Welcome! This issue features some Sufi advice from Shamcher, to think about and contemplate. Also: a brief account of WWII foreshadowed during the early 1930s, when Shamcher had to leave a business he founded in Berlin, “an association of engineers and linguists with experience in the Orient.”
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.
Ideas to contemplate
If there is anything in religion, yoga, Sufism or whatever,
it is to free man again from this illusion, and never try the idiotic experiment trying to understand what, who he is or if he makes “progress”. In the beginning this unlearning is painful if it is not understood. You are right that I never look back to judge or learn. I look back sometimes to see what I did which would have turned out so differently if I had the insight then.What happens after a while of understanding the limitation of reasoning is that you get insight. But not before you have thoroughly rejected reasoning or any effort to “see” where you stand, what you are, or who. That is why the saints say, “I do not exist.” We don’t. Really. So why worry about our status? Progress? Whatnot? But to the man not seeking, this sounds crazy. So don’t try to explain this to outsiders; they may put you in a mental institution.
Please don’t think that you can “know yourself,” please be patient and look with appreciation at life around you. That is you.
Sufis are seekers after truth
, whether they call themselves Sufis or not. A Sufi is accepted as such as soon as he wants to call himself so, or even if he won’t. To me, everyone in the whole wide world may be called a Sufi, or, if not, then I may not be one either.
There are two points of attack:
changing the part of the environment that does not make us happy, and changing our own physical stamina to meet and cope with whatever environment is encountered. To accept one of these paths and exclude the other would not do. We need to do both, continually, while avoiding exaggerations.
Protect yourself
against depletion by simply asking for and consciously accepting protection from GOD in your heart.
What do you think of Shamcher’s Sufi advice? Is it in sync with your own experience?
Orientalistengemeinschaft!
(from Shamcher’s account of WWII memories)
My out-of-the-body dream experience in Dayakland had revived my taste for yoga which I had studied since my 16th year. I decided to leave my job in Borneo and crisscross India in search of a worthy teacher. He did not appear in India but on my doorstep, when I returned to my home in Oslo. A Hindu musician and mystic, Inayat Khan, asked me to translate his talks at the Oslo University and I became his pupil. He called himself a Sufi.
Sufis and yogis seem to me now to have been the source of all religions and most science, these religions and sciences generally deteriorated into rigid mind concepts from the subtle, flowing all-embracing streams of wisdom and the sentiments of vital Sufis and yogis. An example is the confusion of every religion and most sciences in the face of military service. After one of Sufi Inayat’s talks, a listener asked, “Should a Sufi be a pacifist?”
Said Inayat, “If people of goodwill lay down their arms today, they will be forced into war, forced to fight – not for their ideals but against them.”
Two of his children shortly afterwards distinguished themselves in World War II. I went over the hill to serve, though pacifists screamed at me.
I saw a World War II foreshadowed plan, in Berlin, in the 30s, I built a business, Orientalistengemeinschaft, an association of engineers and linguists with experience in the Orient. Ahmed, my Turkish friend and interpreter, his German wife Metha, Hindus, Chinese, Japanese, Malays, Vietnamese and Javanese shared the worries and the profits. One typical day we received a rush call for a Chinese language expert. Our expert was notified by phone but as soon as he was on his way, out of reach, the order was canceled. I told him the bad news when he arrived, and added that he would be paid, from the organization’s funds, not merely for his travel expenses and also for his time.
The energetic young scholar was not dismayed at all. “Excellent!” he jubilated, “and in that case, I insist on doing something for you in return. I will give you full value for your payment: I shall spend the next and coming hour teaching you Chinese!”
I thought of 1000 excuses but none came forth, for my energetic Chinese scholar didn't give me a chance. He propounded sounds and grimaces the likes of which I had never before heard or seen, then forced me to repeat, or try to. My Chinese teacher left me only after he had become thoroughly convinced that I had no more money to pay for Chinese classes.
But it was my German associates who really floored me. Well, why did I have German associates in the first place? Because a new, Nazi-inspired law said that a foreigner, even a Norwegian thought belonging to the super-race, had to have a genuine German associate in order to conduct business in Germany. The authorities were even helpful enough to suggest who. This is how Herr Heinrich Hoffman came to be my associate.
Heinrich Hoffman had the loudest voice. And he so enjoyed using it. Once I had ordered some printed matter and when it didn't arrive on time, I had a friendly discussion with the printing firm about a later delivery. Heinrich Hoffman listened to this, then bellowed, “Give me the phone!”
He spewed into that instrument a cacophony of shrieks that must have broken eardrums at the receiving station. They certainly broke mine. After the performance he looked at me as Caruso must have looked at his fans after his glass shattering performance.
Heinrich Hoffman’s wrath was to be used for more profitable purpose: backed by ever new laws and more shrieks he bore down upon me until he had the business, the money I had stuck into it, the reputation we had acquired, and I had to leave. I heard recently he was still doing fine. Orientalistengemeinschaft!
(For a little more on Shamcher’s experience at that time, scroll down to the last section of this past issue: A Story, Advice and Wartime)
Photo from Wikipedia.
Thanks for responding, sharing, and subscribing to these excerpts from the writings and archives of Shamcher Bryn Beorse.
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The Shamcher Bulletin is edited by Carol Sill, whose newsletter, “Personal Papers”, is HERE.
If you like this post, please click the heart. And your comments are always welcome.
Sometimes folks can't find the way to post comments (maybe because I've set this as a free newsletter?) so I'm adding this one that came to me directly by email:
Orientalistengemeinschaft: Loved the first section and feel I have similar ideas and beliefs on religions, yoga and Sufis. Excellent! Also loved in the second part where Shamcher says NOT to go looking all over the world or anywhere for a teacher! They do indeed come knocking on your door....often invite themselves in.....and even move in if there is the slightest chance. They turn you upside down and whirl you round and round but always leave at just at the right moment. They come, give you everything you need and then depart. You then have to self-realize that the rest is up to you. They gave you the tools and then left you to do your own work. brilliant! You are not to worship them or go into the depths of despair that they are no longer there........you are still totally connected, it's just that you are both in two different rooms. Get over it and get on with it. I love each and every one of my own illuminated souls who came all this way to walk me to kindergarten. Loved Shamcher's word, jubilated.....that says it all.
on the wings of love, Kuan yin
"Sufis are seekers after truth, whether they call themselves Sufis or not"
...as Atiya reiterated with each SUFIS SPEAK newsletter.