but at that time couldn’t see herself in an ordinary sense as a woman who needs an ordinary mate to do one’s earthly work. But it was, more or less, as a celestial mate. She did say that he said that she and Steve Durkee were like peas in the same pod—

WALI ALI: He said that?

NANCY: Yeah, or that they were the same soul splintered up; she said he said that. I don’t know if she’s ever said anything about it. She did say to me that she and Durkee were—that Murshid had said that they were the same soul, way into other times.

SITARA: She said that at her wedding she really felt that she was being married to Murshid. And when the time came to kiss the groom, she kissed Murshid and then she said, “Oh wait a minute, I’m at my wedding, I’d better kiss my husband.”

NANCY: She said that, but of course, on the film clip she kisses Michael first.

WALI ALI: People who have very active idealizations faculties.

NANCY: I think that that is a large part of it. I don’t know why that didn’t happen with me. I wouldn’t even conjecture that. I was never able to interpret Murshid and say, “He’s great because he’s this, or he’s free because he’s that, or he’s in touch with a level of authority."

WALI ALI: You didn’t analyze it?

NANCY: I never analyzed it. In my letters to him I’d say things which sounded like my intelligence was functioning, but I never to myself analyzed him. I would just use the word grace. I saw him as grace manifesting to me. On the personal plane, although he existed for me, his idiosyncrasies and all of that never added up for me. I never added them up, I was never offended by them or attracted to them or anything.

WALI ALI: When you gave parties, for example and had people to dinner and he would walk around the table, and he would dominate or whatever he did. Do you have any memories of that?

NANCY: Oh yeah, I have memories of all that. He was like a sort of Moses, cutting through ignorance. Just slashing, slashing away all the time, and he just never stooped; he was a warrior. That’s my impression of it now because I’m more sophisticated. In those times, I still saw him as a warrior. He was relentless, he was a fighter for truth, for God’s vision or Oneness or what was his understanding. He lived his understanding. A man is his understanding and his understanding was operative all the time. It took outrageous forms.

WALI ALI: Did you ever feel he was a Don Quixote fencing with windmills?

NANCY: No, that image of him didn’t occur to me. It has occurred to me about someone else, but not of him. The word enigmatic, which is used so much, that lot of people see him that way. One could say that the Universe is enigmatic because one doesn’t understand It’s a level of principle and one can’t take in a level of principle in a rational sense. Naturally, he was always enigmatic; he was almost like these creative principles at work. That’s how I saw him, I am over-analytical and, you see. He never let me be, so I was free not to be over-analytical with him and he never encouraged me to be that way.

WALI ALI: What sort of things did you do when you just spent time together? Did you go out to eat a lot?

NANCY: No, we’d go to the corner. He would take me out. He would always treat me nice because he knew I was having a hard time with Ralph. He said to me about Ralph, “Ralph is like a young Eugene O’Neill,” and he also said, “when Ralph loves people the way he loves animals his heart will be open.” He feared that Ralph would have to undergo some disastrous accident of some sort to open his heart, and he prayed not. But when I asked him if I should marry Ralph, he was for my marrying Ralph. He said, “Yes.” He actually encouraged me, directly, to marry Ralph.

WALI ALI: He made a real effort to keep you together.

NANCY: He wanted us together, but what he said was, “Ralph, put your feet on the ground. You may not want your feet on the ground that much.” That was the fight all these years, of course. Now he had them on the ground and he really had them on the ground. They were so much on the ground that I wanted him to get them off the ground. With Murshid—we would go to Coffee Cantata, we would take walks. I spent time with him in his groups because I did come to his meetings at Precita. I’d go to lunch and we would chat around. I would call to him when I was in crisis and need. When I would really need him, he would come out or sometimes he—

WALI ALI: Did you have long telephone conversations?

NANCY: Yes, we did have long telephone conversations.

WALI ALI: You are one of the few people he had long telephone conversations with. He used to have very short telephone conversations.

NANCY: There would be moments when he would call and say, “So and so is in town and we are going out to lunch. I thought I’d let you know,” and hang up. But there were times when we would have long conversations. I don’t remember them. I know there is this one thing I wanted to share with you, for the book. You’ll have to use your discretion as to how you use it. Before he said it, I would use my criticism of this book, what I feel about The Garden, because it is related to it. I felt that it’s real Jung; it’s like fragments and memories of someone, kind of childish. It makes it seem like Grandpa. They don’t add up to the kind of stature that Murshid has. For people now, it doesn't add up, to the level of the teaching. It’s really personalized, and to me sinks down to a family level.

SITARA: More on a popular level ?

NANCY: Yeah, it's popular.

WALI ALI: They wanted to do it a lot more, The publishers, Bruce Harris and people at Crown, who saw the project in terms of money felt that he was a person that you could play up as “Mr. Natural.” You know, “Mr. Natural” in the cosmic strips. Here you have a folk hero, so they wanted to play up the folk hero side

NANCY: Yeah, they did do that.

WALI ALI: They would have done it more, but we did check them on it. I think what they wanted to do was to make a popular book which would expose a lot more of his being to a lot more people.

NANCY: I think it probably does that. I didn't get a negative feeling about it. There were some things that they didn’t include. I wanted to be sure to tell you that Marian is his god-daughter in New York. Do you know how to reach her yet?

WALI ALI: We've written her, I think but haven't gotten any response.

NANCY: I know he just loved her and had me look her up when I went there.

SITARA: How old is she?

WALI ALI: You looked her up?

NANCY: Yeah, I did look her up but I didn't see her. We talked on the phone several times. I could look through my old phone book and see if I could find her. What's her last name?

WALI ALI: Is it Latvala?

NANCY: Latvala? Maybe she's in Queens or Forest Hill, Queens Blvd.

WALI ALI: There were Marians in his life, several Marians.

NANCY: Shirin was a Marian. He also told me, "You're lucky you got in when you did because Shirin would have been my god-daughter.” He used to make me terribly jealous; that's another thing too. I'm digressing again—

WALI ALI: That's alright, I think you should just follow your stream of thought, your feelings, because we’re not going to be able to have an analytical interview like we had with Ralph, he was very chronological.

NANCY: Alright, that's good. He would always do things like, "Fatima is the most wonderful. I couldn't ask for a greater woman in the whole world than Fatima.” Or, "She's so wonderful, so wonderful, look at all the presents I bought her at Hayes." And he would come to my house on the way to Novato, loaded down with all these presents, "And my people are so wonderful."He'd be giving them out. I was the youngest in the family, I always felt—you know. He was always rubbing on my jealousy.

WALI ALI: He did that with everybody.

NANCY: I know he did, but I never saw farther than my own nose that I didn't know he was doing it with other people.

WALI ALI: Fatima used to say, he would always say how lovely someone else’s art work was. He would never once say anything about hers.

SITARA: He told me that he was never satisfied with any art work that Fatima ever did.

NANCY: He was always using other people to—he would make others that way, too.

WALI ALI: Do you think he was trying to bring out your jealousy?

NANCY: I think he was trying to put me in touch with the fact that I had one terrible flaw, a tragic weakness. I came across this, I heard it on tape, that I was listening to once at the Khankah in the meditation room; some of his tapes. He said, "Nancy, something or something, she has this terrible weakness.” I came to realize, I think what he meant by it, was my need to be loved by everyone. I'm not saying I've conquered it, but I at least I'm in touch with it. This need to be loved which makes me so likeable. I was always seeking it, and I think he was helping me to be aware of that, by putting me in touch with my babyness, that saw his—I don't know, I can't put words on to it.

WALI ALI: Approval?

NANCY: No, not approval; it's absurd. It's like one wants to be recognized, I guess, in some way. Like if he talks to Fatima about someone else's art, she would like to say, "How's mine?"

WALI ALI: But, when he would have a meeting, he would always have you sit on one side of him if you were at the meeting.

NANCY: I think I sat on his left. I remember sitting on the window side.

WALI ALI: Didn't you feel that that was giving you recognition? You didn't think of it in that way?

NANCY: Actually, I never had. I don't remember my ego feeling gratified in my relationship with him, which I'm glad about. Not that it didn't, after he died. I think that there were times when I would think, "Oh, I was his god-daughter,” and there would be thoughts that would ramble along that line. But I don't remember being aware of the symbol of that, or the position. It was so close, like sitting next to my father. I never had a very clear vision of what he was doing or an understanding of what he was after, except when I had this experience. When I wrote him the letter with the hand on it, which was which I want to get to. I was in New York and it was after that Christmas when everybody had taken the dope and he was happy. He was very happy with Don McCoy and he felt something very wonderful was coming into fruition, that it was going to be found. I went to N.Y. and Don McCoy came to N.Y. I was going to introduce Don McCoy to some people. He came to New York and made a big play for me. Don was always a big ladies' man, you know that.

WALI ALI: I understood he slept with everyone.

NANCY: Yeah, so he made this big play for me and I rejected him. He would not take “no” for an answer and I absolutely rejected him. Ralph, you see, didn't think I had the strength to do that. He ran to Murshid and he said, "He's going to seduce Nancy, what am I going to do? Isn't this terrible?" Meanwhile, Ralph has had his affair with Shirin while I'm in New York. Someone told me that, but I bring it in now because I think it is part of the documentation that's made us all—it's all part of what was going on then. Shirin, at that time, I know, wanted to live with me and Ralph. She thought the three of us should live together and work something out. She never told me about it.

WALI ALI: She was really in that communal—what that space is?

NANCY: She was in that space, which she got out of, but I knew she was in love with Don at the time. When I was in N.Y., I knew that all these people were in love with him. And here he was, coming after me. It was just repulsive to me, but Ralph was running to Murshid and saying, "But she doesn't have the strength, I don't know what we are going to do." Murshid says, "If she sleeps with Don McCoy, she's finished." He probably thought that I'd get into his trip and drug out and that's all I needed. I stood my ground with Don and I got rid of him. I knew when Ralph flew to N.Y., but I had taken this drug. Don McCoy came there and he gave them to everybody who was into his trip and I had this experience which, I guess, Murshid referred to in that letter. It was this illumination experience that I didn't have any words for. It was an experience where words are cheap, I can't possibly define it. If I could use a couple of words to say what it is, it was certainly the only great experience I've had in this lifetime. I left my body and I went out to a place where I was with my Divine Beloved. It was like through the ages, I had been yearning and aching for my love and I was united with my love. That was the experience. It lasted for hours and hours, and it was like hearing echoes of the past, of all the searching and suffering they have gone through. The ages of a soul, but it really wasn't on the level of a soul. It was like the essence of me that had been calling for this, searching throughout eternity and had found it at last. It was a major experience. I know, on the physical plane, I had been sobbing and weeping because I was told that everything was dematerializing down below. It went on for hours, and it was absolutely pure. There were no colors, there was nothing. There was just this space, this level, this vibratory level. All they think there was  intelligence, if I can use that word—integration of all things, but there wasn't any form or any color or anything like that. And I went to ask Vilayat about it. Anyway, that's past the point. I called Murshid and told him these things next day and he said, "I want you to write it down." I wasn't able to write it down. I was too far off to write it down, but I sent him a letter. I think it's that letter—I'm not sure if it's that letter. I came back here from New York and I immediately went to see him. He took one look at me and he said, "Wait a minute," and he went into his room upstairs and he pulled out a robe. He had me come and look at the robe and he said, "What is this?" I looked at it and I said, "This is brown wool and it is close to Christ." He said, "John the Baptist," and he threw himself down, he threw his head on my lap, and he sobbed and wept. He looked up at me with tears just flowing down his face and said, "You see how serious it is." So that was the kind of conclusion of this experience that I had. He told me in that exchange that he was carrying on John the Baptist's work. That is the level he put it at, and I was able to take it right in, as I was able to take in very high insights from him. I had that capacity.

WALI ALI: I'd really see that. You had no difficulty at all with relating to the highest soul level, but the other part never exactly kooked up in some way.

NANCY: The other part never hooked up because it was never hooked up in me. For me to make it with Murshid was almost too transcendental. In retrospect, what I came to look for, was something terribly practical that could answer this other part of my nature which is very, very tough. And it's tough to satisfy, it's almost unsatisfiable. I can't really describe it.

WALI ALI: That's pretty good.

SITARA: This part of your nature—

NANCY: Yeah, I'm not easily satisfied; it is terribly hard to satisfy me. I'm always looking for something—not something better. I don't mean that Murshid didn't satisfy me. That answer don't satisfy me and relationships don't satisfy me and a cup of coffee that isn't just right doesn't satisfy me. I have that aspect where I'm always looking for, let's say, perfection. I'm sure we all do, it's just that it causes me a great deal of dissatisfaction.

WALI ALI: You reflect that in your cooking, for example.

NANCY: Yes.

WALI ALI: To get us on to a lighter subject, why don't we talk about food, eating, cooking and that sort of thing. Did Sam like to eat your cooking?

NANCY: Yeah, he was crazy about the cooking. He said I spent too much time in the kitchen. He came for dinner a lot and I would want to fuss. (To Sitara:) he told me that you spent too much time in the kitchen.

SITARA: Really?     

WALI ALI: He thought that you ought to be able to prepare a meal in an hour or so and it was not necessary to spend 5 hours in the kitchen.

NANCY: I went through a period when I spent a lot of time in the kitchen, and I wanted to. What I was doing then is that I would never look at a cookbook, I would do it my way. It was kind of like a headstrong child doing everything my way. Astrologically, Gavin showed me that I had Saturn in opposition to the Sun in Pisces. Saturn is in Pisces and I have five planets conjunct in Virgo, conjunct with the Sun in Virgo.

WALI ALI: That sounds just like Neshoma's chart. She has seven planets conjunct. Sun, Moon and rising in Libra, all square Saturn.

NANCY: Who is Neshoma?

WALI ALI: My youngest daughter.

NANCY: So, of course, Saturn is the whole idea of discipline. It gets all foggy, terribly foggy. I get headstrong, Sun-wise. So this period of food—I started addressing myself to classic disciplines. French cooking; I’d look at recipes and I'd follow what they told me to do which took me forever because I wasn't used to it. I never folded a shirt or put my shoes away or ever had a discipline. The only discipline I ever had was actress or writing, or school disciplines when I was young. As a dancer I could dance five hours a day. If discipline was imposed on me from the outside I could respond, like, with a rule book, but I could never instigate my own disciplines. I think that Murshid was definitely calling attention to the fact that I was frantic and squandering and all over the place.

WALI ALI: What did you make of his cooking?

NANCY: His cooking was just brilliant. Everything I ate of his I just loved. As Ralph was saying, it was all heart. I wouldn't describe his cooking as all heart, because that could easily be used to describe everything about him. It was a cornucopia, it included everything. I think he must have thrown everything in his daily dish. That was my impression at the time. I said, "Everything was exquisite. How'd you make the eggplant? And then it would be very carefully worked out. He'd know about what cloves did and cumin and how they worked together, and he put this and that, and he knew exactly. I have some of his recipes written down. I thought he was a fabulous cook.

WALI ALI: I'd love to get some of his recipes.

NANCY: I'll give you Murshid's eggplant. I loved his cooking. He'd have me for lunch and I couldn't wait, I'd be dying—I loved his tea and I loved his cooking.

WALI ALI: Did you ever notice what sort of things Fatima always talks about?

NANCY: The dirty dishwater and stuff?

WALI ALI: Yeah, The carelessness.

NANCY: Of course I noticed it because when I walked up the stairs to his place the first time, I saw all those dishes. There were probably some roaches crawling around in the kitchen sink. I hated roaches, it was one of my big things. I noticed it was dirty and I knew he was sloppy. I asked him once about it. He said, "If I had a fault," he said—oh dear, it was about planting. I was out in the garden and he was planting a fuchsia and he said, "I do things too quickly or I tend to be sloppy." He said something about having a fault. I was very much like him. He was very mercurial; he would be all over the kitchen, pulling here, pulling there. Bouncing back and forth among all the curries and teas and cheeses. I understood because that is the way I work. Only he'd get it on the table very fast. He said it in Sunseed, "I like to cook for my disciples because I like to cook for them." He had a real healthy attitude toward food. "Murshid, what do you think of macrobiotics?" "Too long a word." He wouldn’t let anybody go at all into trips about food. I think that is because he wanted to keep it in balance, kind of as a ritual rather than—

WALI ALI: He used to eat so fast; I recall that. I was always a very fast eater and he was always the first one through.

SITARA: Did Fatima ever make anything about his table manners? I never even noticed them.

WALI ALI: His table manners were okay.

NANCY: He got food in his beard.

WALI ALI: Yeah, but he would eat tremendously fast.

SITARA: He didn't notice it. When you told him he was shoveling or doing loud chewing, talking all the time—(much interruption.)

NANCY: I think that the thing about Murshid that is interesting is that Fatima noticed all those human frailties which were there in abundance. He had a lot of things that if you isolate them all, you could say, on the physical plane," Gee, those are kind of off-putting," like the stain on his pants. But actually, when I took a real good look, and I remembering doing this, he was just gorgeous. Even the things he did sloppy were gorgeous, they were so human. I think it's tantric, "The greatest perfection must appear imperfect and then it will be infinite in its effect." Murshid was a master at appearing imperfect because everybody can relate to it. He is such a success in Sunseed because he is so pitted with—

WALI ALI: He doesn't make the distance between—

NANCY: —His perfection and the frailties of people, no. That was the way he was in the kitchen. He was ordinary but he was absolutely— Again, I think of him as Buddhist in the kitchen, just saying that the wheat was full of bugs when he was looking, "Oh, this is full of bugs," and" I should be doing the yolks, then he was doing the yolks, "Oh the yolks got away from me." In Sunseed it was secrets in the kitchen. He was just terribly empty, the way he was cooking and yet you would think it was terribly focused. The food had so much feeling in it. One thing I would relate about my cooking, which has always interested me through the years, is that people always love my cooking, and I don't think that I am that great a cook. There are people who are fabulous cooks. I've been trying to think of why people like it, and I think it has something to do with—I really put something into it. I don't know where it comes from, but I know I do. I know I don't in a lot of other places. But I've got it with my kids and I've got it with the food and I've got it with friendships sometimes, where a lot of us don't have it. I know Murshid and I could recognize that in his food, that same thing. And he put it in everything, so it could definitely get in his food. The quality of it is first; you could assimilate it. His love could go right into you and you could “eat it up.”

WALI ALI: What about restaurant food? He had a passion for eating out.

NANCY: Yeah, I couldn't dope that out. He told me never to order what I could have at home. He always made me be good to myself and be exotic, and I still do that to this day. Being an earth sign, when I go to a really wonderful French restaurant, I want to order a fine roast chicken because that is exquisite to eat. Somebody could really do that well, although I can do that well at home, but I won't do it. I'd order something far out that I wouldn't make with Murshid. I think I remember him telling me that he just wanted us to experience something we didn't know, that we weren't sure of, that was the unknown.

WALI ALI: To make life an adventure; I think that was a lot of it.

NANCY: Oh yes, that's true, of course. That was his image in the kitchen. It was creative. It was a creative arena, and it is a place where you don't have to have rigid doctrine, in the kitchen. You could even use the dishwater to make soup.

WALI ALI: I am sure that wasn't deliberate.

NANCY: I'm not sure, but the thing with Murshid is that I'm not sure of anything.

WALI ALI: I notice now, a lot of people, when they tell stories that something went down and in some way he blew their mind; maybe showing one of his frailties or like sitting down on a basket that they made and spent hours over. They think that maybe he did it deliberately, but I can't believe that he did.

NANCY: I don't think that he did everything deliberately.

WALI ALI: I think it was just his being that was playing itself out. He related at such a level of power that it was impossible to have a certain kind of fine control over it. It was just coming out and slopping over.

NANCY: He admitted it, too. He said, "The reason is, I get very high and I get carried away.” He would often say that. I don't know if he used the word “carried-away,” but he would say, "I get very high and I would not know what was happening down there."

WALI ALI: He was always saying he had cut himself and didn't know until much later that he had; all those kinds of things. He was not conscious of the body. I think I would be interested in what you would say about it, but I think that basically, it was a great effort for him to even maintain body consciousness, in a certain sense.

NANCY: Absolutely, there is no question that I agree with it completely. I think that why I was able to come into him so fully and had such a deep connection with him, was because I tend to be that way, too. I've got myself much more down on the ground, but I was certainly that way at that time. I think he was able to speak to me through those channels. I wasn't able to decode him; to decode the way he was, to see him acting symbolically because I kind of got on another level. I didn't see it on the symbolic level. I didn't see it coming down as symbols. I wanted to mention a couple of things. Can I bring in some controversial, strange things that are in retrospect?

WALI ALI: Please do.        

NANCY: It's because I don't want to carry things around too long. I carried them around for awhile. but I rejected them, ultimately. A couple of years ago, when Sunseed was first screened, you will be able to document when that was. What's the name of Warwick?

WALI ALI: Ajari.

NANCY: Ajari tuned into Ralph and spotted Ralph in the lobby and Ralph said, “work on the house.” I had a feeling that Ajari would have liked to have gotten Ralph into his camp. I am not assigning any pejorative motives to Ajari at all; I just think he is a teacher and needs some hard workers around him. But he did come over to the house and he did say to me and Ralph, he felt that Murshid had been pushed down the stairs. He didn't say by a person, you know. God only knows what he was thinking of, but I took that in just so much, not more than he did say to me, and said that someday I was going to share that with you. So I'm sharing it now. God only knows what he meant.

WALI ALI: I think we had a conversation about that once, too. It was shortly after Murshid’s fall and he was all concerned that the police were going to get in on things.

NANCY: Oh, the dope bust—

WALI ALI: No, not the dope bust. The police were going to get interested in Murshid's death; how he happened to fall down. He was very suspicious. I don't know what the hell he was thinking about.

NANCY: I don't know either. As I say, I had to look at it objectively because I couldn't even get to first base on that thought. He also said, at the same time, Ralph and I were married by that disciple of Aurobindo's—

WALI ALI: Chaudhuri.

NANCY: Chaudhuri. We had this Buddhist ceremony; it was really awful. It just—oh, I was in terrible pain during the ceremony. So was Ralph.

WALI ALI: It was a Hindu ceremony, wasn't it? It couldn't have been Buddhist, it must have been Hindu.

NANCY: Ajari told me it was Buddhist. Why would he say that?

WALI ALI: God knows. Ajari is a great imaginative person.

NANCY: Yeah, he must be.

WALI ALI: You should hear some of the stories that he tells.

NANCY: This is what he told me. Murshid had Chaudhuri marry us because Ralph and I were to take on Murshid's Buddhist line. There was the Ruhaniat Islamia, there was Hazrat Inayat Khan, and there was this Buddhist line that Ralph and I were to carry on, which made absolutely no sense to me. I didn't know what he was getting at and ultimately, I let that one go, too.

WALI ALI: I think I have an idea what he was getting at.

NANCY: The whole thing?

WALI ALI: If he were to bring you in, appoint you and authorize you to take over Murshid's Buddhist line, so to speak, then he would have the power of control over that.

NANCY: I kind of intuited that, but that's just strange.

WALI ALI: A lot of things with Ajari are strange. Murshid really liked him, you know. There was a place where they met. I remember one time Ajari was under a lot of criticism for some strange things. It was a New Year's something or other. He came and Murshid danced with him in the center of the circle going around. He said, "I don't care what they say about his personality, his higher body is very sound." Did you have some other things on your mind?

NANCY: I know the people that have seen Sunseed—there are people that I know who have seen it—teachers that I know have been very interested in him. One of them said to me, "Never underestimate his loneliness,” which was something that I always felt was very interesting.

WALI ALI: I think that Ralph was alluding to that, too, the price that he had to pay to get to where he was. He did get tremendous loneliness. I remember he mentioned to me that at one point in his life, he wanted so badly to have a wife and a family and so on, that he used to stand in the supermarket to be with a lot of people, just to get an idea.

NANCY: That's a little hard for me to imagine, but now I can see it. He had this quality of walking alone in the world, a quality that I only see in Prophets or teachers or people who really have their work. I can't say that I see any Prophets. I see in them what is written of them and what I kind of see as an image of them walking. They are “upon their Father's Work.” That is the quality he had of walking along, being completely directed and not being alone. Appearing in a certain way alone because of the Dharma that he was protecting and which he had been brought to, or had chosen to live. He was very much alive. I think he is very much alive in all the people that were in touch with him.

WALI ALI: It's amazing to me what connection somebody had with him. Nobody ever forgot him. His being was so present in every vibration he put out. This comes across in the film. People see him in the film and then they just feel like they know him and they work for him.

SITARA: Yeah, and they work for him for the rest of their lives.

NANCY: Yeah, they're hooked in there. These things keep coming to me, about how he was. I know that his horoscopes, what he said about light and the things he read, about the horoscopes when he was born, panned out. They are right-on, without any talk about planets or anything, just the general thrust of them. He once was sitting in my house and he was playing with Shulte, my dog. Banefsha was there and I just remember him saying—things are so enigmatic. He was talking about Natasha and he was petting Shulte. She (Banefsha) says, "How come you don't make a fuss over Joshua Rama, as you do over Natasha?" He said, "I like Natasha, but I love Shulte."

SITARA: That reminds me of a story, too. I went to my god-daughter's house and I ran in full of joy. I kissed the kids and then I kissed Shulte and then said to Nancy, "What have you got to eat?" And this is the same feeling. That was a sign of his great love.

WALI ALI: Playfulness, or something like that.

NANCY: Of course, it stopped Banefsha in her tracks. I had this dream last night; I told Sitara that I rarely dream about friends. I dreamt about Banefsha last night and I remember that we kissed each other the same way that we kissed each other when Pir gave her an initiation years ago at the Garden of Allah. I don't remember, it wasn't Sheikha. It was some initiation he gave her, something special had happened and she said, "You are always there when these things happen," It was like that in this dream. I don't know what that means.

WALI ALI: She has been very sick. She is going through some sickness of kidney stones or something, but I don't know that that has anything to do with it.

NANCY: There was something else I remembered, too, at the Garden of Allah, about everybody seeing him. He was reading his poetry, sitting on the bed—this was five years ago—and some guy, some beatnik from North Beach scene said, "Who is this egomaniac?" He thought Murshid was just outrageous. That used to happen a lot.

WALI ALI: Did you ever see any confrontations with those sort of people and Sam?

NANCY: There was one confrontation; one guy that he threw out of a meeting. One guy who was tripped out and started a debate with Sam after a Gatha meeting at Sheila's house; he was having meetings in Marin at her house. Some guy was baiting him and at one point he said, "I've never asked anyone to leave a meeting, but out you go." He threw him out because he was disrupting his work, disrupting the flow of the meeting. It's the only confrontation I can remember.

WALI ALI: Did you ever find yourself in the position of trying to defend Sam, to friends or other people that you knew, who looked on him as an egomaniac?

NANCY: No. I told this guy who was standing there, to just listen to the poetry, because he was all tuned in to how Murshid was reading it, I thought, rather than to Murshid's personality. I said, "Just try to be quiet and listen to what he is reading."

WALI ALI: I think, of Murshid's writings, I only appreciate much of it now because the force of his personality. His letters, for example; you would receive a letter from him and the force of his personality would be so strong behind it that it would be hard to read the letter just for what it said. Now people can look at it without being threatened, and you see a lot more in the letters than you could see at the time.

NANCY: If somebody said something about Murshid, though, in the years that have followed, that was at all pejorative, I would become very angry. I would directly counter it. I don't know where that energy has come from, but I wouldn't let it stand; I wouldn't passively let it pass. I would come right back at it. I've noticed that—not that people put him down to me, ever—sometimes, something is questioned and something within me comes right back, with a force that surprises me, and an answer which is interesting.

WALI ALI: His way with children; do you have anything to say about that?

NANCY: I'd say the same way as with animals. He was so loving that he was able to reach any level of any being. With children—Natasha and Light both remember him, you know. I don't know how Light remembers him, but they called him grandfather Murshid and would say, "Murshid's my grandpa." They don't even know my father, they don't know Ralph's. He means something very much to them, so he made connections with them. I saw him when he was with children. I saw him kind of in his element, because when he was with serious grownups he was like a fish out of water. With children he was right in his element, he was very free. And put out to them, I think, a kind of love and rapport that he found very difficult, as his work got more complicated and there were more people around him, wasn't able to have that as freely with his disciples.

WALI ALI: This brings up a thing which we passed by earlier, which was, how did he change? I know that he felt that he became less awkward in his ability to do such things as just embrace people or to openly show affection. He had a real rigidity that he was able to overcome through the last years, with his friends and disciples. Did you see that?

NANCY: Yeah, I think what happened is that he became more psychological about the future; that is one of the things that happened. He got so much more feedback on the personal level because he had so many disciples working with him and he was getting a lot of feedback. He was able to see, like with Sheila, he was able to understand, and psychologically I think he grew in patience. I think he was able to teach more from the psychological point of view. That's the big change that I saw in him, aside from the ability to let his love out. The love that he carried in his heart, which was not ready to go out because he got rejection from everyone, now met with reciprocal love so it just grew. It is like anything which grows with watering and with reciprocity. I think he grew in love, if such a thing is possible, and he grew in his expanse and expression of his love.

WALI ALI: Of his human love.

NANCY: Yes, that is right, at the human level. Because of that, he became psychologically more patient and more able. I think he taught psychologically. That's what I saw at the end. He was teaching much more psychologically, much more actually, from what I understand of Sufism. I saw him really functioning, from my understanding of what a Sufi is, at the end, because he was much more hidden. Ralph says he didn't play roles. I think he did play roles. I think where he really got it on playing roles was toward the end. That's when he began to teach psychologically.

SITARA: I think that he meant that he didn't play roles; believing that he was the role that he was playing. He meant that and I think he would agree with you. He adopted roles in order to teach and be to a person that was needed at that particular time. I don't think he believed in it.

NANCY: I have to question that, only because I'm thinking of someone who does play roles. The role is there for the disciple to see through and to dismiss, to get to the central essence. And once that is done, which can happen in the twinkling of an eye, the role disappears.

WALI ALI: Oh, I agree with you, Nancy, he had his little bits that he would do in a certain situation. It's like an actor with certain bits.

NANCY: He was a fabulous actor. He was a great entertainer. Who was it that said that the world has lost one of its great comic actors?

SITARA: When he died?

NANCY: In the newspaper; one of the columnists. A Cain [?] or Art Hoppe or someone. No, it wasn't Art Hoppe. It sounded something like: "The World and San Francisco has lost one of its greatest comic actors." Someone at the Chronicle said that.

WALI ALI: I don't recall. This is curious, this role business. Maybe we can go into that a little more, because I feel you are really right about it. I remember some of his roles. He would get into a thing in which he was telling a story about all his experiences. He just ran those tapes. How many times did you hear those stories?

SITARA: Did you listen to the stories when he told them?

NANCY: After awhile I tuned out, but I got what I got. What I eventually got was that he would remind a person to remember; to remember who he was, not to get lost in personality, not to get lost in what was ordinary or deceptive. Then he would pull out his credentials and he would run the tape of the credentials—all these things that he was. A person would have to drop their own ego, their own learning, their own sureness and stuff, in order to be able to see what was happening. I can't say that I was able to do that. He didn't do an awful lot to me although I was there when he was doing it. He did get angry at me.

SITARA: Did he yell at you?

NANCY: He yelled at me once, and he yelled at me in letters. He wrote some letters to me; he was very angry.

SITARA: What was he like when he yelled at you?

NANCY: He got very angry at me when I wanted to leave Ralph. He said I shouldn't leave a strong man for a weak man. He felt the man I was leaving Ralph for was weak; that's what he said anyway. He called Ralph a strong man, which always stuck with me. And so he was impressed with him. His yelling at me shook me up, because I immediately felt that I had done something wrong. I went to Moineddin on one occasion, because it happened at the Khankah, and I said, "What's going on?" He described ethics to me; the one way approaches a good teacher. I brought Drew Langsner there to meet him, because he was talking about wanting to build playgrounds. I met Drew and thought, "Gee, I should bring Drew to meet him." Allaudin had played at my theatre and I wanted Allaudin to meet him too, because he always said that he wanted music. I just brought him. He was Bill Mathieu, Allaudin. Allaudin didn't like him, said, "He's a sly old fox, but he’s not my teacher." Then I said, " I think you should bring Kay around to him.” Kay was going to a shrink and I thought Murshid would be helpful to Kay, who is now Zamiat. So that happened that way; then I proceeded that way with Drew. If I heard that Murshid wanted something and something came my way that sounded right, I'd introduce him. But this time, he got real angry.

WALI ALI: Ralph was talking about that a little bit earlier.

NANCY: He was?

WALI ALI: That you came over to the Khankah and that he immediately kicked you all out.

NANCY: After dinner. After dinner he got up and he screamed and yelled, but we had eaten. He didn't immediately kick us out.

WALI ALI: I know what his reasoning was.

NANCY: What was his reasoning?

WALI ALI: It goes back to his experiences at Kaaba Allah. He was working so hard and dedicated to the Cause and assumedly one of the chief representatives of, or the chief representative. But always, when something was to be done, they wouldn't consult him. They would bring in an outsider, outside the group of the people that were part of them. Whatever the outsider had to present was always more wonderful, being new and different, than what somebody else, the inside, might present. He was really conscious of trying to break people of the psychological habit.

SITARA: Who was the new person?

WALI ALI: Drew, in this sense,. He was the one that was brought over as the expert.

NANCY: I think that's what Moineddin said to me, too. I bought that explanation because I was really in the dark. He said something about, "I hope your house doesn't catch on fire." He would say things like that, about the houses catching on fire.

WALI ALI: Who would?

NANCY: Murshid.

WALI ALI: I remember that there was a fire at the Khankah in Novato. We were called up. It was when he and Fatima were having some differences, because she was always very strong-willed. Then it caught on fire and nearly burned up her whole wardrobe. That was the extent of the fire. He called us up in the middle of a meeting. It's a funny story, I'm glad you reminded me of it. She called up and said, "The house is burning, the house is burning," and he said, "Save the records, save the records, save my records." "But the room is on fire.” "I don't care, just save the records!" She thought he meant the phonograph records.

NANCY: Oh, you’re kidding.

WALI ALI: No, because that was where it was burning, upstairs. So she went and saved them, Donovan, Beatles and everything. He always assumed that the fire was caused by the psychic conflict. Kaaba Allah burned down in 1949. He was accused of setting the fire, but he said the fire was caused by a manifestation of the occult because of their rejection of him and his spiritual principles. In a sense, fire did follow him around; he lost a lot of papers.

NANCY: Didn't he have a skin problem?

WALI ALI: Yeah, at the end of his life.

NANCY: I remember also that when he was in the hospital I was combing his hair and he was out of it. But at one point, he opened his eyes and beckoned me to him and embraced me. That's the last I saw of him. I remember that. I was very upset in the hospital, very, very upset, I felt very lost. It was funny, because I was in this pain because I wanted for Murshid—I had this wish for him to live. I was in this pain of feeling lost, too, on a personal plane. It was a painful time. But when he opened up his eyes and called me to him, it all vanished again. I would say that he opened up a lot of my unconscious material; he opened up the doors to the unconscious. Then things really started to happen. I grew in strength to receive the material of the unconscious; it became more available to me, which I think it needed. to because I think that his disciples that tended to “trip out” more could integrate this unconscious material. That is one way of expressing it. You just flip out. I think it was my want, a predilection, although it isn't now, but I could see it is always a danger.

WALI ALI: I think we have covered enough.

NANCY: We've covered a lot. I hope I haven't come up with any strong statements, in themselves. It is really not my place to, because it is still a mystery to me and a tremendous blessing that he ever came into my life. It was certainly a great mystery; I've never been able to decode that. It's as mysterious as life itself. The fact that two children emerged from my womb, a great experience like that of childbirth—I see my meeting with Murshid on that level. I can't say it is Grace; I can't label it. It's just a miracle!

WALI ALI: You mention children, which just reminded me. I remember when he looked at Light's chart and he came back to me and was just very impressed. I think he expressed this to you. “A tremendous soul!”

NANCY: Yes. He loved Light, I know that and the name, Light. I don't know where that came from, but I always felt that that was a Murshid-inspired name. Have you talked to Frida Waterhouse?

WALI ALI: We have her things on tape. There are a lot of people that we don't have and some that you might be in touch with, but I don't know who' they would be. What do you recall, by the way, about your conversation with his god-daughter in New York?

NANCY: Nothing. Saadia had a very strange experience at my house. She fled my house. She got terribly sick at my house and ran away. She ran back to the Khankah; I took her back. Murshid had her sit and do some Zikr, for a long time. I have some pictures, too if you need them. I'll go through my memory of people that you would know and could be in touch with.

WALI ALI: Do you have any idea where Bill Hathaway is?

NANCY: I have no idea where he is; and who is that man, Mr. Hunt?

WALI ALI: He's gone.

NANCY: He's dead?

WALI ALI: Is Rudolph Schaeffer still alive?

NANCY: That's right, the guy at the art school. And there’s the guy that we met when we took Murshid out to dinner. That's when Murshid said, "And he made me pay for my own dinner. I was his guest and he made me pay for my own dinner."

SITARA: Rudolph Schaeffer?

NANCY: No, Ralph. It was my birthday. Ralph and I took Murshid out to dinner. In retrospect, Murshid said that Ralph made him pay for his own dinner. I don't remember that happening. We had a great dinner, a wonderful dinner, then we met this guy at the bar, the guy from the Schaeffer School. Actually, there was an interesting experience, but I won't go on.

SITARA: I wanted to ask you one question. What sense do you have of your on-going relationship with Murshid? With him now, after his passing?

NANCY: It's an influence. It's on the level of having a mother and a father and sisters and brothers; it's in their blood. It's in the way that those things are constantly, psychologically, unfolding. The influence of Murshid is always spiritually unfolding, if I can use that distinction. But it's innocent, absolutely organic in that sense.

SITARA: Do you feel that you have any particular commission from him? I know a lot of people who constantly feel that way. Some with regard to a particular work that he gave them to do and others in regard to some transmission that they felt they got from him, which they are trying to fulfill.

NANCY: I don't interpret things that way. I'm at the point now where I'm trying to understand what marriage is. Marriage is a basis of operations, as a support, so that one can go about one's work. It's also a tremendous transforming vehicle if you're able to recognize it as such, and face it in this form. I couldn't dope out what it is for me. I've always felt, and I still do, that my test is to develop myself. As I'm able to do that, love becomes real and then it can actually matter to others. But if I'm just in a kind of unconscious blob of lots of feeling and good wishes, it doesn't. Without any backbone, without any inner-strength, it just kind of all goes down the drain. I've seen it when tests have developed my inner strength, that's been before me. I've been in it for many years. I see that as a task, not as a self-psychic test that only has to do with me. It is a business at hand. I think that if I'm not in touch with my own search, with my own sincerity, then I'm not really of much value to the world, either. That is my understanding, at this level, if one could dope out a mission. I don't have great cosmic schemes; not that you are implying that. But in terms of Murshid's work, whatever god-daughter means is what I am.

WALI ALI: Did you ever meet Norman McGhee, Murshid's godson? He lives in N.Y. City and has a metaphysical bookstore in Harlem. He's doing all sorts of stuff with astrology he has a real active center.

NANCY: Never met him.

WALI ALI: How interesting. He was shy when I met him. I met him on several occasions. I thought he was nowhere, just a real “nowhere man.” I couldn't imagine why Murshid gave him all this energy. We just got in touch with him. There he is in the middle of Harlem and he is working out. Thank you.

NANCY: Thank you. It was wonderful to be able to do it.

Akbar (Jim) Simmons and Brian Carr—on Murshid Sam—9/1/1976

WALI ALI: I think the best approach is just to go into things chronologically. What we are trying to do is put together on the one hand a comprehensive archive on Murshid’s life and the experiences of people around him, which I intend to draw from—I am writing a biography. It was his intention that a biography be written, and I think there is interest now, so I am going to write it, and then I will feel that I have basically discharged my trust with regard to his writings and so on, and so we are trying to just gather as much information as we can on all the different periods, and, it is quite interesting as you might imagine—many different lives in one life. And I just got a communication from a man in India named Fayazuddin Chishti who knew Murshid from his first visit there in 1956, and he said, "Oh yes, when I first met him he was going around cleaning all the Mosques, sweeping out all the Mosques in Hyderabad." It’s funny, he used to tell certain stories which he would repeat over and over again which people couldn’t understand, and which didn’t seem very important, on one hand, and some other things that actually happened he wouldn’t ever mention, that maybe would have shown him up in a better light or something. He said, "Oh yeah, he was cleaning, he just went around for months sweeping out all the Mosques." Anyway you met him before Brian, is that right Akbar?

AKBAR: I think I did meet Murshid shortly before Brian did.

WALI ALI: It was in 1966 or ‘67?

AKBAR: 1966, and I believe it was December or possibly even November of 1966.

WALI ALI: And at that time he was living on Clementina Street?

AKBAR: Clementina, that is correct; I was introduced to Murshid by, as I understand it, his first disciple Clarke Brown—

WALI ALI: That was Clarke—

AKBAR: Clarke L. Brown.

WALI ALI: Do you know where he is by any way?

AKBAR: Clarke is in Idaho.

WALI ALI: Do you have an address for him?

AKBAR: I think that you can reach him at…

WALI ALI: He’s not in jail is he?

AKBAR: No, he’s not; he’s gone straight.

BRIAN: I reported to Sabira that he said that he didn’t want to talk about it.

AKBAR: I’m not sure; I think that he can be reached, and I can’t swear to it by writing; General Delivery, McCall, Idaho, and I hear from him from time to time—in fact his own personal business, he has gotten into working with turquoise, and he is a jeweler or something.

SABIRA: McCall?

AKBAR: McCall, I believe that is the correct spelling.

WALI ALI: You were introduced to him by Clarke, and were some other people on the scene at that point?

AKBAR: There was Howard Mussell who I believe was a very early disciple—

WALI ALI: I don’t know that he ever initiated—

AKBAR: He may not have been initiated; I thought he was, but perhaps he wasn’t, and a friend of Howard Mussell’s, a Wayne, who I don’t know his last name, and those were the only three people that I knew of who were in the group when I first came in officially.

BRIAN: They actually supported Murshid.

AKBAR: Clarke would make contributions to Murshid, and I don’t know the monetary…

WALI ALI: His trust at that point hadn’t particularly come through; he was living on a pretty low level on Clementina Street.

AKBAR: That’s right, and he needed monetary assistance, and Clarke provided that, and Howard may have contributed also.

WALI ALI: Howard I think is in the area, but I haven’t been able to reach him.

AKBAR: Once again, the best way to get to Howard Mussell is through Clarke Brown. I believe that Howard Mussell is living up near Santa Rosa on a ranch—he quit his job as an underwriter with an insurance company he had been with for 18 or 19 years in the city; he purchased a small bookstore near the Russian River, I can’t remember, perhaps it is Guerneville, I can’t recall the name offhand. I visited there several times. Clarke was working there two years ago so he can still be contacted, and Wayne is living with Howard Mussell. So you’ve got all those connections, and if anyone knows where Bill Hathaway is in the Sufi group, I would imagine Howard would know.

WALI ALI: I know that some of Murshid’s early disciples and followers were homosexuals, and I don’t know Clarke’s preferences but I know that maybe at a certain point as things developed, it just didn’t seem feasible, for that reason, and maybe a lot of other reasons.

BRIAN: Is Clarke gay?

 AKBAR: Yeah, Clarke was to my knowledge he would be classified as gay—

WALI ALI: Or Bi—

AKBAR: Bi-sexual possibly—

WALI ALI: So we got off because this is important to us to run down some of these leads.

AKBAR: I think that one of the reasons that these earliest disciples fell away, and perhaps I should even be classified in that group, is that part of the attraction towards Murshid for these particular consciousnesses was the fact that it was small and intimate and not highly structured, and I personally have never been that inclined toward tightly organized trips.

WALI ALI: Do you recall when he started being called Sam Murshid, not Sam?

BRIAN: Yeah, that was shortly after moving over here, maybe the second week, we came up one night, and I think Murshid said, "Murshid has said that he wants to be called Murshid, not Sam," maybe the second week he moved into Precita because he was always Sam until then.

WALI ALI: That was in ‘67 sometime when he moved in here; I have that date somewhere.

AKBAR: The first time that I recall consciously Murshid requesting—and I always called him Mr. Lewis, I was one of the few that did—to be called Murshid—we had just been on a walk—I don’t know if we had just finished a walk or were going to begin a walk—but it was outside on the sidewalk in front of the residence here, and he said that he wanted to be called Murshid or that was his official title because he had a disciple who had achieved illumination, and that was the key to any Murshid, was when a teacher had a disciple who had achieved that plane of consciousness, and then they were a Murshid, and that’s how I remember it.

SABIRA: Who was he referring to?

AKBAR: He never really said.

WALI ALI: Let’s go back a little bit in the time sequence. You were introduced to him by Clarke, and can you recall your first meeting with him?

AKBAR: Yes, I can recall it—and how it got set up was that I was actually boxing at the time, I was an amateur athlete. I was working for Standard Oil of California and Clarke Brown was working for M.D.S. (Mail Delivery Service) and I happened to be working in the mailroom for Standard Oil at 114 Sansome Street and Clarke was the guy that came up and dropped off the bundle of mail every day. And he took some sort of a liking to me, and started talking to me about various things, and my father had been into Hatha yoga for a number of years and had developed his breath and posture and what not—and Clarke mentioned that he was a Yogi or studying yoga, and that he had gotten his breathing down to one breath a minute—which I found rather astounding, and that intrigued me, and he claimed that he would take me to a yoga teacher and help me to develop my ability with the breath and even athletic prowess, so that is how I first heard about Murshid. At the time I was on the verge of getting married, and a lot of things were going on in my life, and I made tentative dates to go over and see Clarke’s teacher, Murshid, several times and broke them, and felt a little bit guilty about it, and finally about the fourth or fifth try or something, I did manage to get over there, and that was on Clementina Street. And I remember having all these preconceptions about what a yoga teacher would be like and how he would look and the posture he would be in, and the atmosphere—and they were completely blown away.

WALI ALI: I can imagine!

AKBAR: By walking up those little stairs on Clementina, and it was an experience! And it shattered a lot of illusions that I had.

WALI ALI: What was it like in that house, do you recall? Did you know him when he lived on Clementina Street?

BRIAN: Yes, I had recently come back from India, maybe six months before, and I met this fellow called Kirk. And he turned out to be quite a turning point because he was the fellow that essentially introduced Murshid to all the hip scene as it was then.

WALI ALI: That’s right—

BRIAN: Karl and—

WALI ALI: That’s right, I remember he said that—

BRIAN: Then he said, "Come over and meet this old guy, he is really hot stuff," or whatever he said, Apparently he had been at a meeting on the Ashram, S.F. Ashram, Chaudhuri’s place, and Murshid had been sitting there next to him and got to talk to him. By that time Murshid was very sort of straight, he looked like an old man on Market Street; short sleeved shirts and baggy pants—

WALI ALI: His clothes never really fit him—

BRIAN: Right, right—but Kirk was an outrageous fellow with that big curly hair, which is not so unusual these days, but of course then it was most unusual, but still Kirk never became a disciple. He saw some truth in Murshid that he hadn’t come across to the point that he introduced all his friends—

WALI ALI: Do you know was his last name was?

BRIAN: No, no I don’t—.

AKBAR: Moineddin might know his last name because my impression from just hearing things now and then was that Kirk was a very influential person in Moineddin’s life and…

WALI ALI: I think he turned Yasmin on to Murshid also; he must have turned a lot of people on.

BRIAN: He was like the messenger, Hermes, he really changed things around, and he himself didn’t seem to make a commitment like a disciple, yet still he had a lot of appreciation for Murshid.

WALI ALI: And when did this come down? Was that late ‘66 or early ‘67?

AKBAR: Early ‘67 I always thought—

BRIAN: Yeah, early ’67—Haight-Ashbury was really going—not commercialized, it was just the early flower-acid era.

WALI ALI: You were living over there then too?

BRIAN: I was living over on Fifth Ave.

WALI ALI: And so that was a whole new wave of people that started coming around at that point.

BRIAN: The first time that I went—although I didn’t learn this until afterwards—there was, obviously, Howard and Wayne. The last time I saw them was when I was initiated—they never came again. Jim, of the people that were before, used to come pretty regularly, and Clarke pretty regularly for awhile and then gradually faded out, but Howard Mussell and Wayne, that was the last time I ever saw them.

WALI ALI: Yeah, Clarke came back on the scene before Murshid passed away. Murshid said, "My first disciple is coming back around," and Clarke had been in jail and Murshid had written some letters or something supporting him. A number of people had gotten busted for dealing dope. Krishnadas spent some time in jail; Vasistha beat his rap and I don’t know who else got busted.

AKBAR: There was rather a lot of—and I don’t think I am violating any confidence by relating this, but Clarke Brown is the type of personality that wouldn’t even get a parking ticket, and he led a very rigid, absolutely straight existence all his life, and still does, and I believe he is getting pretty close to 50 now, so at the time he was maybe 35, or 37, 38 or whatever he was; he was busted because he kind of fell in with a young guy who like a lot of other young guys who smoked a lot of grass. In order to humor this fellow, Clarke was into growing things, and being a nurseryman, he built a greenhouse and this guy came out and threw a bunch of grass in there and raised quite an enormous crop, and Clarke was just going along with this and I think he knew what he was doing. He knew that it was illegal, he knew it was marijuana, he may have smoked it once or twice, but he wouldn’t get as high as he would off of a martini (quote, unquote), and he wasn’t really interested in it, but then his imagination got carried away, number one with assisting in the fantasy that his young friend had of making a lot of money. So Clarke kind of got left holding the bag as it turned out, and he didn’t really initiate the whole thing, and took the rap, so to speak, for this other guy—

WALI ALI: That was when they were turning out raps for them—

AKBAR: He served, I think, the better part of three years in prison, in Salem, Oregon or something.

WALI ALI: To get back onto the chronological stream—what were those early meetings like? I know they were different from the later ones when people were doing dancing.

BRIAN: Yeah, the interesting thing was that when Murshid first started teaching he was not a Sufi teacher, he would teach a little Buddhism, a little Yoga; in fact, before I got over the idea that I would like to join the group, I didn’t really understand exactly what initiation was, until it actually happened. But before that he said, "Do you want to study Buddhism or Sufism," and he gave me a couple of books to look at, and he was very versatile. And for exercises—it was long before dancing—he would do walks and certain kinds of breathing.

WALI ALI: Did you mention something on the turning point (?) (several voices at one here)—

BRIAN: No, he did many different things(?)

AKBAR: Yeah, because on Sunday night he had like a Buddhist night, and then maybe Saturday…

WALI ALI: But he began to more and more try to fulfill the Sufi line. The Buddhist thing he never organized; he gave out these teachings, but there wasn’t anything as a whole. The Sufi thing, he plugged into the whole—he gave grades of initiation, and he initiated people as Caliphs and Sheikhs, and he gave the whole connection with the whole esoteric study program of Inayat Khan and all that stuff, so he decided to emphasize the Sufi line at a certain point. And of course also, the hospital experience was a turning point—now I want to build up to that because I know you even took him to the hospital.

AKBAR: I did take him to the hospital. I might add a few other things that I observed, Wali Ali, and that was—you asked originally how the first meetings were—it was a hodgepodge in my memory of a lot of different, very colorful characters—in fact I think one of the gentlemen that I vaguely remember, I think later became the Cosmic messiah over on Telegraph Avenue.

WALI ALI: Alan Noonan?

AKBAR: Yes, because I specifically remember him inviting me to his restaurant in the Haight-Ashbury, to have some food and I remember sitting there, and coming from a very straight background, nodding my head in assent, but not really understanding or agreeing with everything that was being said about the experiences people had had, and I remember him talking about…

WALI ALI: Were they into flying saucers at that time?

AKBAR: He was into flying saucers, and other beings, and Murshid would let people talk, and it was more like a sharing experience. My first remembrance of what Murshid had me do, I believe, was when he would talk about the different centers, and then he had us look at our feet and then share the experience, with the group of what we had experienced and also look at different things on the wall, and then talk about what we had seen or what had happened after a little meditation. That is all that I remember of the first meetings, and also the thing that stuck in my mind was that there was a certain amount of—I don’t know if bitterness was the correct word—but there was a certain amount of what might be classified as that in regards to the fact that he wasn’t acknowledged or accepted as a leader.

WALI ALI: As a spiritual teacher.

AKBAR: Yeah, and there was a lot of what I would call political intrigue in that there was bickering and some fighting going on, and I think that that is what eventually led him to becoming more and more of what you might call a traditionalist as far as Sufism is concerned because he gained more and more acceptance as he began to have more influence over a greater circle of people. That’s what I saw, and I don’t know whether that is accurate or not, but Clarke used to talk to me about it, and maybe I got a lot of that second-hand from Clarke.

WALI ALI: He would also talk about his whole family background, with a lot of bitterness.

BRIAN: Absolutely, I remember him saying that he was in pain for the first thirty years of his life. His parents hated him; they called him the "ugly duckling," and he learned to overcome that be projecting his voice with a Rama chant, so here was a fellah who was under tremendous pressure. He probably didn’t look that handsome, he was fairly short, he didn’t come up to expectations of a traditional Jewish family perhaps, and probably with his personality he seemed to meet opposition. He used to say in meetings, "When people oppose me I go high," and so there was probably an adrenaline rush that gave him a slightly altered consciousness that would activate his mind instead his emotions and he would challenge people, and over the years it seemed that he had a lot of enemies—real enemies—for instance at the Zen Center he was banned. He had been to Japan and he had met real Zen people, Suzuki was very gentle fellow, they probably didn’t turn out any enlightened people however, or none whatever. But he was in to Soto Zen, it is very gentle. And Murshid would ask awkward questions.

WALI ALI: Did you ever go over there with him?

BRIAN: No.

WALI ALI: But this is just what your remember Murshid saying about it?

BRIAN: No, I was told that he was banned from the Zen Center; I forget who told me I did go to a meeting with him on the death of God at the University of Calif.

WALI ALI: Oh you did?

