Every Day is Earth Day
The Shamcher Bulletin features weekly selections from the Archives of Shamcher Bryn Beorse, and memories of those who knew him. Welcome new subscribers! If this was forwarded to you and you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do it here.
Photo of our home planet from The New York Public Library on Unsplash
Happy Earth Day
It’s been 50 years of Earth Days, and Shamcher was at the forefront of the movement to shift to solar power, full employment, the awakening of intuition and much more, from his earliest days as a young engineer, economist and Sufi/yogi. He spoke out frequently and vehemently to whoever could hear (or not hear) about the same cry of the earth that we are responding to today. His book from the 1970’s, Planet Earth Demands, outlines many of his ideas, emphasizing OTEC (Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion) - benign solar power from the sea.
I always think of the end of April as Shamcher Days. From Earth Day, to his birthday on April 26th, to the anniversary of his passing on April 29th, the last week of April feels particularly Shamcherian.
It will be 40 years since his passing in 1980, and next week’s edition of the Shamcher Bulletin will be dedicated to his Urs. If you have any memories, photos or ideas you’d like to include for the next edition, please send them over before the 28th.
This week’s issue features the description for Shamcher’s course at New College in San Francisco, a short bit from one of his talks, the bio info he wrote for the ‘sketches of principal workers’ section of the book, The Biography of Inayat Khan, and an excerpt from Fairy Tales are True.
Course Description
Shamcher's course at New College, Spring 1980
GROWTH - SURVIVAL
Earth's population as seen by Science, by Religion, by so-called Mystics. Prescription for Growth, Chances of survival.
The sciences of Physics, Economics, Psychology, Archeology; the teachings of Sufis and Yogis like Inayat Khan, Yogananda, Swami Rama - and their teachers - will be brought to bear on our own situation - on each attending student's own needs and ambitions. Physical, mental and breathing exercises, meditation, concentration, as distributed around the clock, will be discussed, and also the question of abstinence related to our habits of eating, drinking, drug enjoyments - and other enjoyments.
From a talk transcript:
Miracles?
We are looking for miracles, we are looking for spirits, we looking for things from the other side, more worth than the side here. Inayat would sometimes tell about people, for instance there was one man in a village in India where there was an elephant stampede. And everybody said, "Get out of the way, the elephants are coming." But he stood up and said, "Swami, swami," and he was knocked down. So his teacher came, "Why didn't you go with the others?" "Oh, I was praying to God." "But don't you understand that your friends around you are God, too?"
From the Biography of Inayat Khan – sketches of principal workers
Bryn Beorse (Björset) (Shamcher)
In October 1923 when I was 27 years old and had traveled all over India looking for a teacher of Yoga, which I had studied from when eight years old, Sirkar van Stolk telephoned to me in Oslo: Would I translate a lecture to be given at the Oslo University by the World's greatest mystic? "We know that you have traveled in India ..." A Theosophist friend insisted on going to the Grand Hotel together, where Inayat Khan was staying. I was irritated: this friend, too talkative, would ball up my serious interview about how to proceed with the translation – sentence by sentence or a script? Wondering how I would be able to get in my practical questions amid the heavy spiritual artillery fire I expected from my friend, I entered the room, a worried man. – Inayat Khan looked up at us with laughing eyes. "Shall we have silence?" The gentle, sincere, almost apologetic tone of his voice contrasted the startling sense of his words. With a graceful bow he asked us to sit down. We seated ourselves in opposite corners of a sofa and he sat down between us and closed his eyes. So did we... . I woke up, refreshed, when a bell rang. The interview was over, not a word was exchanged.
Next evening Inayat Khan gave his lecture and I translated it, after it had been given in full, without taking notes. People said I did not miss a word. I don't know how.
I told him I liked his Message but I was already a member of the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Star in the East, so of course I could not join him. "No, of course not." Four days later he came back from a trip. I said: "I think my membership in those other organizations was a preparation for something to come. I believe this may have come now. May I join you?" "With great pleasure." Then he gave me practices and initiated me in a railway compartment. The people around us seemed unaware of what was going on.
