Our Planet
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.
“Planet Earth, itself, now demands what the sages and prophets shouted in vain.”
Inside: Some excerpts from the book, Planet Earth Demands along with two letters - one to his dear Sufi friend, Ann Nicholas, in Cleveland, and another written only a month before Shamcher passed away.
My Heart Never Changes
Ann Nicholas - photo from the back cover of her book, ‘Albert’ (shared by Amidha Porter)
Dear Ann,
Your changes which you write about reminds me of Inayat Khan, “My mind changes all the time, My heart never changes.” Just like you - and little me.
What you give me in your letters are never burdens. When you air your feelings and thoughts you inspire and enliven me. I feel them, too, and become richer.
You are so right that talking and answering detailed questions about any physical complaint exhausts one and does not help the complaint, on the contrary. Every physical discomfort is a “disease,” lack of ease, that is all, and it is eased, brought back to health, not by detailed discussions or particular medicines but by restoring ease by such means as breathing, contemplation of the unfathomable God (which is us, in essence) and good works in general.
It is so comforting, so reassuring, to have your beautiful letter. So many write to me, “Shamcher, I am trying to learn and live God’s will for me, and I am just failing all the time, understanding less, sinning more” and at their doorstep they have the remedies, the practices, the means of gradual achievement. But it must be instant, without any effort, without any practice.
... and so it goes.
Lovingly,
Shamcher
Dear ___,
What exquisite “poetical prose” into which you have hidden — and revealed — your message. Yes, I see how hard it is but never harder than your courage has agreed to be challenged … When you see a star that another doesn’t see, demand not that he see it too, but forget that star and come down to his station (or up) and give him what he demands — then later again you may bend him, for the sake of the child or children, and, come to think of it, for his sake too, and yours.
I would love-love-love to see you when you come down here, though from June 2-5 I am in Washington DC, June 10-16 in Banff, Canada and I do not know whether I shall be back here between 5 and 10 June. Please come at a time when I will be here!
Love and thank you and love again,
Shamcher, Bryn (which is worst?)
(Correspondence, 28 March 1980)
Planet Earth Demands
Energy, Economics, Employment, and Our Inner and Outer Environments
Do I share with you my relationship with that remarkable lady? Are you one of her fans also? Of considerable age and wisdom, she counsels all who want to listen. She has talked to me since I was a child. With her, I am still a child. I see no authority, no source of knowledge comparable to hers. Yet, she sits in no palace, not even in a White House. “I don't need a palace to entertain beggars of favors."
Her father, the Sun, the whole solar system, the galaxies, the Universe, visible and invisible, all are her family, source of inspiration which she bountifully shares. ....
She is very much alive and eager to tell you of her needs, her views and wishes. People unacquainted with modern science often understood her quite well. Those who know a bit of latter-day geology and biology may know her better. If in addition you know her resources, and know human nature, money, sociology and the life patterns prevailing now, you may establish a close and cozy relationship with this fascinating and compassionate being whom our Indian brothers, East and West, call Mother Earth. My philosopher friend, Dr. Oliver Leslie Reiser, promised, before he passed away, to present "an organismic theory of the Earth as, a living entity, with our human society being a part of that evolving, giant creature." Oliver Reiser was as current in physics, engineering, astronomy, biology and economics as he was in philosophy.
We should bear in mind Planet Earth's proud lineage. She is the daughter of our distinguished solar system. Among her ancestry is our sublime Galaxy and even the total Universe, supreme Father-Mother of all.
I am pressed into writing about her demands and needs by my endless wanderings across her surface, my stretch as a researcher of her mores at the University of California years before the word 'ecology' was coined and my toil with money and economics in so many types of societal or political units.
I have further been concerned with man's idiosyncrasies, my own and others', as seen by modern psychiatrists and ancient yogis and sufis, father-mothers of our sciences and religions.
(from the Introduction)
Image from the book website https://www.planet-earth.shamcher.com
About Shamcher’s book, Planet Earth Demands:
Economist, engineer, generalist and mystic, Shamcher Bryn Beorse, reveals his comprehensive overview of the forces and influences shaping humanity in the latter half of the 20th century. Concerned with the fate of the earth environmentally, socially and politically, he offered both advice and warning, peppered with personal anecdotes. The cry of mother earth, the complexity of social issues, and the needs and desires of human beings living in this world today all combine in Beorse’s bird’s-eye view.
This expanded and all-inclusive vision of the cry of the earth is as important today as when it was written nearly 40 years ago. What seemed radical at that time is commonplace today – an awareness of the totality of the environment including ourselves as well as the development of the inner life.
In Beorse’s world-view there is no separation between the areas of energy, economics, employment, the individual’s pursuit of happiness and his own personal life-experiences. He subtly includes the spiritual life, touching on yoga and Sufi thought and practice as necessary and meaningful tools to address our current problems – not only at a personal level, but in the areas of city life, the environment, education and the media.
It was his love of this life and of this precarious human experiment that urged him to write and add his voice to the increasingly urgent call of our planet.
(Carol Sill)
The Shamcher Bulletin has fallen into an intermittent summer schedule, but will soon be back to regular weekly emails.
If this was forwarded to you and you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do it here:
The Shamcher Bulletin is edited by Carol Sill, whose newsletter, Personal Papers, is HERE.
Like this post? please click the heart, and comments are always welcome!