BRIAN: And he…

WALI ALI: …he lambasted the professor?

BRIAN: Yeah, and unfortunately the way it came across is in a very loud voice, and he would just tear into these people, and they would just turn off to him. They ignored him; they wouldn’t listen to what he was saying because of—I think he must have said it one time—he didn’t have a well accepted personality.

WALI ALI: No, he didn’t.

BRIAN: He described himself to Gavin Arthur as a rhinoceros, and still, in all, he had a lot of truth to say—he said that he had a "boy-next-door complex" as well. People—because they were so used to him—they didn’t listen to what he was saying, so he made a lot of real enemies, probably even in later years right up to ‘68/’69. If Dr. Chaudhuri’s name was mentioned he would lose control.

WALI ALI: Oh I know! Hayakawa’s another one.

AKBAR: The would-be Senator?

WALI ALI: Yeah, right. He would really be on the case knowing that Hayakawa’s got a chance to get elected to the Senate!

BRIAN: But he saw himself in the Fudo role, in keeping the Dharma pure, and he disliked hypocrisy intensely, and probably that’s what attracted him to some aspects of the so-called hip scene, the young people who were reacting against the hypocrisy of their parents. But still, as Jim said, he was keen to receive a kind of recognition as a spiritual teacher probably because of all the karma of all his previous lives. He said one time he tried to commit suicide four or five times up to the time he was fifty-five.

WALI ALI: I never recall him saying that.

AKBAR: I never heard that.

BRIAN: Yeah, I remember him saying it, distinctly, at a meeting. Gavin Arthur, who knew him very well, said that he never had a successful love affair with a woman, that that was all bottled up somewhere.

WALI ALI: This is something we have tried to find out, whether he ever did really have sex with a woman and found no hard evidence to say that he did.

BRIAN: Yeah, well Gavin Arthur said "no."

WALI ALI: Some people have said "yes," but they haven’t been able to put any evidence down on it.

BRIAN: But here was a personality that was meeting so much pain and struggle and opposition and coming through it all, it must have been like a spiritual boost. He went through it, that’s the amazing thing.

WALI ALI: And what you have had to say is very interesting. I want to go back over a couple of points, also to tell you that we did an interview with MaryLou Foster, who is his cousin, who knew a lot about his family background, and the amazing thing was that everything that he had to say about his family was true, even more so. His mother and his father—they spent 15 to 20 years without addressing each other directly!! They had the two boys, Elliott and Samuel, and the father would only speak to Elliott, he would say, "Tell your mother this and that," and the Mother would only speak to Samuel, "Tell your father this," and so they wouldn’t even speak to each other; they hated each other. They just stayed together for conventional reasons. And that is just the surface of it all. He had the most horrible family scene you could imagine; they’ve started opening or to us and we hope to interview others—MaryLou’s mother Mildred in Texas—it is quite extraordinary and one can understand why he said he felt a special sympathy for these hippies who were reacting to their parents because he had such a tough time with his parents. He could be like an ersatz father or grandfather to them. He could appreciate what they were going through. I think it is a crucial moment in his life when he came in touch with the hip scene, because he had a capacity for changing his personality, changing his way of life somehow. He had several radically different lives, and as you said, when you first met him he was straight in a very sort of basic way. He couldn’t really be straight in a certain way, but he was straight in his whole way of coming on, in his whole appearance and in his whole manner and everything, and I think that the contact with the hip scene, as it was, made some real definite changes in his personality.

BRIAN: That is an important thing for a man advanced in years. He was very adaptable, and that meeting with Kirk, I’m sure was the turning point—which Moineddin should know about—the other one was that his changing appearance occurred equally dramatically when he was here, and he started to dress up, and I believe it was probably Moineddin and Jemila who suggested it that he improve his appearance. He used to turn up to meetings with his fly open. Very sloppy! He used to tell us that for years all these people who dress up were not really there, it was almost a point with him not to look the part of a typical teacher with a beard. But when his disciples became more important then, or when the thing perhaps got larger, I don’t know….

WALI ALI: It is something of a mystery—I think you are close on it, it is hard to put your finger on why he began to respond and change. I think he put his worst foot forward, in a certain sense, consciously, and if a person could see the truth behind it then he could open up to them a little bit, and it was kind of like he was a little bit of a hidden jewel or something, and it was his role to be rejected unless a person could see past his exterior.

BRIAN: Right! That’s a good analysis.

WALI ALI: And in any case, as people began to see deeper and to see behind his manner, that there was a lot of real love and truth, then he began to manifest that more on the exterior also. That’s just my interpretation of it, of some of the change that came down.

AKBAR: Along those same lines, Wali Ali, I remember—because the image that Murshid was projecting at that time was so out of line with what my expectations—I remember quizzing Clarke Brown about it. In fact, in many ways Clarke was a very close teacher to me, and I remember Clarke specifically mentioning that he knew or he thought that Murshid was on the path of effacement where he would consciously and purposely let himself be very slovenly in appearance, and to get rid of his ego—his false ego—so that was one of the things that I always noted, and the thing is in the change in regards to his demeanor and his appearance, I suspect. But of course Murshid always had a longing for a close family, a family that was full of love, communication and intimacy and that somewhere along the line the hippies began to fill that need and he responded to that by filling the needs that they had.

WALI ALI: I am sure that’s quite true. I am interested too in the changes, not so much in appearance as in his manner. Let’s say for example the extremes of not having physical contact with someone, embracing people constantly, and if it is true, or it is certainly close to true that he never had any kind of love life with women. Then that change from that very repressed kind of person to a person who has all these beautiful women—he was playing the role of Krishna in the dance—some very dramatic changes that were going on.

BRIAN: The hospital scene was certainly, because the meetings when he was living on Clementina and living with Mr. Hunt on

WALI ALI: Mr. Hunt didn’t live on Clementina—

BRIAN: Oh, he used to room with Sam—

WALI ALI: He lived here.

AKBAR: He roomed with him on Precita, I, yeah, yeah, maybe he was at Clementina, he was in the back room, he used the back room. I remember now because once in a while there would be an argument or—in fact there are a couple of people that lived right in that building or complex because he used to talk about the old ladies who bitch about all the hippies who started to come into his place on certain nights of the week, and he would say, he made several references as to how he charmed them, or, "You’ve got to convince them that you’re interested in them," or something like that, "then every-thing is alright." So there was little trouble there and maybe Mr. Hunt was in that back room, I can’t recall-.

WALI ALI: He used the backroom here.

BRIAN: He used to be there some of the times at the end of the meetings or at the beginning, and so I assume they had some kind of joint tenancy or some kind.

AKBAR: I think you are right.

BRIAN: Because the day I came and he had been taken to the hospital and Mr. Hunt was in the place, and he said…

AKBAR: He kind of lived in the living room, didn’t he?

WALI ALI: Murshid did?

AKBAR: Yeah, he had—it was like a combination couch and bed affair and…

WALI ALI: Oh, were all his papers there too?

AKBAR: Yeah, it was very unkempt, it was very slovenly, disorganized, and I remember Clarke mentioning at one time that he would try and go over there and wash dishes and clean up a little bit and at one time tried to order the papers, put them in order, and Murshid got very animated because he objected to it—he didn’t want anything touched or moved.

WALI ALI: I remember it was a long time before he ever let anyone handle his papers, and they were in terrible disarray. I have a feeling that was amazing, whenever he would find something he would say, "It’s a miracle!"

AKBAR: It probably was!

WALI ALI: He probably did think that whenever he did find anything it was a miracle.

 SABIRA: I recall Ralph Silver saying that he was turned on to Murshid because of the organized disorganization in the house on Clementina. He liked it, he thought it was great—

WALI ALI: How long had you been coming around before he went to the hospital?

AKBAR: When did he go to the hospital?

WALI ALI: It was towards the end of ’67 I guess, I have it in there somewhere.

AKBAR: I guess about a year then, a little over a year, and I remember distinctly that…

WALI ALI: The beginning, about maybe March of ‘67.

BRIAN: Then it must have been six months because I’d only been going for around three months when he’d been in the hospital.

AKBAR: Yeah, if it was in ‘67 then it wouldn’t have been too many months, maybe six months. What happened was: Clarke called me at work, and told me that an emergency had come up—I think he called him Mr. Lewis too—he was sick and needed someone to take him to the hospital, so I left work, and I picked Murshid up on Clementina and I think he thought he had had a cold, a bad cold, the flu, or something that had been lingering on for I think he mentioned two weeks, and I took him to the Chinese Hospital which is where he wanted to go. He directed me, I felt very insecure driving in the city, and we went to the Chinese Hospital and I helped him go into the hospital. I remember a nurse trying to come over and assist him and he refused any sort of assistance, he asserted the role of the master in the Fudo path, and said, "I can do it myself," or "I’m alright," or something, but he was concerned and he called his brother and he told, as I recall, right there on the phone he said, "Listen, I am in the hospital, I don’t feel good, and should anything happen to me I am leaving everything to you." That's what I recall, and after that he went into the hospital and I visited him periodically with Clarke Brown, and there was a very serious point in that stay in the hospital where it was a question of whether or not he would even survive. It was a heart attack; he claimed it was food poisoning, and he never acknowledged the heart attack, but he said it was absolutely food poisoning in one of his travels down the coast to Monterey or something.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I remember him telling the story several times when he said he learned later not to mix blue cheese dressing with wine or something but I know from too many sources that it was a heart attack at that point.

BRIAN: But his attitude might have been relevant in that he didn’t want to psyche himself into it, that it was nothing—

WALI ALI: He didn’t want to give any scope for weakness in his system.

AKBAR: Everything changed. I remember seeing him one visit and he was just starting to come up a little bit and Clarke was asking him how he felt and he said, "Horrible, horrible," He said it was horrible. "You know, I almost lost consciousness, it was horrible." And then he showed Clarke how to expectorate gas. He lifted his legs over his head. Clarke was kind of appalled by that, being rather tidy, but that was part of the Sufi lesson, and then yes, things changed dramatically!! After he got out of the hospital—absolutely!! For one thing he picked up walking on a very serious level, I guess to build up his health or strength again, and it was amazing how quickly he recuperated—seriously, and we started going on these walks into the Haight and Ashbury. I remember vividly one time stopping off at Brian’s house on Fifth Avenue—long walks up hills, very arduous work, although there were exhilarating experiences.

WALI ALI: And he gave people breathing disciplines and so on.

BRIAN: While we were walking uphill and putting the consciousness in these centers that Jim had mentioned that he would lecture on or talking on earlier, so he moved much more into a physically active…

WALI ALI: How many people were going on those walks then?

AKBAR: Initially I think it may just have been myself and perhaps Clarke Brown. If I recall that first walk, it was just the two of us and Murshid, and then as things picked up, and then perhaps as he felt a little stronger, and we were having wonderful experiences with these walks, he opened it up a little bit and the third person would show up and the fourth and probably ultimately the time when things really started to pick up there were maybe four to six people.

BRIAN: Yeah, I would say six at the most.

AKBAR: At the most, that would be on these walks, and I think it was a Saturday morning usually, and I remember it was a very hypnotic effect that the Haight/Ashbury had on me at that time to go through there and see all those different happenings.

WALI ALI: How did people react to you walking down the street in the Haight-Ashbury?

BRIAN: For the first walk, I had hepatitis, I didn’t actually do the whole walk, but I went into the police station with Murshid.

WALI ALI: You went into the police station?

BRIAN: Yeah, and he said, "We want to do this walk for spiritual enlightenment," or some such—and this cop probably didn’t quite understand and he made the remark, "Don’t disturb the animals.”

WALI ALI: Did you speak to the people as they were walking down the streets at all?

AKBAR: No, I never spoke to them—

WALI ALI: Did Murshid?

AKBAR: Murshid would speak to some people if they asked questions or something or—it would almost get into almost a martial thing…

BRIAN: Yes…

AKBAR: And it got to the point where they became adventures, because we would like or would trip off after walking for an hour or two, or two and a half hours, we would go into a little store or shop, and I remember I bought my first Ankh at one of these shops in the Haight-Ashbury, and Murshid got to the point where he started going into these shops and talking to some of the clerks there and also some of the customers, and it would be very casual. But then he would invite people to the meetings, "This is what we are doing." And he even played with the idea of advertising in the Haight-Ashbury, and I think he nixed it and he said, that he wasn’t going to advertise but he was going to hold like a parade or a walk or…

WALI ALI: And then also he did hold meetings over on Cole Street and did dancing down in Golden Gate Park down by Hippie-Hill.

BRAIN: I got the impression that he himself was probably—prior to the hospital and after—undergoing experiences—he was experimenting with the teachings, not with the fundamental teachings; but with the blood, and also he was considering how far to open the group. First it was going to be very small, no more than 13.

AKBAR: Twelve and possibly 13 disciples.

WALI ALI: I remember David Hoffmaster mentioning Murshid speaking about that in his tape.

AKBAR: Twelve and maybe 13—that was the initial maximum number.

BRIAN: And then perhaps 25, and then perhaps 100, much later on.

WALI ALI: He said, when he was in the hospital—he told the story so many times—he had this experience where he was flat on his back and he saw the whole vision of his work opening up in terms of numbers, and they said you going to be the spiritual leader of the hippies.

AKBAR: Right, absolutely!

WALI ALI: And he told that story so many times, I just wonder, if you remember it at the time when it came down?

BRIAN: He didn’t say that at the time; I think he said that afterwards he often used to mention things such as, "I don’t know, maybe," and he would just sort of say, "I don’t know," or something like that, and then go on to each new thing, to indicate that he was going to give this a try, you see. So he became much more definite in his movement to became the Sufi teacher, but earlier he was trying different things.

WALI ALI: Would you say that he went through a real physical rejuvenation after that—like a death and rebirth, physically in that hospital period? After the hospital he recovered sort of a new vigor in his body that he hadn’t had before?

AKBAR: I would say so because I remember the time, once again being pretty athletic and not too much after he’d gotten out of the hospital, walking up one of these hills right around here and panting and feeling it, and Murshid was not too far behind me and he mentioned that some of his disciples would surpass him in some things. I was amazed at his vitality, and I remember seemingly that in one of the meetings at Precita not to soon after he had left the hospital he did mention—and I don’t know whether it was the first time or he was relating it as a story—that he had made the announcement that he had had a vision, and maybe he even talked to Clarke and me about it before that but—yeah, that seems to ring a bell that before he announced it to a meeting, he’d had a vision while he was in the hospital that he was going to be the leader of the hippies and lead the hippies and shortly thereafter the walks started heading toward the Haight-Ashbury and attracting people and bringing people in on Monday night.

WALI ALI: I know you had a certain wish to expose Murshid more and more to the hip culture, and in some ways I associate music with it. Were you the person who got him to listen to the Beatles or something?

BRIAN: Yeah, that’s right. I played him some of the material, of course—Moineddin did give him some experience too.

WALI ALI: Do you remember what his reaction to that was?

BRIAN: He came over one time, and I had a fairly large collection, a high-fi set. I believe I played him some of the Indian music that was being played by some of the Western musicians, and the Beatles, but after he heard that particular one, he said, "That’s it, I don’t want to hear anymore, don’t play too many things, don’t chop the change around," and that was it, and apparently he’d gone to Bolinas and heard some more.

WALI ALI: And then he was talking about, "If you’d only listen to the words on those songs, they are really…“

BRIAN: I’ve got it quite complete. He said, "What you should do is to slow down the turn table and tell me what happens." Because he was thinking of these turntables that used to go way, way down low and I gathered his idea afterward was so that you could hear every word and transcribe it, and mine would slow down a little, so I thought he was directing me to listen to the tone of it and what would happen, so I wrote a page of notes on it and told him what would happen.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I’m sure it must have had something to do with making out all the words, because he felt like those words were really it, all the business about love and all the stuff in Donovan and the Beatles and all that. He felt that they really tapped into the truth and so he became really sold on the counter culture, maybe because he had never been accepted by the establishment himself and he found a new life.

BRIAN: And it was quite an experience for us—I know it was for me when it was the Walrus, that was the particular song.

WALI ALI: The Walrus?

AKBAR: The Walrus, oh yeah! I remember that morning coming over to your place and having tea and listening to a couple of records and enjoying them immensely and then all of a sudden him standing up saying, "Let’s go."

BRIAN: He went next door to Sheila’s house. That was interesting. I introduced them; She was my next door neighbor.

WALI ALI: Sheila McKendrick?

BRIAN: Yeah.

WALI ALI: I have an interview with her sometime.

BRIAN: Yeah, quite interesting. She was leading a very, very straight life and married to a lawyer and they suddenly got into acid, really, and sort of went off into space.

WALI ALI: Yes I know.

BRIAN: And she went to India and came back as the world mother or whatever. Cosmic mother, but Murshid—with some people he seemed to, in the early days, to try to get them to open up—with Sheila it was like…

WALI ALI: …to try to bring her down to earth a little bit; she was like a fairy. What about other sorts of things, not meetings, that went down in this period? Whether it was things you did on walks, or places you went to or people that you met, or restaurants or whatever, do any anecdotes stand out? Any stories are really jewels. I don’t know if you—did you ever see "In The Garden" book, Brian? The thing that was put out by Lama Foundation? I don’t think I have a copy of it around here. It has sold about 12,000 copies as of right now, it is sort of an anthology of Murshid’s writing with a lot of stories, peoples’ stories, Murshid’s stories in there—when you put a bunch of them together they are just really classics—they are like contemporary Mullah Nasruddin stories or something. What I am asking for is any kind of humorous or other kinds of stories.

BRIAN: A lot of the early ones were recorded by that fellah who, remember he was—

WALI ALI: Tom Mason, is that who you mean?

BRIAN: Yeah.

WALI ALI: You recorded a bunch of meetings—

BRIAN: Yeah.

WALI ALI: I’m not thinking about Murshid’s anecdotes, I am thinking about the stories that he told again and again; things that you recall happening, like one time I went over with him to meet his old work crew at Christmastime. He was going to take a bottle of liquor to his old foreman, and he came rushing in there, and he said, "I’ve got the answer to all the world’s problems." "What is it Sam?" "Clean hearts and dirty fingernails!" And the guy turned around to his crew who were a bunch of riffs, lower types in spades, and grubby guys, and he says, "Gentlemen, you are halfway there!”

AKBAR: Oh that’s beautiful. I was always in sort of awe of Murshid. He had a kind of magic on the level of personal development and power and enhancement and what not, so whenever I saw Murshid I always saw the magician, because Clarke indoctrinated me to the idea that, "Don’t believe what you see," and "Everything this man does, no matter how ridiculous seemingly on the surface it is, has cosmic consciousness behind it. Every move is well thought out, every gesture has a point to be learned." And so, where I was coming from at that time, I was in total awe of Murshid. Some humorous anecdotes may have come up but I probably blanked them out. I know that he had a ploy of—seemingly whenever he was meeting someone, including myself—of inviting them out to dinner, and in suggesting things to them to see whether or not they were open enough to try something new and watching to see what they picked up, to see—everything, in talking about the breath and utilizing it on a practical level he would talk about, he would eventually get to the point where you’ve got to be aware of where the breath is going because your will lose consciousness when you’re driving. He says, "You’ll feel the breath go through your feet and will actually lose consciousness, and so that was as close to humor as I recall, being sort of mystified by some of the things that actually did happen.

WALI ALI: Your don’t ever recall being put into an embarrassing sort of situation by him?

BRIAN: Oh Yeah, yeah.

WALI ALI: I figured you would.

BRIAN: Yeah, because the one thing was he had a very ornery personality, especially on the intellectual side. Politically he was obsessed with communists and I thought about this afterwards—he probably went to Pakistan and embraced the true but the traditional. He probably met a lot of young students also who were fresh out of the University with very Socialistic ideas, and they would be zinging into this guy—they were trying to move the populace in some much more left wing direction—so they would probably harass him, hassle him, in fact I remember that he complained to the American Ambassador who wouldn’t do anything for him because the Communists were out to murder him, and he became quite obsessed. He left because of everything.

WALI ALI: This is in his Diaries.

BRIAN: So he would throw out these ideas—Vietnam was going then—about the terrible Communists in North Vietnam and I would say, "What does it matter if they want to be Communists?" So one time he said to me—it was a whole lot of people at this time when everybody was just opening up and embracing and he got a little annoyed with a challenge of that kind—he said, "Have you ever fallen in love?" I was truthful and I said, "No," and he said, "You wouldn’t know then.”

BRIAN: Still there were those two sides of him. I, like Jim, was in awe of him, but I was never able to accept him on a deep level. I couldn’t get to the point of absorption with a teacher because if you are more intellectually oriented it's our fault, he said, "but you have to develop the heart," and I knew that, but still there wasn’t that level of intellectual appreciation as well as the heart appreciation of mind and heart for me. There was no question that he was a Murshid.

WALI ALI: I’m really happy to get such open rendition of things, because when I came on the scene things were quite developed already, I didn’t really come on the scene until June of ‘68. When I walked in, all the disciples had been disciples for a while—they were about 10ft. high to me. If they said something, I figured, it was like the word from the beyond. That was quite an experience to me when I found out that they were not necessarily giants, because I just assumed they’ve been disciples for a year or something, they must just really know everything. I had something of, let’s say, Jim’s innocence, I had an intellectual background. I had gone through an experience where I just went crazy with LSD, I got really into the egoless state with LSD and I just had a tremendously bizarre series of events in my life which made me so appreciative of Murshid when I met him because he had answers that I needed, in order to balance out my consciousness. I always recall his great love for all these people even when they didn’t accept him particularly—it didn’t even interfere with his flow of love, but I remember being put through a lot of embarrassing experiences myself. I know from your sense of correctness in the social sphere and so on, or whatever it is—hipness or suavity—without making a ruffle of whatever it was—I’m sure you must have some interesting memories in that category.

BRIAN: Yeah, I was into astrology then—and that was the impressive thing about Murshid—I would analyze a chart and try to synthesize it, and he would look at a chart and just flash on it. He caught me one time because I made a mistake and he was concerned to have it accurate, And when it was accurate—this was on Moineddin’s chart—he said, "There’s two readings and check it out." But he could flash on a chart, there is no question about it. He looked at mine and he said, this was before being a disciple. I think he asked me to bring him his chart, he asked me write out ten questions from the second volume of Inayat Khan, it was the on sound and music, and let’s see anyway I forget the third, anyway when he saw the chart he said "Take orders, take advice, take money.”

WALI ALI: Great! That was your chart?

BRIAN: And of course he could see that stubbornness that a lot of oppositions bring a mental kind of thing, and that was always, "I want, you to push yourself," but unless there was that feeling of relaxation mentally it was difficult for me to open up my heart. So I would get very tense in situations like that.

WALI ALI: Where he would be confronting something or somebody.

BRIAN: Right—

WALI ALI: Or else we were all at a meeting when…

BRIAN: You are right. And there would be you and Moineddin sitting there and taking notes, and that for me was a situation of a test, and I would switch right off. That was hard.

WALI ALI: Oh, you mean in an interview situation?

BRIAN: Yeah, and then he did the glance with me, like one week, for some obscure reason, before he went to the hospital, I was the only one who turned up, and he tried that time doing the…

WALI ALI: Tawajjeh—

BRIAN: …the glance, and I felt very awkward and he said, "What did you feel?" And, I said "uh-uh-uh-uh, I don’t know I can’t say!"

WALI ALI: That was probably because you didn’t really fell anything.

BRIAN: Well, no.

WALI ALI: You didn’t know how to open up because the whole setting was artificial or something.

BRIAN: Well not that. Because there was no one else there at that time, but it was a whole conflicting emotion/mind thing; I didn’t understand what was going on consequently that would restrict the opening on the emotional intuitive level, and it was rather overwhelming. But one or two experiences I had just personally, was when the meetings were small, and just being on the periphery, I wasn’t the center of attention and then the whole thing, the whole room would flash with light and I would just have an experience like that which were the convincing things for me,

WALI ALI: Were you doing a lot of acid at that time?

BRIAN: No, I had met the Swami Chinmayananda in India and tried the Vedanta trip. It was very, very strict, especially on the social/sexual level, and I was unable to take their discipline. The first time I saw Murshid he asked me where I had been and I related that, and he said, "Good." He was pleased that he always talked about angelic souls and he liked people to be earthy in a way, very down to earth.

WALI ALI: I think maybe he had you tabbed as an angelic soul in some ways, because he gave you the role of Neptune in his Planetary thing, I know, and initially he said, "Brian is my Neptune.”

BRIAN: One of the first questions he asked me was, "Without prejudice, are you a homosexual?" I said, "I never really noticed." He hadn’t had a lot of exposure to the hip scene. I would be wearing light Indian white shirts—it was in fact a very Uranian/Neptunian scene. He would always say, "They’ve got it, but there is no joy, I am going to bring them joy." And that was true as well.

WALI ALI: Do you remember his attitude during that period about drugs and pot and acid?

BRIAN: He never had any particular prejudice; he was never interested in taking them himself. I remember there were two or three out of a meeting of six one week that I had taken acid and went there, and…

WALI ALI: The first time I met him I was on acid.

BRIAN: Oh really?

WALI ALI: Yeah.

BRIAN: At any rate—what was’ that woman’s name? Jennifer was it, Jennie?

AKBAR: Right Jennie, that was her name.

BRIAN: I said, "How was it? And she said, " Murshid got nervous and he went around and just put his hand on peoples’ heads and she said it was like a soft light sort of coming over from all the sort of spacey agitation that you get sometimes. It was like a soft light; she remembered that point particularly. He had picked up on that from people being on acid. He did not know that particular time at that particular meeting that they had taken it.

WALI ALI: Yeah—he seemed to be able to be entirely oblivious of certain things, acutely oblivious. It was amazing how he could be oblivious of certain things. Sometimes in the area of sexual things, of being unaware that someone was on acid or something or some such thing. Maybe because his own consciousness was always far out; his problem was to come down to earth I think. He didn't have any difficulty going high, and his whole work in life had been to sort of to get his fingers into the earth and pull his being down and give it to that to ground. I think because he had been able to accomplish that, he was like a magnet for all those people that were spaced out on acid to bring their beings down to earth in some fashion.

AKBAR: As time went on I think he originally adopted a stance of everything being alright and freedom was what we were all striving for, and then perhaps as he attracted more disciples and what not, he began to form a little bit stronger opinions about certain things. I remember one of the rather subtle criticisms of acid was that he said, "My chief objection to acid is that you lose control over your breath when you are on LSD and I remember him pointing to someone and saying, "Isn't that true?" the person nodded assent or something; "Yeah, that's true, I don't really have control over my breath."

BRIAN: Yes, that's what I remember.

AKBAR: And later on the only other reference that he more or less tacitly didn't disapprove of people smoking grass sometimes was in reference to Howard Mussell—he had just gotten back from Mexico and visiting the pyramids down there, and it had gotten back to Murshid that Howard was going to take some magic mushrooms or something and experiment in psychedelics, and I remember Murshid making some rather, not derogatory, but rather uncomplimentary remarks. In other words, he was disappointed that one of the people who had been one of his earliest followers, was resorting to drugs. He didn't feel that the man needed it, and I think it is much like Carlos Castenada, when Don Juan, using psychedelics, psychotropic plants and what not and initially got to certain states and experiencing something was alright but then once you'd reached it and experienced it, then you shouldn't depend upon it or need it.

WALI ALI: I know he was very much a defender of the people that used it in that period around 1970. Because he said, "You can’t impose both sides, you can't have it both ways," and because he knew all the literature from the ancient Vedas and so on about the use of Soma and all the various things that people had done to go into Divine Consciousness, and the only criticism that I remember him making about it was, "It takes people into the psychic plane but it doesn’t necessarily take them into the spiritual." That's what he used to say about psychedelics.

BRIAN: But I think that Jim is right in that later on he did begin to form more definite opinions, along with developing more structure, because there were a lot more people and certain things became more obvious.

WALI ALI: That was the situation with the ranch—they were doing everything all the time, because LSD, STP, you name it, they did it constantly. I don’t know if you had any connection with the Ranch, actually I have an interview coming up with Don McCoy and Sheila and Sandy Barton and that will be a real circus.

BRIAN: Siranjiva?  

WALI ALI: And he’s going to be there too.

AKBAR: I seem to recall that after awhile there were people that were coming in pretty spaced out. If they were too spaced out, I even recall Murshid asking certain people to leave.

WALI ALI: Because they were too spaced out?

AKBAR: Right, yeah, they were muttering something or they were on their own trip and he might go along with it for a little while but then I remember that once it a while it would kind of jar me because the whole idea was peace, and love and harmony and I remember at least on one occasion Murshid, as far as I can recall, actually getting up and being very strong and saying, "Please leave," "Please get up and leave." And the person left.

BRIAN: And also there was an incident that occurred in the very early days with a fellow called Matthew that I think Moineddin knew as well. He'd become a disciple and it was the only time that he sort of disenfranchised someone, so to speak. I don't know what the instance was but he was very unhappy with him this week, this particular week he exposed this poor guy in front of everyone. He was a very quiet soul, but whatever he had done he passed him over to the Church—

WALI ALI: The Holy Order of Mans—

BRIAN: Yeah, and apparently he did really well there.

WALI ALI: Actually he did well for awhile and then he got booted out of there also.

BRIAN: That was the only time—and then there was—talking about incidents, he had me visit this English Buddhist fellah.

WALI ALI: Jack Austin?

BRIAN: Right, and he told me a little bit about him and—have you been to England?

WALI ALI: I've been to Europe: but not to England.

BRIAN: Okay, imagine it is a very reserved, proper structure especially in the older generation—

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, I can imagine; I've known a lot of Englishmen—

BRIAN: I can just see it happening—Jack Austin recognized Murshid, and, because be had come back from the East, he didn’t sort of have too many preconceptions. He took him along to the Buddhist Society which is a very proper organization. Humphries was the president, and he said, "Can you imagine the situation—there were these very (I forget how he put it, but, the word would be proper, people, he didn't say that then)—but he was Mr. Lewis and he asked questions, and he had this short sleeved shirt on and he asked these questions in his rasping loud voice, and if you can imagine the reaction from these people there. Really! I can see it coming down—Murshid tearing into one of these proper Buddhists!

WALI ALI: Proper Buddhists; oh, I know! There was something in his being that was intensely anti-establishment—

BRIAN: Anti-hypocrisy—he was always…

WALI ALI: Yeah, and he just couldn't stand it, and he would rather blow up himself as well as the other person in order to dislodge it. He didn't have that sense of social poise or position, and he didn't apparently care whether he made a frightful scene or not in that kind of a context. He once described the Fudo thing as being, "The idea is to burn up ignorance, and if you burn up yourself in the process, it doesn't matter." This is good, I think this has been a good example.

SABIRA: There is a wonderful story that Hassan tells about you and the Ranch, and going to take the kiln down, and you're saying, "We are doing this for God and Murshid." Do you remember that story?

AKBAR: Yeah, vaguely I do. It smacked of a military operation, and there was apparently a heavy confrontation between the different camps at the Ranch, and maybe there was even a smattering of violence or a hint of it, and a physical confront, and at that point Murshid appointed me the leader of the of the pre-dawn raid, and I remember taking it very seriously, mapping out a strategy and having my men poised in certain positions, giving them a fiery talk and going in there. And actually it turned out to be very easy.

WALI ALI: You were moving the kiln that Shirin had built to the Khankah in Novato.

AKBAR: Right, because she had apparently tried to remove it, and somebody had physically come out and I think even physically threatened her or something. And so it was very serious and I remember meeting somebody and there wasn't much resistance whatsoever, and the kiln was removed and the operation was successful. But I remember, if anything was humorous about it, it was how serious I took it.

SABIRA: What was the story about you becoming a Khalif? Is that part of the story of Murshid?

AKBAR: As the group got larger, and as things definitely took an Islamic turn, so to speak, Murshid decided that somewhere, or as he might have put it, God decided that names would be given to disciples, and if my memory serves me correctly, I was the first one to receive a Sufi name, an Islamic name, and Murshid—I can't remember whether he told me about the…

BRIAN: No, I remember that he just called you up quite briefly at the end of a meeting, it happened all of a sudden, and he took one of those Pakistani linen caps, put it on Jim's head and said, and he finished the gap across—and he said, "Akbar."

AKBAR: Yeah, I think he told me beforehand that he had arrived at a name for me then, and he was sitting on the couch and he said that I puzzled him and that he was not sure of a name for me, and that he had meditated on it and finally God had said to him that I was Akbar, and that was my name and I took it more or less as almost a secret code name, like this was my real identity because of all the magical and occult connotations with Clarke Brown that I would not make that public, or the title that I have. And I was kind of startled, just sitting in the group because I was pretty introverted even though I might not have impressed people as being that way.

WALI ALI: You always impressed me as being self-contained and powerful, that introversion thing can just really make you impressive too.

AKBAR: It seems like it was a full house and all of a sudden he called me up and I was just slightly embarrassed, and Murshid was always sensitive to that and I don't think that that is why he ever exposed me or confronted me on the level that he may have with Brian or Matthew or some other people because he knew that wouldn't work with me. And he called me up and he gave me the name Akbar, and put a hat on my head, and that was it. And far as the Khalif position or station, I would, as every other disciple, come in and relate to Murshid what I had experienced in practices that I he had given to us, and he would give me these different initiations, and finally, I believe it was over in that art center, wasn't it, at Sausalito?

WALI ALI: It was at that seminary over in Marin County, where those meetings were held—because Vilayat was there.

AKBAR: Right. Vilayat Khan was there and Murshid told me what was happening, and I think he told me beforehand that I had already achieved this 8th degree or, whatever it was and that he was making me this Khalif and he made some remarks to Clarke about it and then it was kind of a humorous thing in that I either arrived late—or I may have been a few minutes late, and I was kind of lingering in the background. Sort of the pomp and circumstance thing where Moineddin had been initiated, I think, in front of all the people as a Khalif and with Vilayat Khan, and then, almost as an aside Murshid turned around and saw me and grabbed my arm and pulled me over, and in the meantime everybody had disbanded and was milling around not paying attention, and he brought me up to Vilayat and said, "Now, here, is my other Khalif," and it couldn't have made a very conscious impression with Vilayat, although he assented to it.

WALI ALI: It was a terribly embarrassing thing for Vilayat as it turns out, because according to the rules of the Sufi Order, only the Pir has the right to make someone a Khalif or a Sheikh, and Murshid was not only doing it, but doing it in his presence. And it was quite a thing for Vilayat to swallow, I believe.

BRIAN: Yes, I wanted to say that that conjures up a very interesting thing for me. Murshid had always, for probably a year, told us about what bad guys the International Sufi Order was—Vilayat Khan, all these people who never knew his father’s teaching. Then there was some sudden political change, and Vilayat turns up one evening and he is sweating, very nervous, and he gives a pretty good intellectual speech.

WALI ALI: That was shortly after I came on the scene.

BRIAN: So I said, "Gee, I'm going to see what this guy's got." So one thing that really stuck, which Paul Reps had confirmed, and another thing was that Inayat Khan had gone back to India with a broken heart, and Vilayat had made some references to his father, so I got up and said, I was rather nervous doing it, but it's my personality, so I said, "Somebody, who has just been here recently, a great teacher, said that your father died of a broken heart." And he was just blown away by it, he didn't know what to say, so…

WALI ALI: Yeah, I recall that.

BRIAN: So Murshid was looking somewhat amused, I think. And the next day he had me over sitting next to him, and just as the whole group broke, he said, "What did you think of Vilayat Khan? I said, "I didn’t think much off him," for that was the truth. But it is funny the way he would do things, though, very interesting.

AKBAR: That always confused me because as Brian said, in the initial early stages of the formation of the group there was that anti-establishment posture, and actually I remember Clarke talking about it more than anybody else because he was constantly talking about Murshid receiving the Baraka from Inayat Khan, and other people not recognizing him and fighting over papers and recognition and what not…

AKBAR: Yeah, and it is a very dim memory, but I even think that Clarke drummed it into me that, Vilayat Khan, Inayat Khan's son, maybe was one of the greatest adversaries of the recognition of Murshid, and that all of a sudden from nowhere it seems, overnight—because Murshid was attracting respectable groups of people regularly—there was a connection made where it was arranged for Vilayat to come and speak—

WALI ALI: Bryn Beorse was instrumental in bringing them together. I don't know if you recall him, Shamcher, a Norwegian fellow, you must have met him.

AKBAR: I don't recall him but I remember that first night that it happened, and it seems like there was some advanced publicity put out that Vilayat Khan would be there.

WALI ALI: Didn't he stay at your house?

AKBAR: He stayed at my house that night; it was a great honor for me, and, there was a lot of preparation for it. I cleaned windows and…

WALI ALI: That was a good deed.

AKBAR: That was a funny incident because I remember that if Murshid asked me to jump off a cliff I would have, and he asked me to clean the windows which was almost tantamount to jumping off a cliff because it was very rickety ladder! At that point I was not that light, and Murshid said, "Clean the windows," and so I cleaned the inside of the windows, and he said, "Clean the outside of the windows," and he brought me around the house and pointed to a ladder and I was saying to myself, "Is that it?" and it looked like it was ready to fall apart, and I remember bringing it out to the front of the house and opening it up and actually seeing things that I thought just couldn't support my weight, and wanting Murshid to hold it, or reassure me. And I started to climb up and I hesitated halfway up. Then I finally went up all the way, but there was some doubt in mind as to whether it would really support me, but I did clean the windows. And I remember Murshid saying that that was very, very important, that it was the most important task was to have clean windows when Vilayat Khan came. So my impression was that he was excited and looking forward to it with great anticipation.

WALI ALI: What he was seeking the most was acceptance from Vilayat. As you said when that came, he was quite willing to accept him, he just had never been accepted by anybody else and he was bitter about it, and I think that when Vilayat came and was willing to acknowledge what he was doing, he was quite willing to…

BRIAN: That said something about his adaptability. Because for us lesser souls having been drummed in, and me particularly that, "These people didn't recognize me," they got his papers, been ripping him off for years, then it’s hard to take for sure.

WALI ALI: That was, I think a very interesting aspect of his character, because he would criticize somebody and then switch over immediately if there was some opening on that person's part, and, as you say, leave people behind who were fixed in their way of dealing with people too. Even some of the people that were some of his greatest bugbears, people like Lloyd Morain and Chaudhuri and Watts and those people that he was always droning on being phonies, when he would actually meet them he would be amazingly open to them, friendly in a real way. He didn't know how to be friendly in an artificial way.

BRIAN: Right! At least they challenged him. There was a fantastic incident at the Church of Mans—this is one I will never forget. It was the first time that Paul Reps had come—Paul Reps and Murshid were on different paths but he always talked about him, and his letters; he taught from his book and this fellow was no disappointment. When Paul Reps first turned up on the houseboat—he just walked in like a silky cat, he was about 80 or so and he said something to the effect that, "I’ve just come here to hear what comes out of the mouth…," and it went on, and Murshid had had a—

WALI ALI: Naturally hip sort of delivery, in a whimsical, not at all fixed in a certain way.

BRIAN: And Murshid came home in the car with myself and Danny who was going there then. He went over and he said, "He is very impressive." And the second time he came the meeting was at the Church of Mans, and Paul Reps was very much like Murshid. In other words he was sophisticated but a no bullshit guy, and he had given this opening address and everyone had gotten very high. He looked at Jemila and said, "Ah, she's got it in her eyes," and the whole meeting was going well, and then there was this fellow in silver robes who deliberately put the question, "What about the Holy Spirit?" And Paul Reps immediately quips back, "I see we have a Christian in the house." By this time, this fellow's disciples were really restive by then, one of them got up and said, "We'd better have this out," and Paul Reps was just ready for another one—

AKBAR: The Crusades—

BRIAN: And Murshid gets up, and here's Murshid who would do just what Paul Reps would do in a similar situation. He played the diplomat, he said, "Now we have to remember spiritual brotherhood," and things like that and calmed everyone down. He was beautiful.

AKBAR: Murshid did that? Murshid said to remember spiritual brotherhood?

BRIAN: Yeah, and that of cooled everything down.

WALI ALI: Yeah, after that meeting they took all of Reps' books and out of the Holy Order of Mans, they did a whole purge on it. Do you remember what else came down? What did he say about the Holy Spirit and so on; when the guy asked him, he just said…

BRIAN: Nothing! He just said, "I see there is a Christian in the house." Obviously saying here's a fellow structuring a question for an answer—

WALI ALI: Yeah.

BRIAN: He didn't need to ask that question; it was not in context, but…

WALI ALI: Hi just wanted to get into a debate around something like that. Or having another view.

AKBAR: This was Paul Reps who was saying this?

BRIAN: Yeah. At that time, if you remember, that little doctor, I think they were claiming to have the incarnation of Jesus, and half of the disciples already in the group were an incarnation, I should have said, and it was a pretty doctrinaire thing, although it was a real new age.

AKBAR: It seemed like a Catholic mass to me. I remember going over on DuBoce or something wherever the first church was—and perhaps it was a wedding or something, but because I was raised as a Catholic it seemed very Catholic in its outward form.

WALI ALI: Why don't you consult your notes and see if there is anything else that you have down that you haven't mentioned.

AKBAR: A question I've always had about this was: I remember Murshid reading "The Path of the Sufi," by Idries Shah, and I never got a clear message on that, although my distinct impression the second time that he talked about it was that he kind of lambasted the book, and said that it is absolutely not true, or something like that, and I don't know—maybe it was that particular book, or maybe it was a passage, or was it Idries Shah?

WALI ALI: It was Idries Shah—the first book that Shah came out with, "The Sufis," Murshid initially liked it because, as he said, it gives me all this publicity, and he was always thinking of things from the personal point of view in that respect. It gives all this publicity to the Sufis, but then, Murshid had friendship and connections with Sufis in the East and basically it was that they had such a dislike of Shah. To them Shah was an anathema to the traditional lines in the East. He represented the whole sort of sophisticated approach to Sufism to them and I think Murshid reflected some of that feeling and also he came to feel that Shah loved mystery rather than some of the simple truths. He said, "Where is Allah in his books?" The teaching that I got in Sufism is that Allah is the only reality and here you get all this mystery stuff and a child can understand that God is the only Reality, and it is made to appeal to complex intellects—if you prefer something complex to something simple even if the simple thing is true. I think that was sort of a combination of those things. He didn't mind accepting Shah initially but then he later saw that Shah wasn't particularly accepted, and wasn't particularly helping—

AKBAR: Does Vilayat Khan recognize Idries Shah?

WALI ALI: He knows Shah; in a sense he grew up with him; Shah's father and Inayat Khan were sort of friends, and as boys he and Shah knew each other.

BRIAN: I remember him saying about Gurdjieff in connection with Sufis, that Gurdjieff was a realized being but that he never left a disciple. At one time he was even criticizing his bosom friend Paul Reps, "He lives off there in Hawaii and I'm here and I'm taking this one…

WALI ALI: He played back and forth with Reps as a love affair and a blast affair on both of their parts, and that was a very friendly kind of thing in that way. When I was in Hawaii last year I made a point to call on Reps and visited him, and he stayed down in the house here recently, and he is in his 80's now, as you said, he keeps his trip together. But he is independently wealthy, he inherited money and he's go it in stocks and he lives off his dividends and he spends his winters in Hawaii and he spends the summers in Canada, and in between he goes to the health spas of Europe. I think that Murshid resented, in a certain sense, that Reps never really had to work hard like he did,  that he had things kind of handed to him on a silver platter.

AKBAR: There is something that is rather humorous I think, in my perspective. Once Vilayat Khan  got into the group, I sensed that, as Brian once again mentioned, when he first came into the room sweating, and maybe even appearing a bit nervous, recognizing Murshid and kind of reaching a reconciliation or conciliation and then getting involved in the whole group and, like you said, the protocol then was in some sense violated in that a Pir was theoretically allowed to make someone a Khalif or whatever, and Murshid had done it right in front of Vilayat Khan, which was an awkward moment for Vilayat Khan, but he accepted it ultimately. The amusing thing was that some of these Arabic phrases and chants that Murshid had come up with, these dances that he had a wholly Divine inspiration for, apparently slightly butchered the Arabic, and I remember Vilayat Khan, kind of nodding his head in assent, and "Yeah wonderful, wonderful," and then I talked to him on the side and he goes, "I've never heard it pronounced exactly that way, but I guess it's alright."

BRIAN: That was an important point. Murshid had me talk to a fellow called Martin Lings in London who is a—

WALI ALI: Was he old? No? Not really—

BRIAN: I only talked to him on the telephone; he wouldn't give me an interview.

WALI ALI: Oh, you talked to him on the telephone? He is a very famous man.

BRIAN: I said, "Here's greetings from Sufi Ahmad, and he was very clear in the conversation, it maybe lasted 15 minutes, that he didn't recognize anyone who wasn't a Muslim first and had gone through all that thing, and then became a Sufi. And even much later in 1970 when Habibiyya first came—they have an Algerian master—they were actively saying that the Sufi group here—I phoned you up at the time—will cause madness, it's crazy what they are doing. They were trying to show the truth, because there is this feeling in the East—they are very, very traditional—and unless you've gone through and been a Muslim and been converted, and done your five times a day trip, there is no way you can become a Sufi—

WALI ALI: I am well aware of this whole controversy—we fall somewhere in the middle of the whole thing. The Habbibiyya, by the way, left this country, because they couldn't get anybody to go on their trip, particularly over here.

BRIAN: They were extremely devotional.

WALI ALI: Yeah, extremely, they've had more success in England. I won't know what that says about the difference in the psychology of the English and the Americans.

BRIAN: They are more traditional in England, so they would go over to many very set forms.

AKBAR: Did Murshid have a reaction to that, Brian?

BRIAN: Well, he died at that point.

WALI ALI: But he wrote him a bunch of very, very strong letters on this very point in our files to these people in England, whom he respected very much. And he could accept their point of view about the way they had gotten to God. In fact, when Murshid had gone to Islamic countries he had followed the way of the Muslim. He had, in fact, shown his adaptability—when he was in Pakistan he was able to go on the trip, but when he was in India, he went on the other trip and when he was in Japan he went on the other trip.

AKBAR: When in Rome do as the Romans do!

WALI ALI: He was very adaptable in that general way, he didn't find any conflict in his being in terms of practicing these different religious forms. But he wrote some very strong letters about this. He said that Mohammed had appeared to him in person before he ever met an Imam.

BRIAN: Those people, they are not going to hear that sort of stuff, they are very set.

AKBAR: I remember one other rather amusing anecdote here that comes to mind—I never really got the real storyêabout how Murshid he got that gold robe. Do you remember that gold robe he had?

WALI ALI: The gold or the dervish burlappy.

AKBAR: The burlappy robe, and he said, "If you knew how I got this, you wouldn't believe it," or, "This is a miracle." One day he was talking about it—this was when he was starting to give us all robes or costumes or caftans or whatever, and he was quite animated, and there was a group of disciples around him and he turned to them as he turned to me and he said, "And Akbar would have this, but do you know why Akbar won't have it? I would give this to Akbar—" And everybody was puzzled, and, "No, no, no, because it wouldn't fit him!"

BRIAN: One really spectacular incident that I have. Jim reported this to Murshid after I had gotten to the point of feeling too tense to continue. I had a dream a month or two later which was one of the most startling ones. For a start it was a very bright background—Murshid had always taught us to look for your dream if there is dark on a bright background, so I was aware of that. It recognized the place as back here in the hills. There was Jim and myself, and Murshid had gone on a walk, and I laid down, in the dream, on the path, and Murshid moved over the brow of the hill with Jim, and he said, "Where's Brian?" Jim looked back and said, "He is resting, he is just resting." And Jim reported that to Murshid, and I think it was very apropos.

WALI ALI: Did he ever talk to you about alchemy?

BRIAN: Yeah, he recommended a book which I am still following by Titus Burkhardt—

WALI ALI: Yeah, the Burkhardt book—I remember some point about the whole thing—the first thing you do is you extract the mercury, and then the last thing you put back in, and then that represents the intellectual content of consciousness or something like that. I remember that conversation that he had with you, but I don't remember anything more than that about it. But somehow you had been given that commission to study alchemy because you are a chemist.

BRIAN: Yeah, that was very fine—

WALI ALI: What else do you have down there on your list?

BRIAN: Let's see—oh yes, Gavin Arthur! He knew him for ages, and of course Gavin Arthur had mentioned that Murshid way, way back had been studying—it was either with Edward Carpenter, or with Luther Whiteman—I don't know who he was at the time, and they lived an ascetic life in the Dunes, just completely, totally isolated—and I don't know much more about that incident.

AKBAR: He died about a year after Murshid, didn't he?

WALI ALI: Gavin did?

AKBAR: Yeah.

BRIAN: Oh, has he been involved with the theosophists? A typical situation—he told us at a meeting one time that they had put a curse on him—

WALI ALI: The Theosophists?

BRIAN: First of all they tried to get him drunk, and he kept drinking, and he kept his vision in mind and it didn't work, and then they tried to put a curse on him, and he collapsed into a coma, but before he did—and that is what saved him because of his vision and his awareness of God—that was basically the trend of it.

WALI ALI: I don't remember that incident. I remember the one where he, when he was associated with the Meher Baba people and somebody commanded, "If you want to be a Baba follower, you have to die." Do you remember him telling that story? I remember if it was the same story.

BRIAN: I think maybe it was the Baba!

WALI ALI: Maybe it was the same story with different clothes on it—they told him he had to die—and he immediately left his body and nobody understand what had happened, and he crawled into his room or—

AKBAR: Crawled up some stairs or something—

WALI ALI: Yeah—

BRIAN: Oh okay, maybe it was Baba, correction for the tape, because that was the story I was thinking of—

AKBAR: I thought that he meant—

WALI ALI: No, the Princess Matchiabelli was the woman—

AKBAR: Yeah, there was a woman involved—

WALI ALI: Yeah—these women at that period in history, I met some of them. They must have been just the worst tyrants and egotistical kind—getting a little touch of this occult thing and really laying it on others—

BRIAN: He did say about the Theosophists, Madame Blavatsky, in his opinion, was the first and the last Theosophist.

WALI ALI: I remember him saying that too.

BRIAN: His comments on other peoples' trips were sort of relevant to where he was coming from in his own life—I made of list of them—

WALI ALI: Why don't you just run through that?

BRIAN: I think we have just about done that. I mentioned that he'd said that he sat at the feet of Inayat Khan all the time he was here, but that Inayat Khan had become totally turned off from the trip. He'd seen that it hadn't worked, and that was his overall impression.

WALI ALI: His whole pain at the breakdown of the Organization?

BRIAN: Yeah—

WALI ALI: And the people involved—

BRIAN: Oh the organization taking it over—

WALI ALI: Yeah—

BRIAN: So when one of the disciples had brought up a fellow from the South, from Los Angeles, I remember that meeting. Murshid had announced it ahead of time and this fellow was proposing to turn into a non-profit organization. At that time it was still very small and informal, and it seemed like a real big deal, quite relevant; Murshid went out of the room and this fellow made his proposal—

WALI ALI: I think Jack Schultz or something like that—

BRIAN: Yeah, that's right, and one fellow who had been coming with a mustache walked out at that point, and we never saw him again. I made some negative comments, but it is interesting, Murshid was not particularly interested either way, he just liked the movement that the other people didn't.

AKBAR: Marcia brought him up, didn't she?

WALI ALI: Yeah, they were together as a couple—that was one of the difficult kind of tempest in a teapot. His whole money trip was an interesting trip because he would oscillate between this tremendous generosity and largesse and then he would run out of money and then he would become really kind of tight fisted and stinky about it. I don't know if you remember any incidents—

BRIAN: Charging for meetings was an on again, off again thing in the very beginning.

WALI ALI: It's been real good; it has been a lot of fun for me just seeing you guys again and I think we have a real good tape. What we'll do is when we get it transcribed we'll send you copies of it and then you can go over it, and then maybe by seeing it in print your memories will be jogged and you may remember a few little incidents that you would like to fill in different places and send it back to us or whatever. Anyhow, thanks a lot.

Interview with Dr. Huston Smith for Murshid Sam's biography—7/15/76

WALI ALI: When did you first meet Sam?

DR. SMITH: I can't remember exactly but I think it was soon after I went to MIT. I don't believe we had contact while I was still at Washington University in St. Louis, so that would have put it in probably the early 60's—I went to MIT in '58—but I don't recall that it was that immediate, and I assume that I came into his world by way of "The Religions of Man"; I can't think of any other way—and that was published in '58, so it looks like about 1960.

WALI ALI: I know that when you at one point offered a course at Berkeley I remember him being quite excited and showing up there in a robe with his Zen Stick. He used to tell the story that Dr. Smith had said there was one decent book in English on Zen—other than those by Suzuki—"The Three pillars of Zen," by Kapleau, and he said that he stood up in the middle of the room and shouted for joy, as he put it. He was so disturbed by all the speculations about Zen and not enough of just actually reporting about what actually goes on. I don't know if you recall that.

DR. SMITH: I remember the course very well, and I remember his attendance very well, and I remember that there were one or two such incidents like that with the Zen Stick and his rising and shouting. It is nice to be reminded of what he said.

WALI ALI: I'm not sure just how to proceed. Of course I would just like to get your impressions in whatever way you would most like to give them, and I perhaps will ask you some questions.

DR. SMITH: Actually this may be rather brief.

WALI ALI: I thought perhaps that it might be, but we'll see. We did an interview with Dr. Needleman whom I think you know. Sam used to attend Dr. Needleman's classes also, and we got some very interesting things from him.

DR. SMITH: He first came into my world through letters/correspondence, and they were frequent and they were long.

WALI ALI: Yes, that is a familiar story.