I had played with God as a lusty playmate from early childhood, so could never be quite as serious and awed as some other mureeds and once, in the middle of the first Summer School in Paris, I suggested to Inayat Khan that perhaps I was not really fit for this life. He reassured me smilingly that I was, and protected me against assaults by other mureeds, in very subtle ways. Murshida Green had asked us "What does Murshid mean to you?" "Well," said I, "a friend, an example." "Oh you don't understand at all. Murshid is so much more than all that." That same evening Murshid gave a talk but before he started he looked thoughtful, then said: "Before I start my talk I want to mention that sometimes a teacher's best friends become his worst enemies – by lifting him up onto a pedestal and making of him an inhuman monster instead of what he is and wants to be: Just a friend, an example ..." Nevertheless, I want to ask forgiveness for my lack of respect. I even once asked Inayat whether we could give up the "Sufi" name on the Message since people misunderstood it for some Muslim sect. He said: "It could happen. But for the time being the name seems right to me, and if we did not put a name on ourselves, others would put a name on us and it might be worse." More important is that Inayat pushed into my mind worlds of impulses that will take me eons to unravel and use.
When mureeds asked if Sufis should not be pacifists, Inayat replied: "If people of goodwill lay down their arms today, they will still fight: they will be forced to fight, and not in defense of their ideals any longer, but against them." In September 1926 I saw Inayat for the last time. I said: "I look forward to seeing you next summer." "From now on," he replied, "you will meet me in your intuition." Then, during the first days of February 1927 I had a strange urge to travel to Suresnes, a three-four day trip by boat and rail from Norway. When I arrived others had had the same urge. Early on fifth February came the answer to why we had come. Now the Message was with us.
Inayat Khan often said "Mureeds who have never met me, never seen me, will often be closer to me than you, who know me as a person." I am meeting such mureeds, closer to him, every day.
Berkeley, CA. U.S.A. From Shamcher's autobiographical data. 27th July 1977.
(Apologies, can anyone help me find the source reference for the photo (above) of Inayat Khan’s Interview Room at Fazal Manzil?)
Humility is the secret password and also the sign of the true
Excerpt from Shamcher’s book Fairy Tales are True
Safe removal of the barrier is achieved by increasingly identifying your aims and objectives, your very life, with those of the Creator. What are the aims and objectives of the Creator? Everyone knows in his heart: growth, be it of trees or animals or men; evolution of mind and heart until great inventions and heroic sacrifices result.
In all known civilizations, as far back as oral or written records go, and possibly before, there were persons of certain schools or orders who repeated, with every breath they took, ‘This is not my body. It is the Temple of God,’ and ‘These thoughts are not mine. They are the Thoughts of God,’ and ‘This is not my heart. It is the Shrine of God.’
Some modern scholars call it ‘self-hypnosis.’ But a more correct term would be ‘self-control.’ Most people today pay no attention to the junk flowing by and into their minds and emotions. In spite of our schools and universities, we allow our minds to become garbage cans. To counter this runaway policy and control the influx, is not hypnosis only for control?
The result of such control is a gradual change of mind and emotions, a general maturing so that thoughts and feelings more and more reflect noble, creative patterns. In a humble way, such a person becomes identified with the Creator and partakes, to some extent, in His vision and power, in His insight into the minds and hearts of other persons.
In this game, humility is the secret password and also the sign of the true. There is not room for two separate persons in one mind or, even more so, in one heart. So the seeker tries to erase completely his own self and his own wishes and ideas to make room for the Creator, whom many call ‘The Only Being’.
And here, a question arises. Is it really possible for a human being to raise himself up into a knowing, almost divine status in this manner? If it is, then it would seem the greatest quest. If it is not, it still remains important to purify mind and heart by controlling the influx. No one can know without trying. And it would seem a worthwhile try. All religious traditions insist that it can be done, that it is the law of life and the purpose of man and the universe. A few persons have had the privilege of meeting someone who seemed to them to have succeeded.
The pinnacle of modern Western Civilization is the scholar, the scientist who, after years of patient study, may find a piece of truth. To expand this fragment and fit it into the larger pattern, he must humble himself to the state of the mystic, with no thought of self and not the slightest ambition. Then he may reach the wider goal, when he least suspects it and after all notion of self has passed.
Therefore, when a man says, I can read your thoughts, he cannot. No one can read another’s thoughts. No one has that right or that power. But when a man loses himself and lives in the eternal, he lives in all, loves all and knows the thoughts of another as he once knew his own. For now. For a moment, he truly is that other person. As soon as he ceased to be that other person, he can no longer know his thoughts.
