Seekers After Truth

Welcome to the latest issue of The Shamcher Bulletin, bringing you snippets from Shamcher’s writings that might help frame and context our experience of the world we live in today. Special greetings to new subscribers!

Inside:

• Remembering Shamcher in late April (April 26, 1896-April 29, 1980)

• Shamcher’s article from the late 1960’s on Sufis and the Sufi Order

• OTEC aspirational images

• Past remembrance links

A heat exchanger image from Shamcher’s papers. Our heat pump at home uses this same principle for heating and air conditioning.

Late April always brings with it the significant dates of Shamcher’s birthday and the anniversary of his passing. For those of us who knew him, or are just coming to know him now, it can be a time to reflect on his work and influence. And this time of reflection is prefaced annually by the celebration of Earth Day, something he would have smiled about - isn’t every day Earth Day? Would he smile about his birthday and death day also, since he so often said, “I don’t exist.”

In some Sufi traditions, they put a stop to the saffron harvest to honour the saint.

Yet Shamcher, who didn’t exist, would encourage the opposite: redouble the efforts to offer all you can for the survival of humanity.

Shamcher often recommended what he called an “Englishified” zikar - This is not my body, this is the temple of God; this is not my mind, it is the mind of God; this is not my heart, it is the altar of God….

It is in this way that he didn’t exist. We can follow his example.

In correspondence he said:

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. A Sufi may know all the jokes and tricks of a magician but he is more serious than any saint or government economist or garbage collector. And he loves them all with a love so fierce, so bitter, and so sweet that in comparison with this love, the magnitude of it, he himself disappears, and no longer exists.

He invited us to meet his work on its own terms, leaving it as a gift for us to apply to the present moment, not for us to preserve it in our preconceived ideas of what is past. Shamcher often taught that the Sufis were holders of ancient knowledge long before Islam. He emphasized freedom, and said:

A Sufi, as you know, is a seeker after truth, and wherever your seeking brings you, that is where you have to go. No one among Sufis is bound to any man, any rule, any organization.

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Sufis and the Sufi Order

By Shamcher in Sufis Speak (est. written in the late 1960’s)

A Sufi is any seeker after truth, whether he calls himself a Sufi or not, and particularly one who knows that others, from their different points of view, are yet seeking that same truth. “A Sufi has two points of view, his own and that of the other.” [Inayat Khan]

Some persons, throughout history have called themselves Sufis: Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed, Jelaluddin Rumi,  Al Ghazal,  Omar Kayyam, Padmakrishnan first president of independent India, Dag Hammarskjold, Inayat Khan, Vilayat Khan, Idries Shah. It has been estimated that forty millions adhere to the Sufi name and many hundreds of millions have the same trend of thought. There has never in any period of history, been a “founder” of Sufism yet Sufism has existed at all times. 

The Sufi Order is a particular association of Sufis, forming a vehicle for the Sufi Message. 

Message? What about? From whom? To whom?

The Sufi Message is a message from man to man and through man to all his religions, his sciences, his nations and all organisations through which men function.

It is called a message of Love, Harmony and Beauty. It is a message of confidence, encouraging every one to have faith and confidence in himself, in others, particularly in those inner, often hidden powers within us which we have called, in the beautiful metaphor of the past and present: Rays of God, the Spirit, Lord, the Unfathomable!

An old message? Yes, and a new one. Old in essence, new in expression so it may match the new concepts and experiences presently enjoyed by searching man.

The word Sufi?

The word is related to the Greek word Sophia, meaning wisdom, and to the Arab word Saf, meaning pure.

A Sufi is a seeker of wisdom and he tries to keep his reasoning pure. The word (Sufi) has disturbed this author because many connect it with a specific religion. The founder (Hazrat Inayat Khan) chose this word since to him it represented a very old tradition, perhaps the oldest we know about, from which he saw the Hebrew, the Zoroastrian, the Christian and the Moslem religions originate. Sufis have for millennia harmonised all religions of the world, all nations, all races; also religion and science. The founder, Hazrat Inayat Khan, gratefully recognised the debt he owed his Sufi training. He was a musician and was raised in the music-oriented Moinuddin Chisti Order of Sufis originating in Ajmer, India. 

The Sufi sees all men as equally respected children of GOD, but different in character, temperament. No two are alike.

The Sufi message seeks out each separate individual, coaxes him to develop according to his own light. The Sufi does not teach dogma, theories, philosophies, either in religion, science or politics.

Many Sufis are spreading knowledge of ancient Sufi literature. This is not the only or main purpose of the Sufi Order. Its “Message” is based, in part, on the perceptivity of its founder, Hazrat Inayat Khan. Some of his pupils stop right there and consider Inayat’s personal contribution complete and sufficient. Inayat himself said, “I have learned more from my pupils than they from me.” All aspects of his Message were worked out in cooperation with his associates. He encouraged his co-workers to speak freely in expressing the Message and envisioned a continuing stream of living exponents who would carry on and enlarge upon this living message. 

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Ten Sufi Thoughts have been prepared as guidelines for interested students though they should not be considered beliefs or dogma, for Sufis are first of all free to think and develop according to their own light. Some Sufis would not ascribe to all of these “thoughts”.

The need for a Message and the essence of that message may be eminently focused by an outsider. Jawaharal Nehru, one-time Premier of the world’s largest democracy, told the Associated Press in New Delhi, September 9, 1958: “We have to give a new direction to education and evolve a new type of humanity. Essentially our problems are of civilisation itself. Religion gave a certain moral and spiritual discipline, it also tried to perpetuate superstition and social usages. Indeed, those superstitions and social usages enmeshed and overwhelmed the real spirit of religion. Disillusionment followed.”

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Energy Conversion

As Shamcher spent decades working to bring OTEC into reality, his archives include several leading designs and plans. The Lockheed diagram below illustrates an article estimating that power from the first commercial OTEC plant was expected by 1986. (This image could look a bit like a heart.)

OTEC plant from Lockheed

TRW - aspirational image of the sun’s heat on the ocean surface and cold depth connected by OTEC to produce unlimited benign power

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Let’s take this time to remember Shamcher in intuition, in meditation, and in daily life.

Below is last year’s remembrance issue, that includes links to past remembrances as well.

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Thanks for responding, sharing, and subscribing to these excerpts from the archives of Shamcher Bryn Beorse.

• Feel free to reply to this post if you have any Shamcher stories, photos or correspondence to share.

• The Shamcher Bulletin is edited by Carol Sill, whose newsletter, “Personal Papers”, is HERE.

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