DR. SMITH: I would say that on an average, four single spaced pages, and the first one, I don't remember just when it came, I hardly knew what to make of it. I answered it; I was brought up to answer my mail, and as I said, I don't remember the content of that specifically, but then I remember that they kept coming. They were mostly carbons, and I'm not sure if he would mention who the carbons would go to—maybe sometime—but I had an impression that there were about four carbons or something like that, and I know I answered the first one, and thereafter my answers tapered off because I couldn't keep up with him, and I had other things to do and either he had more energy, which I can well believe, or fewer things to do, but anyway. So they kept coming, and as I said, I don't remember the specific contents of any of them, but I remember the tone of all of them. It seemed like there were always two constants in these letters: one was himself which would indicate his credentials around the world—the Masters that he had either studied with or who had honored him with some kind of recognition or some kind of validation of his experiences, and that was very extensive, needless to say. The other constant that ran throughout the letters was optimism! To hear Sam write you would think that the millennium was just around the corner. Things were always breaking and opening up in a very positive, creative way. That's my memory of the letters which is the way that he came into my life originally, and was the constant right up to the time that he died.

WALI ALI: I notice that the earliest letters we have written to you were from 1965. There must have been some before, but they didn't get into the files.

SABIRA: There is one letter that he wrote to Dr. Reiser—I'll quote what he said, and maybe you would comment on it: "Several years ago I questioned Dr. Smith about the parallels between the three-body doctrines of Buddhism, Hinduism and Christianity." And that's all he said on this in that particular letter.

DR. SMITH: Oh, the Trikaya doctrine—

WALI ALI: I know he was interested in terms of this sort—in fact I pulled out one of these letters in which he was trying to take some of the Greek terms from the Old Testament and show some of the parallels with the Sanskrit terms, and this might be interesting to you. I recall when he gave those lectures on The First Corinthians which used also the Greek, he was interested to point out the parallel of the subtle body, the spiritual body and so on in the Greek to the Hindu teachings etc.

DR. SMITH: Now when did I first meet him? It just may have been at that Berkeley extension class, and as I said, I don't remember all that he said—which wasn’t a great deal; I think I felt a little bit apprehensive when he turned up and first introduced himself to me. I thought, "Oh dear, here is someone who is going to be coming to upstage the teacher, and maybe even try to take over the class for himself," but there was none of that. There was none of that; he was not in the least disruptive. His comments were terse and to the point, and contributed to the class. I was impressed because whereas his letters made me suspect a large ego in the bad sense of that word because he announced his claims so repeatedly—and his attainments—in person there was nothing of. He did have credentials, needless to say (I'm telling you!), and had met more of the world's great teachers than I had. He could have used that as a lever if he had wanted to use the occasion for ego gratification; but I was not only happy but relieved to find that in person my suspicions of an enlarged ego were allayed.

WALI ALI: He used to say, that he got known at one conference as "The man who wrote the longest letters and gave the shortest speeches."

DR. SMITH: And another nice thing was that he was very friendly, and several times during the two weeks, he would come up and make supportive comments. At the close, the last day, I remember that he got up and made a very short but lovely tribute to the course.

WALI ALI: I know that for him he had been given an assignment from his spiritual teacher, Hazrat Inayat Khan, to serve as a link between the mystic and the intellectual. So he spent many years, with a very unorthodox personality, trying to make some kind of link, and had met with a lot of closed doors, as you might imagine. Thus, he was very gratified, to see, come the mid-sixties, that there was a new generation of professors in this country who were less interested in outer things and more interested in seeing if there was any substance behind it. And I think that he honestly felt very good about what he saw that was happening not only with your work, but with a lot of other people that he felt was a new turn in terms of honesty and the people that were dealing with religious phenomena in the universities.

Dr. SMITH: Then he came east to Cambridge a couple of times, I forget the number of times, I forget how many—at least two.

WALI ALI: I think two.

DR. SMITH: Both times he wrote ahead that he was coming and would like to drop in on me, and did so a couple of times. He came by and saw me in the Cambridge area. The first time I don't remember so well, but the last time I remember very vividly. There were about three disciples, and I remember asking if they would like tea, and I forget whether he accepted, but I have a feeling that maybe he did. There was a very good feeling in the room for that hour. There was very little conversation. We just sat together in peace and happiness—and it was very satisfying. When 4:30 came around he left. And that was I guess the last time that I saw him. The next time was on film right here.

WALI ALI: He was always referring in his letters to you that one of his disciples named Otis had been your student. . Do you remember that?

DR. SMITH: Possibly—a scrambled memory of that. Did he later take the name of Murshid?

WALI ALI: Mansur.

DR. SMITH: Mansur! My memory of that is that I was on a lecture swing, and one of my stops was somewhere in the northern States—it really seemed out of the way, maybe not Bimidji, Minnesota, but something like that. Now did Mansur ever—

WALI ALI: I think he was teaching in Iowa or somewhere like that-

DR. SMITH: I think it was a little farther north than that, North Dakota or Minnesota or somewhere, and my recollection is that that is where I met him. He was married, I believe, and it was one of those nice visits because in one sense it was this out of the way place stuck up somewhere in the woods—and while very visit can be useful in a way, this was memorably meaningful. Mansur and his wife met me at the plane, until they put me on the plane for departure, we were almost constantly together. I think there was a gathering after the lecture, either in my hotel room with a few of their friends and intimates or in their place. And we stayed up a little longer than usual because it was obviously a meeting of the spirits. That is my recollection, of it, but not that they were ever formally my students.

WALI ALI: I noticed one other thing while I was just quickly reviewing this file.

DR. SMITH: By the way, where is he now?

WALI ALI: Mansur is presently outside of Boston in Hull, Mass. and he is in charge of a Sufi center there.

DR. SMITH: Excuse me-

WALI ALI: That's quite alright—I was just seeing if I could come across this—this was in 1963 or perhaps '69, I notice that he subscribed for you, sent you a subscription to "The Periodical Studies in Comparative Religion." He did the same thing for Dr. Needleman. I think it is very curious, and I don't know if that was your first exposure to that publication, but I do know that he had been very interested in Schuon and some of those classes.

DR. SMITH: That interesting! My gratitude, I am glad you mentioned that. It had totally slipped my mind but that must have been the first introduction to that journal, which I still read almost every morning! That is the only journal that I always read cover to cover.

WALI ALI: They do good work.

DR. SMITH: And I usually do it rather meditatively, two pages a day or something, like this morning. Thank you again.

WALI ALI: He felt that those were the people who were doing the real work that he had been designated to do of trying to make the bridge between mysticism and the intellectual community. Part of his life, you know he was like a Mercury messenger, making all these various connections

working at a very tremendous speed and constantly trying to link up this knowledge with that person who might be able to use it. He only outwardly functioned as a spiritual teacher for only a certain number of years at the very end of his life. He had quite a number of different roles. I found it rather fascinating getting into a certain amount of research towards the book.

DR. SMITH: That's going to be an interesting book.

WALI ALI: On the line of just this inquiry, I don't know if you had any discussions with him about the many different phases of Sufism, but I do believe that you have taken a great interest in what is going on in Europe and other countries, that is true isn't it? I recall one symposium you gave at the Unitarian Church on the "Two Faces of Sufism," and I stood up and tried to offer a third face in the middle of it.

DR. SMITH: Oh yes, I remember that now.

WALI ALI: Do you recall any stories? One thing about Murshid was that there were always these very funny, modern Nasruddin stories that used to happen and we have been making a collection of them, so to speak, and I just wondered if you had any recollection of any.

Dr. SMITH: I don't think so, you (Sabira) were telling me some of these and they are delightful, but it wasn't in such context that I knew him. As I recall the two weeks in the Berkeley class, and then twice in my office were the only times I was with him. I don't think there are any Nasruddin stories.

WALI ALI: I don't know if you've seen this book that came out this year from Crown; this was just recently published and is an anthology of his things which includes a lot of stories too. It has done rather well. (In The Garden) I don't know where to go; maybe, as you said, this is going to be very brief.

DR. SMITH: Unless you think of some angle that would trigger something.

WALI ALI: Did you have an impression of him as a scholar?

DR. SMITH: No, I don't believe I had occasion to discover that side of him. He must have written some articles, but I don't recall seeing them and that is where the scholarship would surface. In his comments they would be on small points but not a sustained argument on a specific point, so he obviously had a wealth of information, but often his points were out of the way ones that I didn't know about. I didn't know really what to make of them. I guess my impression was of someone who in the outward sense was all over the map—in terms of the world, and the people he made contact with—and possessed of a very lively mind that darted here and there, but not the kind of scholar's mind that compresses it all and reworks and reworks until it comes out as a solid body that is original or systematic. He made all kinds of connections, but they were between traditions, the Trikaya, the Three Bodies and so forth, but they would almost be like dart-and-run observations. It might be a mistaken impression, but there it is. And then his other side was just the opposite, contemplative, that showed that he really wasn't just all over the map in a scattered sense. That last hour in my office he sat completely calm and centered.

WALI ALI: Have you seen this book, by any chance?

De. S: No, I haven't.

WALI ALI: I would like to give you a copy of it simply because it tells something of the silsila of the Chishti order in India which is the Order with which we are associated; also there is a section at the end of it with some of the world orders and organizations. It shows a connection with Hazrat Inayat Khan.

DR. SMITH: I don't know if you know, but I am doubly grateful for this, because I am on the eve of going around the world and I'll be leaving in September for eight months. I'll be in India for three, and needless to say one of my prime objects in the Delhi area will be to visit the holy areas. Have you been over there?

WALI ALI: No, I haven't, but I am in touch with the people there. Of course Ajmir is the spiritual center of the Sufi Order because that is where Moineddin Chishti is buried, where his tomb is—a tremendous pilgrimage is done every year. And Delhi is the tomb of Nizamuddin Alia, he was the fourth successor to Moineddin Chishti, and that is also where Hazrat Inayat Khan is buried near the tomb of Nizamuddin Alia.

DR. SMITH: That's what I thought, but who is buried at Ajmir?

WALI ALI: Moineddin Chishti, who is the founder of the Chishti Order.

Dr. SMITH: What date was he? I'm not sure. Oh well, the book will tell me. The Big Five—are these the five central orders?

WALI ALI: No, these are the five successors to Moineddin Chishti, the first five successors, and each represents a particular tradition. In fact Farid who is one of the successors is also one of the Gurus in the Sikh line, mentioned in the Granth Saab. It disappeared somewhere around the time of the 12th century, I could be a little off on that date. A lot of the Sufis who came a few hundred years later mixed right across religious lines, and this is the tradition that we come from. There is such a running argument today about the adherence to the religious order and religious tradition and whether or not it is absolutely necessary to observe the Shariat entirely in order to be a "Sufi," or not. In many of the silsila there were hundreds of years in which there were not these distinctions and differences so strongly. Mian Meer who was a Chisthi Sufi laid the cornerstone of the Golden Temple in Amritsar.

DR. SMITH: How does this book come down to Hazrat Inayat Khan?

WALI ALI: This book only gives the early teachers, and of course is colored with the Indian manner of writing, and as you know, any miracle or account is always included, "Because why miss a bet?" But still there are a lot of useful things in it, and I am sure that I sent you a copy of "The Jerusalem Trilogy," Murshid's work.

DR. SMITH: Oh yes.

WALI ALI: I would like for you to have this also (In The Garden), it gives a certain picture of Sam, one of joy. And I want to thank: you very much. I feel very good to have had the contact with you.

DR. SMITH: It was a pleasure. I certainly wish you well with the book.

Michael Suleiman on Murshid Sam—10/28/76

WALI ALI: What do you remember about your first meeting with Murshid? Was that the Darshan over here, did you come over here that night? I remember we were all teaching at San Rafael at the Synagogue—

MICHAEL: I think Murshid used to give Darshan fairly often, but not regularly, but fairly often.  And I don’t remember whether that was the first time or the second time that I came over—I think the time that you are tuning into is the first time that Banefsha came alone and got Darshan from Murshid.

WALI ALI: Right—and you didn’t come over on that time?

MICHAEL: I didn’t come over on that time; I came over the next time.

WALI ALI: What was the place that you were coming from?

MICHAEL: I was just here in San Francisco.

WALI ALI: Were you on a very, a real Jewish trip?

MICHAEL: I wasn’t on a real Jewish trip, but I had spent time and had experiences in Israel, and before I came to Murshid, Judaism was the only kind of spirituality, the only way to God that I knew. I was really interested in Kabbalah and I realized that Murshid knew more about Kabbalah than anybody else I had ever met.

WALI ALI: What made you come to that conclusion? Anything specific that you remember?

MICHAEL: No, actually there was nothing specific, because I never came to a Sufi meeting, Sufi night, it was only Dharma—oh that’s what it was. Somehow by coming to Dharma night I realized that just by listening to this guy talk about Hinduism and Buddhism I was learning more about Kabbalah and Judaism than I had ever learned in my whole life, and that’s what the first mental interest was.

WALI ALI: Had you studied with Shlomo part of that time?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I had studied with Shlomo, I studied at a Yeshiva, but studying with Shlomo at that time wasn’t a disciple/guru relationship.

WALI ALI: He hadn’t even gotten the idea of starting his Yeshiva at that point, later he got much more into the study side of things then he was in the late ‘60’s; that is just my impression—

MICHAEL: The thing was he didn’t have the material—he only had two or three—really I think he had four really strong students—disciples—right?

WALI ALI: Aryeh was one of them.

MICHAEL: Aryeh was one; and then there was another one that is in Israel, and another one—I don’t know what he is doing now. so I was studying with Shlomo and we were going to the House of Love and Prayer often, but not real often, And then Banefsha said, "Melvin took me to meet this guy, you ought to come to meet this guy." So there I was, and then we started to go to meetings, especially in Marin County and on Sunday night Dharma night.

WALI ALI: This was what, toward the end of ‘68?

MICHAEL: This was towards the end of ‘68, it was, I think March of ’69—

WALI ALI: It must have been March because I met Murshid in June of ‘68 and—

MICHAEL: And then you started teaching school that year.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I guess that was that next September. Did you go up to the dedication of the Khankah in Novato that occurred that year?

MICHAEL: Yes, I think I did—

WALI ALI: I think that was right, I think that you went out there after Sunday (?)

MICHAEL: For the maypole festival at the Khankah—wasn’t it?

WALI ALI: Yeah

MICHAEL: I went to the maypole festival, I want you to know that that was the time that I really saw that Murshid had an understanding of the esotericism of dance.

WALI ALI: What gave you that impression?

MICHAEL: At that time we did the maypole dance, and I’d been studying symbology, but I got an understanding that this was like the inauguration of him as a spiritual teacher of the hippies, and he used the dance to bring that down, and I don’t know if that is the right word—inauguration—but I think that’s right.
And I’ll tell you a story—one time, I was going to City College, and this was second semester at City College, and I was real low on priority of choosing classes, and it was the end of the Sunday night meeting here, and it was upstairs, and Murshid was just starting to turn on the TV or something and I said to him, "Murshid, I really have to get these certain classes because otherwise I’m not going to be interested to keep going to school, so give me a mantram to get these classes." So he yelled at me, "Inshallah," and I didn’t know if that was a mantram or what. And I got every class that I wanted to, no problems. They were all the classes that get filled up the first ten minutes by all the people with priority. I got every class at the exact time that I wanted it—like I just felt that I had this blessing that carried through the whole semester. That is the only semester that I remember in going to that school, other than my gardening experiences.

WALI ALI: I actually remember him shouting Inshallah at you down the stairs. The impression that I had was that you had asked him for a spiritual mantram. I didn’t hear the part or remember the part about to get in to certain classes. He gave it to you kind of angrily and as an afterthought, and then you just sort of left, and then he shouted it at you as you were leaving like he got it and then he gave it to you as you were going out the door or something. Because I remember another incident with a fellow when we had those meetings over on Cole St.—he was the guy I brought over from the post office. He came and we had been doing chanting, and all of a sudden, he heard about Maharishi or something, and he came up to Murshid and he said, “Can you give me a personal mantram," and he just looked, "What in the hell do you think I’ve been doing for the last period?" and he turned to him and said, "All wood is not fit to be made into a statue of Mercury"—and he said, "and the guy left in a huff." But I remember him shouting "Inshallah" at you as you went down the stairs. He always said that he had the impression of you that he would say, "Very angelic, very angelic person.” And I never knew what he was talking about, or where he saw that.

MICHAEL: I know where he saw it—when he was alive that’s all I was—angelic; I had never really earth-planed until years later. Also, it was clear I think that I was six years/eight years younger than everybody else around.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I think that is probably so.

MICHAEL: But I remember the time that he was supposed to turn over all his scientific material to me, and I came over—I was supposed to be here at ten o’clock in the morning—I really spent the whole morning moping around and indulging myself in all the things—all my desires, and I didn’t get here until like a quarter to twelve, right? I didn’t call or anything, and I walked in, and I thought, "Murshid has never yelled at me before, forget it, I’m going to get it this time," and Murshid said, "Oh, you’re just in time for lunch," and we sat down and we ate lunch and he said, "Okay, I’m busy now," he had to go to the store or something, and that was all, and then in about a couple of weeks later he left for New York, and then he came back and he passed over.

WALI ALI: Did he ever turn over those materials to you at that time?

MICHAEL: No, he never turned over any materials to me.

WALI ALI: My impression of the scientific materials was that there wasn’t like a box that said "Scientific Materials." There were his notebooks from his courses, but I know that people have asked for things at different times; I have never seen anything that was specifically a whole bunch of writings of Murshids on scientific matters.

MICHAEL: It was in the magazines, and articles that he had clipped out.

WALI ALI: Not things that he’d written, but things that he had collected?

MICHAEL: Right, just different references that he had made in his Diaries, and the only way that I got them—I don’t know if you remember bringing me three or four boxes of just magazines and miscellaneous papers and everything, which it took me months to read everything, and finally after I read it, it was like I had the feeling that I had walked in his footsteps, so I had a certain touch with his concentration and the way he was looking at things, and what he was looking at things for and what he was trying to do both physically and from a spiritual point of view.

WALI ALI: Would you like to say something about that?

MICHAEL: Yeah, alright. First of all I think that he did a lot of work on the inners, that was he saw something—like a Darshan—he brought it out, so that it developed, and he was also especially interested in communication. He loved to connect one person to another, and I think he felt himself more as a kind of catalyst to bring out certain things then to actually do the work or actually do the research. He much preferred to go and find out what someone else was doing, and he would say, "Oh yes, I know someone else who is working on some other related product or project," and connect those two people and let the fertility of their creative energy and expertise bring something through.

WALI ALI: What about specific projects that were sort of his babies in that area? Do you have an impression of anything in that area?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I know of course that he was interested in having Opuntia cactus or prickly pear cactus grown in arid lands, to be used as a juice, and he was also interested in date palms, and eucalyptus. One of his operating theses was that there were a lot of California native plants that were adaptable to other areas of other countries and California had used these commercially. That’s the whole thing with the cherry trees, that there are certain cherry tree plants that adapt themselves to California. That could be introduced in other countries, and given certain different varieties, and matching certain different soils, they would become commercially viable. The cherry trees he was interested in not only for the fruit but also for the organic matter—to help build up the organic matter in the soil.

WALI ALI: Yeah, this is good; I’d like to get into even more of this because I feel that you have some knowledge in this area that will really be helpful.

MICHAEL: Okay—with the cherry trees especially, his idea was to take California natives, Prunus Lyonii was one of them and to use this as a root stock and to graft on top of those commercial cherry tree tops, and he felt that that would be suitable for an introduction, especially in the Middle East and India and China. He had this concentration of Japan, China, India, Pakistan, and the Middle East agriculturally. And he felt that because they were ecologically similar areas that the solutions to their problems could be similar also.
He used to talk about the difference between the realists and realism, with realism being a philosophy and realists dealing with what's actually really there or what really could happen, and then kind of in the same tone he would talk about the ecologists who get all excited about all sorts of things and have no basis whatsoever, no scientific basis whatsoever, and those scientists that dealt with ecology or the inter-relationship between different plants and their environment.

WALI ALI: We had an interview with Harry Nelson some months ago, and it was interesting

MICHAEL: Yeah, you should have sent David to do that interview.

WALI ALI: We got an interesting interview with him. He wouldn’t let us use the tape recorder, he was real funny. He said, "You can take notes, but I don’t want anything to do down on tape." We asked him what his impression was of Sam as a gardener a scientist and he said he thought he was a talented potsherd so to speak. He said, “He came up with some very strange ideas like he was growing greenhouse tomatoes in countries that were very hot," but he was basically saying also what you were, that he was trying to get things started, but he was really…

MICHAEL: Of course it turns out that tomatoes and cucumbers are the most suitable plants for greenhouses which wasn’t known when Murshid was alive.

WALI ALI: Nelson’s point was, "Why grow them in greenhouses when you have a hot climate; what was the point of wasting all that money growing them in greenhouses?"

MICHAEL: They have a hot climate in Abu Dhabi but they spend millions of dollars to grow them in greenhouses now.

WALI ALI: Why?

MICHAEL: Because they don’t have any moisture.

WALI ALI: That’s the reason I brought it up, I want to get some, impressions about some specifics that he was concerned with besides the fact that he was a catalyst that was always trying to connect up people with knowledge that may not be in communication with each other.

MICHAEL: Of course—is it alright if I talk about Harry Nelson for a minute?

WALI ALI: Yeah.

MICHAEL: His correspondence shows Murshid’s point of view entirely different—you get the feeling that Murshid wrote to him never expecting any reply mostly, and if anything it was four or five lines reply from Harry Nelson that only dealt with what Murshid had referred to scientifically, and I think oftentimes he just writing plant lists of what plants he saw in the area at that time and he addressed it to Harry Nelson, and it was really for his Diary, not really for Harry Nelson personally, but it was for whatever he felt Harry Nelson stood for in the akasha.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I think that is a really important point, because that helps one to understand a lot of his correspondence.

MICHAEL: The way he dealt with the world

SABIRA: Because Nelson said that he felt the letters were just showoffs, and something like that.

WALI ALI: Sabira asked him about all the scientific terms, because we asked him what was his impression of him as a scientist or gardener or whatever, and he said, zero/zilch—what about his grasp of all these terms?

MICHAEL: I know that one thing that Murshid did was, he used to go to classes just for the sake of regularly taking up a concentration. In my terms, he is a seven kind of person, like he wants to study something so he goes and takes a class in something related and that helped him tune in to what he wanted to get out of the class, not what the class was giving but what he wanted to get out of it, or what he wanted to put into it.

WALI ALI: Now that's a good example of what Nelson said, he had one course in which everybody had to write a paper describing a tool, and giving a sort of description of the use of a tool or something as you would to someone who didn’t know anything about it—and he said, "Sam wrote about a hoe; about the hoe—it as the biggest bunch of garble I ever saw—he didn’t say anything about the hoe."

MICHAEL: I know Murshid used to write him about his dervish experiences too.

WALI ALI: Yeah, he mentioned that in the letters too.

MICHAEL: Also, Murshid wrote him some poetry about different trees which I may even have a copy of that, if you are interested.

SABIRA: He wrote Harry about everything, he was sounding off on what was going on politically in Japan and if that was the day to write Harry, he didn’t care—it wasn’t always about horticulture.

WALI ALI: What about events that came down in your life in relation to Murshid, that you look back on as teaching experiences and things that really opened a door? Do you remember any particular events or stories?

MICHAEL: His death probably opened the biggest door; of course there was a whole thing in the hospital. First Banefsha and I weren’t allowed to visit him in the hospital, then all of a sudden, no one had time to visit him and we were there for 18 hours a day, and then there was a crisis time when the doctors were screaming about how evaporated he was—he didn’t have any moisture in him. He wouldn’t drink and someone didn’t want him to take IV’s or something—and he wouldn’t drink anything, so since I was working at New Age and I had a key to New Age, so I went and I got some organic juice—apple juice or papaya juice or something, and I came and I gave it to Banefsha, and I said, "Here, give it to him to drink," and she couldn’t get him to drink. So I took it and he screamed at me, and I held it and I held his hand on the cup, it had a straw, and I screamed at him—I screamed at him in Arabic, I said," You’d better drink this or you’re going to be sorry." He got up and he drank half a glass and put it down and then conked out again. I think he giggled and then went back into the coma. Then a couple of days later they moved him to Chinese hospital. He was the first person that I ever watched die—I was really surprised, like how cold he was from the minute—because we were there like right before—ten minutes before he left for Chinese hospital, and then he went to Chinese hospital, and then I think he was there for a couple of days or something and then he passed over. He was real warm when we saw him. He was only for about 36 hours in Chinese hospital. Anyhow, I remember we left him that night and he was real warm, and then we came back right after he had passed over. I was working at New Age then and someone called New Age, and Moineddin and I and Hassan, James, I think was working there. And I wasn’t sad —if anything I was happy—not that he had died but that was the feeling—I just kept getting, "It’s going to be alright." Of course I really thought that he was just tricking everybody and that he was just going to be back in shape in 12 hours or something.

WALI ALI: I know Mansur was convinced of that for days.

MICHAEL: Yeah, I know, when he verbalized it, it certainly struck a feeling that was familiar in me and I know that Abd ar Rahman thought so too. He called from Tucson and said, "Don’t touch him, don’t do anything, don’t put him in the refrigerator—he’s just in some state of samadhi—that such and such guru had been in—and I remember that, but anyhow I do remember that that struck a very familiar feeling and so—at that time I was still very angelic and I understood right away that I had gotten the certain trainings, especially transmission in Zikr, and a special transmission in RamNam, but also things like the heart sutra and I understood that—"You just stick with this and you’ll be alright for the rest of your life." I got that very definite feeling and a visualization which is unusual for me too. Then we took him to the morgue, and we sat at the morgue. I can remember as the hours went by that his spirit left very slowly from his body—it wasn’t like he was there one minute and then gone the next—every hour was like he was there a little bit less in the room and more in heaven, and it was really good for me because as he went up I kind of went with him, because I was in touch with him. Then finally when we were sitting there—I don’t know how long he was dead, but…

WALI ALI: I know there was a whole period of like three days in the morgue while we were contesting their wish to do an autopsy and they couldn’t do anything with him until after the hearing took place, or whatever it was down at Superior Court.

MICHAEL: I have a feeling that this was very soon after he went to the morgue. As soon as we got his body out of Chinese hospital and into the morgue, for a few hours I think that we were there—Banefsha and I—and I really had this experience of him leaving his body, and infusing into the world and after that, that’s when I understood Kabbalah, I finally understood these mysteries called Merkabah—and right after that I understood it not from a mental understanding and a kind of transcendental logic but direct understanding.

WALI ALI: Do you recall any other out of the body experiences of a definite nature after that time?

MICHAEL: I remember when I went to teach the Rabbis of the San Francisco Kabbalah, and when I finally got the go-ahead, I ran out of the Jewish Board of Education and I was just skipping along about six feet high. That was one of the few times—the other time especially was when I got married, that was really out of the body, and I was laughing, but I wasn’t laughing because of me, I wasn’t happy because of me, I wasn’t enthralled because of me—it was because of Murshid, it’s like Murshid was happy, so he was happy through me and it wasn’t me that was happy—I was just there—I remember that. And similar things happened sometimes later on when I went to talk to the Egyptian government—I met the Secretary of State there. Do you want me to tell that story again for the benefit of the tape?

WALI ALI: Yeah.

MICHAEL: Okay, is this—you want to know about Murshid?

WALI ALI: Yeah—the interesting thing is Murshid’s biography does not stop—so many people have had out of the body experiences of Murshid manifesting in different ways at the Maqbara and elsewhere—in dreams, and I think it is worthwhile to get some of those down also.

MICHAEL: Okay, I was in Egypt to do "Hallelujah the Three Rings" work and I was especially doing scientific work, so I had no idea where to start, so I started at universities and did something which I had done often—and that was, just go walk in and meet people at the university from gardeners to professors and just say, "Hi, I am interested in what you are doing," and just try to have guidance to make things happen. So I did that and then very soon after I was introduced to the government Agricultural Extension Service and within about 48 hours they had arranged an introduction to the Secretary of State of Egypt. And the thing was I really didn’t know what Murshid wanted to have done—I had some ideas but I really didn’t know what he wanted me to do. I felt like I had this golden opportunity budding, so before I’d left for the Middle East, I had gone to the University of California library which was one of Murshid’s old places that he used to go, and they had these reports that different universities make about what they are doing, and then they send ten copies to the library, right? The library files one or two then throws the rest away, so I went through the throwaways at the library, and I picked out maybe six or seven brochures, and I had these in my briefcase when I went to talk to the guy. One of the things was drip irrigation and they brought me into this office—this was inside this military secrecy office and I got in there and I really didn’t know what to do. The guy says “Hello I’m glad to meet you. You are welcome in Egypt. What can I do for you?" No one had told me in advance what I was supposed to be doing, so I didn’t know, so I reached into my thing and I said, "I have this report I thought you folks would be interested in, it’s about drip irrigation." He says, "Drip irrigation, that’s exactly what we were talking to the Ford Foundation about." So now, of course, drip irrigation is almost the panacea for all Southern California agriculture as well as Middle Eastern agriculture. It is the thing that is happening. And, of course I attribute it purely to Divine Guidance and Murshid’s concentration that that experience came down. I remember walking away and saying, "Geez, you’re walking a lot like Murshid."

WALI ALI: He certainly did that at universities and so on, just leading by the seat of his pants, so to speak.

MICHAEL: Also it has to do with plugging into a concentration that is there in the akasha and then taking it on. I don’t know if that is a real experience of Murshid doing it, but it is certainly like that.

WALI ALI: Let’s go back a little bit in time, if you will please. Do you remember anything with Murshid and any other teachers like Shlomo or anybody else? Were you around for any of that, anything that sticks in your mind?

MICHAEL: I used to chauffeur Murshid—I was always driving him to different book stores, book stores and shopping especially, and I remember he went shopping, he used to buy the most dented cans. It was like he was looking for the rejected cans and the rejected vegetables. I had that impression of him when he was shopping, at least with me, and I also remember that we used to go into the bookstores and he would do—what he was doing in bookstores of course—I would follow him around and watch to see what he was picking up, and I would just give him space to do what he had to do because I was just the chauffeur and he was the cat who was doing everything, so I remember—I used to pick out all these books, and I would say, "Pick me out a good book about Kabbalah," and he would say, "You go pick a book out," And I would show him ten books at a time and each time he would say, "No, not that book, not that book, no not that." Finally said, "Oh now I understand, Murshid, what you are meaning to tell me is that there is no book about Kabbalah!" And he says, "Yes, that’s right." Then a week later he bought me the books of the Zohar about Kabbalah—

WALI ALI: Yeah, I remember when he gave you those books. He signed both of us up for that Kabbalah course—a typical sort of thing that he would do was to sign somebody up for a course—do you remember anything about that?

MICHAEL: No, I remember he was going to come talk there and he never came, or if he came I would [?] but I think that he just had us go there to get a background; he didn’t expect us to get any sort of transmission, but just to get a background. Mikey Shur was the teacher.

WALI ALI: Gee, I don’t know what else to ask—I remember at your wedding which of course was filmed

MICHAEL: He total ignored me at the wedding. I arrived with Banefsha, and all the sudden Banefsha is gone so is everybody else and Murshid is leading this whole troop of people singing Gilbert and Sullivan, and I followed, because what was I going to do, go back to the car?

WALI ALI: I remember one funny story that happened that day, in relation to you. You must have come up there and gone back to the car to get something, because Murshid turned around and said, "Where’s Michael?"

MICHAEL: Right, that’s what I did—I walked in to tell Murshid that I was there and then when I came back to get Banefsha I walked in and Murshid was in the middle of leading some of the dances—or milling around ready to lead some of the dances—and he turned around and he yelled at me, "This is the clearest vision I’ve ever had in my life," or something like that.

WALI ALI: Yeah, right—I remember what happened—it’s a funny story, because you’d obviously come up there and gone back to the car or something. He’d seen you, because he turned around while you were gone and he said, “Where’s Michael?" And I said, "Michael hasn’t gotten here yet." And Murshid said, "I. just saw him," and this other person said—I don’t even remember who it was—he said, "No, he hasn’t arrived yet." And Murshid said, "He was wearing a yellow robe, it was a vision—it’s the clearest vision—I just saw him—it’s a great blessing!" So then you must have come up after that and he said that to you.

MICHAEL: Far out. I wasn’t there at that point. I didn’t know what to make of that—I said, "I’m very glad for you,” and I didn’t feel anything except the minute he started screaming at me my whole body was in this aura of golden light.

 WALI ALI: The other things you remember chauffeuring him around—how did he react to your driving?

MICHAEL: One time he said to me, "Go this way, go that way." I said, "Look Murshid, I’m the driver, you tell me where you want to go and I’ll get you there," and from then on he just always sat back and we went and after that he never even gave directions; even if I didn’t know where I was going he wouldn’t give me directions But now I am a taxi-cab driver. All the time I go places where I don’t know where I am going, but he never told me that I was going too fast.

WALI ALI: No, I don’t think a person could go too fast except when they were looking for a parking place, then he was always complaining about people trying to find parking places and going too fast and not slowing down enough to find a parking place.

MICHAEL: I always have a parking space right in front of where we are going.....

WALI ALI: But I don’t think you could have gone too fast for him, he always wanted to go fast and go through lights and jump ahead of people—

MICHAEL: I heard the exact opposite story, that he warned everybody in Marin, "Don’t go over 55."

WALI ALI: I know, his relationship to the different people driving him around is always funny and different.

MICHAEL: The feeling I always had was that this was like the Chariot card in the tarot enacted—that’s the feeling that I had. I just felt like I had this fragile egg in my car and he just spaced out; he didn’t say mantrams or do anything that was perceivable, he just spaced out, and I drove him around there. But when we got there, all of a sudden he was dynamic. He always went to someplace for a purpose. He would always tell me where we were going and we went there and never got side-tracked.

WALI ALI: Yeah, but he was always trying to combine a number of errands though; if he was going to be doing the errands in a certain part of town he would…

MICHAEL: Oh yeah, oh it was Uranian—the whole thing—it was first one and then the other and another, he never told me the plan ahead of time.

WALI ALI: Did you go to universities with him or just bookstores?

MICHAEL: No, bookstores and shopping a lot, and not so much to meet people and not so much to the universities—

WALI ALI: You waited some time before you took initiation?

MICHAEL: Yeah, I waited a long time—that’s a good story. I never really felt like I had to join everything—everybody was in this club like and this is how I looked at it—I certainly felt friendly with everybody and I liked everybody, but I didn’t see what was the sense of joining some club—I could go to all the meetings that I wanted to go to, and I was happy. So finally—after about being around Murshid about a year, or maybe a little less—I had this realization one day that everybody else had been going to the same class that I had, the same amount of times, but for some reason they had all shifted gears, and I hadn’t shifted gears and I realized that the only difference was that they were initiated, and I had been known in high school for cutting off my nose to spite my face or just getting mad at some teacher or some authority figure, right? And then saying, "Too bad, I’m not going to have anything to do with it," and not getting the good benefit out of it too. I figured, "I am done with that pattern," so I asked Murshid, "Murshid, will you initiate me?" I said it kind of intrepidly, I guess, very meekly, he just said, "Sure!" And that was it! The next week I got initiated. I remember he gave us cake and apple juice. I always used to remember the tea that was served at the Dharma night meetings, it was like that one cup of tea, one small cup of tea, was enough for the whole week. It was the best tea going, I remember that very strongly. As a matter of fact, after that, when I heard about the Japanese Tea ceremony, I was surprised that they had a whole ceremony, that we sort of got the blessing in one cup of tea!

WALI ALI: What would you say, just to get your overall feeling, how would you sum it up—what’s your impression of Murshid as a man or as a teacher? How would you, if you had to sum him up in a few sentences or a paragraph, what would you say about him?

MICHAEL: That’s impossible because he’s like your teacher in life so every breath he’s there—it’s impossible, you can’t sum it up. it’s different all the time, sometimes he says, "okay you can do it," and you are sure that he is going to say "no you can’t"; sometimes you are sure it is okay and it turns out to be not the right thing at all. So I can’t say. All I can say is that he’s always there.

WALI ALI: Any areas you feel that we have left blank?

SABIRA: The Three Rings?

WALI ALI: What’s your memories in relation to that?

MICHAEL: I remember this meeting under the apple tree or the plum tree at Subhana’s house and I just couldn’t believe that he was laying this whole big thing on six people—the only thing that I thought we could pull off was putting acid in the water supply but maybe we had enough sophistication to pull that off—that’s the only thing I thought that we could ever pull off. So it was like he put this whole big concentration in these six young kids' hands.

WALI ALI: All I can remember about that day is he was so raging mad because he had just suspended Mansur that he was absolutely transfixed with anger or whatever it was.

MICHAEL: I remember we didn’t say too much at that meeting—and the way he did it was, he just let us do it. He never told us to do anything. As a matter of fact, we had to ask him what he wanted us to do, and then he didn’t really tell us. He’d say, "Go look in my files; it’s all in my files," and he never told us what to do. But anything we did blew my mind how big it was as far as he was concerned. Remember when we did that Arab dinner, as far as I am concerned it was just a bunch of people that I called off the street to get them to come up there—but to him it was like world news.

WALI ALI: Yeah, again, it is that same thing we are talking about—it was the way the world revealed itself to him, how every event was seen on the big picture and I think it was really important that people of their own initiative around him were doing—any little event like that was tremendously important to him in the occult world—

MICHAEL: It wasn’t just us—anything that any of his disciples did that was positive he was for it, and he put all his energy and all his juice into it. If they wanted to have a pottery kiln at the Khankah, Ya Fatah, he wanted it to succeed, do you know what I mean?

WALI ALI: Right, that was one thing—I remember he took an axe and he was going to chop down that bench that Jelaluddin Cave had spent weeks building up there—he actually was going after it with an axe because people had lost the priority of their projects or something.

MICHAEL: I never heard that one, but I do know, I remember that he used to—first of all (about Three Rings), he was very jealous then that non-disciples didn’t work on the projects—the only non-disciple that he ever let work on the projects was Carlos—

WALI ALI: Who later became a disciple—yeah,

MICHAEL: And, of course, Van whom he didn’t want to work on Three Rings because he wanted him to do gardening—

WALI ALI: Yeah, he had a definite idea. If you did what his vision was that you were supposed to do, then it was Alhamdulillah, but if you were wanting to move to Novato and he saw you in the city, or if you were wanting to do research on the Three Rings when you were supposed to be working on the garden in Novato, then he was really upset.

MICHAEL: But it seems that most of the time most of the people did most of the things right, and he was just right there to give you positive energy. I remember when Banefsha was teaching and she was having trouble in teaching, something they said—they were going to fire her or something, she called him up and she came over, and she was crying. He said, "Okay, come on in and sit down in the kitchen."
He took me out in the garden to learn how to pick potatoes, and I guess that is how he got himself centered. He came back and everything worked out alright in the end.

WALI ALI: Why don’t I give you a copy of this tape that was done a long time ago; it’s a little bit of Shabda, but mostly Banefsha, and it might trigger some things that you might want to write down or something and we’ll give you also a transcript of this when it is done. And when you look at it there may be things that you will want to fill in when you see it down on paper.

SABIRA: How’d you and Murshid get along, Michael?

MICHAEL: I was always like the third party to everything that happened. I was just there observing everything, and the only time that Murshid ever gave me energy was every Sunday night, at least once or twice he would turn to me and look at me with such a look that I knew exactly that he was talking to me—he might have been talking to the whole room, but he was talking exactly to me at that time and that was my concentration for the week.

SABIRA: What do you mean when you say third party, who was the second party?

MICHAEL: Whatever was happening, maybe it was dinner at the Khankah, and everybody was at the Khankah and I was there also. Of course Murshid talked to me at times when we were driving, when I was chauffeuring him around.

SABIRA: Do you remember any of those conversations?

MICHAEL: I remember one time he told me that Banefsha didn’t have to do spiritual practices but I did, and that’s the one I remember really clearly—I know right where it happened.

SABIRA: Why did he say that?

MICHAEL: I don’t know why he said it, but that’s what he said.

SABIRA: Did he counsel for you and Banefsha—did you come to him with problems about anything—your marriage or Three Rings or anything in which you needed help? What was it like for the two of you and Murshid? Do you feel like getting into any of that?

MICHAEL: I remember he used to counsel me with Banefsha and I always came there with the idea that I was going to surrender to anything; I was ready to get totally bowled over by these two heavy people. I felt, for sure, forget Michael, we are going to write him off as a has-been, so I was ready to surrender to anything—whatever Banefsha and Murshid worked out—fine with me. And I was always real surprised about how he was so fair, and as a matter of fact he was always overly supportive of me and wanted to hear a lot more of what I had to say and a lot less about what Banefsha had to say—that always surprised me. I remember that one time Banefsha and I were having a fight and I was living somewhere else at the time, and that was alright with Murshid, except that he wanted to make sure that I had all the files and all my books. “You work out everything else between you, but just make sure that Michael gets his files and his books”

SABIRA: Did he tell you before he died that he wanted you to continue the Three Rings—all of you?

MICHAEL: Of course, he told us that all the time that when he was finished, he said, "I’m finished, I’ve done my work, now you are supposed to take over," he told us that all the time.

SABIRA: I was curious about something way back in the tape, you said that the Dharma night reminded you of Kabbalah or vice-versa. Can you say a little more about that, how did you connect them?

MICHAEL: What I said was that by studying Hinduism and Buddhism I learned more about Judaism and Kabbalah.

SABIRA: Then just comment on that.

MICHAEL: I learned about three bodies instead of about a lot of customs and ceremonies and history, and Murshid did a funny thing. See, my first interview he asked me, "What are you interested in?" And I said, "I am interested in learning Kabbalah." He said, "Okay, come to Monday night meeting." A couple of months later he sent me to this gardening class on Monday nights, so I used to come on Sunday nights or Saturday night dance class and he would say something, and sometimes he would lead a meditation, and then say, "Okay, are there any questions?" And after you got done doing a meditation with Murshid you never had any questions, and then the meditation would be over and there would be a space of time. And all of a sudden I would say, "Murshid, I have a question," and it was like the whole room would freeze, because he used to always say, "If you have a question you ask it at question time." But I never had questions at question time, I always had questions ten minutes later, but he let me ask them, he never got mad, but I don’t think it was right, I don‘t think it was courteous to do it, I just never had any questions. Some of the questions I had, he would say, "Okay, that’s a question for Sufi night, come back tomorrow for Sufi night," and I would sit there and say, "Murshid how could you do that, you sent me to gardening class on Sufi night." And I never got any answers to those questions.

SABIRA: What was the Saturday night dance class like for you?

MICHAEL: It was like you did these things—some of which were ridiculous and some of which were just for fun. At the end of the night you were high and at the end of months and months you were transformed; that’s the way it worked. It was really kind of like going to school—just by being there you get it.

SABIRA: How were you transformed? What do you mean?

MICHAEL: I don’t know how I was transformed, to tell you the truth. I really don’t know, I have never cognized that—concretized it.

SABIRA: What has happened since Murshid has passed on in your life as far as Murshid. Has he come to you in dreams or visions or how do you use what you learned?

MICHAEL: He just comes all the time in terms of a feeling. It’s a feeling of Murshid, and a visualization—not like a vision but like a visualization—like a memory, that kind of visualization. I remember one time we went to this fantastic dinner at Sophia’s house, and Murshid came and they gave him two or three hash cookies to eat, and Sophia says, "Murshid these are hash cookies and we want you to eat them," so he ate them and there was no difference. I think Amertat got stoned but Murshid didn’t. He wasn’t a bit different—

SABIRA: I think Baba Ram Dass tells a story like that—

MICHAEL: Yeah.

SABIRA: The guy was so high anyway it didn’t make any difference, is that pretty much like it?

MICHAEL: I don’t know if that was it or not—he just overpowered it; it didn’t affect him at all, he was just on a different wave length, But he used to say that—he went to this psychedelic conference in 1967 and—Wali Ali can give you the exact quote about it—he used to say it all the time—especially during the days of the Haight-Ashbury, that all the psychologists thought he was totally sane and all the psychedelic people said that he had all these experiences that all the psychedelic people were describing, he’d had all those experiences without psychedelics. Then I remember one time he told Wali Ali and Banefsha that as far as he was concerned that the date palm was the highest psychedelic, the roots from date palm trees. One time we worked for months, for six weeks gathering stuff for the whirling dervish bazaar, for a rummage sale to work during the bazaar to benefit Hallelujah the Three Rings.

SABIRA: That would be the 1970 one?

MICHAEL: I guess it was the first one or the second one, and we worked really hard real long hours and we made all this money and the next day I found out that Murshid took all the money. I was mad about that for months. I just recently had an understanding that he took the money.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I remember he took the money from the rummage sale for the Three Rings—in fact he demanded the money, and I know what my understanding of it was: that he was trying to take the Karma on himself and give it some positive juice instead of the fact that there were disagreements and things going on in relation to the Three Rings people at that point

MICHAEL: Yeah, I think that that had something to do with it; I also think that he felt that he deserved payment for his work in New York and he wanted some energy back for that, and I think also that…

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, he had originally had the impression that that bazaar was going to be put on by the Three Rings or something and then he had some problem with Banefsha around that period of time—or you and she were having something or there was something that came down; anyhow it flipped over in his mind about the bazaar—nobody else had seen it that way—but he had seen it that way, and so that was in response to that—also it was in response to some of that karma. And I think that you are right, he certainly wanted to get some payment for his service in New York.

MICHAEL: I think also, didn’t he use some of the money to buy materials to get the ladies to make dresses to send to Pakistan?

WALI ALI: No, that was a different thing. This was remember just a rummage sale, the bazaar then was going. That was because the bazaar itself after it changed over in his mind—it was all supposed to be a benefit in his mind, so when the Three Rings thing didn’t happen, it was the East Pakistan relief and then that was the money that was taken out of the straight profits of that bazaar—I think actually a $100 was actually sent to Pakistan.

MICHAEL: His action was definitely a cleansing and karma and a forcing of surrender.

WALI ALI: Yeah right, because he wanted to see, "How are you going to fight me on this one?"

MICHAEL: But no one really fought him.

WALI ALI: That was good.

MICHAEL: Okay, are we finished?

WALI ALI: Yeah, I think we are finished.

Heng Sure (for Abbot Hsuan Hua)—12/9/76

WALI ALI: Let's start at the beginning.

HENG SURE: Alright.

WALI ALI: And if I have any questions, then I will feel free to interrupt you, okay?

HENG SURE: Alright. Sam Lewis, as we knew him came and this was before my time—I was not present for the very beginning of it.

WALI ALI: I knew some of the people that were. I don't know where they are.

HENG SURE: They're here, they are still here, Ron Epstein, I think is one of them.

WALI ALI: Yeah, I know Epstein.

HENG SURE: He started coming to attend the lectures of the venerable Abbot of Gold Mountain in 1961, back on Sutter Street, every Sunday. That was when the Abbot was lecturing at that time. Once a week on Sunday he would lecture, for instance The Sixth Patriarch Sutra, the Platform Sutra, and he would explain—he would lecture a good part of the text, and there would be someone there who could translate it, and then he would explain the commentary very lively, and you could say, in the tradition of the Chan patriarchs—

WALI ALI: There weren't any translators at that time were there? He didn't have any people who were translating?

HENG SURE: Not in the way that we do it now, certainly, but there were people who could render it into English—it wasn't with the intention of compiling a translation for publication, which is what we do now, but it was largely the work of his Chinese disciples then. Before any great number of Americans had come around regularly, it was a more casual thing on Sutter Street, but—

WALI ALI: This was shortly after the Abbot came to the United States?

HENG SURE: No—in fact he had been in the States for some time practicing and living in isolation on his own. But after the place on Sutter Street he began lecturing every Sunday. People came regularly, and he went public, if you will, at that time. When—we mark the major coming out of the Dharma in America was the summer session of 1968 when five American people went to Taiwan to receive the precepts, Bhiksus and Bhiksunis at that time, but that's getting ahead of myself. At that time in '63, Sam Lewis was really a regular, he came every Sunday for three years. He came in '63, '64, and '65. He didn’t—he rarely missed a Sunday, and he was an inspiration to all the other people because of the sincerity that he showed. In his studies of the Dharma, he bowed to the Abbot , and he recited the ceremonies along with everyone and really involved himself for three full years in the study of the Buddha Dharma. What he did the other six days of the week we do not know, but on Sundays he was—

WALI ALI: These were in the afternoons or the evenings?

HENG SURE: This was Sunday evening that he came around, and actually it was a full day, they often would eat. Of course the master eats once a day, and all his disciples—the monastic disciples—eat just one meal a day, vegetarian food, so they would have eaten before noon, but that was a regular thing anyway, and he—his sincerity just maybe stood out from the other students because of his extreme sincerity. And the fact that he was thoroughly involved with the Buddhist teachings at that time. In 1965, then, he came less regularly and went out on his own to start propagating. He felt like he had absorbed enough of the Buddha Dharma, apparently, to go out on his own, and at that time what he said about the venerable Abbot was that he was—that he considered him to be Boddhidharma, who had, you know, brought the Dharma from India to China, and the Abbot bringing the Dharma from China to the West was, as far as Sam was concerned, was the act of Boddhidharma, and those were the words that he used at that time—we developed into the Buddhist lecture hall on Waverly Place.

WALI ALI: That's where I went to the sessions.

HENG SURE: Right. And that was after ’68 for 2 1/2 years and then we came to Gold Mountain in ’70/’71, and this was an abandoned mattress factory which was turned into a monastery with a lot of hard work, and just after the place was set up and functioning, this extremely interesting incident happened. We had lost touch with the disciples after the move to Gold Mountain, Sam Lewis' disciples, and we just heard occasionally that he had been taking people as disciples and that he taught them Buddhism and a lot of other things too, and that people saw him pretty much as a patriarch of his own establishment, and then we heard that he died, and he hadn't come around for quite some time—but that he had always spoken very highly of the Abbot, very, he had been very—

WALI ALI: Very consistently-

HENG SURE: Then the next thing we knew there were twenty people outside of the door who had showed up at a refuge ceremony. Now at a Refuge ceremony—we become Buddhism disciples by taking refuge with the Triple Jewel—that means that you take the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha as your refuge; you become Buddhists at that time. You may or may not take five lay precepts or the Bodhisattva precepts at that time; it is a matter of choice; but these twenty people had quite a miraculous tale to tell. These were the California Dreamers. I guess it had been a week before they showed up at the door, twenty of them had had one dream in one night, and the dream was that Sam Lewis, with his voice and his presence, told them all, in the same dream, to go to Gold Mountain and to take refuge with the venerable Abbot. So they woke up the next morning and came down and said, "I saw him last night, Sam came in a dream last night to me," "No kidding, me too." "What did he say?" They said, "The strangest—you won't believe it, the strangest thing in the world, he said, "go find this teacher and become Buddhists, take refuge with this teacher." "That's what he told me." "Me too." "Me too." So of the thirty people that took refuge that day, twenty of them were from one group. Those people had all had the same dream that night, and since then known as the California Dreamers to us, and some of them never came back from that day on, and some of them came back regularly, and some came back infrequently, and we still keep contact with a few of them.

WALI ALI: Did any of them become priests?

HENG SURE: No, no one actually left home, but that was obviously—Sam Levis had some good roots, which is to say some very wholesome faculties and some strong affinities with the Dharma to instruct people in to be able to direct people to the Dharma, and these twenty people came as a response. So he is remembered fondly around here—some would call it an amusing incident, but it is not out of the ordinary around here, that things like that happen often. So that is our—that's the Sam Lewis story that we tell.

WALI ALI: I have some questions; I don't know if you will be able to answer them or not, but—

HENG SURE: Try me—

WALI ALI: Let's see; let's start with people. There was a man whom I believe Murshid introduced to the Abbot and who became a priest. I don't know whether he is still associated with the monastery or not, and that was Orne Grant. Do you know anything about him?

HENG SURE: He is a layman at Gold Mountain.

WALI ALI: Oh, he didn't become a priest?

HENG SURE: No, he became a lay person.

WALI ALI: Oh, I see.

HENG SURE: A lay person, a lay priest, a lay clergyman—there is such a thing as lay clergy. We consider a person who takes the Bodhisattva precepts to be lay clergyman.

WALI ALI: I see.

HENG SURE: He is currently on a retreat, he is on a Mountain retreat. But he is tremendously faithful, his room is here, and he also, I believe, went through the Order of Mans for awhile—

WALI ALI: Right. My understanding was, but I would like to get the story from him if possible—and that is that he was having some difficulty with Reverend Slighton or with the teachings at the Holy Order of Mans, and found it difficult to break away because of the pressure or what have you of the situation and—

HENG SURE: Yes, I've heard such things—

WALI ALI: And that Reverend Lewis went over there and enabled him to break that connection and brought him and introduced him to Venerable Abbot Hsuan Hua, and at least that is the story as I understood it, and I just wanted to check and find out how accurate that was, about what the real story actually was.

HENG SURE: Yeah, he has been here from the beginning.

WALI ALI: So it would have been about that time, because during this early period in 1963-64-65 or around the time when that lecture hall was procured—I don’t know when—when exactly that date was, when we went over to—up those four flights of stairs—

HENG SURE: Waverly Place, where his lecture hall was—

WALI ALI: I know that the Abbot at that time occasionally had other people come in and give Dharma talks including Reverend Joe Miller and others who were—he hadn’t become established with disciples as yet—I don't think that really happened until a little bit later, that he really became firmly established with American disciples…

HENG SURE: Transmitting The Three refuges.

WALI ALI: Or even having a faithful group of people who stayed with him as students.

HENG SURE: He was really patient in those early years, just waiting for conditions to ripen and that’s why I say that we mark the real beginning of the Dharma with the transmission of the Precepts to the Bhiksus and Bhiksunis—that first group that came to the summer session in 1968.

WALI ALI: Yeah, because I was around at that same time, and I remember that because when I came into the orb of things, actually I was—I met a man called Daniel Lomax who studied with both Samuel Lewis and Abbot To-Lun as he was known at that time. I was impressed with him, and I asked him to refer me to someone and he wrote down these two names. Samuel Lewis and To-Lun, and I went first to Samuel Lewis to a meeting because he was having a meeting that night, and was tremendously impressed, and decided then to become a disciple. And then I went over and attended a number of the sessions at the lecture hall and that was around that period in the early part of ‘68, the middle of ‘68.

HENG SURE: The Surangama Sutra was being lectured at that time.

WALI ALI: Yes, that’s right and then later the Platform Sutra was translated.