Very few who set out to reach this state ever fully succeed. But they always benefit by just having undertaken the journey. They gain in health, wisdom, clarity of mind and purity of feelings. No harm can come from setting out on this path, so we may safely attempt to explore it.
Modern medical science often refers to ‘psychosomatic’ cases, meaning physical conditions brought about by psychological factors, or vice-versa, thoughts and feelings being caused by physical factors. But ages ago, dervishes ate crushed glass or poisonous insects without the slightest discomfort, simply through mental and emotional control of their bodily functions. At this present time, there are two women in India who have eaten nothing for many years and yet are in excellent health. They are currently under close observation by Indian doctors.
We may conclude that thoughts and feelings are the marrow and backbone of our physical bodies. For general good health, a proper diet and exercise and fresh air are important. But ‘proper diet’ and ‘fresh air’ in thoughts and feelings are much more important.
The purpose of all great religious teachers has been to give the clue to such health of thoughts and feeling. The concept of God, the Creator and Sustainer, was a cornerstone in this mental and emotional diet. Today, nuclear physicists, astronomers and mathematicians in increasing numbers, are expressing the same general message.
The road to health of thought and feeling is the very same as the road to mental communication. A perfectly healthy mind communicates without effort. (This, of course, does not mean that a man who can so communicate is therefore healthy in all other respects.)
If we had lived in that long-past era, in the brilliant light at the surface of life, we would know, without having to be told. Now, being so far submerged, most of us have to learn. We have to be reminded and then we have to be convinced and then we must strive. Some tell us to ‘concentrate’, but how can we while a thousand worries scurry through our minds? We need methods.
We may take a look at ourselves, our functions, breathing, for example. What is it? Taking in fresh air? More than that. Breathing is the rhythm which links us to the space-continuum. Therefore, it is a point of attack. By linking our concentration to it, we may succeed. By putting a word, or a thought or a feeling as a weight on our breath, in or out, this word or feeling grows into our being and becomes part of us. Concentration is learned with less effort and is learned better.
There may have been a happier time, long past, when such efforts were not necessary. But today, as we are catapulted out of sleep by the jarring scream of an alarm clock and go through all the ugly disturbances of the day, we realize that we need a better feeling in the pit of the stomach. Could we but see what magic lies in wait for him who earnestly tries.
So while waiting for the next disturbance of your modern world, why not use the time for experimenting with your breathing rather than in fretting? There are many little things to explore. Breathe noiselessly. Breathe through each nostril separately. Breathe in through the mouth and out through the nose. A child who discovers and tests out his breath does such things. It may do wonders for him. And perhaps for grownups, also.
A child likes to share his play with playmates. You, a grownup, may scorn such an idea, although a nuclear physicist of my acquaintance tells me that he thinks much more clearly when he imagines that he is talking with someone who understands him perfectly. You might try to define such a friend, in terms of his loving character and his strength.
Thus, some men of old prayed, ‘Beloved Lord, Almighty God, Who plays in the rays of the sun and in the waves of the air. I feel You and see You in nature and in other people and in myself...’
Even if you are not quite sure, and all this is only a suggestion to you as yet, it might be worthwhile trying it and seeing if it turns out to be true. Only those suggestions will last and produce results which are proven ultimately to be true.
He who has felt the thrill of filling his waiting time with playful breathing and magic thoughts of God, eventually becomes so fond of this game that he finds, someday, his every breath has become filled with the thought of God. Like the saints of old, he will know: ‘This is not my body. It is the Temple of God.’
And he will see all other bodies as Temples of God and all other hearts as the Shrines of God. His general health, his fresh interest in life and his spurt of new energy will amaze his friends. And, in addition, he may become a seer and a knower.
Mansur Johnson's book, Shamcher: A Memoir of Bryn Beorse and his Struggle to Introduce Ocean Energy to the United States, is available here for Download as a PDF.
The Shamcher Bulletin brings you snippets from Shamcher’s writings that might help frame and context our experience of the world we live in today.
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The Shamcher Bulletin is edited by Carol Sill, whose newsletter, Personal Papers, is HERE.
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