HENG SURE: The 6th Patriarch’s Platform Sutra was then translated before the Surangama because the Surangama was really lengthy, and the Platform Sutra is the Sixth Patriarch Sutra is such a lively entertaining work that—we are just now preparing the second edition; because the first edition is out of print already.

WALI ALI: Oh yeah, it reads like a novel.

HENG SURE: Yes, it’s good form—

WALI ALI: I think I’m trying to get to a question which is, would you have anything to say about the part that people like Joe Miller or Sam Lewis or any of the other American people who had roots in Buddhism prior to that time—what part they played in helping the Abbot get anything established?

HENG SURE: The Master has always been very open and tremendously compassionate about his intention here. He says American Buddhism in the West is going to be propagated and translated and carried by Westerners, and I am here to act as a bridge. My function is to make it possible for you to discover the Dharma and to make it something that Western people can learn to cultivate and study, so he has made a point to give all people who come to study with him a chance to practice speaking the Dharma. Monday nights had always been the Sangha time when we take turns speaking, and he had that policy established back then too. If people had the ability to speak and were very confident—there was a good change that they would speak last; those who were not so confident but who could were willing to learn, were the ones who were urged to speak, that were given the opportunity—even if what they spoke was not 100% Buddha Dharma at the time, slowly and with practice, it could change, the intention being to create a generation of lecturers and speakers, who could really translate the Dharma into terms that the Westerners could absorb. Now this policy carries through until today. I’ve seen people come from pure inarticulateness and develop an astounding ability to catch people’s attention, to turn them on, to make them cry, make them laugh, and hit them with principle, and do it very expediently—just from the practice of talking here in the Buddha hall—and that was what was happening then too.

WALI ALI: I recall the Buddha’s birthday celebration That was held at some church downtown. I forgot the name of it.

HENG SURE: That really goes back doesn’t it?

WALI ALI: That must have been the first one after there had been the ordination of the Bhiksus and Bhiksunis—

HENG SURE: Yeah, there was marching in the street with and walking around the block In Chinatown—we have photos of that and they are invaluable.

WALI ALI: I was there, and if it is the one that I am thinking about there were a group of people—a lot of representatives were invited up on the podium, and everyone had five minutes to talk, and it went on interminably with all of these—

HENG SURE: All taking twenty minutes instead of five—

WALI ALI: Yeah, taking—in fact it is one of my favorite jokes/stories, because the hall was very filled at the beginning—there was the Washing of Buddha and everything and then chanting, and the Chinese thing—and in the course of all the monks getting up to speak that is to say, Murshid—Reverend Lewis had been invited—he was up on the stage—he was one of the people that had come and give a talk also, and—in the course of the speaking of all of these people—the numbers of people in the audience kept dwindling. People were leaving all the time, so there were fewer and fewer people there, and everybody that got up to speak made some mention of the good roots, the really good roots of people that were remaining to really hear the Dharma and felt like I was setting all this praise under false pretences because the reason I was there was that I was his ride home and he was stuck up on the platform.

HENG SURE: That’s alright, you were gaining a virtue as you sat there. Terrific. Yeah, I would say that Joe Miller and the other people who were speaking there were allowed to do as an expedient for their own growth, their own progress—

WALI ALI: In other words you wouldn’t say that the Abbot was giving any kind of formal seal of their—

HENG SURE: Oh for heaven sakes!

WALI ALI: —accomplishment as Buddhist masters or anything?

HENG SURE: If that were the case then every single Shramanera here is a patriarch because we all take turns. This has been a policy from the beginning that everybody gets a chance does it. They were the first ones to come with any regularity so they were the ones who anyone remembers for having done it.

WALI ALI: He gave a series of talks, Joe Miller did, I recall.

HENG SURE: He did the—it was a very interesting series of events how that series came about—the Master has a policy which is—"Everything is okay," which is to say that within the framework of the precepts, any kind of propagation of the Dharma is okay and there are 84,000 Dharma doors—one designed for every nature, and when people suggest ways to teach and transform others and it is okay, everything is okay. Joe Miller spoke to the Abbot in person, and said that he was going to give some talks, he promoted himself and he was—I won’t say it's arrogant, but there was a kind of sense of "anything you can do, I can do better" at that point—and it was his organization, his billing, and the Master said, fine, everything is okay. He was very expedient with him. He had been invited to talk, as well the disciples were, but he took tremendous advantage of it, and it was—I don’t want to say that it wasn’t sanctioned—because he was, in fact, invited to speak, but so was everyone. He was the only one who blew it out of proportion, who took advantage of the opportunity.

WALI ALI: Of course his perspective on it would be that he was trying to draw the people into the orb of the Dharma and help To-Lun build up things.

HENG SURE: We all have that impulse, but as far as his being on the platform by dint of superior virtue, he can come any Monday night and find a different face on the platform, and we are not—we haven’t yet seen the Dharma transmission in America.

WALI ALI: That is your opinion?

HENG SURE: Oh yes, it is my opinion.

WALI ALI: Because, I would say that it is not possible to prove a negative.

HENG SURE: There is nothing negative there; it is a question of hard work. It is a question of who can sit long enough without moving; who can really keep the precepts, who can really do the ascetic practices, with vigor—The Master is simply sifting through sand looking for nuggets of gold—and he is still looking. I have been here for some years, and I have given a tremendous amount of my best efforts to understanding the Dharma, and my accomplishments fall so far short of what I thought I could do at the beginning that I am just now beginning to recognize how much I lack, It is a long, long, long road to real accomplishment—it is not something that happens overnight. We all work together; you need the Buddha, the Dharma, and the Sangha, and we have just now gotten the Sangha together. It's not something that happens quickly.

WALI ALI: It happened very quickly to Hui Weng.

HENG SURE: Good point; good point. But he left a Sutra and an entire tradition behind him with robes and bowls, and he as the one, in fact, who told the Master that he would be coming to America, interestingly enough so….

WALI ALI: I just don’t want to let the point pass without an exchange on it because I would say that this is one area where there is some question—because the claim is made by the Sino-American Buddhist Federation that they are the first to be the official bringers of the Dharma to America.

HENG SURE: Who is the Sino-American Buddhist Association? It's you!

WALI ALI: The people who make this claim are anyone who does the work, anyone who translates the Sutras, anyone who sits in meditation, anybody who holds precepts. Those are the people who are bringing the proper Dharma, it's a matter of cultivation, it's not a matter of words. Do you do it? This is the question to ask.

HENG SURE: That I accept, the question is if that it is a historical claim that the Abbot is the first to bring the Buddha Dharma to America.

HENG SURE: There's probably no first, and we hope there's no last—this question is not something that we worry about spend our time with. There’s no value there; the important thing is who does the work—are the Sutras being translated? Are the Precepts being held? Are people actually changing their lives? Are they becoming different in their habits, in their life styles? If that is true, then the proper Dharma lives. If people spend their time arguing about who is first and who is last, if they don't change, if they go on being greedy, hateful, and ignorant, and eat a lot of meat and drink a lot of wine, then the chances are that what they are practicing is something else than the Dharma of Shakyamuni Buddha. It’s immediately evident, there is no discussion involved, you can see it.

WALI ALI: I just recall, you know, I am harkening back to this evening in which all these people were on the stage. It was a great point being made at that time that this was the first time and so on that this had been officially done, I don't remember all the various things. I remember that when Samuel Lewis got up to speak he took to task the man from the Mayor’s office who made some very ignorant remarks on the subject and just gave a discussion of the history of Buddhism in America, which really goes back to 1893 and the advent of Shaku Soyen who came over here and who was a Rinzai Abbot I believe. And there are a whole number of people who sowed along the path of the Buddha Dharma, and he was just trying to make the point that you are making; it is not so important to put a personality on it and a claim as to be first, because there are many people who have been sowing the field and that—

HENG SURE: If you are talking about the proper Dharma, once again it's—it's there to be found in the Tipitaka, what was the proper Dharma back then—who had it and what did they do—you can find it in America. If you can find people who practice. It is said that deviant Dharmas, when practiced by proper people are proper Dharmas. Proper Dharmas when practiced by deviant people are deviant Dharmas. When Boddhidharma came to the West, who recognized him first? A parrot? No person did. The person who had set himself as patriarch at the time not only do not recognize him, he also whacked him with his rosary and knocked out two of his teeth. You know, it is a question of roots, whether you recognize the proper Dharma or not. There have been people in America who have set themselves up as Patriarchs. Who is to challenge them? Nobody knows any different. We are witnessing just the beginning of Buddhism in America.

WALI ALI: Oh I quite agree. Now the only reason that I immediately questioned you on this point was because I have such respect for the Abbot for the clarity always of his presentations, the joy that radiates from his being, the essence of Buddha that is there. I recall on a number of occasions that people who would come to the classes that Murshid Samuel Lewis would teach, and they would ask him about meditation and he would say, "We do these simple meditations here; if you want to be really trained in meditation go and study with Venerable Abbot Hsuan Hua," and so on—but this was the one point that he—that if there was any contingent that he had, it was in regard to any doctrinaire or orthodox claim that this was the only valid school of the Buddha Dharma that was functioning in America.

HENG SURE: Anytime anybody claims to be the only sole anything there are going to be other people that dispute him or her. We don't waste energy with that—it's just a matter of chatter. When it comes down to it, it is a question of what are you really talking about? If you are talking about the practices of Shakyamuni Buddha, find out what he did and see who’s doing it.

WALI ALI: It becomes an interesting question, I think, because would one then say that one should imitate every aspect of his practice or the essence of his practice? Do you go around with a begging bowl in the morning house to house?

HENG SURE: No, people have only done that in the warm countries.

WALI ALI: But that is one aspect of…

HENG SURE: So you are saying that there are cultural variances?

WALI ALI: Sure

HENG SURE: But in terms of—does your life change from being a television watching, marijuana-smoking American to being somebody who holds precepts—there's not a lot of cloudiness there; it is fairly clear who does it and who doesn't. Let's talk about some questions that specifically concern your visit today.

WALI ALI: Okay. I am glad to bring up these other questions because they are worth something in terms of any thematic reference that one needs to make in a broader context you understand. To trace the Dharma roots of Samuel Lewis one has to bring in a number of other teachers and beings, one has to make some kind of continuity.

HENG SURE: Right, definitely. As far as there being any Dharma transmission. In the line of the Abbot it is nothing that is done casually—I repeat, we haven't witnessed it yet.

WALI ALI: Let's see what other questions I might have. Is there any further statement that the abbot would have to make about Samuel Lewis as a practicer of the Dharma?

HENG SURE: Basically I could reiterate what he did tell me: that for the three years that he came that he was exceptionally sincere, in his cultivation and his study. That he came regularly, he bowed to the Buddhas and he was sincere in his practice and encouraged other people to look into it. He set an example for them by his own practice. After three years he went out and apparently had studied enough for his own satisfaction, because he stopped coming, and set himself up as a teacher.

WALI ALI: Do you recall any incident which occurred with Dr. Seo and the Abbot? I don't know if you know Dr. Seo, he is a Korean Zen teacher, who is alive and is the director of Buddhist university, Dongguk University, and who was the man who gave Reverend Lewis his Zen name, He Kwang and ordained him as a Zenshi in the Cho-Ke-Jo school of…

HENG SURE: Soyakar?

WALI ALI: Buddhism, but I wanted to ask the abbot about—in the associations with Dr. Seo if he had anything to say on that point. I remember some stories, vaguely, about their meeting. I remember there was a misunderstanding of some sort—I'm not sure. I don't want to put out any seeds that are not right, but I was wanting to ask the Abbot if he had anything to say.

HENG SURE: We have all kinds of Buddhists come through Gold Mountain—all kinds, quasi- Buddhists come through Gold Mountain, all kinds of non-Buddhists come through too and Bert— there was one occasion when this guy came in and said that he was enlightened and was the ex patriarch and the master came up on it right away. He said, "You’re enlightened are you?" And the guy says, "Yes, I'm enlightened," it's going to be a Zen combat, man-to-man, equal/equal. The Master says, "Alright, you're enlightened, I'm going to have your head, give me your head," and he picked up the wooden sword from behind the lecture seat and jumped up and came running at the guy, and the fellow took one look at him and his eves grew wide and he screamed and he ran out of the hall and we never saw him again! And the Master said "Hm, enlightened, if he were really enlightened he would have given me his head." So there are all kinds of people—America, doesn't have any standard yet.

WALI ALI: Excuse me?

HENG SURE: I said, America doesn't have any standard yet to know, we have no concept of the sage.

WALI ALI: You say this without ever having met a particular teacher, I'm asking you about a particular person.

HENG SURE: As far as Dr. Seo, no, I've never heard his name mentioned in all the years that I have been here. Probably it was a minor incident.

WALI ALI: I don't think I have any more questions at the moment. I can ask you to please give my respects to the Abbot.

HENG SURE: You can do it yourself. Every night at 7 o'clock we have the ceremony, the Amitaba Sutra, or The 88 Buddha's Repentance. and we recite the Buddha's name for all the Pure Land School for about 45/50 minutes. The Master comes down and lectures a Section of the Avatamsaka and it is translated on the spot. We finish off with the Surangama Mantra, it is 15 minutes long. Do you know the Surangama Mantra?

WALI ALI: I don't know it but I’ve recited it with you.

HENG SURE: Great. We bow to the patriarchs and that's each evening, about 2 1/2 hours worth—we do it every night, twice on weekends, Saturdays and Sundays, and what's more we are having two Winter Chan sessions starting the 17th, the 17th to the 24th, the 24th to the 31st. And on the 31st to the 6th we are having an Amitaba session which is a Buddha Recitation of the Session Limitless Light Dharma door. The Chan sessions are really vigorous. We start at 2:30, when everybody’s up walking and we sit hour periods .

WALI ALI: Is that 2:30 in the morning or 2:30 PM?

HENG SURE: 2:30 AM—and we go around the clock. We have one meal a day, and the Master lectures at night, and, we go on until Midnight sitting, so in all we have 12 hours of sitting, 12 half hours of walking, which is about a mile, and a Sutra lecture in the evening—and we do that for two weeks. Last year's Chan was four weeks right here; this is going to be in the Chan hall here, this is where it was, The Amitaba session is equally vigorous, but we quit at 9:30 at night, we don't go on until Midnight, and we get up at 3:30.

WALI ALI: How large is the community here?

HENG SURE: Oh boy. We have a new place in Ukiah, the city of Ten Thousand Buddhas, we have a new temple in Los Angeles, we have land in Oregon for our community so our group has split. Right now on any given night there will be 30 to 40 people here, lay people and left-home people reciting and translating the Sutras. When we all get together, the Americans and the close Chinese disciples there are a 100 or so regulars and then the people in the outer circle. Around the world there are thousands and thousands.

WALI ALI: I know some disciples of Chan, or people who have become Buddhists, is that what you mean?

HENG SURE: Taken Refuge, that’s the first step to real becoming a Buddhist, the first thing is to take Refuge, the second thing to do if you are really serious you can become a Sramanera—a novice, on your way to becoming a Bhiksu, and then you may be ready, after years of practice, to turn the Dharma Wheel.

WALI ALI: We’ve always been following Murshid Lewis and his pattern there, we always recite the Triratna on Sundays and the Surangama.

HENG SURE: So he carried that on Sundays? So that is really good. That’s fine.

WALI ALI: It has been a pleasure to meet you.

HENG SURE: My pleasure too, and I hope you will come back.

WALI ALI: I will.

HENG SURE: Good.

By Abraham Sussman

Towards the One, the Perfection of Love, Harmony, and Beauty, the Only Being, United With All the Illuminated Souls, Who Form the Embodiment of the Master, the Spirit of Guidance.

This project of writing down my recollections of knowing Murshid has met resistance within me. I hardly trust myself to use words that can honestly express feelings within me that are so dear, and so meaningful to my life. What pulls me through this resistance, however, is the realization that those reading and using this material also know the meaning of their relationship to Murshid, and thus can appreciate the depth of impact that words, and even a momentary glance that came our way could have upon our developing souls. Allah Ho Akbar!

I recall a night in December 1969, when 3 friends suggested I come with them to a dance class led by Sufi Sam. These friends were, like myself, wandering aspirants, having just spent many months living with Baba Ram Dass, getting very stoned on pranayama and bhajan, and feeling pretty lucky to be granted some kind of exciting awareness that we were the seedlings of some cosmic plot to "fan the sparks in the ashes" of the spiritual life of America. Dressed in our yogi whites, we soared our way across town, charged up for our meeting with the Sufi Master.

A few things really struck me that night. One was how incredibly beautiful the women in the room were, especially as they danced near Murshid. Another thing was Murshid's Brooklyn accent; when he spoke I kept seeing scenes from a baseball game in Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, where he was the umpire screaming Steeerrriiiiike Three! I had a good time; the dancing was enjoyable, flashing eyes and very friendly vibrations. But Murshid sure did not seem like a Sufi Master, whatever that was supposed to be, for I had never met any other Sufi Masters. He was gruff, he laughed a lot like some kind of a nut, and he kept on carrying out this rambling self-to-self conversation like he had someone on his shoulder taking notes.

My friends left town, and I went to a few more classes, enjoying the energy of the dances, and always feeling peaceful at the end of the class, but not really feeling personally connected to the scene. I also left San Francisco for a few months, traveling around in my VW Bus, camping, visiting ashrams, exploring new diets, looking for teachers. I came back to San Francisco feeling very high, very holy, very free like the wind, barefoot and beautiful.

Well, Murshid smashed me! I waltzed into his Sunday afternoon class a few minutes early and as I came in Murshid asked me who I was and where I lived. I said I didn't really live anywhere. He repeated "Where do you live?" I said I lived on planet earth. His voice got louder as he said "Look, I am asking you a simple question, "Where do you live?" He was looking right through me and I started getting scared. He was not kidding around. I quickly answered, "I am traveling, I live in my Volkswagen Bus." That satisfied him, and he said, "All right." He looked around the room and I could feel him wink at ten different people within the space of a second. Then he started in on me again.

He said, “What do you do?” I said I used to teach school. He asked what I had studied in school and I said, “English and Philosophy.” He said "Who is your favorite writer?” I thought for a while and said "I am." I was thrilled with myself for such a sharp reply, but Murshid didn't like it and this time really yelled at me. "You're full of ego! Now tell me who is your favorite writer!" I started harnessing defenses for any position but Murshid disappeared. It was time to start the dance class and we went outside. All through the class I was preparing arguments for him. But he was laughing and showing his trick of making the women beautiful as they danced near him. I tried to catch him at intermission but he was not interested.

I left the class upset, but feeling hooked. Something had snapped inside my own shelled vanity. I knew Murshid was for real. He really cared about the people around him and about their development. I came to almost every class for the next ten months, and did a lot of listening. Murshid hardly over acknowledged me directly. Even after I took initiation, I felt like he was giving all the goodies to the others around him. He chose them for his special dances; he picked them out for praise; he seemed involved with their activities. With me it seemed different. A lot was happening but it was all on the inner. I had to open many new channels within myself to deal with this feeling of exclusion. I had always been praised in my life. I had been the smartest in my class; I had been captain of my high school football team, I had been chosen to go to Yale. I had been chosen for Harvard Graduate School. I had been chosen to be with the Ram Dass elite. But Murshid would not choose me for his men's dances. I was a great game player, but I couldn't climb onto the top of this game. It was quite a lesson for me.

There were many moments when a few words from Murshid pierced me to the core. Once I had an interview with him and his secretary kept scheduling others to see him before me. I waited for many weeks and was really keyed up for it by the time we met. Murshid was sitting down and I came in and sat facing him. I did not know what to say. Murshid looked at me and said "what is paining you?" I had not realized I was in pain, but I started crying and answered "My work, I am not satisfied in my work." Compassionate, but very firm, Murshid said, "Well, when you stop doing what you think is your work, and start doing what God wants you to do, then you will know satisfaction."

Another time, we were doing the Neptune walk. Murshid said, "Well, your eyes are fine, but your feet need work." I took that in. I think from that day I began to grow feet. I used to work in Murshid's house, helping Wali Ali in the initial phases of preparing Murshid's poetry for publication. I had worked on Saladin, and was very moved by the poem. I wrote a poem to Murshid in response, asking him to use his sword-of-love to shatter my ego, and help me open my heart. I showed him what I had written, and he said, "Very good. You've got the meaning of this poem in your mind. Now when you can connect it with your experience, you will really have it!"

All the while I was feeling swept up in the whirlpool of ecstasy that was Murshid's community. His star grew brighter and brighter as all the seeds he had planted all through his life sprouted in his last years. The transformation of personal ego into humanitarian love was spreading like a wildfire. Like Joe Miller said, "It can't be taught, but it can be caught." Whenever I questioned my own development, I had only to look around and see the tremendous light in other Murshid disciples and I believed that some of this must be rubbing off on me. Murshid's effect on me was as astonishing to him as it was to us. I remember on a night during Gatha class when Murshid came downstairs while we were all singing Zikr, led by Zeinob. He sat on the other side of the room from us, and just began crying. Later he told us that when he came down and felt the purity of our practice, he felt so grateful to God for having granted this blessing to him, that he could share in the enfoldment of us all. I had never seen Murshid cry, and it was very beautiful, his face shape like a little child's and he had no words at all.

I remember vividly another experience. Murshid was standing before a large class, maybe 60 people, in his basement. He said he had just been watching television and was positively thrilled. First there had been some news coverage of Steve Gaskin, and then there had been an announcement of Schlomo Carlebach, who was speaking the next night in San Francisco. Murshid then charged across the room, directly towards me, and I almost fell off my chair. He then spoke to me, standing facing me: "you … yes you … you have been a very good disciple. I want to speak to you after the class in my room." I experienced this like lightning. Murshid's energy was so vibrant that I started to shake. I shook the whole evening until after the class when I went to his room. Then I felt very peaceful and so did Murshid. He gave me $6 and said that Schlomo was his dear friend and that the next evening I should go to Schlomo and represent Murshid. And that I should take a friend (each ticket cost $3).

Well, the next morning was the morning Murshid fell. And by the next evening all of the disciples had gathered at the Mentorgarten to pray for Murshid's well-being. I went to Schlomo and represented Murshid, and it still seems like one of the most important events of my life. I want to believe that from that time I have never ceased to represent Murshid. For I saw in Murshid's being the fulfillment of qualities that are the potential of my own being. I saw his unswerving faith in God's love, and saw how he seemed God's representative of that love. I saw strength and energy channeled with compassion. I saw a dedication that was entirely fanatical, and which inspired all who knew Murshid. I saw Murshid's freedom from seeing things and people within the limited frames of conventional social standards, and circumstance. Murshid always seemed to see people in their potential, and his vision of this potential positively reinforced this potential.

When Murshid passed from his body I remember sitting with him at the San Francisco Morgue, praying and chanting. I was broken, but I knew God was teaching us a lot at this time. As I sat, I was given a vision of a chariot with wheels of swirling flames, drawn by twelve white horses. Murshid rode in this chariot, flying through the heavens, which were flowing in fine brilliant light. As he rode I experienced the seeds of his soul, sprouted forth from his life, entering into my own body and planting roots in my own being. I felt an initiation into the source of all life. I went past death, through clanging gates and chains and flares and red lights. I wondered whether I had loved the mortal man or the spirit of guidance in Murshid. Yes/both. Death took me away from my mind towards my soul, the kernel embryo moving in the juices towards life, fearfully vulnerable. I saw that Murshid's physical term of life had been but a vehicle for teachings of love and breath he was to transmit to his disciples. I saw that the real, eternal life is grounded in this teaching, which passed in relationship from his soul to ours. "Except a corn of wheat falleth into the ground and die, it abideth alone; but if it die it bringeth forth much fruit.

Everything I am involved in now, 5 years after I left San Francisco, is strongly guided by Murshid's way of seeing things. Mostly I work with people, counseling and doing therapy in mental hospitals, nursing homes, prisons, and in a healing center in Cambridge. There are many languages which are used to describe my various relationships with people (mostly borrowed from psychotherapy), but I feel that the essence of my work is in making free connection of my eyes with my heart when I look at people, and making a connection from my ears to my heart when I listen to them. When I can deal with people from my heart I can see other’s potential for fulfilling themselves, no matter what kind of ridiculous circumstances they seem to be in. We have a group that gets together 2 nights a week for Sufi dancing, and we have a dance where we greet the divine potential in each other as we pass around the circle. This is a practice Murshid gave, and we find it very powerful in all aspects of healing and counseling.

We also have a music group that sings and plays together very regularly. And I see the direction of this group developing what Murshid called "New Age psalms." I remember Murshid dancing in ecstasy to the 24^th psalm, and this was the basis of the music to which the Choir set the 24^th psalm. Before we used to ride out from San Francisco to Sufi Choir practice in San Anselmo, we would go by the Mentorgarten to pick up Saul, who was usually massaging Murshid's feet. Sometimes Murshid would come out and bless us, and this would always make for the best practices.

Wali Ali and Khadija: Lots of love to you from all of us here and all praises to Allah for your recent blessing.

Wali Ali, Beloved one of Allah, and Brother:

Through a series of miracles our whole music group is flying tomorrow to Vancouver to be with the United Nations Conference on Human Settlements. We hope to represent Murshid in supplanting rhetoric which reality. There seems to be a portion of the Conference aimed at the creation of a festival, and we have been asked to help in this. May Allah's will be done! Insh’Allah Murad and Abraham and Daniel may be able to reroute our tickets so as to fly back via San Francisco. If so we would be there June 11 and June 12. I have spoken with Frida and hope we shall see her. We cannot be certain until we see what is possible with our tickets from Vancouver, but if it is possible I would love to see you while we are there.

Much Love,

Frank Tedesco
235 So 45th St.
Philadelphia, Pa 19104
(215) 387-6647

Dear Sabira and Wali Ali,

Thanks very much for asking me to write about my experience with Sam. I’ d like to very much, but unfortunately I haven’t the time right now to do it the justice I’d like. When do you need my draft? When I received your letter, I was immediately filled with all kinds of memories of emotions that must be carefully sorted through before I can put them in witting. I don’t trust the “oral” tape recording technique. I’m more busy now than I’d ever thought I’d be sine I’ve just transferred into the Department of Anthropology at Penn. and I must do a lot of background reading etc. I also work 20 hours a week.

But I shouldn't complain because I can be a definite causal chain of events in my life and in important link being my old friendship with Sam Lewis. A Sufi I’m not (Whatever that isn’t!?) but Sam was many more things than a Sufi, and perhaps it was the non-religious aspects of old Sam Lewis that appealed to me most; he was a human being with many virtues and transparent weaknesses and perhaps what Sam thought me was that we all are such a combination of these virtues and weakness….

Surprisingly I’ve recently become friends with a scholar from Bangladesh who heard Sam speech at the University of Dacca and he was highly impressed, as were many of his friends there. He’ s trying to obtain a draft of the speech Sam gave that day, a take on the religion of love….

I still have two sets of prayer beads Sam gave me in San Francisco and they sit in my drawer with Buddhist paraphernalia as well. I was rather promiscuous, religiously speaking; when I hung out at Sam’s and I often visited Hsuan Hua, Tam Thuong Tulku et al while seeing Sam…. You must have been speaking to Joe Miller or Neville Warwick about me and Sam because they were well aware of the many changes I went through in that period of my life. To quote, you asked me to write about “any matters that came down between you” from my point of view. To do that well, with a decent degree of veracity and sobriety requires more time than I can immediately afford.

How are Joe and Gwen and Neville by the way? I’d like to write to them about Sam and others things as well. I’d also appreciate any news about the people I know as Sam’s students—their family names because I can hardly remember spiritual names. I doubt I can get to San Francisco this summer so I must rely on the mail.

Even if you haven’t time to fill me in on all the details, let me know if there’s a deadline for my memoires, and I’ll try my best to get them together.

Sorry for the delay in responding to you. It’s been a month…. I wish there was someone here in Philly who knew the S.E. scene back there in 1966->>…

Sincerely

Frank Tedesco

PS. Why don’t you call Dr Hamid Algar at UC Berkeley, Dept of New Eastern Languages. He hated Sam’s guts and thought he was a totally self-deluded character. Dr William Brinner, of the same department, also knew Sam on a much more friendly bases and can be relied upon for a sober opinion. Sam admired him a lot, as much as Sam appreciated any “expert,” I imagine!!

Don’t quote me at all!! F.M.T.

(Hamid now teaches popular courses of Sufism at Cal.)

at Baba and Chalice Maize’s—Jamshid & Mary Tillinghast—interview May 12, 1976

QUESTION: Can you describe the first time you met Murshid?

JAMSHID: I’m not sure of the year, it must have been ‘68 and that was before Murshid had a beard. He looked really different. It was when Amin and Amina lived in their old house before they moved into the present Garden of Allah. And he was leading about 8 people in Sufi dancing, 8 or 10 people. And then we all went over to Alan Watt’s houseboat in Sausalito. Paul Reps was there and we all did Sufi dancing with Paul Reps. That was nice.

QUESTION: What was your impression of Murshid on that 1st meeting?

JAMSHID: I didn't like him.

QUESTION: Why didn’t you like him?

JAMSHID: He had a certain kind of gnome-like quality about him. Something about the way his face looked.

QUESTION: Did those feelings ever change?

JAMSHID: I grew to appreciate him more later on after I got to know him. Here’s something I should probably tell you, I went through an interesting thing—I’m trying to remember the exact year—

QUESTION: There were only a few short years that it all happened.

JAMSHID: Right, it was a few years back and a bunch of my friends were getting initiated by Murshid and I didn’t want to. I didn’t think it was my time to get initiated. So I went on a camping trip. It was an interesting thing that I went through because I was camping by myself in a place called Desolation Valley. And I had these real intense dreams about Murshid And I figured I should come down out of the mountains, back to SF to be initiated by Murshid. And I did. I’ve always felt that that was one of the things about him that people experienced a lot—this direct pull—a real strong magnetism. Drawing them into doing things through dreams, things like that. One thing he used to talk to me about a lot was books, literature. He knew all the romantic, 19th century writers, all the great writers. So he was always talking to me a lot about that. But poets, I wasn’t into the poets he liked. He liked Tennyson, Whittier and he was really into Whitman too. But one thing that’s always been an interesting paradox to me is that a lot of people think that part of Murshid's teaching was that people shouldn't study things, read or think about things too much. He himself was really into that. He was constantly reading books and he took adult education courses practically every year his whole life. He was really into learning a lot of things and it seems interesting; I don’t understand why people think he didn’t want us to develop our minds. I think that’s an important point, because he was constantly doing that himself. He was always learning.

QUESTION: What kind of things was he learning, What books did he read?

JAMSHID: Various things. One thing that he did was take a course in modern poetry. He began writing some things in this style, Wall Ali has some of these poems that he wrote in the modern poetry style. I thought that was real interesting.

MARY: I actually met Murshid through his mureeds before I met him. And I got engrossed totally with it. I only knew him for a very brief time, the last month of his life. One of the things that really impressed me about him was his many different faces. The totally different parts of his personality. I was attending meetings and he was there and I really wanted to meet him. It was really funny, I didn’t know what I wanted to ask him and he was very short and gruff with me. He asked for astrology charts and looked at them briefly and just grunted. Then he started asking questions like on an application blank: did you go to college? You know, background questions. I responded very weirdly. He asked, "What did you major in?" I said literature. He asked, "What do you read, what do you like?" I said I liked everything. "What else are you interested in?" Music. "What kind of music do you like?" Oh, all kinds. He insisted that I get more specific, he started naming things, just throwing ideas out, yelling at me. "Do you like Shakespeare?" Yes. "Do you like Thomas Hardy? Do you like…." and I’d have to say yes or no to all these different things. With music he listed some things and then demanded, "who else, who else?" And I said, "Oh I just like all kinds of music." "Like Frank Sinatra?" "No." "Like Tony Bennet?" "No." And he really blew my mind. It was a short interview, but he made me realize that I was in a space of “Oh everything,” doing a lot of LSD and really wandering and in a place where everything was all the same. And that is how I was living my life then. He ended the interview by looking at his watch and seeing what time it was, picking up a bowl of walnuts and began cracking them, stuffing them in his mouth, turning on the TV and watching a football game. Shortly after that I began singing in the Sufi choir. The last time I saw Murshid was at the Whirling Dervish Bazaar, and here I saw some totally different faces of his. One was that he was so proud of his kids. He was in this very paternal place. And that was his big thing, that the bazaar had been done and he was really pleased. At the end of the evening the choir finished singing and it was very joyous. Murshid came walking up to me with quick steps and smiled and kissed me. And then just walked away. That was when I met this aspect of him that most of the woman shared and that was that he really was Krishna, pure Krishna. Here he was, an old sloppy kind of grossly mannered man and I was totally in love with him. And it was like he was a lover. This quality was shared by all the ladies. That was my last personal experience with him.

JAMSHID: One thing that he was into that I think was really good was that he felt that when you travel this is the way you should do it: you should eat three really good restaurant meals a day. And I agree. I think it is the key to really comfortable long range traveling. Get about 100 miles in and have a good hardy breakfast, then a real good morning drive, good lunch and so on. It really works and I think that should be recorded. Mostly when I saw Murshid would tell me how busy he was. You would have maybe fifteen minutes to see him in an interview and he would spend about ten  minutes telling you how busy he was. You’d just sit there while he’d tell you all this stuff about how busy he was.

MARY: I had a dream about him—actually two or three dreams with Murshid in them—the year after his passing. I was standing on a hill overlooking a beautiful Marin County type view with a large meadow and there were thousands and thousands of people Sufi dancing in the meadow at the bottom of the hill. I was standing next Murshid and I was a little concerned. I said “What now?” He laughed and said “Look” pointed to the dancing people and just walked away.

JAMSHID: One thing that Murshid said to me, and I still don’t understand this, is “There is someone you should really meet. This person is the key to your…." I can’t remember his exact words, but he gave me the name of this guy, do you know the post master general of SF? Ever heard of him? A Chinese man, Lim Po Lee? He’s the postmaster, right. He has a big suite of offices at the main post office. So I made an appointment with him and went to see him. I really didn’t know why I was there and he didn’t know why I was there either. But Murshid had said that he had had the same Chinese teacher. He was really a nice man. I’ve thought about that a lot. Murshid

QUESTION: Murshid thought you should meet this man?

JAMSHID: Yeah, I actually had this interview with him in his office.

QUESTION: What did you talk about?

JAMSHID: We talked about Murshid.

QUESTION: What did he say about Murshid?

JAMSHID: He said, “Yeah, Murshid was his friend.” He didn’t have too much to say and I really can’t remember. But I never knew exactly why I was there meeting him. Recently I wrote to him, about six months ago, and asked him what the chances were about getting a job at the post office. I got back a real interesting letter from him. It was kind of inscrutable oriental style and it said that you had to get into the post office by passing the civil service exams but once you got in the chances for advancement were great. So I guess I should be working for the post office. That’s far out isn’t it? To just send you out to meet some guy. Murshid was into things like that. He liked to go and have meetings with people. He really liked to take a bunch of people and walk in places. You’d just all go in and sit down.

QUESTION: Did you regard it like an exercise in meeting someone totally unexpected? Did you dress up and prepare for it?

JAMSHID: I didn’t really. Mostly it was not knowing why I was there. And I never asked Murshid about it. But you never know about something like that. It is the kind of thing that could really be useful to you. To have it come along unexpectedly into your life, something never thought of, like the guy who met Howard Hughes out in the desert. When I was traveling we’d go into a big city like Tehran, and it was far out, it was real interesting to see. I was meeting a guy, Seyed Husain Nassar. He was a famous Muslim scholar, a Sufi. And he wasn’t too impressed when I told him I was a disciple of Pir’s, but when I mentioned Murshid he really brightened up. He said, “Oh yeah, I used to have long talks with him." It was real interesting how Murshid could connect with a lot of those people, particularly by mail. People over there, they are into letters a lot more than we are here. When I was in Pakistan I met Pir-o-Murshid, Sufi Barkat Ali, He looked a lot like Murshid and Murshid looked a lot like him. I recognized a whole lot of similarities. It was funny, they really looked so much alike. He was an old army man, used to be. He looked like a Colonel or something, he had this military manner. Murshid turned him on to writing letters. He’d never written letters much before and Murshid told him about keeping a typewriter. Now he writes a lot of letters. He has a typewriter and a couple of rubber stamps for his coat of arms or something. That is a guy who is really interesting. He was a amazing person to meet. About 300 yards away from his place, it’s like a Sufi Ashram, there is a platform where this old guy sits. And he goes “Baa, Baa” all the time. People would go over and talk to him and he’d just go “Baa, Baa” and that’s all he’d do. And I said who is that? And they’d say this guy is a Madzub. And he sounds like a sheep. Those people over there, they’ve got so much faith. Sufi Barkat Ali got into his car, the universal joint was wearing out and they went on a very long trip and whatever was suppose to go wrong with the car didn’t happen. All those guys over there all remember Murshid.

I hope what they don’t do in this book—I got the impression in Sunseed, if you watch Sunseed you got the impression everything Murshid said was like a pearl of wisdom and everything he said was right on. But in real life, actually the things he said, you’d hear them a lot. You’d hear them over and over again. He loved to repeat himself. Meeting after meeting, he’d just ramble on. And so that’s really a good thing to record. It wasn’t like every time he spoke he was coming up with something new and far out. A lot of times he was saying things you’d heard many times before. People got tired of hearing it, but for those hearing if for the first time it was interesting. Then people would say, like Amina, I never listen to what he says. People would work out things like that.

CHALICE: I know I worked out something like that once. I’d been coming to meetings for a while, sitting with his disciples around him when one time I began to feel extremely embarrassed, for myself and all of us. It was like he was talking to us at the level we were projecting, so he had to repeat things over and over. Even sometimes it seemed he’d use this voice which sounded a lot like the Maharishi, who was very popular at the time. When he’d talk in that voice I always felt like he saw us in the image of scattered hippy love children and that this was the way he was trying to reach us. I would sense our limitations and feel humiliation, which was probably real good for me.

MARY: He definitely was right for us. I just can’t imagine our connecting with him at any other time. He was so weird and so were we. We were weird enough to accept him. He had such an outrageous personality. And if you just looked at him, without knowing him or loving him, he looked like a strange sloppy old man—maybe even lecherous.

JAMSHID: A lot of people thought that about him at first. People would say that to me. I never thought that there was anything lecherous about him. I never thought he had anything going on that level. He was just too old.

BABA: I felt through Chalice what you said earlier, Mary, about Murshid being like Krishna.

MARY: Oh yes, all the women around him felt that way. They were all in love with him.

CHALICE: It was wonderful. One of the best things I’ve ever experienced. It was such a pure love of the heart. I’ve loved deeply, but this went beyond anything I’ve ever experience. it was a real opening to the greatness of the heart. It was a marvelous gift that he gave to all of us.

BABA: I went to a meeting with Chalice in San Anselmo. It was my first time. I didn’t know it but I had hepatitis at the time and I was feeling really strange. We got there early and stood around with a few others waiting for the door to be unlocked. I was very self-conscious and was staring at this poster which was tacked on the door. Murshid arrived with Hassan. He jumped out of the car, the door was unlocked and he hurried inside. We all entered and began hurrying up the stairs after him. After the meeting had started, he said “Did any of you see the poster downstairs on the door” “What did it say?” And I couldn’t remember what it had said, even though I’d been staring at it. Then he said, “Everybody go down stairs and look at that poster and see what it says.” So we did and the poster was something about Vietnam, prisoners of war or veterans I can’t remember now. Then we all went back inside. He said “Think of this, they are there and you are here.”

CHALICE: He really liked to test us like that. I remember something similar that happened at the Mentorgarten. A group of us were upstairs before Sunday dinner. He passed around a photograph of a group of men. There were about twenty of them in the picture. They were dressed in suits and religious robes. Murshid wanted us to study the picture. He passed the photograph around. Each person studied it carefully. I seriously tried to notice something unusual about it. It looked like most group pictures, tall ones in back, short in front with Murshid in the middle of the front row. Apparently they had been meeting together; they looked like leaders of various religions. Murshid was really enjoying our studious approach and he kept chuckling while we handed the picture around. When everyone had looked at it, he said “Okay, what’s wrong with the picture?” People suggested different things and were wrong. Murshid started laughing and said “Can’t you see, no one is happy, no one is smiling. Here are all these teachers, ministers, priest gathered together in the spirit of religious harmony and peace and no one is even smiling.” And of course Murshid was the only one who was.

Ranch Interview: Sheyla, Buzz, and Don 10/21/76

SABIRA: Okay, this Oct. 21, 1976, interviewing Sheila—what’s your last name?

SHEYLA: U.S.A.

SABIRA: Alright, Sheila U.S.A., Don McCoy, and Sandy Barton, is that correct?

BUZZ: I’m Buzz Rowell

SABIRA: Oh, I’m Sorry, then Sandy isn’t here, alright, Buzz Rowell.

SABIRA: Okay, so what we want to find out is what you recall about meeting Sam. Do you want to start, Sheyla?

SHEYLA: I met Sam, Carl and Pat Jablonski, (Moineddin and Fatima) in the Fall of 1967—they were telling me, “You must meet this man, Sufi Sam; he sees fire fairies, he sees elves in the woods and things; he is an extraordinary man.” So by January they took me to see him on Clementina Street and he was a broken-down, tired little man about 70, he was 70 then. And he was not a Sufi teacher, he was just a little man who was a very dear friend of Gavin Arthur’s, and Gavin Arthur—whom I had met first—called him a "walking encyclopedia." He had traveled around the world and he had been initiated into every religion and knew a lot about a lot of things, and was a horticulturist and knew a lot about growing things, and living things. And so we visited with him at the Clementina Street apartment. Immediately we met Nancy Fish and Ralph Silver, his god-children, and we became very close friends.

SABIRA: How did you meet Carl and Pat?

SHEYLA: I had met Carl and Pat when my former husband, my husband at that time was Bob McKendrick, and together we had two shops in the Strawberry Town and Country Village over here in Strawberry—and one of them was a dress shop called the Mad Hatter, and we bought and sold artists' articles and clothing, and we had purchased and sold their earrings and pins that they made. They made them together; I’m sure they still do that, and became friends with them. And then we went out of business and remembered them very well and invited them over one night, and we began to be very dear and spiritual friends with them, and they began to talk about Sufi Sam.

SABIRA: Were they living at the Khankah in Novato at that time?

SHEYLA: No, they lived in an apartment of their own. There was no Khankah, and there were no Sufis, there was no Sufi Order. This was the very foundation of the making of the Sufi Order. Sufi Sam was a broken-down, ill man, he was not well; he had had one of the roughest, roughest lives I had ever heard of, and I could see that he was a stone that had been rejected, as he called himself, the "Cornerstone," and shortly thereafter, about a week or two after I met him, he was seized by a terrible illness of the stomach, and taken to the hospital, and was on his death bed, and that is when God-Father came to him, and said, “You are not going to die—Samuel L. Lewis, you are not going to die, you are going to be reborn, you are being transfigured and you will have a new life—as the teacher of the hippies.”

SABIRA: This actually was a heart attack?

SHEYLA: It wasn’t a heart attack—

BUZZ: It was ptomaine poisoning—

SHEYLA: No, it was—

SABIRA: He said it was ptomaine, but the doctors—

SHEYLA:—at that time?

SABIRA: Yeah, found out it really was a heart attack.

SHEYLA: Okay, he was very, very, very sick; then he came back and I held his hand all the time—so I met him in January of '67, that’s the second year of Shiva Kalpa, the era that we are living in—Father was speaking to Sufi Sam from that time. He had always had a communication with God, a very close communication with God, but now God’s Voice came booming in on him just the same as he had come booming in on me, booming in on many of us: Don, Buzz, you see, and we actually heard God’s Voice, and he was actually directing us together, individually, and collectively as a family. Nobody knew why we were called "The Chosen Family"; Sandy Barton always said to the press, “It is because we chose each other for family,” but really it’s because we were chosen. So Sufi Sam was guiding us all the time to Father, hearing from Father daily. He was a different person, a completely different person. He had always been for 70 years a person that people could step on, push around, reject, deny, say “Shut up, you creepy old man." He was totally misunderstood and denied in his life from his birth. His mother denied him.

SABIRA: His family couldn’t stand him—

SHEYLA: He was like a deformity in the family, but they were just freaked out in every way. I know he was a freaky child, I know that. Women, he never got along with women or girls, and in particular older girls, and immediately what he wants me to right off speak about is Ivy Duce—his arch-enemy in the spiritual world. Now she has become my girlfriend. Did she die or anything?

SABIRA: No, she is still living, and living in Walnut Creek.

SHEYLA: She’s my girl friend, and you’ll see her surrender to this little baby, Sufi Sam. You see, Sufi Sam said, “Don’t bother that I will die for God, whatever you call it, we don’t call living dying”—beyond births and deaths, this is where he speaks to us from, and he said, “Don’t bother because I never could make it with girls, inside of me I am a very handsome Prince Charming like Buzz,” and he always pointed to Buzz, and Buzz was very, very close to him, closer than Ralph Silver, closer than Moineddin, closer than Wali Ali—in this, he was the first closeness because Sufi Sam projected himself into Buzz’s body, do you see, he told me that.

SABIRA: Then how did you meet Sam, Buzz?

BUZZ: I met him from living on the Ranch; as the Ranch was coming together there were several people that were already initiated disciples; Sheyla, and Shirin, and another fellow that came and lived with us, Kris Stens (?) was waiting for his initiation already, and we became fast friends with him too, and went down to a couple of Sufi meetings on Precita, and ended up going to maybe three meetings a week for the next eight months or so until I went to India with Sheyla.

SABIRA: Then were you actually initiated into the Sufi Order?

BUZZ: Yes.

SABIRA: When did that occur?

BUZZ: That occurred maybe three months after I started—it was a period of time that I had never had a religious teacher or a religious inclination prior to that, and never expected anyone to make me want to feel like becoming initiated or—until I had gotten to know Sufi Sam. In fact, I wasn’t going to do it until the last minute.

SABIRA: When Sheyla says that she feels you were closer to Sam than some of the other people, would you talk about that a little bit?

BUZZ: For a period of about five or six months I had dinner with him every Friday night at his house, in his kitchen, and we took turns cooking but most of the time he did the cooking, and we ate fish just about every time.

SABIRA: No kidding; because it was Friday?

BUZZ: No, as a matter of fact, I had become a vegetarian. Along with deciding to become a Sufi, I became a vegetarian for my own purposes, and every week he used to make a joke out of this. “Because you’re eating with me on Friday, I have to go on a fish thing,” because he didn’t care about vegetarianism, and he made numerous jokes about that to me, and so we got to know him that way. That was a way that I was really lucky to be with him so much besides being with him at all the meetings, and stuff.

SABIRA: Could you describe those dinners? Particularly the ones that you remember—

BUZZ: One of the nice things about it was that we would always go shopping in the afternoon prior to this, and he would take me to all his favorite stores. We would drive around, and he would take me to parts of San Francisco that I had never seen, that I never knew existed, and introduce me to the guy at the fish store, the Fillmore Street fish store, and select a good fish—he taught me how to select good fish, and good wine. He was always the one that wanted to get the wine; I wasn’t drinking at that time, it was the only time I ever drank was having wine with him.

SABIRA: How do you select a good fish, according to Sam?

BUZZ: Ha, ha—you have to see it, I can’t flash on it, a quality now, but I don’t eat fish much right now, at least that kind. I am an Hawaiian—either raw or barbecued, pretty essential, pretty basic—I was going to tell you about that, and I have so many experiences with him that I don’t know which I can tell you that will actually be able to be used.

SABIRA: I think whatever stands out the most in your memory is what we want, because that would probably be the most important and the most interesting. We can’t do them all, obviously, nobody could—

BUZZ: Once I called Sufi Sam from Ohio because I had had a huge, full-on mystical experience the previous night, and I was so excited that I couldn’t wait to call him, and part of this experience was seeing Hazrat Inayat Khan’s face right next to my face in a mirror, and actually feeling that spirit coming to me. It was such an exciting thing, and I was going to tell him about it, and I called him up—it must have been, it was early in Ohio, so it was really a strange time, and he came to the phone and he said, “Yes, who is it?” I said, “Dara.” And he said, “What do you want?” and I said, “Om Sri Ram, Jai Ram, Jai Jai Ram,” that’s all I could think of to say, and he said, “Yes, yes, okay, what else? Is that what you called me to say?” And I was bursting with this whole story, and I started to tell him that I had woken up, that everything was coming into place. He said, he stopped me cold, he said, “Okay, that’s enough, alright, goodbye.”

SABIRA: How did that make you feel?

BUZZ: Ah, that was really a surprise, he did it with love, he didn’t cut me off—he just told me, “Just don’t get into talking about it,” so I am reflecting that right now about wondering about how much of each story I should tell.

SABIRA: What do you think he was saying to you?

BUZZ: He knew it the whole time. I didn’t bring him any news, he knew what was going on, and there was no need to say a whole bunch over the phone, or to say anything at all, and that was that. But it was like another realization, not only was I awake but he had been waiting for me to wake up for a long time, and he knew just when I woke up. He knew it probably way before. He called me "a sleeping giant" on several occasions, prior to that, and it bugged me. There I was trying to gain like a complement or something, in his eyes, and he came off the wall with something like noting my spiritual transgressions.

SHEYLA: He was counting on Buzz completely, and that’s why he sent Buzz. God told him to send Buzz with me. It first came to Buzz in a flash. From the beginning of Sufi Sam’s career as a Guru, and I am holding his hand every day, I was with him every day, and on the phone, and just his constant companion, and he said, “You must let go of your husband now, God is….” He said, “Don’t ask me anything. I am telling you what God is telling me to tell you to do, and I’ll help you in every way,” and he helped me a lot, he said, “But you must let go of your husband now, he will learn how to take care of himself, find his own socks.”

SABIRA: Were you able to do that, Sheyla?

SHEYLA: Yes. And, “You must let go of your children and they will grow up and learn how to take care of you.” And that has happened.

SABIRA: When he said "let go," did he mean like a divorce or simply letting go of the attachment?

SHEYLA: With my husband, obviously, it meant divorce because one night—I’ll tell you a story that illustrates where my husband stood. Sufi Sam pervaded our life immediately as soon as I met him. That was it. And one night at midnight, on a Saturday night, my husband and I were watching T.V. and laying out on the couch, yeah and just tranced, and the door burst open and Sufi Sam walks in with Mansur and—I can’t remember who else he was with, but a party—maybe Amin and his wife. At any rate, we’ll get into who the first disciples were, and they came in like the wind brought them in, and my husband became terribly frightened, and I became terribly happy. “Oh hi!” I am making tea and cookies, and having a nice little party in the middle of the night. My husband went up to bed, you see, and shortly thereafter I said, “When Sufi Sam comes into the room, my whole world lights up,” I said to him, and he said, “When Sufi Sam comes into the world—into the room, my world gets darker,” Because everything was pointing to that God was intervening in our mundane marriage—because of this American housewife in a condition of nervous breakdown cannot raise children in a world of lies. And I am calling out to God, “Save me, save me, save me, save me!" Then God came to me and said, “Everyone who comes to you now is coming to help you to come to me. Find out how they want to help you.” That was before Sufi Sam, before Gavin Arthur, before Sandy Barton, before Don McCoy, before Buzz.

SABIRA: It sounds a little about the story of Joya Santana, because she was also a housewife and had a husband and children—

SHEYLA: I have been told that I should see her and know her, so I would definitely like you to give her my phone number, if you know her. You don’t know her?

SABIRA: No.

BUZZ: Can I ask a question?

SABIRA: Sure.

BUZZ: In the process of gathering all this material, do you know of any records of the initiations, of Murshid’s initiations? Because I would be curious, because I can remember some details from my own. I was initiated with another fellow who I didn’t know very well at all. He just happened to come down at the same time, but the things that were said by Murshid were different from him to me.

SABIRA: I don’t know. I know that when Wali Ali initiates people he puts down practices and the person’s name and address and so forth.

BUZZ: Mansur was recording—

SABIRA: I’ve never seen a book like that, but I’m sure there is one, there must be, but I just don’t have access to it.

BUZZ: Because I thought back about it many times, and looking forward to my new initiations, the details of those things become so important later on.

SABIRA: Do you want to talk about your initiation a little bit?

BUZZ: Sure. I asked Murshid that I wanted to be initiated, and he said, “Okay,” and didn’t say another word to me for maybe a month, and I just had a few people had told me that this is the way it happens. Some people he initiates that night, and other people he—and sure enough one night about a month later, he just called me and this other fellow up. One of the amazing things was that this fellow—I didn’t know him well—I had just seen him at the meetings a few times, but his last name was the same as my middle name.

SABIRA: Which is what?

BUZZ: Which is Sager.

SABIRA: I know who you mean. Jonathon Sager, Jonathon—Joshua—Thomas Joshua Sager—we’ve heard from him and we have his tape. But go ahead—

BUZZ: And that was a coincidence, but anyway, so right in the middle of the class, he just stopped and called us up there and he initiated this other fellow first and went through maybe a minute or so talking about the various responsibilities of the Order, and then the guy nodded, and then Murshid put the beads on him. And then he came over to me, and he said about three things that took about five seconds and then put the beads on me. It was a whole other thing than what he had done with the other guy. And so I was just curious to know if any of that had been noted because I would love to read those words again.

SABIRA: Yeah I really don’t know, we could probably, maybe find out through asking Moineddin.

BUZZ: Mansur may be the guy to ask because he was the one who was doing most of the record keeping, I think, at that time.

SABIRA: Of course he lives in Boston.

BUZZ: Oh he does? Well, there you are!

SABIRA: He’s lived in Boston since 1991, something like that, for a long time.

BUZZ: I didn’t know that.

SABIRA: Okay, do you want to tell a little bit about your initiation, Sheyla?

SHEYLA: My true initiation happened when I heard Murshid calling to me, and I had a feeling I was going to meet someone—some very important teacher, and then from the moment—(interruption)—so when he began to become the Guru and get everything organized and take the few people that were his young friends and make disciples out of them—I don’t remember that as being a big moment, because every moment that I was with him was a very big moment, preparing me to go to Calcutta to recognize the beggar.

SABIRA: The young people you refer to were Akbar, perhaps?

 SHEYLA: Yes.

SABIRA: And who else?

SHEYLA: Moineddin and Fatima, Jemila and Mansur and—

SABIRA: Did you meet a Bill Hathaway?

SHEYLA: Yes.

SABIRA: You don’t know where he lives do you?

SHEYLA: I don’t know anything about him—

SABIRA: We can’t—it’s really hard to reach him—

SHEYLA: I saw him a lot in the early days—

BUZZ: Did you talk to Kris Stens?

SABIRA: I’ve never heard the name before.

BUZZ: You never heard—he was a disciple of Murshid’s.

SABIRA: Does he live in the area?

BUZZ: Yeah, he is a good pal of mine.

SABIRA: When we get through I’ll get that.

SHEYLA: I want to talk about Murshid and why Murshid heard from God immediately when he began to be a Guru, that he was preparing this form, this freaked-out American housewife to save the world—“This young lady,” he would say, “is going to India to save the world.” He took me everywhere: to The Holy Order of Mans, to all the Rabbis, to all the priests, sages, and prophets and to Louise Snifeld (?) and we were sent and brought, and he sent Ralph Silver to become Don McCoy’s spiritual advisor.

SABIRA: Before we get into that, let’s put Don on for a few minutes—and talk about how you met Murshid and then kind of get up to the point of where the other two are and then we’ll try to bring the three of you together.

DON: I don’t actually remember when I met Sufi Sam, it was sometime in 1968, but I came to him, of course, through Sheyla, and Shirin, I remember used to go a lot to the meetings—

BUZZ: Nancy and Ralph—

DON: I think that party at their house was the first time that I met him. Do you remember that party?

BUZZ: Oh yeah! Right, right.

SHEYLA: A party at Ralph’s house?

BUZZ: Right, right.

SHEYLA: Christmas Eve—

DON: Yeah, I think that was the first time I met him.

DON: A PCP night—yeah, and Val was there.

SHEYLA: This was one of the first PCP nights, this was called the peace-drug, you see, everybody got a taste at the door. I was posted at the door with daddy-Don, do you see, this was the introduction of this drug that is known to the world to bust down barriers to loving you—see, God sent this, it’s gone now, it’s gone now. I asked everyone as they came in, all Sufi Sam’s friends, and oh Ralph and Nancy, his god-children, his friends, and all of the Olompali family, we were all there—daddy-Don and I were at the door, and I said, “Do you want to have the happiest night of your whole life?” “yes, of course,” and we gave everyone a taste—a tremendous loving feeling—that was that night.

DON: So that’s when I met him, and he didn’t impress me at the time that I met him at all—but there was something about him that I would say that for a period of time he became my highest teacher that I’d found. And I was definitely was going through a period in my life when I was searching for something. The hippie movement was happening, I was too old for the hippie movement, but I was curious, and I still wanted to know what was going on with them, and that was one of the main reasons for Olompali, which was the ranch that Buzz was referring to—where we all got together to try to do something spiritual and something—spiritual for those who wanted spiritualism, and material for those who wanted materialism, and it didn’t matter. It was mostly an attempt to start an alternative style of life and for me it became a period in my life when I started seriously questioning the reason for my existence, trying to find out who I was and what my purpose was for being here. Surely it didn’t seem right that I should come here just to "kick the bucket at the right time," as Father says. And I got turned on to the Bible and Christ at that time, and then I got turned on—I would say mostly by Shirin and Sheyla, but Ralph was there and Nancy was there always and people were directing me towards Sam, and I went to maybe three or four meetings and it was very high for me, I just didn’t know what I was watching or what I was doing, really, I didn’t realize that the whole thing, the whole show was being run by Father, and we were all being put together for a purpose, but I couldn’t see the purpose, and I wasn’t moving consciously, but definitely I was moving. And the direction that it all seemed to take—we had some evenings—I remember one at Sheyla’s house in Mill Valley, and Sam was there, Jeremy was there, Art Lang—

SABIRA: Jeremy Cave?

DON: No, Jeremy Ets Hokin—

SHEYLA: My ex husband, my emperor Don McCoy, my ex husband Bob McKendrick, his father in law and conservator, Art Lang, all the big guys, the big guns were there—that was that party.

SABIRA: I tried to call Jeremy Ets Hokin and he hung up on me—

SHEYLA: You have to say something very sweet to him—

SABIRA: Like he wasn’t interested whatsoever in talking or anything—

DON: He’s not in a good mood but we love him, we have dozens of people for you that are interesting. So, it was a very high night and the central theme at that time seemed to be what to do about me, because I had declared my intention—I was really flipped out, and I told Jeremy that I was going to give my money away—I guess I told everybody—and I had considerable money at that time. There was a summit conference or what—it was to figure out what do we do about going crazy—

SHEYLA: This was at the party, and Sufi Sam called the party, because his concern was to send us in an orderly fashion—Don and Buzz and I—to India, with all ties untied here, everything free, everything clear—that was the purpose of the party.

DON: It must have been Sam’s idea then. He planted the seed of the idea that eventually—when was that party?

SHEYLA: It was August '68, just a month before we started out for India—they were already taking your money away—I remember they said, “Oh give them $5,000 and send them to India right now,” and Sufi Sam said, like Art Lang said, “Let’s send her to India right now”—the whole thing was India, India—for two years Sufi Sam had me on his trip and then brings in the two gentlemen one on either side, just according to God’s orders—

SABIRA: Do you know what reason Sam had to send you to India?

SHEYLA: Yeah.

SABIRA: What was his reason?

SHEYLA: God—Father—Father was speaking to him super-physically from dawn on Sept. 19, 1966, known in Revelations in the Bible as "666."

SABIRA: How did he pick that particular date; why did you pick that particular date?

SHEYLA: That’s when Siva Kalpa began—this era of the colorful imagination—where we get younger and younger, we don’t die—you are immortal—you have no intention of getting old and dying.

SABIRA: Did Sam tell you this?

SHEYLA: He did! He did! We were holding hands or on the phone, just like me and my husband. I am the only girl that had this kind of relationship with him.

SABIRA: You used to sit on his right side?

SHEYLA: Always—he called me “Mama-San, we are raising the children of God, Mama-san,” and we would go to the grocery store, and go to the bakery, and clean the house and cook, and just raise the children together, “We have to raise the children of God.”

SABIRA: This was the house on Precita after he had moved?

SHEYLA: Yeah, so we were in touch, daily touch, constant touch, do you see, and his theme, his theme, and what he wants brought out in this book is that he gave his life, like Jesus Christ. He consciously gave his life for Father—why? Because he was a workaholic Guru like Wali Ali is today, saying his famous words—look, here’s some documentary proof—here you are saying—“Wali is so busy and juggling interviews….” and here is from 1970, August 24, Samuel L. Lewis, in Wali Ali’s writing, “Secretary, Mrs. Sheyla McKendrick—Beloved One of Allah—” He’s writing me at Father’s house—“Beloved One of Allah, Peace be with you. Murshid received your telephone message, and he asked me to write you for him. He is a tremendously busy man and while he undoubtedly lacks humility, he is working seven days a week in an effort to remove suffering of all kinds from the world. As long as there are wars and people suffering from malnutrition, he is not making social calls of any kind. If you wish to speak with him, you are welcome to make an appointment and come to this house. Faithfully, Wali Ali, Secretary to Murshid”

SABIRA: What had happened that Wali Ali would say that he might lack humility?

SHEYLA: We just corresponded back and forth, hot and heavy—you’ll see the letters.

SABIRA: But this was before—you said that you had physical contact with him every day—something must have occurred in between?

SHEYLA: Oh, this was after India.

 SABIRA: Oh, alright, alright—

SABIRA: See, he was preparing me to go to India—

SABIRA: Okay, let’s get it all in order—

SHEYLA: And preparing me through fairy tales, nursery rhymes, or holding my hand and skipping up and down the street, and preparing me with my emperor, and with Buzz—his hope in the Sufis was Buzz, to head the Sufi world, to set a perfect example of a man who stays home with his wife and children and the whole world comes to see him, like Father. He’s got a new house—like Father stays at home on Scott Street with his family and his mom and the babies and cooks and invites people over, and this is what the President of the United States has to do and everyone has to do—a father is a teacher—a father sees them—so he spoke to me daily, day in and out about Don. He said, “Look,”—and Don never received a formal initiation, that would be redundant. Did you?

DON: No, I had Darshan once but no initiation—

SABIRA: That’s the same thing, or it could be—

SHEYLA: When we met Sufi Sam—we met Sandy Barton first, she was the big flash on Father of the Western world, she’s out here—then we meet Sufi Sam andit’s all chemistry, it’s God’s chemistry, He makes flash, flash, flash, flash, flash, flash—right?

DON: Right.

SABIRA: So there are the three of you, and let's get into the trip to India and how that developed.

SHEYLA: Buzz runs up to me and Sufi Sam had—oh I must tell you this in a nutshell—Sufi Sam spoke to me everyday—this is what he said about Don, first he would say, “Don is Zeus,” he is walking around like this holding my arm, all the time, walking around Olompali, which you see was "home of the Gods," Don called it—he said, “Don is Zeus, Don is Jupiter, you just stay near him, he doesn’t exactly know what’s happening and you don’t have to ask a lot of questions either—”

SABIRA: Now you moved to Olompali then after you left your husband? Is that the chronological order—

SHEYLA: Yeah, I made a home for my children and took my children there, and rented a house for me in a separate house for me for a year alone doing nothing but hanging out with Sufi Sam preparing to go to India. So then in 1967 in the Fall in the Peace and Freedom Party business, Don was going to run for president. You see he was having flashes from God, from Father, saying, “You are the ruler of the world,” so Sufi Sam says, he calls me up one morning, he says, “Don doesn’t have to run for president, Don is going to India to become emperor of the world,” this he told me way back, way back. I didn’t know from anything—emperors and empresses—I am just listening to Sufi Sam. And he carefully prepared me through all this with fairy tales and story books and what he is hearing from Father to recognize God as a beggar.

SABIRA: What do you mean by the fairy tales, how do they fit in?

SHEYLA: Like all nursery rhymes and fairy tales—all point to Father. Like in Pinocchio, Gepetto is Father, do you know that?

SABIRA: Sure.

SHEYLA: Do you know that when Gepetto was praying, “Oh Lord, I made such a great puppet, so I want a real son—I want him to become my real son,” and Pinocchio becomes a real son, opens his eyes and calls him, “Father,” you see, so all fairy tales point to that.

SABIRA: I see.

SHEYLA: And all children’s beliefs, things that children believe in, because the whole point was that this American housewife was created to lead—like a little child—the whole world into eternal childhood, do you see? Where we are very grown up, very stable, but really our values are very simple like children: love, home, family, truth—my God.

SABIRA: Let’s talk about the trip then.

SHEYLA: Does Don want to say anything?

DON: I just want to say something about 666 because this might be the first documentation of the 666 that appears in Revelations in the Bible is referring to June, the 6th month of the year 1966, which on the midnight of June 14 and 15th is when God took possession of Father’s form, the form of Oiranjiva, and he had his permanent flash on that night which is the referral of 666, but I don’t know where I was on that night. I’ve often tried to figure it out where I was, but that is the turning point from the period of darkness. It was when the light first began to shine, when the light first appeared.

SHEYLA: June 6th—

DON: June 14th—

SHEYLA: June 14th to that date at midnight—

DON: 1966.

BUZZ: I know where I was, I was in the Army in Korea.

SABIRA: Where were you, Sheyla?

SHEYLA: In June of '66, I was being a freaked-out American housewife. I was the president of the PTA, and just closing it all down for the American ladies. I said this is not it. At the same time Alan Watts was having programs saying, “This is it, this is really it, this is really it,” so this wasn’t it—a world where my children had to get up in the middle of the night and go to school. We just became terribly focused on the children, we did the whole thing for the children, the book is for the children, everything—the era is for the children—to return everyone’s attention, undivided attention on the children.

DON: They all dug Sufi Sam too. They loved to go to the Sufi meetings—

SHEYLA: They loved Sufi Sam. He was grandpa, and he was everything; he was like that, that old fashioned character, and all he talked about was self-respect, connecting me up with Father—this is our by-line, this is our it philosophy or whatever you want to call it of this whole era. Self-respect is the way to the life of truth, knowledge, power, and love—not: I am the way, he is the way, you are the way—self-respect is the way—and self respect is what Sufi Sam spoke to me about every day. Why? Because Father was speaking through his form, and Father spoke through my form to him. It was like the conversation in the Bhagavad-Gita between Krishna the Knower, and Arjuna the asker. I would ask and Sufi Sam would tell me everything. Then he’d say, “Don’t ask.”

SABIRA: Did Father—did Sam meet Father?

SHEYLA: That was part of the mythology, of how he gave his life for God like Jesus Christ. He was playing on the stage of life for God, the workaholic Guru, he couldn’t stop running, like Pir Vilayat Khan and Wali Ali—

SABIRA: Yeah, but what I’m asking is did they actually meet in the flesh?

SHEYLA: They saw, I think they had a glimpse of each other one time at the Holy Man’s Jam when Father arrived in America—maybe they did just get a flash off of each other, physically—

SABIRA: Why did they avoid each other?

SHEYLA: They did not avoid each other; Father went to Sufi Sam’s house—

DON: We took him there on Murshid’s birthday—because they had not met—we of course thought that this was what we were supposed to do, would be to get them together, when Father got here from India—and so we took him—we knew it was Murshid’s birthday and that there was something going on there, and popped Father into the car and went over there, and I guess Sheyla ran up to find out what was going on and everything, and Murshid refused to—

SHEYLA: He went into his room from his birthday party to watch television, refused to see Father. They did not avoid each other, Murshid evaded Father.

DON: Yeah, that’s right—

SHEYLA: In the meantime I have to remind the whole Sufi world and the whole world that in part of my training, especially toward the end, he said, “Now you see, this is the point wherein the greatest teachers of the world—after they have taught the disciple everything that they know—then the disciple goes on and becomes the teacher of the master.” He said, “Do you have anything to say to me?” the day before I went to India, and I said, “Yes, I know that the Sufis will become known through the singing and the dancing and not any more through the seriousness, the spiritual, the heaviness, not anymore through that and therefore his true legacy in the Sufi Order is the Sufi Choir and the dervish dancing. Not the running; it’s the family life and through this book, the family—we’ll take the example from Don McCoy and Buzz Rowell—they will get to know what a man should do, what a perfect example of a perfect Sufi. Don is a perfect Sufi because he recognizes God in everything, but first in his own wife and children.

SABIRA: How long were you in India?

SHEYLA: For about three months. Two to three months.

SABIRA: And you brought Father back.

SHEYLA: Right.

SABIRA: When was this then that all this occurred with Murshid going into the room to look at television instead of meeting Father?

SHEYLA: After Father came to America.

SABIRA: But what time? 1970, ’69—

DON: We got back from India Christmas time of '68.

SABIRA: '68, okay, that’s what I wanted to know.

DON: Father came on Labor Day weekend of '69. So it must have been his birthday of that next year.

SHEYLA: That’s right.

SABIRA: I see, October—

SHEYLA: That’s right—

SABIRA: Why do you suppose he acted that way?

SHEYLA: Because he was following his destiny, do you see. If you read through the Bible today it would blow your mind. How come Jesus did that, do you see? He had to follow that line to show how ignorance dies, because knowledge surrounds us, knowledge surrounds itself with peaceful, loving family.

SABIRA: So what does that have to do with Murshid, with Murshid Sam going to the room to look at TV instead of greeting and meeting—

SHEYLA: God, who he prepared me carefully for —

SABIRA: Why do you think Sam—

SHEYLA: Because at that time he had joined himself for Father, he had connected himself up with the workaholic Guru, do you see? And as Father was sitting in rooms full of people every day, with me right there, it’s on record, saying, “Now watch the Gurus tumble headfirst, Sheyla. “Sufi Sam first?” And I’d say, “It looks that way Father, it looks that way.” Because I knew, and Randy had phoned him, wrote him letters—I have the copies of the letters, my letters to him and his letters to me. I kept saying, “Please slow down and just meet Father, and let’s all be a family together. We’re just a family together, the whole Sufi Order.” I can’t go up to Banefsha or any of those people, “Everything is up now, that’s not the way Hazrat Inayat Khan meant it to be in the new world.” He didn’t speak it, he said, “The Sufi recognizes the true God in his own family.”

SABIRA: Let’s get some more information about your feelings about—at this time, apparently there was a rift of some sort then between you and Sam and Father?

SHEYLA: He said “The perfect master will throw the disciple out,” and so when I tried to go back to him as soon as I returned from India I went to visit him.

SABIRA: Who said "the perfect master will throw the disciple out’?

SHEYLA: He said he always told me that—

SABIRA: Sam or Father?

SHEYLA: Sam. So when I went to see him to visit him, I said, “I am not coming to you as a disciple, I am saying that what you sent me to India to find, I have found.” “Don’t tell me, don’t tell me, don’t tell me, don’t tell me, I don’t want to hear that….” And at the same time, he sent disciples to Scott Street to say, “Sufi Sam said stay with Father.” So you see it was like a cosmic joke in a way and a really fascinating story because here is Father saying, “Gurus will fall, watch them fall. Watch Steve Gaskin—”

[End of side one, reel one.]

SHEYLA: This new world, this new life is all family, and this 11th year of Siva Kalpa is the year of the marriage, do you see? Don and I as the rulers of this Planet—you’d never dream it, would you?—we are here to see that everyone’s marriage is perfect first, to see home, marriage, babies, how are the babies? how is the food? how is the shopping? how is the kitchen? And I am a household yogi, I am the first American housewife to reach enlightenment, and the first Sufi lady to reach enlightenment—and this is the first Sufi man to reach enlightenment.

SABIRA: What do mean when you say "reach enlightenment?"

SHEYLA: It means that I know everything that God wants a person to know in order to live a perfect life on this Planet at this time and forever more. Does that make sense?

SABIRA: Yeah. What are your feelings about this situation after you got back from India, Don? And also Buzz? Let’s get your story about it—

DON: About what situation?

SABIRA: The situation that apparently developed when you came back with Father—just whatever impressions you remember of that time—

DON: The strongest impression that I have of the time is of meeting Father—I don’t know if that is appropriate for your book or not.

SABIRA: Go ahead with some of that—then as you came back what occurred? In your memory?

DON: Sam was mainly responsible, as I said, for getting me to India in the first place. I had no idea why I was going, I wasn’t consciously going there, and as a matter of fact, a year before, if you had said, “Wouldn’t you like to go to India?” and I would have said, and I think I did say, “You’re crazy I have no—"

BUZZ: That’s why I went—yeah, because you weren’t interested—more or less.

DON: Yeah, I had no interest in going to India, but some power, certainly greater than and beyond me took control, and it seemed to come largely through Sufi Sam, so I didn’t really know what to do when I got to India, but Sam had said that there was this important spiritual Summit Conference, that we should attend as representatives of the New Age—

SABIRA: The Temple of Understanding conference?

DON: Right. The Temple of Understanding—and so I remember going to Sam’s house on Precita and filling out all the forms saying why I was going to India, and him saying, “Put there—to visit shrines and mosques, shrines and temples.” So, I had it in my head that while I was going temple hopping and Guru shopping, like so many people but I was a wealthy American hippie, that’s what I was, and when I was beginning to get turned on—I had gotten very much turned on, I had taken acid by that time—and I was very much turned on to seeking a higher meaning in life, or to finding out what was this thing called God that everybody called God because I never had any conception of it before—ever in my life, and that was 38 years—so I went to this Summit Conference in India, and interestingly enough we arrived in Calcutta eight years ago tomorrow, Oct. 22nd, and I met Father eight years ago on the day after tomorrow—it’s how all these dates coincide because Murshid’s birthday was last Monday—

SABIRA: Oct. 18th, right—

DON: Samuel Inayat Rowell’s birthday was last Tuesday, yesterday was a day off, and today we are having this; tomorrow I arrived in India, the next day I met Father—we all met Father—the three of us met Father on the 23rd—

SABIRA: So this interview, that’s why we need to be doing this interview—

DON: Right—so it feels very much like that time then is a good time to talk about that. I arrived, and I was informed that the spiritual Summit Conference was being held in Darjeeling. So I got to India eight years ago tomorrow, got off the plane at DumDum airport, and immediately went in and made the necessary arrangements to get a plane to Darjeeling. And I was blown by the language barrier, it makes it very hard to get anything done there, but I got the ticket and I got on the right plane, and I was on my way to Darjeeling thinking everything was hunky-dory, and there was a newspaper lying on the seat next to me—and it happened to be in English, so I picked it up and I started reading it, and I read about that there had been a landslide and the spiritual Summit Conference was not being held in Darjeeling, and I think maybe it said that it was being held in Calcutta, I’m not sure, so I got off the plane at Darjeeling, I went in, and there was this funny little airport there, and I looked around. They had a guest register that you sign when you get off the plane in Darjeeling, and you sign your name, everybody signs, right? And I looked through there and I didn’t see any names that I knew—except Molly Minudri, I saw her name, and so I turned right around and while everybody stood there and watched, this crazy American turn right around, and go back and get on the plane and fly right back to Calcutta, and arrived there late in the evening on the 22nd, and I had nothing to do—no buses into town until the next morning, so they had a little motel there where you could sleep. This Indian motel which is entirely different thing from an American hotel/motel, but anyway I went in and I spent the night at the airport motel there, and the next morning I got up and took a bus into town to look for Sheyla and Buzz, and I went to the hotel finally where they were staying. You have to understand, if you haven’t been to India—it takes hours to do what here you can do in a half an hour or an hour, just getting from one place to another and making your way through all the people it is incredible—

BUZZ: Gathering crowds everywhere—

DON: Yeah, and people stopped you—

BUZZ: Huge crowds—

DON: Whenever you stopped, 50 people stopped; if you stopped moving, 50 people stop and stare at you, so you have to kind of keep moving but at the same time you cannot move too fast—everybody wants to talk—the people who can speak English all want to talk to you—but anyway I finally found out that Sheyla and Buzz had gone to the Bureau and Academy of Arts and Culture to attend the second day session of the Spiritual Summit Conference, so I went there, and I went in—it happened to be the noon break—and there was only one other person in the hall which was Swami Chinmyananda, an interesting chap, who looks very much like “my American Guru,” Lou Gottlieb, who was at that time—I wanted Lou to meet Father—but that is getting ahead of my story—and I spoke to Chinmyananda for awhile and found him to be a fascinating man, and pretty soon people started coming in and the meeting began—and then we sat, I would say, through about three hours of total boredom—just nothing going on—it was like a costume party—everybody had his thing, and everybody wanted to get up and say his ten minutes and it was droning on and on until finally the whole thing—oh, before the meeting started we had a joyous reunion with Sheyla and Buzz and I—we were so happy to see each other.

BUZZ: Pir Vilayat was there throughout all of that too,

SHEYLA: He was there the day that we met Father—

DON: He went on several little….

BUZZ: Yeah he was with us on several different little occasions.

SABIRA: I assume Father was at this conference, to make a long story short?

DON: So you want me to make a long story short?

SABIRA: Yes, definitely, if you can.

DON: As the meeting was breaking up we were slowly filing up the aisle and I looked to the back of the room and I saw this person who seemed to have a purpose—he seemed to know what he was doing, what he was there for—nobody else—I didn’t know what I was doing there, and it seemed to me like nobody else knew. I I felt like an imposter the whole time—this man definitely knew what he was doing there, and then I Sheyla and said, “Look at that guy” and then he disappeared, and we went on out into the lobby and we were all standing in the lobby, and the director of the Conference was here, and I was here, and some other people were here—Sheyla was there, and 3 or 4 other people were all standing around in a big circle, and I noticed this man come up and speak to Mr. Dunn who was the director of the whole Temple, and I didn’t hear everything that he said, but Mr. Dunn went away and then this man stood very quietly next to me, and didn’t look at anybody, he just stood there, and Dunn came back after about five minutes and spoke to the man. He said, “I’m sorry,” and I started listening. He said, “I’m sorry, but I wasn’t able to arrange ten minutes for you to speak to the Conference.” And Father said, he just looked up at him, and he said, “That’s quite alright, don’t be sorry, you tried your best,” And then he looked right at me and said,” I have other means of communication.” I grabbed him by the arm and I said, “You tell them brother,” and we just jumped into each other's arms and we jumped around and we laughed—

SHEYLA: We all jumped up and down, hugged and kissed, laughed and cried—

DON: It seemed like flashbulbs were going off, and then I don’t remember for about ten minutes or some period of time, I don’t remember what happened, but we all went outside and across the street, and we were sitting in a big duney (?) on the grass—

SHEYLA: A hundred people all followed the beggar—and us—we followed him and all the people followed us.

SABIRA: “When the disciple is ready, the Guru appears?”

SHEYLA: Like that—only after our Guru. What our Guru was sending us toward was the One. So he was the one our Guru had sent us toward. We knew it, we all knew it instinctively and intuitively—we just knew it—instant recognition is what happened. As Father said, “hello, my gods and goddesses, I have been waiting for you for 2.5 years. Please come with me, I have something to tell you. He asked our names, and told us what our names meant, he called Don my emperor, he called me the empress. He called Buzz the sound of the universe, Pranyavananda—right away he began to organize us.

SABIRA: Did you know Pir Vilayat at that time?

SHEYLA: Yes, we had known him—

DON: We had hosted him at the ranch—he had come up there and conducted a Sufi camp at Olompali—I drove him around a lot and so we knew him—more than as just disciples—

SHEYLA: Like intimate friends—he spent a whole weekend with us at Don’s invitation, do you see?

SABIRA: So then you met Father, and then did you go to the other places that Sam had wanted you to go to in India?

SHEYLA: No, only on our way, Buzz and I went to Pondicherry for a week—that was Sam’s dearest wish—

SABIRA: To see Mother Krishnabai?

SHEYLA: No, the Mother. My whole path was the Divine Mother—the Holy Mother, so I was supposed to case this whole joint, called Pondicherry—now this is what this mother did, but you are going to do even greater than that, you’re not going to do what she did, you’re going to do that to the world, and your husband is not going to sit over there and write books, thousands of millions of pages and let you go do all this work. So that’s what I learned at Pondicherry, and then when we met Father immediately after we went back for one week to pick up Lou Gottlieb and because I had promised to bring the emperor, to bring Don back to meet them. You see, Sam wanted that because Father is the embodiment.

DON: Do you know Julie Medlock?

SHEYLA: Julie Medlock—you have to have her story in the book—

SABIRA: We'll be getting it—

SHEYLA: You’re getting it—Father is the fulfillment and the embodiment of Sri Aurobindo’s life Divine. Like they wrote about it, they talked about it—at that time so that we could live it. This is the Rassoul of God, the family.

SABIRA: You said a moment back that Sam wanted Don to do something? What did you mean?

DON: Me to meet the people at Pondicherry. Sam knew that something was happening in India, and he thought—he told Sheyla to watch the beggars—and it seemed that it might be happening at Pondicherry—definitely something—

SHEYLA: It was connected—

SABIRA: My impression of that is that Julie was quite disappointed with Pondicherry. Is that true?

SHEYLA: They are very poor; they need things—they need more American's attention, we’ll go there and take care of Pondicherry at the time. That’s our business—but they know us now, they know us.

SABIRA: Were you disappointed with it?

SHEYLA: I was not disappointed—I was on tour—I was checking out the scene. If I go to the Khankah or go to Novato I’m not going to say I’m disappointed—I’m not disappointed that Wali Ali is a workaholic, I love him like anything, I’m going to help him, hold his hand and get him out of it—all he has to do is take Jessica’s hand, she is his goddess. From Don—look, we gave Jemila, we gave Mary Sue, Don gave these beautiful goddesses to the Sufis—

SABIRA: Who is Mary Sue?

SHEYLA: Mary Sue is a goddess out in Novato, you asked them—

SABIRA: No; is this a Sufi lady that I don’t know of?

DON: She is; I don’t know what her Sufi name is—

SHEYLA: Jessica, Mary Sue, Shirin—

DON: She’s a tall blond lady, long blond hair,

SHEYLA: All Don’s goddesses, do you see? All prepared—

SABIRA: It might be Mouni, maybe, I can’t think who Mary Sue is.

SHEYLA: She’s a very beautiful blond, blue eyed pretty girl—

DON: With glasses—strawberry blond—

SHEYLA: Strawberry blond—very beautiful.

DON: And I’ve since heard that she accepted Christ as her—

SABIRA: Maybe it isn’t Mouni—I’ll find out—

SHEYLA: A Sufi, do you see, I am here to lift the Sufis beyond the distinctions and differences of the earth that divide men, that’s my purpose—

SABIRA: I understand, alright, so you met Father and then you eventually came back here to America—

DON: That’s when my search ended, when I met Father—then I didn’t see Sam after that.

SABIRA: I see—how about you Buzz? Where were you at that time?

BUZZ: I was the first one to come back from India, and I got here, oh a couple of weeks before Sheyla and Don, something like that—I called up to find out where Murshid was, and I had this big news—and he was at the Novato Khankah, so I went over there and waited, and told, I think, Moineddin that I am back and I want to talk to him. Okay, so he received me in the room with Moineddin present and that was cool with me, and I told him I started to tell him about Father and I had a picture of Father, and he said, “Who is this man, what does he do?” and I said, “Basically he teaches the Gita, he teaches us everything, but essentially the Gita,” and Murshid just freaked out. “Who is this man think he is? I am an expert in the Gita. Who is this man, he’d better—he’d better know his stuff. I’m going to check him out when he comes here.” He was just enraged.

SABIRA: So at this point he was willing to meet him?

BUZZ: Yeah. But he was enraged by the subject, it appeared—a reaction like that—I was not ready for that at all, I thought it was going to be all “yes, yes, yes.” And so there was a prayer meeting scheduled coming up right then, he couldn’t take too much time with me, I guess it was a Gatha reading or something, and so they invited me to stay for the Gatha reading and so I did, and then after it was over there was a time for questions. And so I stick my hand up and I said, “Is it possible to have two Gurus at once?” I was still coming down from the reaction that he had thrown me, and he looked at me and he said, “Oh sure, there is nothing wrong with that,” and something in the way that he answered that made me know that it was not going the way I thought at all. And it was just time for me to wait for Sheyla; and my next move was that the instant that Sheyla got back, I put her in the car and took her over to Murshid. And the same thing happened, except he was even noisier—

SHEYLA: He threw me right out the door, out the hall and down the stairs, he said, “Get out, get out, get out, get out.” But I understood. See, you can look at it from every level, a real Sufi does. I see from a gods-eye point of view, so I see, overhear—he is playing a part on the stage is all I could see. He was acting out this typical Guru ego, do you see? “Oh no, no, no, no, I know I’ve been preparing you to recognize God no matter what name and what form He came in, I know I have prepared you for that, but I can’t take it.” Now that the moment of truth has come, I really can’t take it, do you see? You can look at it from that level. I look at it that he gave his life to prove Father—he tumbled head first, he did—

SABIRA: He actually did—

SHEYLA: And one week before he died, before he tumbled—I made my last attempt—Mary Meyers took me over—Nancy Fish’s best friend, Mary Meyers, took/drove me over to a Sufi meeting at 7:30 one Monday night, and I sat down and held Murshid’s hand, and just held his hand and I said, “Please, you’ve got to see Father, you must see Father,” and he is holding up his watch and he is saying, “Time is my worst enemy, time is my worst enemy,” and I held his hand and I just looked at him—just trying to recapture that closeness that we had—but he was already gone. He said, “Time is my worst enemy,” and I said, “Murshid, time is your best friend, Father is time, Father Time, he is here, I want you to see him, he wants to cook for you. He loves you. Father was broken hearted. On that plane Father couldn’t believe that this man who had carefully prepared me for two years before had said, “Watch the beggars, honey, do not be distracted, do not gather daisies along the way, they will only detain you,” that’s what Hazrat Inayat Khan said. “Do not be distracted by the horror in the streets in India. You’ll want to pick up every baby and take it home with you, and don’t become distracted like that, but watch at the spiritual Summit Conference, do not allow them to put you in the formal part of the program—something extraordinary is going to happen to you between the scenes,” and that is exactly what happened. This beggar revealed himself to us as God, as the embodiment of every name and every form of God—he called himself Siva. He said, “I am Siva.” It says right here in chapter one—”when wealth is admired, then God comes as wealthy King Solomon; when beauty was worshipped, Joseph the most handsome gave the message; when music was regarded as celestial David gave his message in song; when there was curiosity about miracles, Moses brought his message; when sacrifice was highly esteemed, Abraham gave the message; when heredity was recognized, Christ gave his message as the son of God; and when democracy was necessary, Mohammed gave his message as the servant of God—one like all, and among all. And when destruction is necessary, Siva appears to destroy ignorance and create light in our forms.“ He appeared there looking like billions of suns, it would knock anyone out. This gorgeous face that you saw in your dreams in your childhood, in the fairy tales, in your imagination—he looks just like God. And in Revelation in the Bible, I have been prepared by Sam with all Scriptures to worship—and to know that all Scriptures are true, and in Revelations in the Bible, chapter one in Revelations is the perfect physical description of Father standing there “with hair as white as wool, eyes like fire, feet of burnished brass,” and there he was—”tongue like a double-edged sword of truth, a voice like many waters.” John in the Bible fell down at his feet, do you see? And I had that feeling; Father doesn’t require that, only hugs and kisses and recognition that you recognize him. Then he can serve you. He says, “I am a slave of your understanding.”

SABIRA: So it really had to happen this way for you to serve Father?

SHEYLA: Absolutely—and Sam served Father, and he is the only Guru that I am allowed by God to glorify. And it is not a complicated story. He got the message, he prepared this little girl, he sent these powerful men with her—without them I couldn’t have done it, I couldn’t have gone alone. I was cuckoo—I wanted to take my clothes off everywhere, to be a free flower-child. But Murshid prepared me and sent down to be on either side of me to see that I don’t do that, that I stick to the point which was finding Father, and immediately Father picked up the whole scene and carried it through. Don said, “This is it, this is Father; we have nothing to do now only listen to Father.” And we all agreed with Charlotte Partridge Wallace, the president, the first American girl, who was with us, the first American girl from the wealthy Summit Conference, the 42 wealthy delegates brought Shotsy Wallace, Charlotte Partridge Wallace, and her cousin Patty. There were two young, wealthy girls, Don and I and Buzz, and two wealthy young girls. There were five of us that joined together before we met Father—a couple of nights before. Well no, Don appeared on the day that we met Father, but Buzz and I and Shotsy and her cousin were already close friends. We had Shotsy looking at the Sufi Message book that we had with us, and talking a mile a minute, and then when Shotsy came with us to live in the mud hut with Father and his family—Shotsy’s parents contacted Murshid. Now they live in Ross, Mr. And Mrs. Craig Wallace, they’ll have a story to tell about their communications and visits with Murshid—about their lost daughter, she was lost in Calcutta—missing. “Where was she? She was in the mud hut with God. So you want to get Shotsy’s story, you want to get—you want to get everybody’s story who has anything to say about Sufi Sam. No other Guru—the Guru era is now ended—no other Guru in that entire era received the message.

SABIRA: Wouldn’t you call Father a Guru?

SHEYLA: No, not at all; he was a creator of Gurus; he created you, me, glasses, wallpaper—first he made heaven and earth, and began to tell us that as soon as we met him. He said, “First I said "OM," let there be light, and then I made light.” He said before creation there was language; he began to explain to us everything in the Creator’s words, so he has proven over the past eight years to all of us completely that he is God, and that we can all become gods, if we just love him with all our hearts—that’s all he wants.

SABIRA: What came down at Murshid’s funeral?

SHEYLA: I told this whole story of how Murshid gave his life for God, and about the fall, the tape is there—I’m sure there is a film and a tape, ask Ralph Silver. It was a blowout.

SABIRA: I just wanted to hear it from your lips.

SHEYLA: Murshid had carefully loved me and prepared me and stayed with me, and had taken such good care of me as a freaked-out American housewife, and lovingly preparing me to go to India to recognize God disguised as a beggar. And then freaked out and wouldn’t meet Father, so he couldn’t stay around. He had been saying, “Watch the Guru’s tumble head first. Sufi Sam first, Sheyla?” because I was broken hearted in my room at night in Father’s house—writing another letter to Sufi Sam. I am calling him up again, I was going nuts and he doesn’t you know, when you don’t have a man for your Guru anymore, he can be your buddy, he can be your friend, he can be your old uncle, he can be the—my goodness we take such good care of everyone—

SABIRA: You were broken hearted that Murshid wouldn’t meet Father.

SHEYLA: Because it was his glory, it would be to his glory and to his everlasting life, but he said—

SABIRA: Did you feel that way also? Were you broken hearted, whatever words—

DON: No, I didn’t feel one way or the other about it—about Murshid when he came back—

SHEYLA: I was disappointed that such a smart person on that plane preferred, knowing God’s will, really I knew God’s will was that he did exactly what Father said, tumbled head first “Sufi Sam first Sheyla?” “Yes, Father.”

SABIRA: Do you think that that is why he died?

SHEYLA: “Sufi Sam first, Sheyla?” “Yes, Father.”

SABIRA: Do you think that that is why he died of that—

SHEYLA: Yes!! Absolutely!! No one who even looks at Father can possibly die, you get a guarantee against sickness, old age and death—just knowing that Father lives at 59 Scott Street if you think—

SABIRA: Nobody ever dies anyway, I mean physical death—

SHEYLA: No, we are not giving up these bodies, this body is physically immortal; it’s just getting younger, and cuter, and darlinger. I am going to have a hundred babies with him. I am 43 years old and I have only just begun my life, because Father is eternal life—Ciranjiva means eternal life—

SABIRA: And he lives here now, in San Francisco?

SABIRA: Yes, he does, 59 Scott Street, anyone can go there. You can call or you cannot call, you can go over there and catch a hug from Father—and you’ll begin your life all over again too.

SABIRA: I have a living Master, so I don’t need another one, but….

SHEYLA: No, it isn’t a matter of Master, it is the matter that he is the Father of everything that lives, the trees, the breeze, the bees—and all he says is “Love me, please.” And he is so sweet and darling and lovable, and that is all he wants.

SABIRA: Did you bring him over, Don?

DON: No.

SABIRA: How did he get here? Money-wise and so forth.

DON: Lou Gottlieb was the main mover behind getting Father a ticket, and Father had some trouble getting out of India, and then Lou had to send him—but anyway Lou did all the financial arrangements—sent the tickets and the money and so forth. I was in a mental hospital at the time, actually I’d just gotten out of the hospital. I had come back with the message that I had met Father and found a tremendous resistance to people wanting to listen. What I have to say, it is really amazing, people don’t want to be proselytized, whatever that is.

SHEYLA: That’s right, they don’t.

DON: It’s been so ingrained—it’s even more strongly ingrained in a lot of people than their desire to know what God is, or to see or, experience God, “God, okay, it’s just that I don’t want to talk about it"—that kind of reaction, or like Sufi Sam had, a kind of evading or avoiding him almost. This surprised me—my brother did that, I couldn’t figure that out, because I listened to you and it is almost as if you are doing that, “I have a living Master, I don’t need another one.” But that indicates to me—as I said before, my search is ended, and it seems to me that you are saying pretty much the same thing—

SABIRA: That’s pretty much what I feel at this point in my life, but this tape is not about me.

DON: Okay, but the curiosity is the thing I am talking about. I  was going to Hawaii—to and from Hawaii—and came from Hawaii, and I was received back into Father’s graces after twenty months of exile, which is another story. And I sat up and spoke to my brother for hours into the night, and I couldn’t get any reaction out of him at all, and I finally said to him, “Look, what I am trying to tell you is that I have found God. I have found a perfect form of love, and I don’t understand that you don’t even have the curiosity to just want to see this man,” just to say like “Wow”—and it all had to do with his feeling about me, is where the message comes from, right? God does everything. Do you agree with me? Nobody does anything; God does everything. Yeah.

SABIRA: We are just channels, as far as I can see.

DON: For me to speak to you is like God to speak to you, right. I know I didn’t have any conception of this before I met Father—even with Murshid Sam I didn’t—but now I know that God is in every form, and if I say, “God, this person over here turned me on to the fact that God is in every form, that he lives in you, he lives in me, and we are all messengers——imparting our knowledge to each other, through a medium of maybe a tape recorder, or the greatest medium is TV now. We can get our message to millions of people—right at one time. Here we are speaking to how many? Maybe a few handful, but is important because, don’t let the search end, that’s what I’m trying to say. If you have a living Master—

SHEYLA: Introduce him to Father—

DON: That’s groovy.

BUZZ: Pir Vilayat is your master?

SHEYLA: It’s Wali Ali—

DON: I don’t know if I’ve seen him, I don’t know if I’ve ever been even introduced to him—

SHEYLA: That’s easy-breezy—we can introduce Wali Ali to Father easy.

DON: Sure, anytime.

SHEYLA: That’s a cinch—

DON: To get into feelings, I wonder how he feels? If he has a living Master? To get into feeling that you have a living Master, that’s really good, and the next step—I don’t know what the next step is. Ultimately, ultimately, you’ll recognize God, when you see Him, you will—and all we are saying is that you don’t have to die anymore—

SHEYLA: Nor cry—

DON: And when you do you will be pervaded with such a feeling of happiness. It’s like an ethereal thing, you all of a sudden understand the myth about death, and that is has ended, that it did exist and it was here for a purpose, just like night has a purpose. Consider death as the same thing, it's like night time, so there is day time, so there has to be night time. So there was life; there had to be death, but there was a period when that existed, now there is a period where that doesn’t exist anymore.

SABIRA: Did your time in the hospital have anything to do with Sam?

DON: No.

SABIRA: None of these feelings?

DON: No, it had all to do with Father, as I was saying before, I was trying to speak this to people and they didn’t want to hear it. And the more they didn’t want to hear it, the more I wanted to make them hear it.

SABIRA: Sure—

DON: That was when I was hitting people, and grabbing people by the lapels, so finally, I just wore myself out, and I couldn’t talk about him anymore. I couldn’t even remember him anymore.

SABIRA: Yeah.

SHEYLA: Murshid wants to be known as the Guru who sent three people to personally receive God.

DON: The meeting of the East and the West. He really set up the meeting between the East and the West—

SHEYLA: He really did—

DON: Which was Father and his family, and in the West which was Sheyla and Buzz and I and our family, the chosen family. Which we came right back to bring the message back to our family, and the first thing that Father wanted when he met us was to take us all, and he did take all five of us to meet his family.

SHEYLA: And they didn’t freak out to meet us.

DON: Then we got there he said, “Here they are, see I’ve been telling you for 2 1/2 years that they were coming, and here they are.”

SHEYLA: His wife and children and mother.

SABIRA: Have you been able to forgive Murshid Sam?

SHEYLA: God is forgiveness. To know Father is to become one with the faculty that is called forgiveness—and to understand forgiveness you give something—I give him lots of praise, Sufi Sam.

BUZZ: It was right after we had met Father and attended the spiritual Summit Conference that Thomas Merton who had just come out of a seminary Jesuit retreat there or a monastery and left that conference to attend one in Thailand and was electrocuted. It was just a matter of a day or two after he left our presence—

SABIRA: He knew Father.

BUZZ: And, yeah, he was really something else.

SHEYLA: He was with us and had met Father—

BUZZ: Yeah, he met Father and spent some time with him and spent some time with us, too—we were really lucky to be with him for a little while.

SHEYLA: The Holy Order of Mans was Murshid's—do you see them? He is part of them, they call him Dr. Sam.

SABIRA: Yes, right.

SHEYLA: Now they come to Father’s a lot, and they are around our block and they love him—they love Father a terrific lot. Because really they are the Sufi Christians, they have been into every Scripture, and they see that the same truth is in every Scripture.

SABIRA: Yes, we see a lot of them, in fact they are going to be putting out the book, “This is the New Age in Person,” but it is going to be re-edited and they are going to work on that with us and we see a lot of them.

SHEYLA: So we are all one family, right?

DON: Is that the book you are working on now with these tapes?

SABIRA: No, this is a book that Sam—

DON: This is a biography, you said.

SABIRA: The book we are working on now is a biography; the book I just mentioned were Sam’s lectures at the holy Order of Mans on the Corinthians—

SHEYLA: How nice.

SABIRA: Right, and it has already been printed, but it is now out of print, and the holy Order of Mans—

SHEYLA: It means that family is everything and Murshid definitely wants that message to be completely gotten across because he came back—he is embodying Buzz—and Buzz stays at home, makes a home, and takes care of his family, do you see? And so he became the son, he chose Buzz to be his dad, anyway—

SABIRA: It is interesting that one time Wali Ali said in a letter, I’m sure he wouldn’t mind me repeating it, “I’m going to go upstairs to the only world that I really know, that of my children.”

SHEYLA: Who said that?

SABIRA: Wali Ali. So he isn’t just a Guru-holic.

SHEYLA: Good, good!

DON/SHEYLA: We’re all workaholics—we’re all running too much—

SABIRA: Did Sandy know Murshid?

SHEYLA: Yes.

DON: Sure.

SABIRA: Why wasn’t she in on the taping?

BUZZ: She’s still a skeptic, but she was there through everything, so—

DON: Sandy brought us all together—she goes back.

SABIRA: Is she here now?

DON: I think so.

SABIRA: Can we get her story, shouldn’t we get her story?

DON: Sure, if you want to.

SABIRA: If she wants to.

DON: Right, if she wants to.

[End of side two: reel one.]

SHEYLA: Murshid said to me so many, many times, because he wanted me to be sure that all the Sufis know this—this is very grown up stuff, whether you call it information or what—I call it knowledge, of Sufi Sam—when you write a biography about a man, you are writing about his personal life, and no one got so personal with Sufi Sam as I did. And in a world where everyone was calling him, “Oh what a creepy old man, oh, h’m’m’m’m, h’m, h’m—he rose above it all and became a teacher of self-respect and sweetness and clean living in the world of filthy hippies. That was all he had on his mind—cleaning the house perfectly, and minding the babies perfectly, and going to the store and selecting everything—just the same as Father is doing today. And about his body, he said, “Look, look at the body that God gave me, I even freaked my parents out when I was born, it freaked everyone out—it always freaked everyone out, and I never had a nice time with girls; I couldn’t get a girl to fuck me and I know that God means for people to eat and sleep and make love and live a family life, I know that.”

SABIRA: So why wasn’t he allowed to have one?

SHEYLA: The same as Jesus didn’t. It just wasn’t in the Plan, it was not in the Planning—he was given that body, he was given that to do, and he said, “Don’t bother  I will die for Father, I will prove that Father is right, that running workaholic Gurus will fall head first—I’ll go first”

SABIRA: Sam said this to you?

SHEYLA: Yes he did.

SABIRA: He said, “I will go first?”

SHEYLA: Yes he did—and he said, “Please understand that," and “I want to be like Buzz, I want to have a healthy, beautiful body that girls want to fuck; I want to have a wife and a true life and a home life and everything.” You understand that Sheyla, you understand that Sabira, and “I will come back as an American baby with parents who love and worship it.” And so there is this little Sufi Sam—Samuel Inayat Rowell, and worlds will come and see this is Buzz’s baby.

And guess what else? He was so intensely, he really wanted me to understand this about him, every intimate—the most intimate feelings about himself, and I spent lots and lots of time with him and he would stay overnight at my house, Every. Wednesday night in Tam Valley I had this house—and we would have a Sufi meeting at my house, every Wednesday night. All Sufis remember those beautiful nights. And we served tea and cookies, and the children would come from Olompali, where Don was babysitting my children so that I could be with Sufi Sam, and get ready to go to India to meet Father, and Murshid would stay—oh, as many children as wanted to attend the Sufi meeting would stay overnight with me, and I could make a big fuss of them the next day and play with them—and that many children came from the ranch each Wednesday night. And Murshid and I would play with them, and Buzz and Shirin would bring the children that would stay overnight too, so we had like a little family night every week.

SABIRA: Buzz was living with Shirin at that time?

SHEYLA: Yeah. And then, Murshid—everyone had gone to bed, and late at night we would play classical on the radio or the record player. He would sit down and he would hold my hand and we would drink some wine and we would have some tea, and he would always talk about God, and said, “Don’t bother that I will give this ugly, creepy, dwarfy form for God; I will come back as an American baby .” And he came as Buzz’s baby. This is the absolute truth, and Murshid wants it in his book, do you see? This biography has to be the whole personal truth in the story—

SABIRA: Absolutely, that’s why we are doing it—

SHEYLA: And he was very romantic. We were very romantic together, and who did I have, do you see? I was chasing after Don McCoy who had a million girl friends, and Sufi Sam would just hold on to me and say, “Don’t, bother, don’t cry, don’t bother, do you see? And so he would like just consume my whole being with God the Beloved. “Take God as your Beloved. Don will become perfect like God and then He will be your beloved.” And that is what happened. Until Don became perfect and I could see that he was God, I couldn’t love him.

SABIRA: So you had to become perfect in order to see his perfection?

SHEYLA: That’s right. And Father made us both perfect; Sufi Sam sent us to meet Father, that is the whole point, the whole beautiful point, and this Shirin will tell you and Pir Vilayat will tell you. Pir Vilayat will tell you—he had a terrible sex life and home life and marriage, and poured his heart out to me when we first met at our ranch that weekend. At that very weekend, by the grace of Don McCoy and God, he gets this beautiful Jamila.

SABIRA: Is that where he met Jemila?

SHEYLA: That’s where he met Jemila. So Pir Vilayat had to stop running, do you see? Why should he lose them? It's called trashing people.

SABIRA: Maybe it is all part of that Plan, the Plan that they have—

SHEYLA: Anyone that can tell a great—but now it is time for me to stop them as the mother—to stop them. I can stop Wali Ali.

SABIRA: I don’t think you’re going to be able to. They have a certain message they’ve got to do—

SHEYLA: Yes, but you’ve got to—

SABIRA: Pir Vilayat included, he runs all the time.

SHEYLA: That has already happened in this tape—it is in the tape. It is called gene bombardment, do you see? And when I say that we are the first American couple to reach enlightenment, that means we know how to live perfectly, and help others to live perfectly. Praise God that we’ve found it. And so our loving message is Hi to Jessica and those babies, and to Wali Ali and the babies, and his wife Jessica.

SABIRA: At this point her name is Khadija.

SHEYLA: Good. Khadija.

SABIRA: Alright, that’s great.

Interview with Murshida Vera Van Voris—February 20-1972

Note: At the time of this interview, Murshida Vera was a Sheikha in the Sufi Order and refers to herself as such during the course of the interview.

WALI ALI: All right, now let’s begin at the beginning. When did you first meet Samuel Lewis?

MURSHIDA VERA: This is Sheikha Vera Van Voris telling you some of the memories that I have of our beloved Murshid Samuel Lewis. It was in the spring of 1937 that I met a very inspiring woman who was then secretary of the Index of American Design, the head of which was Mrs. Armstrong—Nora Adams Armstrong, the wife of the great New York illustrator and publisher, Sidney Armstrong. She had just returned from work with the Navajo Indian children that she had devoted most of her life to, and had started out under government tutelage as the head of the new Index of American Design. I was working across the hall in the photographic department and saw Hazel Armstrong every day. We had an immediate attunement and liking for each other, and it wasn’t long before she invited me to her apartment, which she shared with the Khalif a, Dr. Davida Herrick. Davida Herrick and Hazel Armstrong were of the same generation as our Murshid. And they had grown up in the Sufi work, living in the old Khankah on Franklin Street in San Francisco and later at Kaaba Allah at Fairfax. It was at her home that I first met up with the work of Inayat Khan, his music and a few recordings which we then had and felt deeply attuned to it, because I had had early psychic experiences with Murshid Inayat Khan, as a very young child, five years of age. And I had never seen him in the flesh or knew that he lived in the flesh; and when I saw pictures of him in Hazel Armstrong’s music room, it just turned me on. I was thrilled to know that this person really lived and what he was and what he stood for and immediately was attracted because of that to the Sufi literature and the Sufi work. Hazel Armstrong started me out in the Gathas and the preparation to become a Sufi. My young husband, Don Clark, whose Sufi name was Arjuna, also was active with me in preparing for the Sufi work. But, because of my experience and background, Hazel soon felt that she couldn’t handle me. She would just tune out or go into a state of questioning me, and I wasn’t getting anything out of it. She said, "Be patient. Your teacher is going to be here in a few days." But the few days went into many weeks. But finally one day Samuel Lewis returned from his trip, and she set a specific time and date for me to come to the Sufi headquarters on Sutter Street to meet him. I came in, not knowing what to expect. I hadn’t any idea—no one had told me a thing about Samuel, who he was or what he was or anything. So it was a great surprise. But the minute I saw him we recognized each other immediately and went towards each other and enfolded each other in our arms, and both of us were overwhelmed with emotion. It was as though we had been separated for centuries and all at once we again met. And neither one of us could put it into words or explain it. Perhaps I can’t explain it to this day, but I’m sure that we knew each other in India and that we had been very closely aligned, perhaps in a brother-sister relationship—at any rate, in a blood relationship where we were of the same generation and very close in our thoughts and our love for each other. He initiated me immediately following this, without any speech or explanations. Our meetings were always emotional: we were either weeping or very joyous or dancing or—we would go into this state immediately we met, and that set the key for the whole thing. The whole visit would be on that immediate note that we felt when we first met each other or sat before each other. Samuel immediately took Arjuna and I to Fairfax. We were working during the week. I was then starting to paint for the Index of American Design and had to be there part of the week; but I spent perhaps four days a week at Kaaba Allah and three in the city where I had to be at the old Washington School Headquarters. Every weekend on Friday evenings all of the Sufis got on the ferry boat and we went over to Fairfax.

And we met in what was called the lower house on the property, in the biggest room on the property, second to the chapel. This room was kept bare to the center; it had a large fireplace; it had a dining alcove, and a large kitchen led off of this room also. We all sat in a circle—the older mureeds sat in chairs; all of the younger ones sat on cushions on the floor and Samuel would always see that I was opposite to him. He wanted me in front of him. I might be across an auditorium or across a room, but he would always give me the eye—and we had excellent mental telepathy—and I knew what he wanted me to do. He would give me only a little nod of the head, but I knew I was sitting in a wrong position; and I’d move until he bowed his head forward and I knew I was where he wanted me to be. This, I think, had something to do with polarities; that there was a positive-negative polarity between us, and if we were in alignment whatever happened would not be a direct attack on him. It would be put into a Kemal state where the individual could not continue that attack. In my first meetings with Samuel in the Sufi Order, I realized that he was having an inner battle with the older mureeds. When I say, "older mureeds," I mean those who had been the young disciples of Inayat Khan at Suresnes, and later in New York and the Cleveland Center and finally in San Francisco where they settled at Kaaba Allah under Murshida Rabia Martin’s tutelage. And that was a Khankah—the so-called upper house—the house that burned was the house that the older mureeds lived in. They were all grey-haired or white-haired. And I was a young woman when I came into the Order. They lived up until the time of the Meher Baba entrance on the scene, and then they seemed to die one after the other. They just all left this plane around the same time, and those Sufis are all buried in a Sufi plot in a cemetery in San Rafael, I believe.

To continue, Samuel and I had a great deal in common in the dance. I had danced for ten years, and we did a lot of dancing together at a time when we didn’t have dances as you have today. The dervish dance did not come in yet, was not popular in this area. But we danced, with each other. Samuel would just simply stand up in the circle and lift up his hands and start, and I would stand up, and we would dance. And everyone else sat and looked at us, which we weren’t conscious of, I guess. But, looking back on it, I wondered why everyone else didn’t get up and join us. But we didn’t invite them; they were probably too flipped by what we were doing.

But in these days, the older mureeds would say that Samuel was a canary bird. And he was hopping up and down on a perch and getting nowhere. Well, they simply did not understand the dances of Shiva which, of course, took in that type of leg and arm movement. And it was what we were—the meditation I was picking up psychically was that. And I never asked Samuel, but I’m sure that’s what he was picking up too. At any rate, that was the type of dancing we did. We had three groups there: this group in the twenties, the very older mureeds, and the very young mureeds.

WALI ALI: Did Murshida Martin live at Kaaba Allah?

MURSHIDA VERA: Not at this time. She had lived at Kaaba Allah in the early days. And she rode horseback up on those hills and picked out that property and developed it right from scratch. And then, gradually as the work went along, they financed these buildings. The older mureeds put a lot of money into this. They put their fortunes and their lives into it. And they deserved the love and respect of the younger group. But, unfortunately, they put up a block against the younger generation’s growth and tried to stick to the old formulas that had come from Suresnes, I guess—I don’t know where this had come from. But they wanted to sit in a room and they wanted to be preached at or talked to; they didn’t want to experience. We wanted to experience; we wanted to dance and to paint and to work on the flowers and on the gardens. Everything we wanted to do we wanted to be active in doing. And the older mureed had a different concept of getting the work. Now, I’m not downing this, because with these older mureeds…

Previous to my becoming a Sheikha, Samuel took me into what was sort of an entrance hall between the front and the back of the upper house. And this room had all of the files—locked files—with the entire Sufi papers—everything that Inayat Khan had written—and most precious materials, all of which burned in the fire later. The library was there, a large Sufi library which took in all four walls. And this was a place that the older mureeds loved to read in and to work in. And every afternoon at 3:00 they opened their bedroom doors, which led off of a long hall from this library, and each one sat in his room with his Sufi book; and each one read aloud from the Sufi books, whatever he was currently on. The droning here was like a hive of bees, each one doing his own work on a different level.

Samuel and I would come up to the library, plug our ears, and march through as fast as we could out to the other part of the house. The upper house at Kaaba Allah had a ground floor entrance in the center that you went up to on one little flight of stairs. Off of this were some outdoor screened rooms that various mureeds slept in. Then you went into an area that had a little sitting room and the small apartment and kitchen that belonged to Hazel Armstrong’s mother. And she was the traveling companion of Rabia Martin on all of her trips to South America and other parts of the world to spread the Message.

SHIRIN: I have two questions: first, were any of the buildings on the property when it was bought?

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know that, because when I came the buildings were already there and in excellent condition. The buildings that were later furnished along the fence on the adjoining property opposite the opposite fence to where the rock is, were long low buildings. And they were right on the borderline of the property and were bought at the time of Meher Baba’s expected visit and were furnished for him, but occupied by an attorney that Hazel Armstrong was serious about, was going with.

WALI ALI: When was this?

MURSHIDA VERA: When did Meher Baba come into this picture?

WALI ALI: I’m not sure; sometime in the 1940’s, wasn’t it?

MURSHIDA VERA: I would have to look that up. It seems to me that it was at the end of the war years, towards the end of the war, that he came in. Because I was living with Mary Chase, a Sufi, who had been the housekeeper at Kaaba Allah; she and her mother had been cook and housekeeper. And Mary Chase came to work and do war work in San Francisco, and lived with me on Telegraph Hill in my apartment. And it was at this time that they were doing all this refurbishing over in Kaaba Allah for Meher Baba and trying very hard to get me active in it. I couldn’t see it at all.

WALI ALI: I don’t want to take up that topic directly. What I’m interested in now is, let’s say, the history of Kaaba Allah.

MURSHIDA VERA: All right. Now, I do not know what happened before I came at Kaaba Allah, except that it was going full force when I entered it, as a young woman. The rose garden was as large as this room, and we were trying to expand that to three times that amount, which eventually happened.

SHIRIN: Did it seem as if the buildings were made for the purposes that they were put to use, or…

MURSHIDA VERA: I suppose they were, by that generation. The chapel was on the second floor, above this apartment of Hazel’s mother. You went up another flight of stairs; to your left as you went up that flight of stairs would have been the library I described to you, and a long hail with the older mureeds’ rooms off of that, and the bathroom facilities. To the right was the large chapel. The chapel, again, was occupied by chairs in rows, and we never were allowed to open that up and dance or do any of that work there. That was always done in the lower house, in what was the meeting room or open living room. Although Samuel and I danced many times alone in the chapel, but never with the group. The prayers, of course, were always said there, and the speakers would speak in front of the altar there. Healing services were held there. I recall only once that we had Universal Worship there. Universal Worship was always given in the Sutter Street headquarters in San Francisco. And most of the lectures and meetings were given there.

SHIRIN: Are any of these buildings still existing in Fairfax.

MURSHIDA VERA: The lower house and all of these little shacks that were refurbished for Meher Baba are. That property was bought at that time with the money from Murshida Duce and the princess, other people interested in Meher Baba.

WALI ALI: The period that we’re talking about—your entrance on the scene—is about 1937, and then when World War II came, I suppose the picture changed at Kaaba Allah.

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, it changed—well, I don’t know what happened at Kaaba Allah because we were all pulled out of the Khankah life to serve. The young men went to war immediately: Arjuna and probably four or five others; Dr. Tuffey immediately went into the medical work, as did Dr. Davida Herrick; Hazel Armstrong moved out to the end of Monterey Boulevard and opened a knitting shop, where she had little Sufi meetings that I could attend to. We were all working different hours; and, as I went into the Naval Training School at Bethlehem Steel as an artist, my life was twelve hours a day. Our lives changed drastically because of the war.

WALI ALI: What we want to talk about first is the period from 1937 up to the change that took place at the war. So we’ll concentrate first on this period in detail.

MURSHIDA VERA: All right. Perhaps I should talk some more about what happened then at Kaaba Allah.

WALI ALI: Let me ask you a couple of questions, and then when you start talking, you can answer them in the course of your talk. About how many people were involved in the Sufi work at that time? How many young mureeds? What was a typical day like at Kaaba Allah? And was Murshida Duce at Kaaba Allah? What did Murshid Samuel Lewis do during the day at Kaaba Allah?

MURSHIDA VERA: Murshida Duce was never at Kaaba Allah. Murshida Duce was a secret mureed of Rabia Martin. She went to Berkeley to train her. We knew that; she told a few of us—she told me, anyhow—that she was going every week to train this very wealthy woman who refused to be known in the Order, who did not, for political or financial reasons, wish to be known as a Sufi. Yet she was giving her private lessons in Berkeley. Now, we didn’t know how serious this was, or what she had in mind. Evidently she had in mind from that point that Murshida Duce would take over her work, though she was at that time in good health. There was no reason to feel that she would later have cancer in her shoulder, to my knowledge. But she trained her secretly. How much of this she told Samuel I do not know. Things were going along very well.

At the time when she had the cancer in her shoulder—this must have been in 1945, because my little daughter was about a year old, she was just toddling around at that time—was when Murshid Martin came to see me. And she then had large pads and bandages on her shoulder. And she visited me in Glen Park in my little cottage and told me about Meher Baba and told me how much I was needed in the work and that she wanted me to come back and serve in this work; and told me of the superiority of this man, of the fact that he was a seventh plane master, and our Murshid Inayat Khan was somewhere low on the scale in comparison to this great man. Well, you can imagine that for a person who had met Inayat Khan in the spirit body at five years of age, it was a tremendous guidance in my entire life work before I ever knew that he lived on this plane; I could not accept this gradation of mastery which was foreign to all which we had been taught in the Sufi Order. That is, that we are in tune with the hierarchy, that the hierarchy has to do with the heart attunement with the master and his master and his master before him. One does not step up by staircase levels, but one attunes by the heart and the spirit; and this puts us in the states which we are in, and this gives us the initiations which we have attained before our master ever puts the sign on our forehead or our heart. And immediately something closed for me. I simply could not accept it, though I tried hard to be polite and loving and attuned to her, which I always was.

At Kaaba Allah, when Murshida Martin was on the property, things ran in a very routine manner, as routine as one could make Samuel and the younger mureeds. We would have about 25 young ones—I mean teenagers—that Samuel and I would be in charge of: I in the girls’ apartments, he in the boys’ apartments. But this didn’t work out too well, because we were climbing all over the place. We would be having meditations at 12:00 at night or 2:00 in the morning in the girls’ rooms. (laughs ) The older mureeds up above could look down and see those lights and look in the windows; their hair was standing on end, and they were sure that Samuel and I were leading them down a devious sexual path, which of course was not true. It was all full of joy and full of fun, and there was never any of that. The great tangle of love-life problems came with the people of my generation. Every Sufi was in love, and no Sufi was in love with one person. Everybody was in love with at least three: This entanglement never brought on any extreme jealousies among the men; they seemed always to be able to get along well and work together and not have any terrible arguments or fights or feelings against one another. But with the women, it was another thing. The girls became very serious on this, and they would study the Sufi work very closely to back up all of their love notes with quotes from Murshid—and Murshid, I’m sure, never knew he could be quoted in so many different ways!

WALI ALI: By Murshid you mean?

MURSHIDA VERA: Inayat Khan! All of this Samuel seemingly paid no attention to, as if he didn’t see it and he just didn’t recognize it at all. Everyone’s life went their own way. He interrupted and involved himself with all of them with love and understanding and criticized none of them.

WALI ALI: Now, these teenagers, about twenty or so people involved, did they live at Kaaba Allah?

MURSHIDA VERA: No, they came on weekends only, and they were children of mureeds. They were all children of mureeds. I don’t ever recall anyone being there that was not related to a Sufi.

WALI ALI: Had they received initiation, these young people?

MURSHIDA VERA: At that time, I don’t think any of them had been given Bayat, but I really don’t know. If so, Samuel had done it privately. We took turns with these young people; all was not group work. When you came in there would be a retreat schedule posted on a doorpost of every room in both buildings, so that wherever you entered, on every level, you could read it and see what was going to happen at a certain hour in that building. And the first thing you did after you put your baggage down was to go and find out what was happening in the upper house and what was happening in the lower house.

But, regardless of what you wanted to do, or chose to do for that weekend, you were expected to rise when Samuel gave the call and to get yourself to the chapel, and in a hurry. So most of us just put on our Sufi robes and our sandals and went up there. And, by the way, I see something happening now that Samuel was dead against at that time, and that was that never did you expose your feet to concrete. He felt and preached to us all, "You are losing your magnetism when you put your feet on concrete or on asphalt, but take off your shoes whenever you can get on wood, and on earth, and on grass. " Which we did. We all did our practices on the Sufi paths and in the houses. We wore tobbies then a great deal, and they were not as popular as they became as beachwear a later.

So we have all come in now, wandered in, some of us on Friday night, some of us very early Saturday morning, but the younger mureeds always come on Friday. As soon as we can get away from work we hie it down to the ferry boat and over to Kaaba Allah. The minute we get off the train, off with our shoes. And we walk on the dirt borders, seeing as how we were never supposed to walk on the concrete. But we could manage that way to get the biggest part of the way up to Kaaba Allah without it. But Samuel would always be on the upper terrace looking down: "You’re doing it again!" when he’d see us in bare feet coming up the asphalt on the last turn of the road. He didn’t want us to have our feet on this pavement at all. So he would come up, and you’d run up the stairs, thinking you were going to see Samuel, but you didn’t. He’d disappeared. You would just see him through the trees and the bushes, waving his hand at you, and then he was gone, like magic. But you wouldn’t see him then until dinnertime.

We had a big gong, on the front of that building, which was always struck by Hazel Armstrong; and when you heard that gong, you got yourself in your robe and came down to dinner. It was the day of what’s called hot pants now, of course; we’d all be in our hot pants when we were there, with as little clothes as possible, which really shocked the older mureeds. And they made it so that you had to wear your robe when you came to the dinner table. They were not about to see you like that. So we early learned to have our Sufi robes handy—there was a big banister on the porch at the upper house, and we’d all throw our robes over it.

WALI ALI: Did everyone have a robe?

MURSHIDA VERA: Everyone had a robe.

SHIRIN: Were they the same?

MURSHIDA VERA: Peach color; apricot was the great Sufi color used during Inayat Khan’s days at Suresnes, and he wore a great deal of the apricot, and we all copied that.

SHIRIN: You had a choice of making your own robe?

MURSHIDA VERA: I can’t remember that you made your first robe. A robe was always given to you by your initiator; when you were initiated, you were given a robe. Sometimes it was very poor material, sometimes it was patched. I’ll have to bring over my Murshid’s shawl and show you what was given to me when I became a Sheikha. And it was full of holes and gold wool, and it had the Indian embroidery on it, that tarnished years before, and nothing can look so bad as tarnished Indian embroidery. And I looked at it, and I thought, "Oh my, how am I going to stop the moths?" And Samuel, who was present, laughed; and as soon as the initiation was over, he took me aside. He said, "I know, you were worried about that sieve, weren’t you? (laughs) And I said, "Frankly, yes. How do you stop the moths?" He said, "Don’t worry," he says, "you fight them with a needle." I said, "How?" He said, "By the time you patch all of those holes, all of your sins will be worn out. You will have worked them out." (laughs) I said, "You’ve got to be kidding!" "No, I’m not kidding," he said, "the ancient Sufis believed that as you darn the holes in your robes, you expiated the sins of your life before your initiation—your lives, not your life, but your lives before." And I said, "Oh, Samuel, you don’t believe in reincarnation!" He said, "I can only quote you what my Murshid taught me. Reincarnation is a fact, but we do not teach it!”

(Laughter)

So I darned, and when you see it, you’ll see I’ve still got a lot of holes to catch up on, so my sins are not expiated, perhaps not in this lifetime anyhow (laughs). However, we didn’t wear these ritual robes then, but we wore the light cover; they didn’t have nylons in those days, they had rayons—some time I’ll bring you the first one that I wore over there as a young woman. But many of them were built very much like the Japanese kimonos. Some of the girls wore the Japanese kimonos, the light silk ones. The young girls—thirteen, fourteen-year old kids seemed to like those. The ones that were in their early twenties always wore the Sufi garment, which was all in one piece and went over the head. And it was done on yardage that had a little slit at the neck, and then you’d hold out your arms, you would simply sew from here down to the bottom. The type of thing they wear today for lounging? That was the type of thing that we liked, because you could just shove it over your head.

SHIRIN: Oh, a kaftan. So it was like a triangle.

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, that idea, because you could slip it over your head quickly. And that’s what we wore. But the ones that were given for initiation usually opened down the front. If Murshida Martin gave them to you, they had openings down the front. And all those that she brought from India and from the great holy places of the Sufi poets which she visited in her lifetime, and they were given to her, had a great deal of Sufi mantrams in the Urdu stamped or painted down the shoulders, running down the shoulders, over the breast and down to the knees. They never wrote anything below the knees. That, no doubt, meant something, but I didn’t figure out what. But that type of robe was famous for her generation; the older mureeds wore that type that came from India or Persia and no doubt had been given to them by their initiators.

But, anyhow, all the robes would be hung on this big banister, and when you heard that gong you ran like mad and got that on you and ran down the path and down the stairways, which were winding, until you got to the lower house porch, where you wiped your feet before you came in. There were heavy mats there, hand-woven mats, and you always wiped your feet before you came in. Because the floor of the meeting hall was carpeted—and so we would always wipe the dust off our feet.

Then you came in, and you came to the table, and you stood, much as you do at the Catholic and Anglican retreat houses. You did not sit for the blessing. You stood behind your chair until the Murshid entered. If it was Murshida Martin, she entered first, and then Samuel entered. He was a Khalif then, and he sat at the foot of the table and she sat at the head. If she was not there, Murshid Samuel sat at the head of the table. They were long refectory tables, with straight-backed chairs, carved-back chairs and you stood behind your chair until the blessing was given. And a mantram was also given for that day, which was usually a reprimand. It seemed to us, the young ones, that we were always being reprimanded, that whenever we’d gotten off too wildly we were given a quotation to cool us down. That may not have been so, but we felt it was given with that in mind.

When we sat down, Samuel would soften this; when the conversation began, he would always soften this with his own talk and interpretation which might be about what the Chinese are doing this week in Chinatown in San Francisco or, "I saw somebody roller skating backwards at the rink last night." And they would go like this; they would be completely disjointed stories that you’d think, "What in the world is he talking about?" And then when the silent parts came and people were eating, you’d be trying to mull over in your mind, "What was he thinking? What was he talking about?" (laughs) And then, bang! you had it! It was always something for the younger generation. And then, as soon as we got out of there, we’d say, "Hey! Did you understand what he said?" And they’d compare notes, and sure enough, the biggest amount of us had all got the message, which was so hidden in this jumble that the older generation never knew what he was talking about (laughs). And we felt very wise and it sort of encouraged us.

Now, your duties were given to you when you came. The retreat lists told you what room you would have. Your name would be on there and you would be assigned to a certain room. The first part of the years there I worked with the younger kids, and I was always assigned to the girls’ quarters, which was in the lower house on the second floor. This was a three- story building, the lower house was, and still is. The last time I was there, it was still very much the way it was at the beginning. It had this outdoor porch faced on the garden; behind that was the big meeting room, the dining area and the kitchen. You went up a staircase to the top floor: that floor had nothing but bathrooms, the housekeeper’s apartment, at the end of that hall: open rooms, and bathrooms on that whole level, for the young girls.

WALI ALI: Was the housekeeper a mureed?

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh yes, everybody there was an initiate. Then if you wanted to go to the bottom floor—because this was built on a hillside—you would have to walk around the side of the building. And there was an entrance at the lower end, where the driveway to the garages were. You would come off of that driveway and come up to this back entrance. This was an apartment where either an older mureed lived in or Samuel lived in. A lot of the time, as I remember, that was his apartment; and no one, unless you were called there, ever was allowed in that apartment. I was in there only once, and it was a most unhappy experience which I’ll tell you later, about when Samuel lived there.

I first met Murshida after she came back from her South American—and she was a square woman who was like a block, to me. And she was strong-looking, masculine-looking, a deeply mental woman who had striven hard for her early learning. It came in a different way than it came to this younger generation. It came intellectually and by mental discipline And her husband was an importer of oriental art goods, and she had an endless amount of money to devote to the work. She was completely and absolutely devoted to Inayat Khan. When she went to Suresnes, she was so different from all the other mureeds, who were many of the others who became Murshidas following her. You see, she was the first Murshida. Inayat Khan made her a Murshida before any of the others. And no doubt she deserved it, because she worked so hard to attain the entire teaching, intellectually. And she had the money to put the centers into work. And her devotion, heart devotion, was so sincere, could not have been denied. But her personality and her outer approaches were intellectual.

Now, in the days of Murshida Goodenough and Murshida Green, these were women of extreme spiritual qualities, esoteric qualities, deep, always in some state of the inner planes. And the young Dutch sisters, who spread the work in Holland, were very young mureeds at that time, and Inayat Khan gave them a great deal of the esoteric work. Then he sent Fatha Engle and Mary Kushi, who was made a Sheikha by Maheboob Khan, I believe, and who became my last teacher in the later days— after the Kaaba Allah and Meher Baba affair broke—then she became my guide and teacher for a period of time. Not exempting Samuel, but our paths went different ways at that time for a while. Anyhow, you can understand that when she came to Kaaba Allah, she built everything the way Suresnes was built. She planned everything, and everything was run there the way Suresnes was run during the early days of Inayat Khan's work.

Samuel had not been to Suresnes, and his reception with Murshid Inayat Khan, despite the things that I read in the latter days—I do not believe this was true—because of everything that Samuel ever talked to me about. And he had had also an experience like I had had; we had both had extreme experiences on the spirit plane with Inayat Khan. Samuel, in his early days, now, at the time when he was gardener and Major Do and second Murshid Khalif and manager of Kaaba Allah during Murshida Martin’s many travels, was very much receiving on the spiritual plane. His messages, his commentaries, the work which he gave to us, was all dictated from the spirit. And he was down in the little apartment down below, and you’d hear that little type-writer going faster than anyone could ever type, and the reams of material that was coming out—to every level, to every age level, to every interest on Kaaba Allah: from things like how to ride horseback and meditate, to thinks like how to do the Dervish dances on roller skates or on ice skates, or how to hike and, while hiking, heal oneself, to climbing trees, and retreats from the world in treetops for young people—fantastic subject matter! Such breadth of view—of course, a human being could not do it!

Samuel was not a human being, and anyone who tries to approach him that way starts off on the wrong foot, because you find him Yiddish, you find him pushy, you find him insulting, you find him over-egotized, you find him a man who’s going to plow through whether you like it or not. But if you meet him and looked at him as in the spirit, then you would understand that here is a man who has a work to do, in a very short lifetime, a tremendous work to do. He has to meet all generations, all age levels, on their level, never on his own—this he would never do. His teaching, in his spiritual life, he met you on your own level—and sometimes that level was a low level, in those days of great poverty in the depth of the Depression. Whatever that level was, Samuel could ignore your being hungry. You could come there, as many times we did, without food all day—Samuel would never see that you got something to eat. He would take you on a hike, and he would pick an herb here to give you and an herb there to give you, and he would talk to you. And soon you ended up on the rock, and you sat down with him. And then he would transcend you out of the flesh totally and into the spiritual body. And you would have the most marvelous experience with him—some spoken, some meditating, some merely holding his hand and watching the sunset from the rock. And you would come down totally filled. You would not feel hungry, you would not feel weak, you would not feel depleted, and you would feel a fulfillment of all three of your bodies, the subtle body, the spiritual body, the mental body—complete harmony. Then you entered for your evening meal, and you weren’t even thinking about physical food. And this was not only my experience, because I speak to you as a person who had a great deal of inner experience; but it was the experience of quite earthy people, who also at that time were hungry.

Murshida Martin was extremely generous—those of us who did not have the money were never kept away from Kaaba Allah. When you were assigned to your room from the retreat sheet on the front of the doorsills, you then went to your room. Right inside of your room, on the door, would be posted you own instructions, which would tell you what you were expected to do. You were not asked what to do, you were assigned. And Samuel made these assignment. But they were—you just wondered, How did he ever choose these? Because many of us he hadn’t seen since Wednesday, when we would meet at the Sutter Street headquarters for an evening of whatever he was teaching at that time—and yet he hit it right on the nail for everyone. If you were physically low that week, he would have you assigned to working in the earth. If you had a whole lot of sexual energy that you didn’t know where to place, you’d be working on the rock pile, digging up bamboo, or planting fences. He had it planned for you so that you used your energies in a way that you would gain something in the spiritual body, no matter what: if you were using the physical, you still would end up in the spiritual body by Sunday night, I can promise you!

And there was great work going on at Kaaba Allah. We were leveling the ground where the clotheslines were. This was the only flat area on the grounds, and it was adjoining the fences where the little low buildings which were later bought for Meher Baba were located, that border of the property. And we had leveled that. Now, this was a great place where we could do our dancing and our games. We played lots of games with these younger children. Samuel's games were original and they were always in the circle, and they were always big group things that everybody did. Everybody was pulled in. No matter what age you were, if you went down there, you got hauled into it and you had a great old time. And we took down the clotheslines, which made the old ladies roar, and wrapped them on the poles so that we had even a bigger area. And it was as large as this whole house, this area, that had hard-packed dirt, and it was lovely—bare feet felt great in it. So this is where we had slot of our playing went on there.

But then the upper gardens, above the rock and below the rock, were heavily overgrown with bay trees and grass and bamboo, scattered bamboo. And Samuel decided to transplant it; we would dig up the bamboo, which was everywhere, and get it along that border, so that there would be privacy from private homes above there that could look down on it. He always felt a fear of these outside people looking at us, watching us—an apprehension, not a fear, an apprehension. And I think it was preliminary to the burning of Kaaba Allah, when those were the people who made the great attacks on him and claimed he had set fire to the upper house.

WALI ALI: When did Kaaba Allah burn?

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know that year. I wish I knew the year that it burned. I was traveling and returned from New York to hear that it had burned, and Samuel was in great disgrace and had been really pushed out of the Order. And everyone was furious; all the older mureeds were furious with him.

WALI ALI: Did people really think that he burned the place?

MURSHIDA VERA: Well, these people claimed—he was the only person on the property. And these people who were on adjoining property there were friends of Murshida Martin from the early days, when they bought there and built there at the same time. They claimed that they saw him enter that lower room. There was a great oak tree that grew there, huge oak tree, and it went up and wound around to the third floor where Murshida’s apartment and my apartment—or whoever was her maid or her servant chosen for that month would live in that apartment. But I was there most of the time, and took care of her clothes and her robes and the burning of her incense and the scattering of the rose petals—everything was ritual. Everything that had been done for Murshid’s apartment in Suresnes, I had to learn those methods, and they were used on her apartment.

Samuel cared not at all for that. He lived so much in the spiritual body that, if it hadn’t been for Hazel Armstrong taking care of him, he would have forgotten to take a bath, change his clothes or put on a sweater. I’ll tell you some incidents of this forgetfulness of the physical body, which was hilarious when we were young, and sometimes embarrassing too, to those of the older generation. But he was really cute on that, and these older people just didn’t understand it. They were shocked at it, and they would always quote Murshid Inayat Khan, who always wore his slippers, who always had his robe on, who always combed his beard and his hair, who always had the light shining around him. And here was Samuel—frockless, dirty, unkempt, not giving a hoot for the physical body—and it really shook these mureeds to the bottom. I can’t remember that it ever bothered any of us; we always thought it was amusing and funny and just cute. We all got a big bang out of him. But the older generation surely did not.

Anyhow, after you were assigned your work, then this is what you had to do for that whole weekend. Now you might be assigned the job of gathering up all of the young people, or the children up to twelve years of age (they were called children at Kaaba Allah)—all those under twelve you gathered up and you got them to working, either on building the flower leis, which would be ten inches across and you made these big leis, and long leis, that were always draped over the entrance of Kaaba Allah. By entrance I don’t mean the lower entrance that we come up from the station, but I mean where the road wound around the rock, and still winds around the rock today. You hike around the upper road, there; and there was a gateway leading down to the library of the upper house, by a short path as wide as an ordinary garden, and that gateway my father had built. And it was made of huge timbers—two huge timbers and had a great crossbar that had the Sufi symbol carved on it. And you entered through that gate. If you drove your car, of course, you had to park up by the rock, or on those little narrow edges next to the road there. You’d leave your car and then you’d enter through the upper house and come down to the lower house.

But the great oak tree came over that house, so that on the third floor, if you were in my apartment, you could hop out of the window and climb down the oak tree, which was the way I entered and left most of the time in those years. I don’t think I ever came up that staircase any more than I had to. Also, you could get out when you were supposed to be there and do what you wanted to do—which I loved—under the rock and down the little building and the new bamboo fence. A little creek ran through there and we wanted to have just a wild meditation garden, with nothing planned other than the natural herbs and plants that grew, and transplanting them so that they were in a place to give us privacy. There were natural rocks there and natural swings—so many natural places that you could sit and meditate right in the rock or in the trees. It just seemed to be made for young people’s meditation, and we used that area a great deal. All of the young people loved that part of the property. Murshida Martin loved the under part of the rock, the face of the rock that faced the lower house. And that is where her ashes were supposed to be placed—because that’s where she always wanted to be buried, under that rock, or within that rock, but whatever happened at her death I don’t know.

When you had your duties, you knew what you were supposed to do, but you would have dinner that evening. Dinners at Kaaba Allah were very different than anything we later served or had in the Sufi Order. Your main meal was in the middle of the day, and in the evening it was like a supper. And you had different kinds of marmalades and natural grain breads, and there was always plenty of buttermilk, milk and tea—herb teas. I don’t remember that we drank a lot of China tea; it seemed to me we had mostly herb teas, which many people gathered, or they were given to the Order. I know we didn’t buy them; they came from within the Order. But I wasn’t part of that at that time. I had other duties.

But, anyway, to have a flower lei over that gate on a Sunday morning was sort of a must. When it was time for chapel in the morning, Samuel would be out there, sometimes at 5:30 if he wanted you to go horseback riding or hiking, but it would be very dawn’s early light. He would get outside of the girls’ dorm, in that garden at the side of the lower house, and he would sing—oh, "Pirates of Penzance" (laughter) or any one of those that happened to hit his mind. He was off on that tack at that time; he’d start singing. Well, of course, it would take two minutes before we’d be up to the window and yodeling it back to him.

SHIRIN: That’s what he’s doing right there. (looks at picture)

MURSHIDA VERA: Is he really?

SHIRIN: At my wedding—he’s singing the wedding song from Mikado, is it?

WALL ALI: No. No, it’s from the Lord High Chancellor who’s always giving the brides away—

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh, yes! (laughs)

WALL ALI: "And one for him and one for him, but never, never one for me!”

MURSHIDA VERA: (laughing) Oh, yes! Boy, I’d love that! And he’d have his hands out, just like that. Of course, he was a very young man, and he’d usually have on his dark slacks, his bare feet, and always a white shirt, open down to his stomach. (laughter) And sometimes his prayer beads or sometimes just flowers that—when we worked on the flowers we’d usually make a lei for Murshid. I'd always see that I made a lei for him, or some of the girls did; and then we’d pick one of the youngest ones that he was currently spending a lot of time with, to put it over his head and kiss him. And this was never a Sufi kiss; it was a smack-on, which would always give Samuel great pleasure.

WALI ALI: (laughing) That’s a real Sufi kiss.

MURSHIDA VERA: He would chuckle and he’d laugh, and he’d get such a big kick out of these young ones being in love with him. Well, someone was always in love with Samuel. You never got very far in the Sufi work before you fell in love with him. And this was a very serious thing. The young ones simply would not tolerate anybody around him when they were going through this love stage. And Samuel seemed to recognize this, and he would pick them for private walks and private horseback rides, and he would get this mureed to himself a great deal of the time, while the rest of us would, just in disgust, throw up our hands. There he goes again? We’ve got to share him another weekend!

But Arjuna, my young husband, was a very quiet young man, but he was very interested in—deeply interested in—the breathing. And Samuel spent a lot of time with him working on levitation. And he and Samuel would sit, would go down below the rock there. And they were big rocks we were trying to move; I mean they were perhaps three by six feet—they were boulders! And they had to be moved. Well, the boys would put down planks that they’d nailed together with cross bars, and they’d roll these rocks onto this sort of a lever. And then it had to be lifted, so that it could be carried to where they wanted to put it in this bamboo garden. And Arjuna would always be on one end and Samuel on the other end, and sometimes if Yon Wood had come over from Europe, he would be down there, working with them too, on this levitation. And at our parties we would practice levitation.

SHIRIN: Someone who lies down and everybody lifts them with their fingertips?

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, and somebody would cross hands and then sit down, and the person would sit up, and Samuel would say, "All right?" (a strong and loud inhalation is taken) And everybody would inhale like the roof was coming off. But they didn’t lift people only to here—they were good! They could lift them right over their heads. And it was really a sensation when you were the person being given the ride on breath. It was lots of fun; we had lots of fun doing that. And the levitation went on and on. Murshid was away; when she came back, she put a stop to it right away. She said, "You are off on something that is far from what Inayat than taught, and we are not going to have any magicians around here, period." (laughter) Put we didn’t care, because big work in the garden had been done by breath on levitation; whether she liked it or not, it was done, and that’s how it was accomplished. We had no wagons, no sleds; it was all done by the breath.

So that would be the work Samuel would do with the young men. Then you would go to the chapel, the first thing in the morning after you were awakened by this yodeling, and bathed—you were expected to wash your hands, feet and face. This was the rule.

WALI ALI: Standard ablutions.

MURSHIDA VERA: That’s right. Before you went to the chapel. And you were to wear your tobbies until you arrived there, not to track the dirt into the chapel. And then you went into the chapel—usually the older Mureeds who lived on that floor would he there meditating before we entered, so we’d all enter late. And then you would all rise as Murshida cane in, and you did not sit down again from the tine she entered the room. And the prayers were said—Saum, Salat—and whatever else they had in mind to be done that morning. The regulation prayers were done. Then a Zikr was always sung on an empty stomach, which the young ones hated for one reason and the old ones hated for another. The older ones wanted their coffee before they started, and the young ones wanted to get off to hike or ride before this work and breakfast routine began; and this was just something they didn’t feel was necessary to do, but you did it either way; you had Zikr on an empty stomach.

WALI ALI: Who led Zikr?

MURSHIDA VERA: Samuel, always. He always led the Zikr. Murshida Martin would follow. But he was always a great chanter and he had a fine voice for it. And sometimes he would be in a different mood entirely, and we would be taken off into Hindu chants, or he might be in a Buddhist mood, and you’d get the Zen chanting—it depended on what mood he was in, as to what he did. But whatever it was, it seemed like people didn’t enter in. It seemed to me we did a humming, like you took a breath and you hummed, and Samuel carried it. We all didn’t enter in. He led it.

And then, as you left there, if you were assigned to certain work for the breakfast—you went to help put food on the table, or whatever you were assigned to do. But Samuel, if I was there, he’d usually give me the sign: "I have something for you," he would say "and you and you." And he’d just point to you; and then that meant that you would follow him. And you went out the front door at Kaaba Allah, and you then did "Ya Hayy Ya Haqq" out to the rock. And this was done in single file, and Murshid Sam always led the way, and everybody else came behind him. Sometimes, if you had a close friend, you held that person’s hand, and you did it together. He never objected to this. But the path wasn’t wide enough for anything else.

But there were times when we had tremendous experiences. When Murshida came back from South America, I had been up at 4:00 in the morning with all of the young ones; and we sat on the front porch of the lower house, and we made garlands, yea big around. And those garlands were just draped over every entranceway. And we had tons and tons of marigolds, a beautiful orange color with all the greens—it was just delightful. And they were on everything, along with the Sufi ribbons, which we had cut gold letters out of and pasted on there with the different welcoming Urdu or Muslim signs for these welcoming words, Sufi words. And we had them all over the property. And I had made little bows and tied them onto bushes going all the way out there, which said, "Allah ho Akbar," or some Sufi phrase. I had them, oh boy, on every hush leading out to the rock. And I thought something was needed to welcome Murshida when she first went to the rock, where Samuel was trying to build a chapel. And it was a little round pergola with a pointed roof—it was a pergola wit lattice work, and we had planted passion vines there. Somebody had donated these. They never took root on that rock. That was against Samuel’s will; he told them they wouldn’t, but they insisted that’s what they were going to have, so you didn’t argue with the older mureed, who had the money to do it. You let him waste his money, as Samuel would say, and convince himself, which he did. But, anyhow, the pergola was nice, and this is where we went to have our own little mantras that he would give in the morning to those he chose to go with him. And after you got out into this little chapel the lattice work gave you some privacy from the highway. The brick will, the "wailing" wall, wasn’t built yet; so that there was an open space there, to the road, and this gave you protection from people who were not in the Order who might be coming up there, that driveway.

Out the morning that Murshida Martin came and walked out there—and I had been so worried that she not have anything to welcome her on this path—and as she walked out, all of the bushes bowed. And everyone saw it. Every bush on that path bowed down as she arrived and went to the rock. And I felt it was one of the highest spiritual moments I had ever seen her in. When she came back down to the lower house and sat down in her chair, I saw on the right side on a cushion at her feet, and Samuel sat on a cushion at her left. And everyone else was in a circle. The older mureeds, like Maria Phelps, and—oh, many of the others—sat there with a smirking smile on their lips; and afterwards she said, "I thought I’d die when I saw you and Samuel sitting at her feet." And this struck me badly. From that point on, I divided myself mentally, and I became completely Samuel’s mureed. Because I felt that they had missed the boat. All the years at Suresnes with Inayat Khan, all of the lifetime living in Khankas, and all of the money of their life work, which they had freely given to Kaaba Allah, was to be washed down the stream by the lack of recognition of the spiritual body. And I had to make my choice. I felt impelled to—very, very strongly so, so much so that when I went to the rock with Samuel the next time, I told him that today I had been divided from the older mureeds; never again can I love them, because they have made a distinction and a difference at a time when you have taught us that the first rule is there be no distinctions and differences among mureeds, that this is the number one ruling in the Order: that, regardless of age, of creed, of race, of color, of money, or poverty, within the Order there are no distinctions. You are all mureeds of Inayat Khan, you are all the beloved of Allah, you are all one in the spirit of the Message, you are on in the Message. And they had divided us by their criticism—mental, intellectual criticism of the mureed who chose to sit at the feet of the master.

However we might disagree with Murshida Martin, intellectually or any other way, we never ever felt our loyalty was not hers. One of the reasons Samuels work was found so late in life was not because he wasn’t practicing it or had the self-realization and the exploitation of that outwardly. He did have it, and he did not, in those days, have this terrible ego-tramping, this crucifixion that he referred to last night in the lecture. He was speaking of himself. He had been crucified in the spiritual body, in the subtle body, and it had been going on for years at Kaaba Allah but it came to its big head at the time that Murshida Martin got the cancer and no doubt knew that she had a limited amount of time to live.

Then—she then didn’t have the good grace—and may Allah forgive me for making this statement to you, but I feel since it so influenced my Murshid Sam’s life that I must tell you the truth of the matter, as I saw it and as I lived it. Samuel was a Murshid; he was a Murshid by discipline, by realization, by practice, by recognition of the entire Fairfax community, not just the Sufi school. He put it to work among the populace, among all the young people in Fairfax, regardless of religion, in all the churches which he took us to visit on Sunday mornings. At 10:00 or 11:00 all the young people would gather together with Samuel, and we would visit a church of his choice in Fairfax. Sometimes it would he Methodist, Baptist, Pentecostal, Catholic; we visited every parish in that area. And we were taught, a Sufi enters any church of God, any house of God, and behave as that denomination behaves. He honors God in that manner. And when we went to the synagogue, we honored God in that manner, and we sat separately. When we went to the Quaker meetings, we sat separately and honored it. And we learned, by experiencing these different congregations, the love of God expressed in so many different manners. But always behind it, at the heart of it was one truth, one message; and when we came back, Samuel would give us the heart of that message in that religion’s own texts. And then he would swing back and immediately quote from Inayat Khan, so that you would see that Inayat Khan’s message also was the same message, in a different age, in different words, in a different teacher.

And this taught young people the oneness, the unity of religious ideals as the books never could have, because we were living it with him, experiencing it and seeing it. All of these ministers, all of these priests, and all of these men respected Samuel, accepted him, welcomed us into their parishes. The donation was the same—many of us didn’t have money; Samuel would always have a little bag full of money, an before we came to the synagogue, or the church, or wherever we were going, he would say, "This is the time when we give back to Allah that which he has given to me." And you never knew where he got the money, because he never had anything except what was given to him; he had no salary, you see. And you put out your hand, and everybody got the same thing; sometimes it was a nickel, sometimes it was a dime; there were times when it was even a quarter but this is what you dropped in the plate; and you never went in there without it. If you had money, you would say, "I don’t need it, Samuel, I have my own." "Never mind, it’s not mine." And he insisted that he touch the coin that you gave. And you, in turn, were allowed to give that back to Kaaba Allah, if you had it. But you took his coins that had touched with his hands to give to these denominations.

Then you were prepared ahead of time. When we were walking down there, he would tell you something about this denomination, about their way of worship, about how to behave. There were young people there that had never walked into a Catholic church before in their lives, or a Greek Orthodox, or didn’t know how to behave in a synagogue. He told you how to behave before you entered. He said, "These are the manners, your manners of worship; these have nothing to do with your talking to God. When you talk to God, you speak one language, remember that. There’s only one language for God; there are many forms of worship." And this was a marvelous experience for all of these young people, and for myself, too. When we came back from that, we would be silent. There was never any talking on the way back; Samuel would start a mantram, and he would quote from Murshid, and then he would quote from their texts here and there, haphazard; here and there he would throw it out as you walked along, and then you went back. And then, when you went back—we had an early lunch at Kaaba Allah—oh, I’d say around 11:15 or something like that, you’d have the lunch.

Immediately following that lunch Murshida Martin would sit in her chair, everybody would sit in a circle, and she would give her talk; and all the old people fell asleep, which were her mureeds, all fell asleep while she was giving the message today. Nobody ever fell asleep with Samuel, believe me! (laughter) Ever! You might be dead, but you didn’t fall asleep! But anyhow, following this, there was never any talking. She went to her apartment, I went with her, prepared her for her afternoon nap, and left her and went to my own apartment; where, if I felt like working , I did, on my own; or, if I didn’t want to be alone or write or whatever I was doing, I’d then climb down the oak tree and join whoever was over in the young people’s garden, where we had to be quiet, So this was the time when we didn’t work, we either meditated or talked softly with each other. Sometimes there were big holes where we’d taken the big boulders out of and we threw leaves in there and we’d lie in these holes, see? So it would give you a chance to be with whoever you were at the moment enamored of, without having everybody know it. But none of this was on a—I can’t say it wasn’t on a sex basis, but I mean it was not—it wasn’t heavy lovemaking, you know what I mean? You might lie there in each other’s arms, or hold each other’s hands, but we didn’t seem to have that. Of course we were all accused of this, you see. This was all "promiscuity," to the older mureeds, who would say, "That’s what you’re doing!, I know what you’re doing." We were protected, though they were never there because they were always sleeping. They were loaded from overeating at noontime. Samuel always said, "Take all you want, the table is laden." Believe me, they did. He said afterwards, "Isn’t it funny that those of you who are doing the hard work and who are really starving are the ones who are eating the least." We said, "Yes, our stomachs are shrunk and theirs aren’t." They were eating every day, three meals a day!

Anyhow, after this afternoon quiet period or nap time and the afternoon lecture, then you all came cut into the sun; and everybody was allowed then to get into their sun suits or as brief as you wanted to. There was a little crescent court, maybe, oh eight steps higher than the lower house’s porch, and you could walk up there and the older ones would sit in the lounge chairs and sun themselves, and all the young ones would be lying around on towels or sitting in the garden or talking or something. But this was the tire when the mureeds traded friendship and talk. And the talk was always full of jokes and they had all kinds of Sufi jokes that they told; it was really a hilarious time with a lot of laughter and a lot of fun among the mureeds. And sometimes the flute was played here and if someone came from the East and had the sitar or any of the oriental instruments, they would play. If there was anybody in Fairfax who was visiting there from Europe or Asia, they were invited up. And this was teatime. They came and played music. And I don’t remember that we ever danced there; there were stones there—it was laid with big blocks of stone, this courtyard. But, anyhow, this was our outdoor afternoon visiting time. This was after the nap time or the quiet meditation time. Teatime came off; supper was never served until dark.

You ate supper and you left on Sunday night. Immediately following supper you went down to get the train. So, it was usually beginning to be dark when we would sit down to this supper and then leave. And at the end of the supper Samuel would stand at the door. Your baggage was always ready to go. Following this tea, everybody got packed to go back home, whatever you were taking back home, and you put it on this outside porch, and it was left there until you left. And then you went back into this meeting room or living room, and when everybody was more or less organized, then we walked single file up to the chapel. And up in the chapel then we had the last of the prayers. I think it was just short prayers, and mostly the Zikr again was sung. You left after Zikr in silence. Everybody kissed everybody, said goodbye; but it wasn’t in language: it was in gesture, or by kissing or hugging one another. But everybody greeted each other as you left. Usually the older mureeds stood at the doorway; the very oldest, the three oldest ladies, always stood together. And Samuel would to returning to the city with us, and we would be saying goodbye to these older mureeds as we left.

WALI ALI: He didn’t live full-time at Kaaba Allah?

MURSHIDA VERA: He did when he was a gardener and when Murshida was away. But he had this Wednesday night, he had the meetings to take care of, so he usually left on Sunday night, stayed through Wednesday, and then came back to Kaaba Allah. He was usually gone the first part of the week when he had business—the Sufi business and the running of the center—Hazel Armstrong was the full time secretary of it San Francisco.

WALI ALI: Is she still alive?

MURSHIDA VERA: No, she died at Kaaba Allah at the period, here I was through with my travels and I was married and I had my baby; and I was living at the new house which you visited on Hilaritas. It was just built, and we were living in that house. Then it was decided by the Sufi Order—the Board, I think, had gotten to a point like this. And Maria Phelps was on that Board, and she and Samuel were just at odds, but proper. Her daughter, Gladys Coto and Samuel had a love life that went on for many years. They were very close. They had a great love and attunement between them, although she married a pharmacist. But he had known her before that marriage. And all through those years he was a guardian, mentor and father to her three children by her first tragic marriage. The children had come out from the East during the depth of the Depression with a crate of oranges and old tin Lizzie, no food or anything, based on faith alone. They had become mureeds in Cleveland, I believe, when Gatha Engle was the head of the Cleveland movement, or center. And they came out from there. Then they came to live at Kaaba Allah. They had no food, no money, nothing; and Murshida Martin took them in at Kaaba Allah as housekeepers and cooks, and anyhow they were there. And Samuel knew these children very well, and very intimately. The youngest child was born with club feet after she married the pharmacist here. The two oldest ones, Shirin and Nadine came out from Cleveland; and then Gladys married and had this little girl who was born with club feet. And Samuel was very close to Gladys in advising as to the procedure of how they would heal this child, what was to be done for her, the final decision on the surgery. The first surgery was done—which was done against Samuel’s wishes—but other people influenced them, at the last minute, and they felt that they should have this one tendon cut. It was later decided it was a mistake, and they put the child in braces. Both Samuel and I fought this terribly, because it was so cruel to see these heavy braces on this tiny child two or three years of age.

And we got her at Kaaba Allah, we would always manage to get Gladys aside in the rose garden and say, "Gladys, get those things off of her!" And she’d get their off of her; and then we’d hold her by the hands and walk her without the traces. And Samuel did much healing by hands and by earth and by water on this child’s feet and legs, and great progress was made. Maria was a music teacher (the grandmother), and she was constantly with this child. And she was also the librarian at the Sufi Center in Can Francisco. So every day little Virginia was with her in the Sufi Center, and all the Sufis surrounded this child with love and healing. She was an adorable little child who suffered agonies in silence. And we all loved her very dearly. And she grew up to be a very fine pianist and, I understand, married. I’ve never seen her since she grew up.

But anyhow, those years Samuel did a great deal of healing with the children and with this family and this child, in particular. He was deeply devoted to this child. The oldest girl, Shirin, became WAVE in the first bunch of WAVES, and she went to Seattle, Washington and her plane crashed. She was landing are she hit high-tension wires and her boyfriend, her fiancé, who was also a pilot and, I think, an instructor of hers, came out to the plane, and he said she was in perfect position—pilot’s position. Her hand was down and her hand on the stick, and she was just killed instantly. Samuel grieved deeply over this. The body was brought back, and he had a service in, the Coto’s home, and Oh, his grief over Shirin’s passing! He had been father, mentor, healer to these children, and Shirin was such a beautiful girl with her pale honey blond and brownish hair, beautiful china blue eyes, a lovely smile and just the most delightful teenage girl you’d ever know, very close to me. Shirin and I built the friendship seat, which is still on Kaaba Allah, on the rock at Kaaba Allah. He felt terrible grief over her, but I could not attend any of this. I couldn’t stand to see Samuel in the state he was in. I couldn’t stand to see him shook all to pieces and weeping. They said that the funeral service that he gave for Shirin was an agony for everyone there; everyone was weeping, and Samuel was in a state for two weeks. He just had a horrible time getting over it. Madine married and lives in Marin County, I understand.

But anyhow, this work that he did with the children in those days was a healing work, and many of the ideas that I have and that I have put to work with the retarded children, with children with all kinds of physical and emotional problems, are things that I saw our Murshid do, and that he explained to me, or that served—that I saw what he was doing, psychological and spiritually. And he worked by suggestion to a great degree. But Samuel's idea of suggesticology (which I want to say something about at this healing meeting) was the opposite pole to what Dr. Lasalov uses, because Samuel hit it from the opposite pole. He would strike you with something so ridiculous that you would be utterly shocked, and you would say, "What is that man thinking about?" Fine, he had you it a state of mind where shock stooped you from thinking what you were thinking. Then he would turn around or the other hand and he would give you a positive suggestion, one positive line! Then he would hit over on the other angle at which he would make it personal: "I, I, I!" He would talk personally. And you would think, "What is he talking about?" Are then you’d try to concentrate on him. Fine! Then he’d hit you again with a positive suggestion. Back and forth you’d go. The positive suggestion; Samuel, the ego of Samuel speaking—back and forth he’d hit you—then another ridiculous statement over to the left. Totally disorganized and disoriented to what he was talking about. Much of what he had in the introduction of last night’s lecture, when you thought, "Is the man going to get on the subject or is he going to forget what he’s talking about?" (laughter) Then he’d hit you with "I, Samuel," then this positive statement about Paul, right on!

You see, he made you work mentally, and he still did in these last lectures as I heard last night he had the same method, still: confusion, which stopped you from thinking what you were thinking. A positive statement based on Scripture, unchallengeable, enlightened; immediately back to the Murshid "I," the ego saying, "I am the Murshid, this is what I personally think, or my personal experience….’’; back to the suggestion. Exactly what Lasalov in Bulgaria has found to be the great new healing method, of which he says that without it you cannot even investigate ESP: "You have to have this, or you don’t understand FSP." Samuel always had that. I cannot remember a Sunday morning at Kaaba Allah when he was not getting the ridiculous, the sublime, the ego of Samuel. This was his method of teaching. And you cannot place him as a physical man with a modern attendance and a modern vibration and a modern goal, because he had no goal of modern man. He cared nothing for success, he cared nothing for appearing great before the public. He cared only that you recognize the Message.

And later on, when the School of Asiatic Studies was going and all of the Sufis of the old school that had grown up under Samuel and Murshid Martin were considered to be utter idiots; they would have lectures on Sufism based upon texts from the State library: I swear they had absolutely nothing to do with the true message of Sufism; and these men with PhD's behind their names would get up there and spout off to a good-sized audience of 50 or 80 people. Only, when the question-and-answer period care, Samuel was hopping around like a flew on a chair, he could hardly sit still. He would manage to get in the back and you would hear that breathing. And I’d say, (I would be in the center of the place) "Oh, Samuel’s here, he’s getting warmed up. Oh, are they going to get it!’ (laughter) And they would—come the questions, right on, bang! Spiegelberg would be "Gr-r-r. How can we get that man out of here? Why does he attend these lectures? Lewis is here. Did you hear him come in? Get him in the back, get him in the other room!" Of course, nerve of this worked. Samuel got in, he ploughed in all square feet on the floor, shaking the place. By his meditation alone he shook the place. And then the question-and-answer period would come. Well, of course, Samuel would start in and each of us would ask a question which would rip him apart. And the thing would be just a hot and heavy deal, and they’d get angrier and angrier as they got pushed to the wall. This was true of Watts too; that’s why I asked you what had happened to him because in the early days of his message, when you had to pay a good fee to get in the Palace Hotel, or rent a room to hear him, Alan would be taking off with greet erudition upon the intellectual side of Zen; and Samuel would crack in on the question-and-answer periods and just take his well-planned-lecture apart. And this he did with all of the different sects, except, I would say, only one, Vedanta. But, of course, in Vedanta the swamis were never trying to intellectually overwhelm you. Their mantrams and meditations were just not something that you could tear apart, or would want to tear apart. And we always enjoyed the times that we went there; I don’t say that Samuel was recognized in a way to include him in their services, but there was always spiritual acceptance, let’s say it that way.

WALI ALI: It wasn’t this personality game: "I am the expert up here lecturing on Oriental Philosophy.”

MURSHIDA VERA: None of that. There was none of that, none of that at all. But the experts were experts intellectually, and they came with their college degrees. It was then that I told Samuel, "Samuel, after this depression is over, I should get my degree; we must have somebody in this Order that can put them flat. We shouldn’t just stand here and take this.' And Samuel said, Well, we’ll see, we’ll see. These things are not important. Let’s get the spirit body going and all this will fall into place." He would never listen to me on that; he couldn’t see it at all.

WALI ALI: of course, now he has disciples that are professors in universities, even at Berkeley and Harvard.

MURSHIDA VERA: That’s true, you see. But remember, in those days he had disciples then; I mean Bryon Hood was made a Sir by Queen Elizabeth. He was in the Consular Corps as a Secretary; he traveled all over the world. He was a young man who came as often as he could to Kaaba Allah and to San Francisco, and he brought with him the Message and friendships and other people from the widest possible political backgrounds, and the Sufi message with it. Adlai Stevenson, who was a Sufi also—much of his work was brought to us. And we had very great musicians, people who were very high in the Symphony and so forth, who came with the message. My father was a concert violinist. Many people came there who brought the world to Kaaba Allah, and they were Samuel’s mureeds; they followed him; they were interested in his Message and his interpretations. But then, nobody was talking about "What ground do you stand on, Samuel?" Everybody was alive who had been at Suresnes, everybody knew that Samuel had been in America during that time. He never had the money to go to Suresnes, to have that privilege. He was always home holding down the fort, doing the teaching, taking care of the Order or the Pacific Coast, while Murshida ran off to the glory and the recognition all over the world. But he was extremely faithful to her. Much of what I tell you now is hearsay, but it came from the Board Members of the Sufi Order at that time, and I feel—since they all had the same thing to say—I feel it was legitimate. Samuel was never told until Murshida’s deathbed that this secret Murshida Duce, who was trained in Berkeley, without a name, who had never been brought to Kaaba Allah, or introduced to any of us, as to be the Murshida to take over the Order. Everyone was in a state of shock; the idea that the years of service and teaching and the putting himself in the most awful position that could possibly be imagined, in standing for Murshida’s claim to be the Pir of the entire Order. He was her disciple, she was his Murshida. He was pledged to be her spiritual guide and her psychic mentor. In the years when Samuel was receiving psychically practically day and night and was going through his psychic training, not through an earthly master, but by the inner masters, he was advising, at Murshida Martin’s behest, every decision she made. Just before I became a Sheikha and right following it, I was living at Tenth Avenue and Irving, and I had to walk through the park to get over to Ashbury. There was no money for carfare, so I would take my big dog and hike over through the park to Murshida Martin’s. When I got there, she knew that we were half starved, and she would give me jelly and bread and tea. And then we would go into the front room.

Murshida Martin would sit me down in her beautiful living room, filled with the art that she had collected all over the world, and would then question me as to the psychic messages brought to her by Samuel in the name of Inayat Khan. This was extremely shaking for me, and I just didn’t know what to do about it. I would just insist on going into a short meditation and then answer her on my own ground. It shook me very much to have to give her an opinion about a psychic message brought by my own teacher.

SHIRIN: Were you a Sheikha at that time?

MURSHIDA VERA: Just previous to it, and after it; both previous and after this initiation. She seemed to be going it two ways. The things that Samuel was telling her to do, she was trying to carry out intellectually. And perhaps this is where the trouble began; because if you are going to receive on the psychic plane, then you have got to be answered on the psychic plane. You surely cannot use the psychic, put it into the intellectual, and then try to make decisions out of it, decisions for the benefit of the Order. It was at this time that I said to her, "Murshida, I feel that we should have our own meditations together; and please, if you wish to bring on these things regarding the messages from Samuel in Inayat Khan’s name, don’t ask me the validity of it, but allow me to bring you my own message, and make your own decision of the two." And this is how I got around criticizing what Samuel might be doing, or what might be coming through to him, which was never handed to me straight; I’d pick up the papers here and there and know in reading it that this is the language of Murshid. And, although Samuel is receiving it, it is not Samuel who is typing it; it is not the message of Samuel; it is Inayat Khan’s message. And there was this long period of his psychic training from the other planes, which Murshida Martin used and misused for (I say, personally, my opinion is that she misused these message) she took them and used them to rule the outer work. And she made up her mind—made decisions at that time which were not right. I say they were not right in regret, because of what happened to the Order from that time on. It should have been that each person was exposed to these messages. If he had a message for him, he should have taken it and put it to use. If he did not have that message, let it pass over. But, at any rate, Murshida Martin should not have used Samuel to bring her the psychic answers to her pressing problems in the Order. This, I think, is always a mistake; no matter how you may doubt yourself, get your own attunement with the Presence, which was our Murshid Sam’s rule of life. And he had it in his lecture last night. First, practice the presence of God; all other things will come to you as they are meant to come. And this is the way he lived his life, and the way he taught me, and the way I’ve lived mine; for better or for worse, it’s been at least devoted to that principle. And I have no regrets on it, as I know Samuel had none, in his own personal life. He would have done it the same had he to start all over again. I too would say I’d do the same thing. But, in practicing on a psychic plane, many things can come in. Now, Murshida Martin doubted her own wisdom.

WALI ALI: Was this just towards the end of her life that these doubts came in?

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know.

WALI ALI: I remember Murshid Samuel speaking about how she got into trouble psychically when she went to India and after she came she was somehow…

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh, is that right? Well, you see, I had never known her before then, personally. She had been a Murshida, but she’d been traveling all over. I never met her before the time I told you that she came back and all the bushes bowed to her, and Samuel and I were in a hal state.

WALI ALI: That was from South America?

MURSHIDA VERA: True. No, I think it was with her Indian trip, too. I think she came back from India too—I was there at that time when we had a big to-do—and the same procedure that I described to you went on. Always we went to the rock, and came back, and she gave her message.

WALI ALI: She was recognized by the Sufis in Ajmer when she went to India.

MURSHIDA VERA: She was recognized all over the world, and she had the robes to prove it and the papers to prove it, the great documents and all. She had it. But all this time I was saying to her, "Send Samuel to India; Samuel must go to India. Stay home, work the Order here, and let him go. You must send him, because only there is he going to be straightened out on what you are saying. The psychic is driving you batty." And he was doing things which nobody in the Order could guide him on. He had no teacher.

Bill Hathaway, who was a very dear friend, and Erica Hathaway, his wife, and Bryon Wood, Arjuna and myself were very close friends. They lived in our home, in our Khankah set up on Tenth Avenue; and whenever they were in this area, I went to Santa Barbara where Bill’s family had a villa and lived there a good deal of the time with them—part of the year with them—when I was not painting or dancing or on tour. And then I would come back to San Francisco. At that time the messages that we received in our meditations were strongly on the Buddhist line. Samuel was not on the Buddhist track at all; he was totally on the Sufi tack. We decided that we wanted to visit Senzaki in Los Angeles, and we got up very early at dawn one morning. The boys had gathered four-foot-long irises, blue irises, the most exquisite things. Mrs. Hathaway senior, Bill’s mother, had found us a great long floral box to arrange them in, and the boys were taking that. The girls, Erica and I, had nothing to take, and we felt so upset about it. I said, "Never mind, Erica, I am going to do the lotus dance for him, and I will dance and we will present this; you chant and I’ll dance. Fine. We didn’t tell the boys anything about it. And we went down to see Senzaki, and he took us into the little shack by the railroad track, and saw him and had tea with him and meditation with him. And he was terribly upset as to the meditation method that Samuel had taught us. "No, you do not sit on the floor, you sit on a chair," says Senzaki. So we sat on a chair. Everything that Samuel had told us to do he was against. He simply didn’t like our approach, which was a Sufi approach, no doubt. But when it came to the dancing, that really sent him. And, of course, he loved these irises, and his servants in the house, or whoever these Japanese ladies were, did the most exquisite floral arrangements while we were having our meditation. I just have never seen anything like it, what they did with those flowers in that short amount of time. Then Senzaki said, "What do you want to see?" I said, "The art." "Fine," he said. Much of the great art that you later saw in the San Francisco museums had been shipped over here, to protect it from the Japanese invasions which they feared; and this was all in an old tin warehouse: exquisite Kwan Yins and Buddhas, ancient, gorgeous things, bronzes as tall as I was, just exquisite things. He took us in this warehouse and showed us these things, and here were all of the postures and, to boot, more than I had taught. And then after that I walked with Senzaki and Erica and Bill walked behind us, and he talked to me all the way back. And we went back to this little chapel where I did my lotus postures that I knew, and he taught me all the postures in one session, just like that. And then when we came back, I did this dance for Samuel, and Samuel then went to Senzaki and began his serious work with Senzaki. I did not. I read Senzaki’s books, but I did not. You see, when Senzaki had first come to San Francisco’s Chinatown, he was in bad with the Chinese regime. And had they known he was here, they would have killed him. So he worked as a cook in Chinatown, and only a few of us—closest Sufis or people very closely in the spiritual work—knew where he was and who he was. And even when we visited him at the railroad tracks, he was living as a very poor man in a shack, completely hidden. No one knew that he was there, or he would never have lived. Because the Buddhist Orders were out to kill him in a hurry, if they could, and he had some terribly frightening experiences to protect himself against their views.

SHIRIN: Now, which one is he? (looking at picture)

MURSHIDA VERA: That’s Senzaki there. And, at this time there was Sister Domadina, who lived in the Palace Hotel of San Francisco, who was a Buddhist nun; she was teaching speech correction to Mrs. Roosevelt, Eleanor Roosevelt. Her public speaking, and her great career later in the public eye was dependent upon Sister Domadina. Sister Domadina was a Rockefeller, and she had given up the great fortune of the Rockefellers and had gone to China to become a Buddhist nun. She still wore the habit and had the shaved head when I met her. Again, I was the person who made the introduction, who made the contact, through my dancing, first of all, also through speech and singing, voice. And Sister Domadina at that time told me that she was in a back brace and quite restricted, critically restricted, physically, that the Buddhist way was one of silence; and, at a certain point, unless you had a rap on the crown of your head, they did not feel that the centers were opened. This all came about because Maria Phelps, who was a great Sufi teacher in the Gathas and Gathekas—don’t misunderstand me about her going around on the Board later regarding Samuel’s psychic behavior and Murshida Martin’s accepting the outer running of the Order financially by Samuel’s psychic messages, which she would not accept as being Inayat Khan’s work at all—this was the alter ego of Samuel, and that’s the way she looked upon it. So you can see that the situation was hot and very differentiated, mentally. Those of us attuned to his method of teaching and training, of course, were completely wrapped up with Samuel; we could take no other choice. Although I loved this family and spent a great deal of time with them, still there was a parting of the ways where any criticism of the way I had been raised came up; and I was very bitter about her telling people in the Order, including her interview with me, that my centers had been opened too young and could not be closed, and therefore I was in a bad way to ever make advancement beyond a certain point. This I could not accept, because I had been a yogi—I had taken yogic training before I ever became a Sufi, as a very young woman. And I knew differently; I knew that the prana, the life force, was always working; that if a center was opened too young and that light and energy from within was shocking out of that center, there was still a polarity, as Samuel had always taught us. There was no such thing as a hopeless human being.

WALI ALI: He was able to take people that had been rejected all over in the later days and just open them up.

MURSHIDA VERA: True, but he knew polarities; that’s how he could do it: by the walks, by the breath, by the taking the person where you are. Samuel says, "I don’t care about what the ideal is; give me a man where he is, and let me find that polarity for that man, whatever his state is. And that other center (there is no such thing as a single chakra; there is always a paired chakra)—give me that man, and let me see him for where he stands, and I can give you that polarity, if that man can, by his breath, his discipline, his walks, his dancing, his singing, balance that within himself, he’ll have the answer. I give only keys; I have no miracles." Didn’t he say that in the lecture last night? What seems to be a miracle. And did he ever live that in his teaching.

WALI ALI: Let me bring up a couple of things, because this is something that Murshid Samuel and I talked about—let’s say, the psychic period at Kaaba Allah. He said, "I am not just allowed to talk about it, and I wasn’t allowed to talk about it at the time." He says, "What was actually happening was that I was being called on by the Hierarchy to have a function in the war." He said one of the things that he was willing to say is, "All these bodies, these people that were being executed in the gas chambers in Auschwitz, he was called on to take the souls over to the other side.”

MURSHIDA VERA: True. Now, this is what happened at that period. There was a mureed called Mrs. Green, who was Jewish, who had a very beautiful home out in the avenues. Mureeds would meet at this home quite often. During the time that we were meeting there, we decided to have a party; and our parties were always in costume. We came in Sufi dress, the ancient Sufis, the ancient Sufi poets or dancers or poetesses, characters like Shirin and Khusrau and Majnun and any of the ancient poetic figures of the Sufi poetry, we dressed up and we came in our costumes. We were having such a party one evening at the Green’s home when four of the Jewish people smuggled out of Hitler’s Germany and smuggled into the United States and who came in on a ship and were smuggled out to the Greens unexpectedly came. They were immediately ushered in, looked at us in awe and fear and trembling, and were taken to a back bedroom. That back bedroom happened to have my wraps in there and many of the other Sufis’ cloaks that were worn that evening. Late in the evening, when we were ready to go, I went into that room to get the cloaks, and these people who were huddled together, looked in fear at me and got down on the floor and crawled under the bed. And I thought, "What in the world is wrong with them?" They were guests; we were not told who these people were, but we could tell they were just from Europe by the way they were dressed, and they did not speak any English. So I immediately went out to Green and said to her, "I don’t know what I’ve done, but I’ve done something; these people are in fear of me, and they’re under the bed. And what shall I do?" And she said, "Oh, Vera, come in here." And she took me in immediately, and she told me the story of them. She said they had been locked in attics in Germany, and later in Holland, and we’ve just gotten them out. Any sounds at all make them feel that they are going to be put in a wagon and taken to be eliminated. And Samuel was there, and I thought, "Well, why hasn’t Samuel been told?" I says, "Does Samuel know?" And she said, "I don’t think so; I didn’t want to make any announcement in front of all these Sufis." There were over 50 Sufis there that evening. I went and got Samuel: "Samuel, come here." I took him in the bathroom and slammed the door. I said, "Do you know about those people?" He said, "I know what they look like to me." And I said, "Well, you’re right." And I told him what had happened. And I said, "She has locked them in that back room because we’re here, and she’s going to keep them there until we go. And I don’t think this is right. These people are frightened to death." "Oh," he says, "I never heard of such a thing." So he went into the kitchen and immediately got Mrs. Green and went into that back room; and soon you could hear the mantrams going, and Samuel was working with them. So this was my first, and his first introduction, then, to the problem of these people, that I know of; I had not heard anything about it. From that night on, this is what Samuel was teaching at Kaaba Allah. I, in turn, coming from a Dutch family with some Jewish blood, and having had all of my grand-mothers that Samuel knew so well (my grossmer)—all of her sisters and family had been wiped out trying to escape from Holland during the bombings, on bicycles; and many of them had been shot with glass tubes, which went into their brain and killed them like that. I had not been able to get in contact with any of my family over there, and we were pretty sure they were wiped out, from the messages we got going on the inner planes and through "Yon" and other Consular people who were Sufis—they got into these countries and got messages back to us. We were pretty sure they were all wiped out, so I had very strong feelings. But I also had strong feelings against the German Jews, because my grand-mother and my relatives told me that they had fought the German Jews on the principle of buying up all the bakeries and all the small businesses, until they controlled them. When the Nazis came in, they resented this owning of property by so many Jewish people, and instead of the Jewish people immediately backing up and fronting somebody else, they kept on buying up all the land that they could buy up and buying up all the businesses that they could buy up. Well, this, of course, put them right on the open firing line when the Nazi purges began. And the Jews in Holland were saying, "Flee now! Get out of there!" And Baroness von Strohl and her husband, who were Consul Generals from England and Africa, got out by the skin of their teeth. And when they came to the Bay Area they too warned against this. And I felt that Murshida Martin and her connections with the Jews in the East and her relatives, her son-in-law’s Jewish background there, and the contacts with the Sufis as well as the Jewish people there, that they were doing totally the wrong thing. Now, Sam immediately got to work on this, beginning that evening when the first refugees were found under Greens’ bed; and he started to work for these people, on the inner planes, immediately. And, of course, he was highly trained psychically at that time—and he was receiving on the psychic plane. And Murshida Martin was putting it to work on a material plane right away; interpret, bring it down, put it to work here. You cannot do that; that is the wrong approach. And everything that Samuel wanted to do, she was putting to work in a different interpretation; and they were just going at opposite poles to each other.

WALI ALI: Yes, I see. She should have also been working in the higher…

MURSHIDA VERA: She was working, but she was working in a different way. Remember that Murshid had said that her husband, who refused ever to attend the Sufi functions or be a Sufi in any context with her work—he gave her all the money, all the freedom in the world to work, but "I’m a businessman; I make the money, you place it where you want to." Murshid Inayat Khan had said, "Do not push him. He is the rind of the orange. Don’t push him; don’t struggle to change his place. He is functioning as he should function for this Order." So he was never present, ever, or had anything to say about the Order, whatsoever. Samuel and Murshida ran it. And she met and knew Samuel when he was very young, probably eighteen or seventeen years of age when she started her training with him; he was a very young man. His first initiations or contacts with Murshid, either in the spirit or otherwise, I don’t know which, were when he was nineteen—only nineteen when he had those first initiations. And she immediately put him to work as her secretary, her mentor, her psychic receptor. And she insisted that he go that path. And she placed him on that path from the very beginning, because she herself lacked it, and he had it, naturally.

He didn’t have to train for it; he had it; he came with it. And this, which started off so well, ended up very badly when she decided at the end that she was going to bring in the silent Murshida she’d been training and give all the work of the Order over to Murshida Duce. And Murshida Duce immediately came forth with the Baroness and the three old gals that had all the money.

WALI ALI: Princess Matchabelli—

MURSHIDA VERA: Princess Matchabelli, and the other was a Rothschild, wasn’t she?

WALI ALI: I don’t know.

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know. I didn’t meet them because I didn’t want to meet them. I had absolutely cut it completely. Now, Samuel was still completely faithful to the Murshida; she might be going downhill and off the brink, but he would not desert the boat. And he was over at Kaaba Allah and still initiating right and left; many young men then were attracted to him. They were plowing through those halls, tramping up the stairs. Hazel Armstrong was in that first bedroom on the chapel floor slowly dying of cancer in the shoulder. (It was interesting that both of them should have had these centers afflicted.) And Dr. Davida Herrick came to see me and said, "Vera, you’ve got to go see Hazel; it’ll be your last visit—you’ve got to go." And, oh, I put it off and put it off, and finally I got myself in a state to go, and I was determined to bring joy to her; and there’d be no weeping or goo-goofing or any of that stuff—I simply wouldn’t go unless I had myself in a total spiritual state, which I got myself into after about a 48-hour retreat and Sam was backing me up on it which I’ll say one thing: he was 100% there. But the whole time I was there he and these guys were just ignoring Hazel’s condition, tramping up and down the stairs, making noise which caused terrible pain in her shoulders. And I was so angry at him I could a wring his neck. I never saw Hazel again, and we did have a beautiful meeting, and a happy one; it was about 20 minutes that she could stand it before she had to take further medication. And I was so against that, and so was Davida. We said, "Why does she bring in this medical stuff at a time when she should be able to get into the spiritual body and stay there during those seizures?" And then I talked to Samuel; I said, "Samuel, this is the most terrible thing, that you should allow these nineteen or so young men to tramp through that house when you know she’s in intense pain." He said, "I have no sympathy with people who have the out in the spirit and who insist on taking the physical path. Finis." He would not ignore it. He said, "If it’s bad enough on the physical, it’ll force her into the spiritual." Well, I don’t know what happened; I left Kaaba Allah with this feeling—I had never been there and seen such disruption.”

SHIRIN: This is what happened with Moineddin too.

MURSHIDA VERA: The houses had been bought for Meher Baba, they were being painted and fixed up, and Meher Baba was coming, but he didn’t show up on the dates he was supposed to show up. And the Order was up like this waiting, and then down and then up like tight waiting for the great appearance of the avatar.

WALI ALI: Was Rabia Martin still alive?

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, she was alive, but she was in her own home with her own physical problems; she was not controlling it. And Samuel had the full go, the full control of Kaaba Allah, all the initiations, the running of the Order, the whole thing. And he was then relieved from gardening duties; I don’t know who was doing it. I guess it was going wild or something. But, anyhow, I left Kaaba Allah for the first time just really shook to the floor. I thought, "What has happened to the Order?"

WALI ALI: What year around was this now, Vera?

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh, I wish I knew the dates that this happened—it was after the war. My husband had been sent overseas; I was alone with the baby, and the baby wasn’t nine months old—‘44 or ‘45, I would think it was. Alan was born in ‘43, and so this must have been the two years following her birth that this was happening. Maybe later than that—it might have been up to ‘47, because the new house had just been built, and Samuel had come up and we had paced off the foundations and selected those lots—Samuel had selected those lots—and the house had been built under meditation. And he had come up and blessed the house, and then he immediately went on and initiated every type of person; and he initiated people who were psychically off the beam and with emotional problems and had been cracked up by the war. And as fast as he initiated the problems, he’d send them to me; and all at once I have 30 mureeds all psychically off the beam and taking them in. Now, pretty soon Maria Phelps and the older ones are saying, "She is a witch. She is practicing witchcraft." I felt I was practicing white magic. I felt the only thing that I could do was give them the tasawwuf and hang them on their necks. And that I build the circle of light, meditate the circle of light, and when it was meditated strong enough that's when I sat down, they would sit within that circle. Now, there was no string on the floor; it was a pacing that I did with the Sufi practices, and did hour after hour in bare feet, in meditation, to get that circle of light so implanted—as I said, we had the floors bare and waxed because I danced on them; everyone danced in the house. And that light had to be right so that when we faced the East and I sat on my meditation cushion, they would automatically stand within that circle without having been told they were within the circle of light. And this is how I healed; but I also made tasawwuf and put them on their necks, and I used the Urdu and the Sanskrit symbols, and I used those symbols that said, "There is no God but God, who is Allah," "Allah ho Akbar," and the other Sufi incantations that were the highest I knew or could write. These I had been taught to write by Bill Hathaway who’s always been a great linguist and I used them for that purpose. And I had many books on alchemy and on Paracelsus and on every type of mental-emotional healing that could be done. And none of this was spoken to Samuel except we were in close touch by the telephone. He was holding down Kaaba Allah; I was holding down San Francisco. And they were coming fast and furious; and at that time I thought, "What am I going to do?"

WALI ALI: Had the Order been in some sense severed, then, by this time from what was happening in Geneva and Europe and also had it been turned over to Meher Baba by this time?

MURSHIDA VERA: No. I’d have to say I don’t know, because I did not go to see Murshida Martin on her deathbed. I was one of the people that didn’t pound at the door. But I understand Samuel was pounding at the door day and night; he had that family furious with him—the Mayhees, that is Murshida’s daughter and son-in-law were furious that he was pounding her for decisions on her deathbed. And none of us understood why, but I can understand why later: he’d been hit with the idea that here she is installing this Murshida Duce and going whole hog out for a woman nobody in the Order had ever met. I couldn’t take that; neither could the Tuckeys, neither could any of the educated and advanced people who had the titled of Khalif, Masheikh-ul Sheikha, Sheikh, the other titles. None of these people could take the idea of a complete strange woman coming in and you’re supposed to put your life in her hands. Why? Because her eyebrows meet? Now I went for my interview down at the Palace—wherever she was staying in one of the big hotels, I don’t remember which—and these people sitting on the floor out in the hallway, waiting to see Murshida Duce. I phoned her and told her, "I’ll be there at a certain hour; I wait 20 minutes and no longer." And I meant it. Nobody is going to get me to sit on the floor like a servant, waiting for someone that I never even met who’d been shoved down my throat. I just was furious about it, like Samuel. So I went there, and she came. Samuel hadn’t been told when my interview was, but he arrived ten minutes after my interview. And she immediately spread out on the bed every picture she had of the great Meher Baba, and she gave me the work with tears running down her face of the avatar of the age, "This great soul has come, and you as a Sheikha, all people, should recognize him, serve him and give your life to him." "But," I said, "but what of Inayat Khan?" Every once in a while, "What of Inayat Khan?" "What about the Message in America?" "Well, has Murshida deserted the message of Inayat Khan? His first American Murshida?" The subject was changed, changed, changed. "Oh, Vera, you must sit down for a moment of meditation." I thought, "Oh boy, here it comes, Meher Baba." "No, not Meher Baba, Samuel—what shall we do with Samuel?" He was the big worry. "What shall we do with Samuel?" I said, "Don’t drag him into this; let him do the universal work, right now, in the world: the situation in Asia, all the humanity is in such a mess; let him do that work. Don’t pull him into this. Leave him alone. Don’t bring him in here; he’ll cause trouble for you and what you are trying to do. And he has a work completely outside of this." She was just trembling. Her servant had come in and told her that Samuel was out in that hall: "He wants to see you in the presence of his mureed, of his Sheikha." And I was in the middle of the thing, and they came in: Samuel with his eyes popping and weeping and she with the tears streaming down her face: "Yay, Meher Baba!" And Samuel: "The Message! The Message!" (laughs) And I in the middle quaking in my feet and thinking, "What is the answer? How am I ever going to get these two calmed down?" Both in their own hysteria. "What is the date that Meher Baba is coming? Let us quiet down and decide—when is he coming?" Well, this big date was set for him to come, and I said, "Well, let’s all just have peace and quiet and rest on this. When the Master comes, he will of himself prove himself, one way or the other." And I had no other answer, and left.

Then I went home; Ruth Chase was living in my home. And they had separated, this mother and daughter team that was killing each other with the mother overwhelming this girl in her forties who had never been one inch away from her mother in her life. Finally we got them weaned apart, so she got a job as a telephone operator in one of the women’s hotels on Geary Street, and the mother was away from her for the first time in her life. But she was rude to me! I became the mother-image, you see? And I said to Samuel, "I just don’t know what to do about this, because Ruth is insisting that I meditate every night with her on Meher Baba." And he says, "What harm? Go ahead. Are you attuned to me? Do you love me?" I said, "You know that, Murshid. There’s no question of that." And I called him "Murshid" years before he had anything but a Khalif’s feel, because I saw him as a Murshid. And I knew he had attained to it, and alone! He addressed me as "Sheikha," and I addressed him as "Murshid." He was, already; what were they waiting for? And this was a terrible slap in the face. This man had given his life to this woman, then secretly pushes the whole thing into the hands of Murshida Duce. He was the Murshid; he should have been the head of that Order. And here she was going off half-cocked.

Well, I don’t know how Samuel came to do it, whether through the pressure of the Order or what, but he felt that he should recognize the Avatar, sidestep the Murshida, recognize the Avatar. And, after all, this was what I had advised the two of them to do, that there was nothing to do but to wait until the Avatar arrived; and if he was the Avatar, all things would be settled in place. Then we began these meditations—Ruth began, and every time I sat down to meditate with her, here would come the shadow of Meher Baba. And it was, "Do you feel it? Oh, my heart!" And the tears running down her face. What did I feel and see? A black shadow, and a black hand coming between us. And I said, "But if this is the Avatar—I had given my life to the Message since I was five years old—is this the Avatar coming to me with a big black hand, dividing me over my heart, and the feeling that my breath is being stopped?" After about a week of this, I said, "Ruth, I have to tell you my experiences. I cannot accept this Avatar. I am sorry." "Oh, Vera, you of all people, how could you?" I said, "Because I have to go by my inner experience. All my life it’s been this way. And I’m sorry if I’m wrong. I’ve got to go down on my own experience. I cannot deny the inner voice." And so she said, "Oh, you’ve got to see Samuel." So she went and got a hold of Samuel. And Samuel had a conference with me, in which he just put it to me. And I told him, I said, "Samuel, do you remember how many times you have told me in the past of your spiritual experiences; they conflicted terribly with the Order’s outer work?" Yes, he remembered. I said, "What did you do?" He said, "I followed the inner voice, without deviation." "Right." And I said, "You have to give me the grace to do the same." So he kissed me. He said, "I do. It’s not my way; I’ll still be at Kaaba Allah." I said, "Fine. I’ll still be on Hilaritas." And this was one of the two breaks that we had in our life. And that was one of them.

The other break came when the older mureeds were being put in institutions after they’d given their fortune and their life to the Sufi Order. And Murshida was dead, and these three old ladies then had to be cared for at Kaaba Allah; Samuel felt there was no one there to care for them, and he made the decision that they would be put into homes. I felt strongly against this, coming from a Dutch family where we cared for four grandparents until their death and where we scrubbed up the hemorrhages of two of them from cancer until they died; and every member of the family devoted themselves to their elders. No charity and no other person cared for our old ones. And to have them give their lives and then be put into old people’s homes….

WALI ALI: Murshida Goodenough ended up in an institution.

MURSHIDA VERA: That’s right; there were others, many of them. This was nothing new, but from my family background, I could not accept it. We did not treat our older people that way in my family. And I took my physical family’s rule of order to my spiritual order, right or wrong. I felt this was the wrong thing to do. And the older mureeds, the Tuckeys and others who were professional people, were shocked that Samuel made this decision. And he had the power to make it. Well, it didn’t last; they died almost immediately, all three of them. They just couldn’t take being away from the protection of the Khankah and living in big institutions; I think two of them were in paid institutions; the other one had to be put in a [?] home, and they put chains on her legs and chained her to an iron bed. And I went every day and meditated at the foot of her bed for the release of her soul, nothing else—until she was released. And I felt that this should have been faced by the Order. Let’s not say Samuel, but the Order owed these people; their lives and their fortunes had been given to Kaaba Allah, and they deserved more than treatment at death; that was my feeling at that time. Then, of course, Samuel was doing the universal work; he was working on the psychic plane, he was in the spirit body, and he was working in the prisons, in the Khankahs, in the strongholds of Europe to bring the light to protect the people that had to flee. This is what he was working on, to try to aid the humanity, to save the humanity. And he was right; he had to make a choice, and that choice drew him further and further away from this Meher Baba. Then Meher Baba finally arrives, decides that he is not going to come to Kaaba Allah, after all the money and work, and the property had been bought for him; and he goes off down south to Florida with his three girls and gets in an accident, gets furious at America in general, and takes off for home. Then he decides that he’s going—on the inner circles now, they will deny this—but the truth of the matter is I know that Meher Baba tried to get his voice back, and I know the people who tried to help him in Europe; and he could not get his voice back, after all those years of not using it. They say today he chose not to; that is not true. He couldn’t; he wanted desperately to. And, like our own Murshid—I mean Inayat Khan—who gave his first message through music alone, no words; and he reached a handful of people, including Murshida Martin, who really got the Message through music alone, and who later said that if he had to do it over again, he would have put his message into books and would never have faced the people and the lecture platform, that he should have put it into the books. And I have letters in my possession from Inayat Khan so stating. But, to me and to the mureeds, they felt that the music was it, because there he hit the heart of those who were ready.

WALI ALI: And now the music is really coming out again, in a wonderful way.

MURSHIDA VERA: Right. Now it’s coming back again, and it should; because there the initiation was of the heart, immediately, through the sound, through the mysticism of sound, and through the touching of the heart center. And it began where it should begin; it didn’t begin in sex organs; it didn’t begin in the head; it didn’t begin in the Vega nerve; it began in the heart. And the development of those mureeds was instantaneous and terrific, as it will be today, because you’re starting from the main center.

But then, here they were with this great decision to be made. I was decorating the gate for some big to-do, which I don’t exactly remember what it was; and I was up on a ladder, and all the young girls had been sent down to the lower house to finish off another two feet of the garland that I needed. But I was up on a ladder, putting it up, and when I was through, I sat up on top of the gate, waiting for them to come back with the garland. And one of the older mureeds, a white-haired mureed who had been a teacher, came up to the gate and stalled to talk to me? And tears were running down her face. Samuel had really read her off, and I don’t even remember what he read her off on, but he just had her in tears. And my great love and devotion to these old people, which I had all my life. If you’re old, if you’re a dog, or if you’re a kid, I’m a sucker (laughs); and I’ve always had it. Here was this old lady with the tears running down her face, crying to me at the way Samuel had treated her and had banned her to her room, and she had to stay there for two weeks. She was not to be allowed out of her room as punishment. And I was just indignant. And Samuel came up while we were talking, and he was furious with me—he could stamp around and his eyes were popping—the only time I ever saw him angry with me in my whole life, and I immediately was angry with him. And I just told him "No, Samuel, you cannot treat these old people this way. I am not going to stand here and allow you to punish them. One does not punish." And he was cracked by me; I was standing above him, sitting on the Sufi symbol, and the power was coming through me, and it cracked him up. He began to cry and ran down to his apartment.

WALI ALI: This was after the whole Meher Baba thing had started, or…?

MURSHIDA VERA: No, this was previous to that Meher Baba thing. I was telling you about the second time that I’d had a set-to on an intellectual—where I was really angry at him and he was really angry at me. And I went and got my husband, and I told him what had happened. He says, "Get your suitcase, we’re leaving." This was my first husband, Donny. And so Donny got the suitcases, and we went and walked down the road to the garage area where we’d left our little car, and Hazel met us halfway down. And she said, "Where are you going?" We said, "We’re leaving, and we’re leaving for good." And she said, "You cannot do this. Samuel is weeping; he is completely in a collapse. You cannot do this to him, Vera; you have got to see him." And I said, "Well, I won’t see him on that note. I will not go in there and confront him and have a knock-down and drag-out with my teacher; I just won’t do it. And I’m in no state to be talked to. I can’t see him banishing an old woman like that, who only the week before had appeared with her hair—it was about the length of mine, only she wore it tied in the back with a little black bow like maybe colonial men would have looked, with a little curl—and Murshida Martin had read her out before the whole Order in circle, telling her that she was too old to look like that. And everybody just acted as if they were slapped in the face when she said that. It was the most rude thing that Murshida Martin ever could have said in public to a woman who had given her fortune and her life to her? But this was the sort of thing that was going on in there, complete disregard for the heart and feelings of people who’d given their lives to the Order. The thing was just completely off the beam. It was no longer the Message.

WALI ALI: It just had gone off the beam.

MURSHIDA VERA: Gone off the beam. And Meher Baba was coming in; they were all being influenced by the coming of the avatar, long before it was Meher Baba—the avatar was coming! All these messages were coming from every source: the avatar is coming. And, of course, when Meher Baba came on the scene, he was it! Denying the fact that they had within their presence a man who was going through the state of the avatar; he went through a madzub stage. Samuel was as madzub as they come; he was completely off. I knew nothing about madzub, never heard of it. Then somebody gave me this book by Meher Baba—the great he was doing with the madzubs. I read that, and I said, "Ho, Samuel’s been doing this for years! He’s madzub, and they don’t even recognize it in their own midst, but they’re going to India to adopt another one? He is going through the state of the avatar, and they didn’t even know it." And I didn’t know it; don’t think that I felt I was superior, because I didn’t. When it hit me, it was the shock of my life, to realize that, yes, here is the state of the avatar, and he is here, and you kneel before him. And the rest of my life never entered a room where Samuel was present without sitting before him, humbly. And I will, within spirit, to the end of my days; because he was so head and shoulders above anything that anybody has recognized. He was working for the humanity on the plane of the avatar; and all these mad things, like feeding Asia—the things he referred to last night in his lecture: the humanity, his personal, psychic, spiritual destiny was the work for the humanity, the whole world, not us, not me individually, not you, not any of us as a small group, but the humanity.

WALI ALI: This was his work.

MURSHIDA VERA: Right up here, his whole work this was. And I’m sure if we knew his phrase given to him by Murshid, it would have been for the brotherhood of man, in some way. I don’t know that phrase, but I know his life, and I know what it was; it was for the brotherhood of man.

Lunch Break

WALI ALI: We’re back again with Vera, and where shall we begin? We were talking about the incident at the time of Rabia Martin’s passing and the way Murshid was caught in the middle between her and Murshida Duce and so on.

MURSHIDA VERA: Perhaps Rabia’s passing finished an era in the Sufi work, because all of the letters—a good many of the letters, which I have, written by Samuel in defense of Murshida Martin’s position as the rightful Pir of the Order, being the first Murshid so initiated by Inayat Khan, was a work which Samuel never should have been put to work at, looking back at it. I think that it divided his ego, and from the lecture I heard last night, it was never ever integrated again. It forced him to serve a purpose for her too many years of his life, so that he never again was able to pull that together, which he had had up to nineteen years of age. And this, I think, was a very great pity, because he was on the path of the making of a Murshid; his whole life showed the building of a Murshid right here, putting it to work in a modern international city with the greatest of opposition one could have, the greatest of racial prejudices, to begin with, and especially during the years of the Nazi regime, building up to that period, there were so many people who were asleep at the switch as to what was really happening in Hitler’s Germany; and we were so fortunate to have Bill Hathaway’s father having been a Consul General all of his life, a Secretary in this work to President Wilson who wrote a tremendous work predicting the entire Hitler program ten years before that war which was silenced by our State Department. And we were just so very fortunate to have Bill and to know this family personally, and to know that this was all coming about; it was all planned, it was all heading for it. So we had warnings, and had Murshida Martin been the inner listener instead of one trying to the last to fulfill her claim, and having Samuel devote years of his productive life in typing nothing but defenses for her, for her desire to reach that level. Only after she made the trip to India and was recognized by different holy orders on her own ground and had a hundred people or more trotting behind her wherever she got off of a train, did she finally come to any feeling of being recognized on her own ground. Of course, she demanded this world for Pir recognition, you see. She didn’t start at all on a spiritual plane for the humanity, as Samuel did; she didn’t start on the plane of working in your own back yard as the rest of us did, but demanded and spent her whole life trying to prove and claim the Pir-ship. And this was just a great pity; but I feel that she has been drooped as if she didn’t exist. She influenced so much of our Murshid’s life that something definitely should be done on the life of Rabia and the work that she did in America. Without her fortune and her money and her devotion and her travels and her art collection; without her building and setting up Kaaba Allah and the people that it attracted to the Pacific Coast, we would not have what we have today. We do owe her a debt. And one should never judge the way the hierarchy works. It was done with the knowledge of the inner planes, and there was a purpose in it, though I feel, personally: I feel that Meher Baba shattered the Order and that only with this generation has it begun to relive on a right plane. But perhaps it was meant to be. As Samuel said, "I don’t weep for Kaaba Allah, because that which had to be destroyed was destroyed, and then which is to be rebuilt will be rebuilt." And when I went to the rock with him after the fire, he said, "Quit crying. Quit weeping. It was all destroyed before the fire anyhow; you know that.”

WALI ALI: That’s right.

MURSHIDA VERA: And I said, "That’s true, Murshid, but all of the memories, all of the great art that was destroyed in the chapel." The collection of a lifetime had gone up in flames in one evening, could never be replaced. And, as an artist, this meant so much to me. And then our Murshid Sam said to me that it would be reclaimed and rebuilt by another generation; and so that prophecy I have not seen; I don’t even know who owns Kaaba Allah now. Samuel predicted to me that the school would be reclaimed in Fairfax and that I would see in my lifetime the rebuilding of Kaaba Allah.

WALI ALI: You see that poster of the Sufi Choir? Over there, for their performance that’s coming up? Do you recognize that place?

MURSHIDA VERA: My goodness, yes. Isn’t that wonderful!

WALI ALI: This was taken right up by the Rock of the Prophet.

MURSHIDA VERA: So it’s coming back.

WALI ALI: And people go up there and meditate all the time even though the property is owned by others; but now, I understand, Pir Vilayat is in the process of starting a Khankah-ashram-type situation—it probably won’t be in that physical place, but at the same time it may be the same spirit.

MURSHIDA VERA: Gee, I wish we could reclaim the rock.

WALI ALI: I don’t know what the legal money side of it is.

MURSHIDA VERA: I just can’t understand how the people who have it now would have any use of the rock. The rock itself had just such tremendous meditations, and Murshid Inayat Khan himself stood upon that rock and dedicated the Temple of the Western World off on that point. That it would not at some time come back into the hands of the Sufis?

WALI ALI: I think we should look into it. We use it, and we consider it a shrine, regardless of who it belongs to.

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, that’s true. As a shrine, it would be wonderful if it could again come back into the hands of the Sufi Order. Do we have a separation between Sufi Order and Sufi Movement now in America?

WALI ALI: Yes, this is correct. The Sufi Movement is supposedly headed by Fazal Khan, who is a young man in his late twenties; and I believe the grandson of Inayat Khan. And they have all this money and organization centered out of Geneva, and also apparently appealing to older people and putting a lot of emphasis on Universal Worship and so on. So there is still a division between Sufi Order, which is headed by Pir Vilayat and Sufi Movement, though the Sufi Order is undertaking all the elements of the Sufi Message that were included under what was called the Sufi Movement: the Universal Worship, the Brotherhood, the Healing and so on.

MURSHIDA VERA: I see.

WALI ALI: We should get back to what we were talking about. Since you brought up the subject of Rabia Martin, would you have anything more to say? You said you took care of her personal quarters; why don’t you give us a report just on her—

MURSHIDA VERA: On what we did, would that be good?

WALI ALI: On what you did, how she taught, something about her personality or her history and so on, anything you feel that you wish to give.

MURSHIDA VERA: Rabia gave us the world that she met on her trips. This is what I personally got from her outside of my personal meetings with her, which were always based on a comparison of my psychic opinion of what Samuel was bringing forth. I was never exposed to what he was bringing forth, but I had to give the answers purely from the psychic, so it was an inner reading that she was demanding of me each time. And I personally never knew if I was right or wrong, and I later felt that I should have found some way out of that, that this was a psychic misuse of any talents I had, and something that never should have been done to me, or to anyone, or even to Samuel; it was not the right thing. But I suppose that when one lacks one’s own psychic or inner vision, then one has to depend on someone else to do it for one; and this may have been her reason for that. But when the point came of doubting the validity of Sam’s messages, when those messages became personalized punishments against old-time Sufi members, this set very badly with the old-timers. And this made great complaints brought to Murshida Martin’s door, and great upset and frustration on her part. Now the messages that I received at that time were, "Send Samuel to India; get him there." And, of course, I don’t know what made the trend that he should not go to India, but he should be sent to San Francisco City College and trained in horticulture. And then he went into gardening and off onto that tack, which led him into the feeding of starving Asia, the period he spent on that. And I saw a great deal of him when he was at City College, because I lived in that area, and he used to come up to the house.

WALI ALI: And what about the date; do you have idea of placing the time when he was at City College? It was before he ever went to Asia, which was 1956, I know that.

MURSHIDA VERA: I would say maybe in the early ‘50’s. We just have to check with the College as to the year that he graduated from there. No, I can’t place that date in anything that happened within my family that would place it exactly.

WALI ALI: Never mind the date—let’s talk about those years, when he was at City College.

MURSHIDA VERA: When he was at City College, he worked in the nurseries on the flats, and he was deeply interested in seeds, in grasses and grains that could be used to feed Asia; he did a lot of work with seed catalog people in our country and contacted some of the heads of these firms in research that would make possible the use of our hybrid grains and crops that could be used with the simple plowing and the simple irrigation of those countries; this is what he was working on at that time. How many letters that he showed to me! Unfortunately, I didn’t take seriously enough to put down names; or the names didn’t connect with any of my contacts, so that I don’t recall them today. But he did a great deal of correspondence, a great deal of work. He was present and active in the first session of United Nations in San Francisco; many of the Sufis attended that. I went to one session with him, but somehow I was off on something else. To me it didn’t seem to be the important thing it was to Samuel at that time; he was just deeply wound up in United Nations when it met in San Francisco. And he followed this [?], to my knowledge, all of his life he was deeply interested in United Nations; but as he grew older he was deeply interested in mostly what they were doing for Asiatic people and—they were not doing for the Asiatic people. And he foresaw the Vietnam debacle with the French people and the great starvation that would hit the lower classes and he was hopefully working to prevent that type of starvation, mass starvation, which we are seeing today.

SHIRIN: Or not seeing.

MURSHIDA VERA: Or not seeing, yeah. But, during those years that Samuel was at the nursery at the City College, he was so beyond what the people in the class were doing that I understood from other students who I knew or met or who were connected there with the President of Cogswell Polytechnic College, where I had graduated from, and lifetime friend of the President of City College at the time Samuel was there—it was at a time when my marriage broke up, and I had to make a decision of how I was going to raise and support these children, so I went to City College to see that President for advice on the better way for me to go or where I should specialize from that point on, trying to walk away from the arts which were at an all-time low, which I knew I could not support these two children on that, or I felt I couldn’t. They discouraged my going toward the teaching field, the people that I consulted at that time. But when I went to Samuel down in the greenhouse and told him nothing about the interviews I’d had on the hill with the administration; and he was just working in the soil, and I was sitting on a box next to him watching him work on separating young plants; he went into the subject as if he had been with me the whole time and I had just walked out of the office (laughs) as he did so many times; and picking up the conversation from there, he went on to tell me that I should look away from the city and look unto the hills. And I took this as an interpretation that I should go to the hills and left Hilaritas and went up to Nevada City, which I never should have done because I landed in the house which the branch of the American River that flooded Yuba City ran under during the floods and washed out all of my costumes and lifetime belongings—all my dancing background just wiped out the back door with the river (laughs).

WALI ALI: We get these initiations of the elements. Isn’t it interesting—the fire element, there’s a destructive side; the water element, there’s a destructive side and so on.

MURSHIDA VERA: So, all of the elements had their initiation on me, and of course I misinterpreted totally what Samuel had told me, because he did not mean that to me. Now I am where I’ve done the work which he had meant me to do in the beginning, to look into the hills, to be a in a valley where I was looking to the hills, but not going to live in them, which I had misinterpreted. And he also was very much for my continuing the mental healing and very much against my putting myself in any physical contact that would deplete me physically. And, of course, I went through years where everything was drawn out of me physically, and I was just giving and giving and giving and depleting myself in a way that he was very much against.

WALI ALI: How was he supporting himself at the time when he was going to City College?

MURSHIDA VERA: His family, I understand, and he told me personally, that his family had agreed—the father and mother had had a reconciliation where Samuel was concerned. I knew Fuchsia, his mother, very well, and Samuel took me to meet her when I was a young girl, before I was married to anyone; he took me to his home and introduced me to his mother and then to his brother and to his father. And his father approved very much of me, but I’m sure his father was looking again for me to balance Samuel, which of course I wasn’t thinking of balancing Samuel at all; I thought he was plenty all right the way he was! (laughs) So that didn’t ever blossom out very much. And then Samuel asked me to attend his father’s funeral with him, which no other mureed did, to my knowledge. There were other mureeds there, but they did not walk with him and weren’t with him at the funeral; I was. And I know Samuel’s feeling; he was terribly upset for his mother and tried to hold her together mentally and emotionally, which he did a very fine job of. And he was terribly against the fortune, the bronze casket, that his father had that type of a funeral at a time when he could see the money going to much better spiritual use. Then, following the funeral, following this period, Fuchsia’s own mental health became very poor a year later, say, a time later.

But at the immediate time, he held her in good lieu; then the family went through this forgiveness theme, Sam’s own family, at which they decided—or he agreed with his father that he would agree to go back to college and get this education that they wanted him to get; his father wanted him to have a profession. He didn’t want his son just to be a Sufi spiritual leader; that just killed him, that this boy would not get down to being financially minded and getting down to the practical side of life.

WALI ALI: Apparently, when he graduated from high school he wanted nothing better than to go to college, but he wasn’t interested in business, so….

MURSHIDA VERA: He got involved in the spiritual work so early in life that when he got out of high school he was already deeply involved in the spiritual path, and here they were trying to place him on a mundane path, which he fought with his whole being. That fight went on and on for years, and when I first came to the Sufi Order, his family were going hot and heavy at him, and Murshida Martin was going hot and heavy on her end.

WALI ALI: He said, "Thank God they couldn’t get together—that’s what he said! (laughs)

MURSHIDA VERA: That’s right! If they ever got together, they would have destroyed him—I was just going to say that.

Murshida Martin was a Jewess that gave a lot of money to Hadassah, that turned Hadassah down to develop the Sufi Movement. And this was, in the Jewish community, unbelievable! That this woman, from such a fine family, with all this good background should turn away from Hadassah and put that money into Sufi work … horrors! So Samuel sort of happily went his own path, ignored the whole thing and went down the middle. But every once in a while the family would get on him and crack him up and he’d be in tears and all schook for weeks: and then it would die down and they’d let him go his own way again. But they let him go his own way because he simply gave up the whole thing.

WALI ALI: His mother was a musician or something?

MURSHIDA VERA: She was something else! You’d have to hear Fuchsia on the piano to believe it. I’d say that she had the strength of three men, and all of it came out on those keys. It was tremendous power in those little hands and this little bird-like alive, vital person who would bang away and stop in the middle and say, "Vera, come here. Did you know my son is named Samuel; do you know why? (laughs) And she would tell me the history of Samuel and how; she said, "They said he was born out of wedlock, but" she said, "don’t you believe it. He was born a prophet, and he came in the spiritual body first." She realized what her son was, and she would tell me and…

WALI ALI: She might have told you, but she never let him know that she felt that!!

MURSHIDA VERA: …and Arjuna said, "She’s mad! Why doesn’t she tell her son this?”(laughs) He would hear this in the rest of the house; and afterward, he’d say, "She’s mad! She tells the world, but she doesn’t tell her own son." And I said, "Well, she’s not telling the world, she’s telling me." And he says, "Well, it’s the same thing; if any woman tells another woman (laughter) you’re telling the world!" But, anyhow I would tell Samuel, and he’d say, "Yes, I know; she has told me; she has told me about my conception and my birth. Yes, she knows that I am a prophet. She knows I was born as a prophet." Well, I said, "Why doesn’t she influence your father?" He said, "She tried to, and you see what it’s done to her?" (laughs) So that probably a lot of her nervous mental problems were due to battling her husband for her son.

SHIRIN: What was he like—what kind of a man?

MURSHIDA VERA: He looked nothing at all like Samuel. I would say that the other son looked more like the father and that they had these real strong masculine figures, heavy bone structure—I wouldn’t say very tall men, but they both, the brother and the father, were physically of a strong build. And, of course Samuel, when I first knew him, was very delicate; he had nothing of this strong body that he built through the years by practices. But he had a delicate bone structure; he was thin and…

SHIRIN: Intellectual.

MURSHIDA VERA: …and intellectual and esoteric being, all head. And, speaking of all head, I’m speaking of the ones on his shoulders. During the time that Arjuna and I were first married we lived on 20th and Diamond Street and we lived on the top floor of a flat that overlooked the Bay and the bridge. And if you weren’t young and strong, you couldn’t stand it to climb up that amount of stairs; so we didn’t have to worry about the old ones—they wouldn’t climb. (laughs) We had only the young ones who came there, and we would have tremendous parties in this house; and one night we were having one of the first parties we had after I joined the Order. And all the young people were there, and Hazel Armstrong and a few of that middle age group were there; and Samuel came late. And, of course, the front door was always left open so anyone could come in and out on the top floor; and there was a long hallway leading back to this big room adjoining the kitchen where we had the big part of the party. And I had all the young ones there—Shirin and Nadine and all the Phelps kids, and the whole bunch of children that were children related to Sufis, and they were all sitting around on the couches and the chairs. And we had a fishbowl, which was turned upside down for an oracle; and we had towel turbans—if you were the swami, you had to put on the turban. And then you had to look into the fishbowl and you had papers that everybody had their question and their name on it, and you picked up a paper—if you were the swan, you took the paper and you looked in the fishbowl and told, predicted for this person, gave him his fortune. And these fortunes were just hilarious; everybody told all the dirt they knew about anybody else (laughs). And we were all laughing and having a great time when Samuel came, and he looked and he said, "What are you going? This is all wrong! Vera should be the swami." And he walked over to me and snatched this turban off the person, wound it around my head, and went out to fill the fishbowl with water and put it right side up. And he said, "No, put your mind on this and stop this nonsense." He says, "Excuse me," and he marches in the hall; and nobody’s paying attention to him. I’m scared of the fishbowl, (laughs); what am I supposed to see or do? (laughs) Where’s Samuel? Please come and save me! Samuel had taken off his coat; he was in his pants and his shirt. And he comes marching back through this door from the hallway with his fly open and his penis hanging out, zipped in? The penis zipped into the fly!

WALI ALI: Oh, God.

MURSHIDA VERA: (laughs) Here’s the Phelps gal there who sashays over to the door; she’d been in the kitchen, she had an apron on. She holds out the apron, stands in front of Samuel; Samuel is totally unconscious of the whole thing, marches right into the circle!

WALI ALI: (Laughter)

MURSHIDA VERA: I didn’t know what was going on, and she is certain; and doing zippering movements over the shoulder. What is she trying to tell me? I just couldn’t get it; I knew it was something. And she’s got this apron out? And all at once she swishes the apron aside, like this, and I look (laughs), and I got the message. "I got the message," I said, put down the fishbowl, grabbed Samuel around my arms like this, and began kissing him. He says, "What’s going on? Stop this! I’m being attacked!" (laughs) And I sashay him out, backwards, through this door. I said, "Samuel, your zipper! All those kids could see you." "Oh, he says, "What zipper?" and ”Oh! That!" (Laughter) Zips down, pull, zips it up! (laughter) marches back in. I looked at Hazel; God, we were in a cold sweat, looked at all the kids' faces. No, they just hadn’t seen anything at all; they were totally unaware of it. But, old Mrs. Phelps was furious; "Oh!”she says, "the very idea! Think of that, what those children would have thought! Just think of what could have happened!" she said, "If I hadn’t walked out of that kitchen when I did. I saved the day!" She gave herself full credit for it. So that was just the joke of the Order. But this is typical of the states that Samuel was in; he was totally unaware of the physical; it simply didn’t exist. He was in the spirit body; he was working in the spirit all of the time, and the physical body was just simply not recognized. And I think this was true all of his life, so that in the low points of his life, when he should have been retreating and been on his own retreat, free of teaching mureeds or giving the Message, he would plow on, not even recognizing his physical states. Ant after the years of Hazel’s death, when there was no one to knit his sweaters, take care of his dirty socks, care for him physically and see that he did what was right for his physical body, no one cared about his physical body. When I visited him during the time that he was living down by the dry-docks in this little shack with the screens on it, and flies all over, everybody bringing him fruit and gifts, and the flies—just droves of them on top of everything. Sammy in his sheet, meditating away, and all of the boys sitting around with him, completely unaware; he wasn’t being fed, he wasn’t being cleaned up and they were just taking it from him. You know: absorb, absorb, take from the master every instant of the way. And nobody there to protect him or do anything for him. And this is what brought on these savage, sudden attacks of physical depletion—they just absorbed everything possible. And he didn’t have this opportunity to retreat from it. No one reminded him to. And he himself was totally unaware of the physical.

SHIRIN: Do you know something about the findings in the hospital?

MURSHIDA VERA: Only what I heard from other people; they said that he was the most frightful patient that ever lived. And I could see why; because they were imposing a physical regime on a man who was in a spiritual state. And this was a most terrible thing; he evidently didn’t have anybody around him to protect him; and when it was told to me, it was over. I was not contacted at a time when I could have gone to him.

SHIRIN: The thing is, he says it was one thing; and we find out from the medical doctors that it was another thing.

WALI ALI: But she means the first time, not the last time.

MURSHIDA VERA: No. The first time; this is true. But I never heard what was really wrong with him.

WALI ALI: The doctors say it was a heart attack, and he always said it was food poisoning. I don’t think he wanted to alarm us about it.

MURSHIDA VERA: No. I think, on the contrary—I just don’t think he was conscious of it. Really. Because he simply refused to turn into his own body. He absolutely refused.

SHIRIN: That’s what I wanted to know.

MURSHIDA VERA: And when he worked with me as a young woman, when I had five miscarriages, one after the other, when I was married to Donny, Samuel would come to me in the middle of the night, three in the morning, whenever it happened—all I had to do was call my Murshid and he would appear—Samuel would always say to me—he’d get everybody out of the room, anyone that was around he’d get out of the room—and he’d sit down with me on top of the bed, get on top of the bed—and he’d say, "Vera, you can get out of that physical body, and I demand that you do." And that way he could roar. I’d say, "I can’t take my arms off the bedposts; I’m just in too much pain." And he said, "Nonsense!" And he would whack his hands on the crown enter of my head, (she claps, indicating what he did)—not my head; he would hold his hands above there and he’d give (claps) a whack like that. And then he would start a mantras, and he would demand inwardly, "Follow the mantram." And the minute I could get my voice to meet his voice, I was just out of my body like that, and free of it. But I could never do this in the presence of my husband; I could never do it in the presence of anyone except my Murshid. But he demanded that of me; and I’m sure he demanded it of himself, because Samuel never taught anything that he didn’t do himself. If he couldn’t do it, he wouldn’t ask you to do it.

WALI ALI: Let me tell you something; I just remembered something that happened once, during the period when I was living here. I had gone out for a short walk and he was in the kitchen doing some work. Somehow, through a series of—something fell on something else and hit something else, and a whole kettle of boiling water fell on his shoulder. And when I came back into the house—this had just happened—and one of the girls who was here was there. I saw what he did—he just took this deep breath, and he held it; and then he continued to do that. And he didn’t express any pain or anything of the kind. And it was tremendous—the scar was there for months, a tremendous thing; but he just got right out of it, by the breath.

MURSHIDA VERA: Also Samuel always taught in regards to pain, to my own pain—when it was something that I went through—he would say to me that one must meet water with water, fire with fire. Whatever the element is, you must meet that element head on in order to relieve yourself of the pain and to start the healing—the system itself, battling it from within. You don’t do it on the outside. You don’t put salves or anything on the outside. Water [?]

SHIRIN: I remember, during my natural childbirth….

MURSHIDA VERA: … that he held to that.

SHIRIN: He wasn’t there. He was in the hospital at the time, but the kind of breathing we use is a water breath. During the whole process, and that’s the only breath that works.

WALI ALI: This is a subject we’ve gotten into, of course, natural childbirth. Our woman now are very capable and able to do it very well; this knowledge has just come in.

MURSHIDA VERA: This is marvelous.

WALI ALI: Now, I want to find out a little more about his family, because you’re one of the few people that knew them personally. He became reconciled with his father on his father’s deathbed, and then he opened up his—[?]. He says his family always preferred his younger brother Eliot.

MURSHIDA VERA: He said this all of his life, that Eliot was preferred. But Eliot looked a lot older than Samuel even when he was young. And Eliot always had the expression in his eyes that made you figure that any contact he had with you had to be evaluated on what your contact was with Samuel. And, no doubt, he felt the spiritual superiority of this brother, of Samuel; and would not recognize the physical side of him at all, was ashamed of him physically and ashamed of his work and ashamed of his attitudes and actions and everything else. But Samuel, physically, and in his inheritance, was like his mother; he did not look like his father or have the strong physical build of the father or Eliot. And he was an older son; and in a Jewish family one expects that older son to be something special where his father is concerned. And Samuel simply refused to be it, or maybe he couldn’t he it; maybe he and his mother were so in tune from the beginning that he never could be attuned to the father in the way the father wanted him to be. And he had a plan for Samuel’s life, and Samuel did not fit that plan from the time he was a boy. And his scholastic ability, his pride in Samuel’s progress through high school was very great, and Samuel was a marvelous student and had tremendous grades at Lowell and was a brain from the viewpoint of everyone I ever met who knew him when he was in Lowell. And that he would throw this out the window to go to this nutty spiritual path was inconceivable to his father and the more he fought it, the more the Hierarchy seemed to have its plan for Samuel, to dominate his life and to guide hip on the psychic path. Now, how he got open to this psychic stuff, I don’t know, but I would feel from my own experience with children, and from the lessons he gave me in regards to my children, that it was very early established between the mother and Samuel.

WALI ALI: He said that in the first couple of years of his life he had all sorts of experiences and even was able to remember the Bible and read from the Bible and do all sorts of things.

MURSHIDA VERA: Right.

WALI ALI: And then later he forgot it and then remembered it.

MURSHIDA VERA: He was a reincarnated prophet; that I know. Fuchsia told we that she knew he was a prophet when he was horn. And the father, of course, having the traditional Jewish orthodox feeling for the son, accepted this and believed that Samuel would go that way. That was fine, so long as it was within his orthodox concept. But when Samuel reached the year of his majority and had his own experience—and he forgot all about what he came with; he forgot his former incarnation; he forgot the prophet that was. And he became a child on this plane, searching and seeking for his own Murshid-ship. He stepped from the set-up prophet to the teacher of the masses, of the humanity. Then this long hard battle to attain that, and the finding of Baba Martin, his first teacher; the coming through the Theosophical movement—he was trained in theosophy, early; he made strong contacts with the astrologers and the theosophists in that area (Murshida Martin founded the first metaphysical library it San Francisco). He contacted her through the metaphysical books, and they became deep intellectual friends when he was very young. And when she found Inayat Khan and entered the work with that, it was a very natural thing that Samuel carry right along with that. Then the metaphysical library was given up for the Sufi work; the Khankah on Franklin Street was established; the Sufi headquarters on Geary and Sutter (the first one I was involved with was on Sutter Street); these places opened. And Samuel was a young man, vibrant and alive intellectually, and known by all art circles—drama, dance, art circles all knew him. And he attracted that type of person. And they came to the center, to the great art shows we had—of the Asiatic art brought back by Murshida, gathered and imported by Murshida Martin’s husband, and gathered on her travels. And these tremendous shows would be crowded; 200 people jammed into those large rooms. Mr. James, Mr. Gump, people of the highest order of art and craftsmanship, and leading buyers; all of the intelligentsia, of the creative world of San Francisco met at these great art shows or teas that they had there. The Universal Worship was attended perhaps by 25 people, but the art shows, the teas, the soirees that they gave would be jammed to the doors. You could meet any of the creative people of the day; the heads were there: people in drama, in theater would all be at these Sufi doings on Sutter Street. And they were tremendous evenings that gathered together a great many of the creative people of this area. And Samuel was always in the center of this, organizing it, setting it up; he had Hazel always to be his right hand on carrying out anything he wished: the colors of draperies, the textures, the costumes, the food, every detail he planed ahead of time. And he just simply gave it out to Hazel, and it was taken care of, like this, by Hazel and Davida and those girls that worked for him; they did all that for Samuel and carried it out for him the way he wanted it. So he had a tremendous set-up there, and I say myself that I think for Samuel, the breaking up of this deal and taking it to Fairfax, putting more concentration on Fairfax was when the depth of the Depression hit; and it was felt that the mureeds should be solidified and aided on the spiritual basis; to bring us to a Khankah and to get us together as much as possible seemed to be the way for us to go, in a deep depression, as there was then. But the headquarters still went on, and Mrs. Phelps was still the librarian there every day, five days a week, and Hazel at this center a couple of times a week. They took turns, and they were well-dressed, culturally adept people who could handle it. And the books were being given out and were constantly loaned out to many many people who were not Sufis and who used that library. And it was a fine library, because it probably had the cream of what Murshida Martin had gathered in the old metaphysical library on the Eastern Philosophy. It had been brought to that library.

WALI ALI: Instead of looking at particulars, looking at the general sweep, let's say, of Murshid's life and, as you say, the building of the teacher….

MURSHIDA VERA: To me it's the building of a Murshid. He came as a prophet; he was born a prophet, with full recognition of the Scriptures and the whole story of the time of Samuel, the time of the Prophets; he came with the full knowledge. This knowledge was gradually veiled from him, so that he forgot all of the Old Testament and all of that he had lived, and he became a novice. He became a beginning raw reed, searching for the Path. And in finding his Path, the Path was not one to be accepted by his family; it was in absolute opposition to what the family had planned for the oldest son of a well-to-do prominent Jewish family. When he met Rabia Martin, she was of the Jewish heritage; and she gave him Father Abraham, the beginning of the Sufi tradition in Abraham. And this he could accept, and it was natural for him to accept this. And he immediately became the protector, and she became the mother-image, recognizing him in his spiritual state, having solidity, having a definite goal and a dedication, with the ability and desire to give her fortune and her wherewithal and her time to the Sufi Message. It was already Samuel's message, because he came with full knowledge of what the Prophets had predicted. And he had in him the strong sense of right and wrong; to have the guts to get up and call anyone—I don't care if it was the mayor or the Vice President, or the Governor of the state—he not only wrote them letters, but confronted them in person, when they were spiritually doing something against the prophecy, or against the Message. And he would confront them and tell them; he would state it right to them.

WALI ALI: Because this is the path of the Prophet; this is what the prophets had to do in their own time.

MURSHIDA VERA: That's what the Prophet is for, and always is for. But he went through the Naqib, the Rassoul, the Nabi; he went through these various stages in his own development. His spiritual guidance from within, or call it the Hierarchy, despite his Murshid, and he became absolutely beyond the point of his teacher s hand—he was beyond          them in the beginning, probably, but he would get them distracted, because they could only go so far with Samuel, and then he went so far beyond them, he just drooped them. They couldn't keep up with him. And if they couldn't keep up with him, they themselves became distracted and began first weeping about it and gnashing their teeth, and then they'd escape. And I believe that a lot of Murshida's travels were purely and simple escapes from Samuel so she could recoup herself and come back and know what in the world should she do. But, when advised from the inner planes what to do—at least, let us say, what I received, whether it was legitimate or not; the psychic reception I had when asked to make these decisions was always that Samuel should be sent to India and that he should be taken out of her mureed-ship.

WALI ALI: Of course, after he did travel in the Orient and was recognized over there and met masters over there, then everything opened up for him over here eventually.

MURSHIDA VERA: Then he came back with an entirely different thing; he was recognized an initiate. And from my viewpoint in readings and studies of all the masters that have lived in modern times…

—Break—

I don’t know of anyone else in the history of the world, to my knowledge in reading and books, that could ever compare with what our Murshid went through. It’s really extraordinary, because he brought all of the spiritual progress of the whole world right here to San Francisco and the Western world. And it grew—we saw it grow and we saw him develop through it all. It was a tremendous, wonderful experience.

WALI ALI: We haven’t talked about the last few years of his life and how you saw that.

MURSHIDA VERA: The last years of his life you probably know more about what went on in this work here than I. When I came back to San Francisco, at the time of the flower children coming here, I went to Golden Gate Park to just escape from all the things that were expected of me socially, and I just had to get away. When I went to the playground I had nephews with me who were old enough to play in the playground alone, and I gravitated over to the hill where they were doing the artwork with the chalks given to them by the city. And it wasn’t very long before I just had to sit down with the chalks because they were doing only parts of pictures and parts of symbols. And I had to give them; you couldn’t just have a heart and not have it with wings. And the winged heart just naturally had to go into the crescent and the crescent into a star. So I did the Sufi symbols on the side-walk there and walked away. And every day when I brought my nephews to play for a week there, I went to that same area. And as I walked around I found somebody who was working on that symbol, sat dawn in silence and picked up a chalk and worked with them. And as I gave them the key in drawing, they could follow it through so that, in their own way, each got the symbol.

Now, Samuel comes along. I didn’t visit Samuel; he didn’t visit me—there was no connection. Samuel comes along soon after that, walks through the park, sees the Sufi symbol. Ah, you people are uninitiated Sufis! And he picked them up, picked the first as up who had done the Sufi symbols on the walks, and they were the first to have Bayat along the flower children, and it was the beginning of his work there, no doubt. I don’t know, because I wasn’t there, but he told me himself that he was aware that the seed of the Sufi symbol had taken sprout in their hearts and that "You have been up to your old tricks again," he said to me. I said, Whatever do you mean?" "That you have always expressed the completed picture, but then you walk away and let me pick up the work!" It was a sort of a compliment and a reprimand. And that was all that I had to do with that. I knew nothing about it from that point on until Samuel had written to me and told me about his god-daughter, about his god-son, about the different people that he was working with, about his view on hallucinatory drugs. And he asked what was my feeling about it—I was at Sacramento State College at that time—and what was I running into on the LSD.

I was very closely involved in the psychology department there with Doctor O’Hara, and he had an incurable liver disease, but worse than that, he had slipped down to the point of suicide; and he had a young wife, deeply Irish Catholic, with a young son. And he asked me if I would come and give him art lessons in his home. And at that time I was working on Jung and the mandalas, and I had made many of them and had done my own mandala. And I brought my mandala to San Francisco to visit Samuel and set it up before him. So this right away got him going on this writing to me about the kids that I knew in the college who were experimenting with psychedelic drugs, and they were all going off with these older women—my age. And getting involved in the bed life and being kept by these women. And I was not about to have any part of that at all—I thought this was really shocking that these women were misusing a force. The kids were open, and these women were walking in on it. And many of than were my friends in the college, and I had some real hot set-to’s with then; I just would not go along with it or treat it lightly or friendly or anything else. I think these women were just disgracefully off the line. And I wrote to Samuel about this, and then he wrote back to me and told me the work that he was doing. He said—and last night you referred to it in the lecture—that I would hope that you would not go this way, but I would not tell you not to. I will merely show you a different way. And this is where he felt that I should organize the work in San Jose to put these people on meditation—the ones that I knew and were associated with. But when I started to do this, these women, who were also friends of mine, felt that I was breaking up their love life. And it was getting near summer, and they took the boys and took off on trips with them. Of course, what happened is that by the end of that summer they were dumped I flat on their so-and-so’s and were back gnashing their teeth, weeping, and the psychology department all shook up, and Dr. O’Hara was fighting his own battle and trying to take them on. And I definitely feel that his ultimate suicide—(he died by asphyxiation—he just put the hose on his car and inhaled deeply) and I really believe these women brought it to that point.

WALI ALI: Well I guess, Samuel said a lot of his life karma or development had to be facing women who had certain kinds of—I don’t know how to call it—hysterical or psychic or unconscious kinds of behavior patterns, and he was put into inferior positions to them and had to go through all kinds of things in this way. In some ways what he says is that towards the end he was able to reconcile all these experiences.

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know. I never was with him in anything like that except his mother’s nihilistic way—and that he had to contend with for years, I know. Now, as far the Sufis are concerned…

WALI ALI: His mother, and in a certain sense the Murshida Duce thing and…

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh, probably, but you see I washed my hands of that entirely. And I traveled; during that time I was in Virginia Beach and deeply involved with the Cayce records. And I was painting the astrology charts which were shown at Virginia beach and got so deeply involved with the astrological point of view, of trying to study all the masters again with the understanding of my own teacher, Samuel. I was trying to understand what is mastery in our time? What do the charts of the masters look like? And how are they connected in the hereafter? I wanted personally to understand this—don’t ask me why, I haven’t any idea. But I got deeply in it and I spent an awful lot of time studying it and learning it. Samuel used to always go and see Fritzi Armstrong, and of course Fritzi probably was part of telling Samuel that I was a witch, in the work that I was doing. But the work I was doing was certainly on the path of light and healing for the mentally disturbed and had nothing to do with her satanic witch-worship or the stuff she went off on.

WALI ALI: Yeah, he didn’t think very much of her.

MURSHIDA VERA: I know he wouldn’t, but he knew her from the old Theosophical days, so that was a friendship that it back to his youth, long before I ever met up with him. But at the Manly Hall lectures, where Sam and I would meet many times—and many of those lectures we went to together, especially on the Dhyana Buddhists—I knew that Sam would have to go back to the Buddhists, that somewhere along the line he’d have to walk away from Sufism; because he had a tremendous lesson to learn there. And his first interest in that was the building of the Buddhist temple, which he felt these people would do and what the Sufis were supposed to do at Kaaba Allah in fulfilling Murshid’s dedication of the ground to the Temple on the Rock and that they never had fulfilled, because they were unwilling to get down and contribute labor, work and doing. They wanted to sit on their fantails, meditate, and the holy beings were going to do it all as a miracle, which they can do and could have done, but what evolution would there have been for these mureeds? They wanted it handed to them on a golden platter, because they sat and meditated before a master. And Samuel was not about to be used or misused that way. He didn’t argue with them—he got to a certain point where he fought with them, had a good fight with them, they all became hysterical, he washed his hands of the whole bunch, went down to work the Buddhists and did what he wanted to do. And he didn’t have any trouble doing it because they were already on that beam anyhow. I think that probably somewhere after I had seen Sister Donnadina and Senzaki—that he’d made good contacts there.

WALI ALI: Well he met Senzaki from way back. He knew him for a long period of time.

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know. As I said, I never went there with him, but he must have known—as Senzaki lived in Chinatown—he must have known him at that time. We never discussed him until afterwards, of course, than I did the dances and Samuel saw them and was just all for it. In every way he thought it was great. But I could not see the violence that Sister Donnadina went through. When she was whacked over the head she fell down a tremendous staircase in this temple and broke her back and for the rest of her life she was crippled, came back and became a speech teacher.

WALI ALI: Well, this is all—

MURSHIDA VERA: So I mean there are orders and orders, and she evidently contacted one of those orders, you know what I mean?

Wali Ali : Yeah, exactly.

MURSHIDA VERA: And Samuel had his own power, and he never contacted that type of an order or went through that evidently. Of course, he was on a different path. He wasn’t on the path of renunciation. He was on the path of fulfillment. And when you take one who comes as a prophet and who has his own development as a Murshid to be attained to, he has to go through all the stages which Murshid lays out in Vadan and Nirtan for us. And he did go through these stages, one after the other. And looking back at it—which at the time I did not—I was too busy living it, living my own life and experiencing it, and I did not have the knowledge of the Sufi Message as a whole, as a teacher, to look back on the Gathas and the Sangathas and to see the study of the elements and the breaths and the way that a man develops from one stage to another—I didn’t see that overall pictures which I saw later. But looking at it later, and especially in my last meeting in the flesh with Samuel, when I came here, when you did the dances of the breaths, and Samuel was saying to me inwardly, "Look, I have a disciple who can do it all. Do you remember, Vera?" And I did remember, and I saw as I watched you dance and watched you do the practices, I saw reeling before my inner eye all the years that San struggled to get one person after another, through one terrible strained stage after another—and here in one short hour I saw one disciple who was going through it 1-2-3, just like that at the command of the Master.

WALI ALI: And there were lots of people; finally this new generation was the one that he was waiting for to be very receptive to him.

MURSHIDA VERA: And so he wrote in his stories. But I wouldn’t say that they were receptive to him as that is an injustice to Samuel, but that they were receptive to the Message which he became the embodiment of.

WALI ALI: Yes.

MURSHIDA VERA: He so went through all these stages that when I saw him at the end, the last visit, there was the cowardly lion of Oz, joy beaming from his eyes. He had attained it. The whole thing was there, and it was as if he were saying to me, "Oh, we used to play at this, didn’t we? We used to costume ourselves and play. Well, here I am, your old cowardly lion, in the flesh." And it was an attainment. He had attained it. And he had passed on his word. And he had been able to live to give it to an age that had reached rock bottom. And the greatest thing that Murshid said to me was in regards to my own children, "If you let everything else go in the world, Vera, never forget love. Make love the center of your teaching of the children." And I have in my house and in my classroom a winged heart and it says on it, "First comes love," because that’s what Murshid gave to me: First comes love; all else will follow. And when I say "love," I do not mean sexual possession, involvement, encirclement and stifling Me-My-Mine. But I mean love as our Murshid knew it, the giving of self to the nth degree so that there is no physical self left. Never mind the destroying of the ego; don’t concentrate on that. Just give of yourself and your talents and your being to the exclusion of all else, and you will find that love has dominated your life. But it has to come by the Grace that Murshid spoke of last night, the Grace of God: all else you can talk about—what’s more important than all of it? Grace, he said. When someone said, "Love," then someone else said, "Grace." He said, "Who said that? Who said that? It was you, Wali, wasn’t it? Yes. Grace. Because you don’t get it, you don’t give it, you don’t demand it—it comes, like the rain from heaven; you never know when, but it just comes. And that Grace is the real answer. Oh, that was a wonderful lecture, wasn’t it? The summing up of his own life in that lecture—it really was—if you go back from there, you have it.

"When did he become a Murshid?" I said to myself. When was his initiation outwardly as a Murshid? In India?

WALI ALI: This man in Pakistan gave it to him, and then Pir Vilayat recognized it.

MURSHIDA VERA: Is that so? Well, that is so interesting.

WALI ALI: And he said it was only given to him after he was able to show that he had two illuminated disciples. It’s not given on the basis of the other thing.

MURSHIDA VERA: This is true. Yes, so he said so many times that one’s illumination is very hampered if one is a female, he said to me one time. And I said, "Why?" And he said, "Because you’re always propagating." (laughs) And I said, "What do you mean, Samuel?" He says, "Well, at are point or the other, you are. (laughs) It’s so much easier when you’re a male." I said, "Well, how do I escape from that? I can’t help what sex I’m born with." "Oh, I wasn’t speaking of sex, you know that." You see, so he set me straight in one sentence. (laughs) He said, "Have you never heard of Jelal and Jemal?" And I said, "Oh:" (laughs) "Yes," he said, "Are you attaining to the Kemal state, or are you still on one end of the teeter-totter?”

WALI ALI: And the only thing I'm sorry about is—we got the lectures on First Corinthians an tape, but the lectures that he gave there on The Gospel According to Thomas, which happens to end with this very thing. The disciples objected, why should Mary Magdalene be with us? She’s a woman. And Jesus says, "I will make her a man." (laughs)

MURSHIDA VERA: There’s the polarity again. Don’t forget it. You can do it. All you have to do is get out of breath, and you’ve got it. But this puts the whole sex picture in a totally different picture. The way Murshid taught it was so very different than the way my generation was practicing it.

WALI ALI: Yeah, this is a question that I think we’d like to get into, because the evolvement of the whole sex idea and …

SHIRIN: … and its whole orientation is so different today. There are so many facets.

MURSHIDA VERA: This is what I mean by a Murshid. When you attain to the state of the Murshid—now I don’t speak from personal experience, but by reading and association with Samuel through all those years of actually learning and observing him develop and being able to see psychically, being born with insight to see his aura, to see anyone’s aura, and to see the states in the aura that he went through, the states of his energy body, the states of his emotional body, working, playing through that aura all the time, the carrying of the great Atlas that he became, this great world that he carried on his shoulders, bent over, just previous to the time of the flower children. When I would see him on the streets in the Civic Center near the Library and call out to him and couldn’t catch up with him, a bus would come in front of me—something would stop me physically, and he would be gone. I couldn’t catch him; he turned a corner and had gone into a building; he was out of sight. And I’d be time and again so upset that I was so close to him and couldn’t touch him. But I would always see that, the bent-over shoulders, the small overcoat, and this big aura filled with the world; he was carrying the world on his shoulders, this big globe that he was carrying just previous to the time when he had to work with the flower children. And then I thought—afterwards, when I saw him the next tine—"Oh, this was the meaning of this? To be able to set down that world and straighten up his body again and be able to be the Murshid. That he carried that weight with him in his psyche, in his aura, right up to the time when he met the generation that he could unload it on, that was ready to accept him. But, as you say, he had gone through all these facets. Now, in his own life, there was a girl named Mollie whom his family had picked for him before I came on the scene; and he was engaged to Mollie for quite some time, and this was the girl they wanted him to marry. And she was an attractive Jewish girl that the family loved and wanted him to have. Well, I never—and nobody else ever got out of Samuel—what happened to the big romance with Mollie. But he spoke of Mollie always.

WALI ALI: I think he told me a couple of things about it, about how it broke up. She wanted him to be an orthodox Jew.

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh yes, that’s why the family approved.

WAIL ALI: And he even tried, but he had association with some—well, for example, one Jewish fellow who’d married a Gentile and who was something of a Kabbalist and gotten interested in Vedanta and so on. And she said, "Well, I’m going to ask the rabbi what he thinks about this man." And he says, "Please, whatever you do, don’t ask." Because he said he could see in his vision what this would bring on, for the Jewish people, for them to judge this man on a spiritual basis. Well, she did, and then the judgment came down. This was a sort of a place that a lot of conflict came up, I know, in this relationship.

MURSHIDA VERA: For goodness sake, is that what she did? Well, he never would come to that point and he would just laugh it off and it would always be in a group of young people who would be horseback riding or walking, skating, doing something. And when Samuel first started his work in Fairfax with the young people on the skating rink, he took all the kids of the area—it didn’t matter who they were—he just got out there on the floor and he just organized them all and had them all skating in the circles and doing the formations, and he was doing the breaths and he had the community absolutely— the older people of the community were not Sufis—up in arms, because he had such power over their youngsters. And they certainly didn’t recognize him; they thought that any teaching like the Sufi school, which was teaching all religions, was nothing. Even I, with my own personal contact with the Muslim missionaries here, came to that point where they just challenged me directly on Samuel Lewis because, saying that you are nothing; you Sufis are nothing, because you will not became orthodox Muslims.

WALI ALI: Yeah, this is the old game.

MURSHIDA VERA: You see? So, I went to Samuel right away on that, and he confronted that fellow, and they really had it out, because Sufism does not stand on that. That’s ridiculous. Murshida Martin had given it on the basis of Abraham in all of her teachings at Kaaba Allah. One did not trace oneself back to the world of Islam. We have the Sufi poets, don’t misunderstand me; we dramatized them and danced them and sang about it and had a great deal of theatrics on it. But in no way at all were we given to believe that the work of the great Rumi and Hafiz and Saladin and Omar Khayyam least of all, the great Sufis of that period were the beginnings of Sufism. Never: But it was so interpreted, and the Muslim s brought this out very strongly and especially when the mission was established here.

WALI ALI: If we can go back to this sex thing just a little bit, because it is something of interest.

SHIRIN: What was the role that he envisioned for women in the New Age? Do you know anything about that? I know he wished them to attain the same heights as men, spiritually. At least I felt that.

MURSHIDA VERA: I have a different understanding than you have. I can only tell you my in understanding and my own teaching and realizations with our Murshid: that he did not see sex as a male and a female, The physical body you were he was not even aware of or seeing, and what he saw was you in your spiritual body. He saw your magnetic aura next to your skin, next to that he saw your emotional energy body, and he saw your emotions playing through that body. Now he read strongly through the eyes; he had very strong magnetic eyes, and he used those eyes wide open at the entire world. Never did he mask that gaze; when he wished to mask that gaze, he pulled the inner curtain down, but never did he close his eyes in my years of work with him, with men and women in any kind of a group. If he saw a man who was off on a feminine tack, he would get with him, work with him on the opposite pole; he would start the Jelal practices, and before that man knew it he had flipped him over to Jemal. And he would get the breathing, the walks and the breathing practices going with this person, and especially the work of the legs and the feet on the earth, and it wouldn’t be long before this person, unbeknownst to himself, would have hit the other polarity. Now he came across a woman who was on the masculine tack, he would hand her over to a feminine teacher at once, and then he would work through that feminine teacher, but never directly. He disliked the personal contact, the physical contact with the physical body of the female.

WALI ALI: He got over this the last a years of his life.

MURSHIDA VERA: Did he?

WALI ALI: He did these Krishna dances.

MURSHIDA VERA: Well, in my time he didn’t like it.

WALI ALI: Do you think he ever got into the physical sex thing at all in his own life?

MURSHIDA VERA: No, I do not. I think he got through it in the evolution of the prophet, yes. But you see, he came having already completed it. I’ve told you the experiences that I’ve had with him, little things that I thought which showed up very plainly where he stood on the physical when he was a young vibrant man. And his physical body was just not present. I don’t think he felt it. I don’t think he was aware of it. It was just something that he went along with, but it was his grace to be blessed by people who cared for his physical body, that looked out for the necessities of his life, and I don’t mean sex life. Because, of course, anyone that uses their legs in dancing and in skating and in jumping and his dances in those early days were not the kind of dances that you learned later in life with the smooth wonderful leg rhythms. That didn’t exist—it was all hopping. Like they said, "He’s a canary bird; he’s hopping up and down; he’s hopping from one perch to the other." He was working vertically, not horizontally. Now, anyone who does that in the dance, I can tell you that if you’re doing elevations and you’re working of the toes and you’re hopping up and down, the sexual centers are depleting themselves in a different way. You do not have the releases of the physical body bothering you; they are not gathering up in certain glands of the body, because you are constantly pushing that force to the earth and to the heavens. And this Samuel always did, in all of his work on elevation and all his dancing in his early hippie-hopping around at Kaaba Allah that was so-called canary behavior. He was jumping up and down. He was elevating his body, and he would get tremendous elevations in the walks with me, when he would do the walks, and elevate himself as much as Nijinsky did, from a straight position directly up in the air and had that power of the breath that he didn’t go higher than I went. He wasn’t getting any more elevation than I was with all of my body training, with all of the background of breathing and practicing. But he had the power of the breath to hold it when he got up there. And that’s the whole trick: it isn’t how high you go, but how can you hold that breath so that you don’t come down with a plunk? And he never came down with a plunk. He went up there, held that breath and seemed to soar up into space. So the way you use your feet is the way your legs are working, the way your sex organs are working. There was a constant relief through the prana going down into the earth and being extended up into the arrow which put him on a basis totally removed from very few men. I would relate him more to Nijinsky than anyone else. I think Nijinsky had the same key, and he knew what Samuel did. And we had a mutual friend named Vivian Wall who’s a very great natural dancer and teacher in the San Francisco area, and she was a disciple of the barefoot dancer—what’s her name? The first one to take off her clothes and use the veils.

WALI ALI: Ruth St. Denis?

MURSHIDA VERA: No, before her.

SHIRIN: The one who was strangled by her scarf?

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, strangled by her scarf.

SHIRIN: Isadora Duncan.

MURSHIDA VERA: Isadora Duncan. She was a disciple of Isadora Duncan. Many times Sam and I would be at her studio, and I danced with them once in awhile to loosen up, to get away from the stifling routine of the ballet—it would do me good to express part of myself in that way.

SHIRIN: The thing is, I felt in Murshid a kind of a nostalgia, a romantic nostalgia.

MURSHIDA VERA: For that time?

SHIRIN: No, that he never married or that he never had a partner in this life.

MURSHIDA VERA: This was, I’m sure, of his own choosing, because there was never any young girl who came into the Sufi Order, or any young women including myself, that did not at a certain time fall deeply in love with Murshid.

SHIRIN: He always said to me, "Well, I have to be very careful with these girls, I have to be very careful." He never let it get lower than a certain plane. But I always felt as if in some way there was a longing in him.

MURSHIDA VERA: This might have been so, because even Murshid Inayat Khan, who was married to a first cousin of Mary Baker Eddy, an extremely beautiful and etheric woman when he married her—I mean all during her years of marriage to Inayat Than, this very high spiritual basis was maintained through the conception and birth of these children, including Vilayat. Yet, after his death when she went with her daughter to Paris and did the nightclubs and went down to the other plane, seeking a fulfillment that her marriage and her life with Inayat Khan had not fulfilled, evidently. Why would she have done that? To the shock of all the young Sufis that I knew in Paris who knew and saw this behavior, and they all considered that the oldest daughter, the one who was killed in the French underground work—what was her name?

SHIRIN: Noor.

MURSHIDA VERA: Noor—she was the prize; she was the one who had inherited the real spiritual light of Inayat Khan. She gave herself for the French underground, and Vilayat was secondary to her. She outshone him during her life, which may have been why he was a late bloomer, spiritually speaking.

SHIRIN: I know they were very close, as brother and sister.

MURSHIDA VERA: That’s right—they were, very deep, very close. But I don’t believe that people who have that relationship—I mention this not as any criticism at all—but Samuel was aware of this relationship of Murshid’s and of the great burden it was on a woman to be the wife of a Murshid and a teacher and the true spiritual ground one had to stand on and stand away from so that he could be all things to all types of women all over the world, that they might attain to their illumination. But how many women can stand to give their husband to that? And he realized that when you do that, you certainly crucify a woman. If you’re going to be a husband and a father, there’s somewhere along the line that as a Murshid and world teacher, you have to walk away from it—you belong to the world. You can’t take them with you. You’ve got to go off and have your own realization, your own life. And this must be a crucifixion to the ones that you love and leave behind. And I don’t think he ever wanted to do that, or ever wanted to get involved in that. His part was not that.

WALI ALI: No, it wasn’t. And, in a sense, what Shirin says I know is true. He did have this longing, and we talked about it. If you read his diaries it comes up time and again. And he was told by certain spiritual teachers that he should merry and, in fact, that he would marry.

MURSHIDA VERA: He turned that down of his an free volition, because he could have married Hazel Armstrong, and she would have been happy to serve that; and his turning away from allowing her to care for him—now, that was not based on a sexual basis—but his turning away from that, going into this retreat of life caused her to have this shocking alliance with this attorney, and whom she brought in there to occupy Meher Baba’s quarters—but he turned it down. And, of course, Sam said he would never judge anyone’s sexual behavior; he would walk away from it.

WALI ALI: I’m going to give you a poem called "Salome" by Murshid and you tell me what you think of it. I won’t say anything more, but I bet I know what you’re going to say.

MURSHIDA VERA: Samuel told me at that time—I went to him and I said, "Oh, Samuel, why are you letting this happen to Hazel? Do you know what kind of a men this man is?" And he said, "Tell me." You know how he was—he put you right on a pin when you made a statement like that. I began to cry, and I told him, "Well, Donny could not have sexual relations, and we were married for five years and lived a celibate life. And when Donny went overseas to the war I became extremely ill, and the family doctor finally got at the crux of the matter. He said, "This is wrong. You must annul that marriage and get out of it at once. You are having uterine tumors, and they are caused by your emotional state, and there is no consummation. It’s just boil, boil, boil and bang! This is backing up and causing these tumors all the time. If you don’t, you are going to have to lose part of your body. Quick, right now. And naturally, right away I spoke to the Bishop—Bishop Block—faced him with it, and he said, "You must not. You must not annul the marriage." A bishop said, "Don’t annul this marriage. You must divorce this man, by mutual consent. Get an attorney, go to him, and by mutual consent have this marriage ended. But do not annul it, because if you do you have to state the grounds. and this sensitive man will be marked by it. And you mist not do that to him, you will destroy him. He’s speaking of Arjuna now. So, listening to the bishop, I then went to the Sufis, talked to Sam about it. Samuel said, "You must talk to Hazel. Hazel has a friend who is an attorney." "Is he a Sufi?" "No, but he is deeply attached to Hazel." So I went to Hazel and told her.

"Oh yes, I’ll introduce you to him." This was the man, the boyfriend I’m telling you about, who later occupied the grounds over there and never married Hazel and sucked the Sufi Order dry at a time when they could hardly afford it. Hazel than turned her back an Sam and aligned herself with this man, trying to bring Samuel to his knees. Well, ridiculous. Who’d know what she was thinking about because Samuel world never think on that grounds anyhow. Instead of waking Samuel up, she got herself into her neck and threw her centers off and took cancer in her shoulder, and that was the finish of her. But, at any rate, that was her way of trying to make Samuel wake up to her. Her mothering and caring for him and nursing him and knitting for him and doing his washing and smoothing out his problems with his mureeds and everything else was a devotion and a love, but I’m sure that he could have had a very happy marriage with her, and he turned that over.

And in turning me over to this man, that’s another story that I would have to tell you, but I had an experience with this man in an elevator which just frightened the life out of me. And when I got out of that elevator, I ran into the room and got out of there, and I thought, "Oh, how could Hazel ever have anything to do with a man on this plane—he was a frightening individual. But, of course, I went bank to Samuel, and he stood on his feet and his hands were out at his sides as he could, and they were just shaking, shaking. And he said, "Dismiss this from your mind. Dismiss this from your mind at once. It never happened. You never faced him. It never happened to you." And I said, "But I can’t, Samuel," and I was just weeping. And he said, "You can and you will. I take it on. Come here." He put his hands on my shoulders, stood close to my body, inhaled and demanded that I inhale with him. I went into a state. I don’t know what he did, but when I came out of it, the thing was done. I never again had any fear, any feelings about it. I can tell it to you as at the time it was an experience that just shocked me to the ground, and especially for my dear friend, great love, Hazel, that I was upset, frightened and terribly upset. And Samuel said to me later, "You know why she has this, don’t you? You know the laws she disobeyed, knowing better." He had no sympathy at all. He wouldn’t even walk in there—he could relieve her of this pain, he could heal her. "I don’t touch this at all. It’s out of my hands, out of my hands.”

WALI ALI: He said that this certain kind of moralistic basis—this is one of the greatest things he had to overcome in his own personality, his tendency—being naturally born with a certain sense of, let’s say, call it the Ten Commandments or whatever you want to call it, these kinds of high codes of ethics.

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know. To my knowledge, his behavior in the closest relationship I had through all those years, he always lived it.

WALI ALI: He lived it all right it was a question of seeing others…

MURSHIDA VERA: He lived so within the law that it never even bothered him. I never at any time ever saw him that I would feel that he went through the temptations we went through. His temptations were on a different plane. But he sure didn’t have them on a physical plane.

WALI ALI: That’s right, and this is the thing. What he had to get past was getting other people….

MURSHIDA VERA: I’ve seen girls just weeping over Samuel. I mean they would be so crazy over him, and, as I said, he’d drop them like a hot potato and take on another mureed who needed him in another way, and they would go through hell because he would just drop them suddenly. And their love and attachment to him was so terrific, and he would say to me, "You know, we have to wean babies, don’t we?" He saw this as a weaning process. He says, "Of course, there’s the slow hard way or there’s making up your mind you’re going to wean them overnight." He said. "I believe it should be done overnight." And that’s what he did.

WALI ALI: And the funny interesting thing—irony or whatever—is when the age difference became so great—he wasn’t any longer like a father; he was like a grandfather. I mean he was 70, and his disciples were 25.

MURSHIDA VERA: But they were still falling in love with him. In my generation they did, they all went through this falling in love with Samuel, and then they’d get dumped and they’d get out of it and then have a good…

WALI ALI: No, this didn’t happen.

SHIRIN: I don’t know whether he made it that way or…

MURSHIDA VERA: He probably learned how to handle it.

WALI ALI: And instead he came back in the other way. Then he was able to have physical contact—kissing all the time, hugging, doing these Krishna dances where he would play the part of Krishna and he would take the girl…

SHIRIN: And totally impersonal—on very high plane.

MURSHIDA VERA: You see what I meant when I said to him right here that day? I laughed at him and said, "You better watch out; the girl will be falling in love with you! And he just smiled because everybody fell in love with Samuel somewhere along the line. And at one time, when we were both so wrapped up in Gandhi and Madame Gandhi’s place in his life. And I was reading all these things and would sit down with Samuel and say, "Samuel, listen to this, listen to this: And I’d read Gandhi to him. And he would turn around and say, "Yes, yes, I know what you’re thinking. I know what you’re planning." (laughs) I thought, Oh this would be terrific; gosh, to be married to Samuel, to share his life, and protect him and care for him—this would be the greatest thing in the world. And he just "Yes, yes," and steered that away and steered me right to Arjuna! (laughs) But when I took him on a walk at Kaaba Allah, and I was just near to distraction, and I said, "Samuel, you know I’ve got to divorce Arjuna. I’ve got to give him up," he said, "Oh. Oh no. This must not be." He was so upset that day. He took me on a long hike and did 150 practices and he came back and took me up on the rock and I was all shook up, terribly emotionally disturbed. And he said, "Well, now, you don’t have to worry," he said. "You’re not going to have to face this the way you think you’re going to have to face it." He said, "The world karma is going to take care of the whole thing. Just sit tight." What in heaven’s name is he talking about?! And what was it? I think four weeks after, Pearl Harbor. And of course that was it. Pearl Harbor came, he signed up that day in the Navy and he was taken. Our lives were separated by death. And the papers had already been signed, but I never went back in that office. I never walked in there. And I walked directly to Hazel, and we were on a streetcar going down to the ferry to go to Kaaba Allah. And I told Hazel what had happened, and Hazel did not accept it. She simply didn’t accept it. I had had an hallucination, this was a psychic experience—it never happened.

WALI ALI: What? This conversation you just reported?

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, this attorney friend of hers had attacked me in this elevator, and she would not accept it. I said, "Hazel, do not get yourself involved with this man, please. You don’t know what you’re getting into." And she just wouldn’t accept it at all. So I got off of the ferry boat and took another streetcar back; I didn’t go to Kaaba Allah. And that’s about all. I can’t go over there and face this man, and Samuel hadn’t had an opportunity to get him off the property—which he did; he got him off at once. But I knew that she would never forgive me, and she doesn’t forgive Samuel for that.

WALI ALI: Yeah, this is the kind of thing I think that he was talking about, where he faced this kind of sexual energy or whatever it was. It’s certainly something our society has had to go through and we’re still going through.

MURSHIDA VERA: I don’t know how he evaluated it. But he was in this instance that I know of very much a believer in the Ten Commandments.

WALI ALI: Oh, I know he was.

MURSHIDA VERA: And he could not stomach any attack on a woman by a man. It was out of the realm of his realization. He simply couldn’t conceive of such a thing happening, ever. And he felt that this was brought about by our civilization forcing male-female relationships too closely together, that there was a place of retreat for a man, and there were times when women should be with women and men should be with men and that that was the only protection they had. It was never carried out in our Order; we were always mixed together in everything we did, regardless of sex. But I know in his own talks to me that he expressed so many times that cur civilization did not allow the woman to retreat and be among women at certain times of her life; and that it was a good thing and a thing where women should be with women and should have their retreats without men being involved. And it just never was carried out, but those were his wishes; that’s what he would have done. And he always would put these retreats on you at a time when you needed them, if you were a woman; I don’t know what he did with the men. But I know to me, many times he sent me in positions of retreat —without it I would have collapsed. And he gave me that opportunity to be alone and to pull myself together and be protected.

SHIRIN: I know his opinion of Muslims having more than one wife was for a woman’s protection. The Western world doesn’t see it that way, of course; it sees it as a matter of exploitation. But in reality it is a means of protection, when women don’t have more than one child every five years.

MURSHIDA VERA: That’s right. And they do not have a constant sexual pressure.

SHIRIN: They share the work.

MURSHIDA VERA: And they have this protection and respect all of their lives. They are never divorced and set out to be smeared the way that women in our society have.

WALI ALI: He did try very hard to keep couples together.

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh, yes.

WALI ALI: This very wedding…

SHIRIN: Oh, I know, incredible. (laughs)

WALI ALI: This was this very funny thing that happened—I don’t know if we need to record it or not—because everybody knows the story—but Shirin and her husband—had the ceremony already been performed?

SHIRIN: No. It was a Buddhist wedding because—I don’t know, maybe because the ceremony appealed to us, and there’s a place where—apparently Murshid had spoken to the priest and said that he wanted to say a few words at a certain place in the ceremony and Reverend Wagner stopped the ceremony in an appropriate place and turned to Murshid and asked him if he had anything to say—I think it was where if anyone is opposed to the union—

WALI ALI: I don’t remember that. No, everyone thought he was just going to give a blessing.

SHIRIN: A blessing. Oh, right. We all thought he’s going to say something to bless the marriage, and he just put on a completely Jelal state and said, "I will not bless this marriage unless…." And here I am floating about two feet off the ground, and it wasn’t like I crashed down or crashed up—I just crashed sideways about two miles. And it wasn’t a come down—it didn’t bring anybody down because he was in a state of just complete power. And I don’t remember the words….

WALI ALI: I remember. He just said, "Some people are working on this thing and it’s a wonderful thing, getting married, and then people think about pl splitting up and you’ve got to work on a marriage." He says, "I’m not interested. If these people are interested, I will bless this marriage, but these people working on it better not split up." Or something like that.

SHIRIN: He wouldn’t bless the marriage unless all who were there stayed together. And they did for a while.

MURSHIDA VERA: We are normal people talking about someone way beyond us, and it is most difficult for us to see a person like this in perspective. It’s very difficult for me to see him in perspective, looking back through all the stages he went through and thinking of the times when I stood opposed to him thoroughly in what he did, and when he stood his ground and weathered the thing, constantly mailed me letters telling me of what was happening to every one of his mureeds, when I really got of patience with him and told him that he—Samuel, these people that you are initiating right and left with all these problems, and they are making problems in my marriage, because that which is demanded of me, to get these people out of these hysterical states, my husband does not tolerate and does not want these people in our hone in the few hours that he’s home. He doesn’t want these people there with their hysterics and their demands on me; and it is making trouble in my marriage. And Samuel just was so—he said, "Well, I may have initiated these people, but they are your mureeds and your responsibility. Don’t ask me to make these decisions." And I just thought, "Boy, he just washed his hands and leaves me high and dry."

But of course he was washing his hands of having anything to do personally with it. He worked for me and with me behind the scenes at all times, but he would not do it. He demanded that I get up and face it. Then, of course, if I hadn’t done that I never could have been the teacher that I later became. I could not have stood the emotionally handicapped child, elementally retarded, all jammed in together. At one time I had 80 of them in an institution on Cambridge Avenue here in San Francisco, and to try to organize anyone, to even protect—self-protection, I never even thought of.

When other teachers were spread-eagled against fences I had no problems. Samuel told me what to do when you enter, and get yourself on this breath—do not enter that front door unless you have it well-established. When you enter, forget it. And I did. I never entered that door until I did have myself thoroughly in that vibration. I entered there and I went through some terrifying experiences and never was touched, never was injured, was divinely protected.

WALI ALI: I have one more question before we just stop, not with the sense that we’ve finished, but that maybe some time in the future we’ll look back and do some more. After Murshid fell down the stairs and was taken to the hospital, in the middle of the night a few days later I got a phone call from you, and I would like you to tell me—at the time I don’t know if you told me whether he had come to you in your spiritual body, or someone else had told you about his accident?

MURSHIDA VERA: No, no, no. I knew nothing. I had no contact with anybody regarding what had happened to him. I called you at a horrible hour—wasn’t it 10:45?

WALI ALI: Oh God, it was 2:00 in the morning.

MURSHIDA VERA: 2:00 in the morning? Oh, I don’t know –

KHADIJA: Oh yes, because I answered the phone.

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh, how terrible. I was completely unaware of where it was, but I had gone to bed and had gone to sleep. I woke up suddenly, and just sat up in bed and realized that Samuel was standing at the foot of my bed, and just as much in the flesh as he could ever be, in his robe, and looking right at me; and I addressed him; he called me; I heard his name; he called me three times. And I sat up and looked at the foot of the bed, and he was standing there. And I didn’t realize it was the middle of the night, and I was just thrilled to death that he was there and began to talk to him, and then my conscious mind said, "This is impossible!" I denied it, and immediately the manifestation in the physical body went into the spiritual body, into light; and I knew that he stood in the spirit body, talking to me. And that disappeared, and then just the feeling of ice cane slowly down through each center of my body, and I thought, "what has happened to Samuel? This is terrible." I immediately got up and got my address book and called this number? And I said, "What has happened to Samuel?" Or something like that.

WALI ALI: When I got to the telephone you said to me, "Is Samuel all right?" And you said, "Because he just has come tone in the spirit body, and I wonder if he is all right." And I said, "Well, he fell down the stairs.”I told you what had happened.

MURSHIDA VERA: He was whiter than a [?] fire.

WALI ALI: Of course, there’s a funny side of this story which was that Jessica; when she answered the telephone—of course it was the middle of the night—she comes back into the bedroom, and she says, "It’s Che Guevara on the telephone.”

Laughter

WALI ALI: I say, "Well, all right, I’ll take that.”

MURSHIDA VERA: She must have thought I was completely mad. (laughs)

KHADIJA: I was perfectly serious—

WALI ALI: No, she thought—the revolutionary, Che Guevara?

MURSHIDA VERA: Yeah? (laughs)

KHADIJA: I really didn’t—I wasn’t conscious of any of that—I was still asleep.

MURSHIDA VERA: Oh, dear. I received my impression at about 11:00 at night—

WALI ALI: This is, of course, a very unusual experience—was this the first time that he had—

MURSHIDA VERA: It was not unusual in my life—unusual where Samuel was concerned, yes. But he always would come at the most amazing time. He just appeared in the flesh as if he was the answer to a call—if I thought about his mentally—

WALI ALI: When you say "appeared in the flesh," you mean actually physically—he would just come.

MURSHIDA VERA: He would appear at the house, yes. He would just come. He’d come to the door, or he’d come into the house and just be standing in the doorway. And it would be at a time when I was in trouble, when I needed him, for some reason, and he would be there. And this was just accepted—it took me a while to get the idea that it wasn’t. I'd been used to him coming in time of trouble, but I wasn’t in trouble. There was no reason for him to come; the minute I began saying in my mind, "This can’t be. This is not possible," then, of course, he went into the light. And I realized that he had come to inform me and to bid his farewells to me. And I felt very strongly his blessing. There was always this enfoldment in my relationship to him. If I stood before him or sat before him—many times I saw my aura, which is an extreme thing, to see one’s own aura. And I would see my aura—the fingers of my aura out like this. And I would see his own aura always hooded like the cobra—his own aura had always a hood over it and his hood would come out and envelop your head, and mine would go out and envelop his shoulders. And this was just a tremendous feeling to every center in my body—this fluttering, feeling of fluttering wings and then a warm slow vibration would envelop me, like you were being enveloped by warm air on a completely nude body—a very wonderful feeling, and Murshid has always come that way—since his passing. I will know if I get a glance of the bending of my aura outward, it will always be followed with the feeling of the light, the hood—the light hood enveloping me, and then the feeling of tingling and the warm feeling. Then I know his presence is there. When I stood at the door before I came in here and the dog came out and barked at me and I put out my hand, and the dog licked every finger of my hand? And so many times when Samuel and I had been away from each other for a long time, and I’d first meet him, he would always take my hand and kiss each finger—just the fingertip. And it was just as though through the dog he was saying, "Welcome," and greeting me.

WALI ALI: Well, you haven’t met his cat. We still have Murshid’s cat here—he’s quite a character.

MURSHIDA VERA: You do? Oh, that’s right. I had a cat named after Samuel. Did I tell you about what happened just before my last visit with Samuel, here, when you did the dance? Do you remember my telling you about Samuel, the cat? And Samuel, the cat, just came to me in the early morning hours, came up and talked to me and —this was just such a wonderful cat—it would just come and press its mouth against your cheek like a human kiss, and walked out, and I looked at it and I saw that cat walking out the door, and the fur, it was like light. It was so etheric; it was so old and etheric the way it walked out. It was in its spiritual body—it didn’t walk out in its physical body. I thought, "That cat is not going to last long, and I never saw it again. Then I talked with Samuel about it. I was so upset over the years—22 years of living with Samuel and dragging him to Kaaba Allah and dragging him home—he always came with me? (laughs) And he was named after Samuel. We had quite a ceremony when he was baptized. It was a big joke. (laughs) We use to save all the rose petals on Kaaba Allah—every rose that bloomed we’d save—we’d put them in a jar, a bag, or a jar of some kind. And then these rose petals were always used when we were welcoming a Murshid or Murshida or some person who had a high title in Sufism and came to visit from Europe or anywhere. Well, we would always scatter the path where they were entering—we’d always put the rose petals out so he walked in on rose petals.

And so we had these rose petals. And Samuel had the jar of rose petals that he was bringing out the door, and I was sitting out there on a stone terrace with chairs with the kids waiting for him to come and baptize the cat Samuel, see? Samuel canes out of the door with the rose petals, trips, and the crock bustled, and all the rose petals landed on him: ”Stop! Stop! I baptize you Samuel! (laughs) Away went the cat! (laughs) Things like this were always happening; they were so funny! That was how Samuel got his name. He was baptized, all right. (laughs) So Samuel said that…

WALI ALI: He says he’ll be born again one day.

MURSHIDA VERA: Yes, he’ll be born again.

WALI ALI: And he said the same thing about this cat—this cat disappeared for a year and then came back.

KHADIJA: And my cat—when I moved into the Khankah, before I even moved in, Murshid told me, "Now, remember that your cat might disappear, there are so many cats out there, when you bring your cat out into the country." I said, "I'm prepared for anything." So he went away on a trip to New York or somewhere, and just right after he left, she split. And she was gone the whole time he was gone. A couple of weeks after he got back, we came in from the Wednesday night meeting, and Fatima—the babysitter has Numa sitting on her lap, and the cat’s been gone about three or four months. And so he blessed her, and evidently she’d come back. But he had told me beforehand that she was going to disappear.

MURSHIDA VERA: Whenever Samuel was teaching in a circle at Kaaba Allah, the cats would come in. Mary Chase always had a cat of her own and she kept him in the kitchen. But, wherever the cats were, they would all come in and sit next to Samuel—so many times he looked like an Egyptian god sitting there with the two cats, one on each side, straight backed with their heads up like Seth (the god Seth), and they sat on either side of his knee while he was teaching. When it was over, they’d plunk down and go to sleep. But while he was teaching, the cats would sit completely upright, just like two images on either side of each knee. This would happen so many times, it was fantastic.

WALI ALI: Why don’t I go see if we can find Nassim, and we still stop it now for the time being.