The Man in the Desert
Welcome to the April 8, 2020 issue of weekly excerpts from the archives of Shamcher Bryn Beorse. Warm greetings to new subscribers! If this was forwarded to you and you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do it here.
The Shamcher Bulletin brings you snippets from Shamcher’s archives that might help frame and context our experience of the world we live in today.
This week: Excerpts from correspondence including two letters from Shamcher to Murshid SAM in the late 1960s, some memories from Shamcher’s daughter, Daphne, and a look at the healing prayer, Nayaz.
All Eventually Dissolves
You know about the stages one goes through: After enthusiastically accepting sublime mental and heart teachings there comes a time when all that dissolves into an at first amorphous nothing, then gradually to be perceived in an entirely different form or rather in no form whatever, and one even conceives how one’s original teacher had gone through all that and taught, with a grin of apology, the words he emanated and which he knew would be eventually dissolved. In his last year on earth Inayat Khan chose to show exactly this, and all remembered and noted by his son Hidayat and by the unhumble undersigned, but only recently digested or experienced.
At such a phase one has no or little right to talk or even appear at meetings where attendants expect the straight teachings of the faith. Except if one is extremely careful in the choice of words — more than most of us can muster.
Photo: Precious Onuohah, Unsplash
4 October, 1966, My dear Sufi Ahmed Murad,
Thank you for that beautiful test! Every or almost so — teacher tests their man by saying or writing what should rightly upset him. Now as for me, I have lost the upset-met, but let me try to respond: All titles that can be expressed in words are shams, but by shams we learn and shams we shall have. I often had to laugh seeing how Hazrat Inayat, a great soul, shammed his Pir-O title and those of his four angels who had received the glorious title of Murshidas. I visited the Grand Murshid of the Mevlevis in Aleppo and saw a humble fellow in the court yard who of course had no title for he was a teacher. These call themselves by all names or no names.
The fana-fi-lillah or Fana-fi-alla state is often held by people who have no claim to even interest in learning or teaching. George Washington, Ben Franklin, James Madison, Thomas Jefferson and Abe Lincoln were all Fana-fi-Allahs though they may never have heard that word.
In the Sufi communities there have been many teachers titled up to Pir-O-Murshid who were just for the local stage, and in that religious community (Qutubs) then others had a wider range, could accept anybody on this earth, at least, and others again, accepted and held pupils far beyond their own passing into the next world, and from there, accepted new pupils living here and led them successfully toward their goal. Now as for you, glory be that you are taking upon yourself the almost impossible yoke of teaching, constantly, accepted mureeds. Bravo. We need you desperately.
As for me, no such path at all. I am the man in the desert. Whomever I meet he will receive my shelter and food for so long as he stays and when he returns, and my answers to his questions, differing as he develops. But essentially he and I walk alone, our different paths. Most people today can only act this way and it is a safe and quite good way.
From Shamcher’s Daughter, Daphne
In a letter, May, 2008, Daphne tells a few family memories, with her younger brother Bryn. Above is Daphne’s drawing of her father, 1980.
Daddy immersed us in many countries with many schools in different languages. I worked in awesome houses, mansions and lean-to’s, yes a dug-out in Norway, dark in Lapland as maid or caregiver, was the peacemaker and clown in the family. Daddy was the best friend, awesomely wise and compassionate and patient father and teacher I have ever known, as with Bryn. We led him a merry chase through train stations and ocean trips playing hide and seek. Mommy always got in trouble through customs. He was hugely a humanitarian with visionary ideals and great good sense. Enough experience to really know what he is talking about and education to back that.
He could never be long from an ocean and we ran naked for years.
Sufi services and incredible kindness all over the world from Sufism, places to live, food to eat, spiritual bathing in glorious light.
One lady in Paris killed a chicken in front of my poor Bryn and showed him the little unborn eggies inside and said, “And the dear little Shamcher’s son, here will be your breakfast and dinner both!" Poor miserable Bryn grabbed me and we became invisible.
Nayaz, an interpretation
– Shamcher Bryn Beorse
“BELOVED…”
You stop, think, feel after that first word. Who is beloved? By whom? Without waiting for any answer yet, you let this one first word float enticingly in space and inside you, embracing you, bit by bit assuring you that every atom component of your body, of your surroundings, is beloved and loving; also the tiny thought components of your mind, feeling components of your heart. So your morning is new, your whole day is new and fresh, lovely and beloved! Cascades of fluid love course through your veins, circulate through your nerves, make you new and whole and incomparable and interlocked and interjoyed with all; with your friends and so-called enemies; with the whole.
And who is so compassionately loving all these atom components and thought and feeling components and friends, enemies and stars?
That lover must be whoever or whatever created all these things and beings, for why, otherwise, would It have taken on this gigantic task?
Who is this creating giant? Looking deeply into myself, could I possibly be involved? Being both creature and creator? And what shall we call It? The second word of the prayer suggests:
“LORD…”
It is a much used word for this sort of thing and, perhaps, it is a good idea to use familiar words — and let any new aspect we want to introduce be expressed by associations and environment. For example, the word LORD alone may be a bit scary like a servant would feel toward a rude and abrupt lord and master. But after our loving introduction in which we identify with this new Lord, he has taken on the close and dear look of one who is already part of us, closer than a brother, sister, or lover.
Come the third and fourth words.
“ALMIGHTY GOD…”
If those two words had come first, there would have been a distance; cool, possibly insurmountable! We made the acquaintanceship the right way through a lovely being and beloved Lord whom, we now find, is the very same as the Almighty God, whom we did not know before because we had kept Him on a pedestal, high and dry and remote! Now we begin to suspect we ourselves are part of Him and He of us.
“THROUGH THE RAYS OF THE SUN…”
That mighty sun! Hot, beyond imagination, but its heat diffused so we can enjoy it and benefit from it — what a magnificent sign and symbol of the mighty Creator! So, also, thought many of the old-timers, who by scholars are now classified as “sun-worshippers” — a term encompassing a greater variety of wisdom, knowledge and maturity than our encyclopedia convey. In this morning prayer our magnificent sun becomes creature, creator — and self.
“THROUGH THE WAVES OF THE AIR…”
The air is what we find around the earth. It belongs to Earth, clothes earth in an evanescent veil which diffuses the sun rays, protects us and Earth from their stings and lets through what we need. The whole Earth is a sun dependency and the Earth is us and we are the Earth — more so than is often understood. More mighty suns and more dependent planets with vast spaces between them form the universe. The following words of the prayer are,
“THROUGH THE ALL-PERVADING LIFE IN SPACE…”
Yes, LIFE pervades all space and that life is creature and Creator. It created us and so we ask “through the rays of the sun, through the waves of the air, through the all-pervading LIFE in space, purify and revivify us and heal our bodies, hearts and souls…”
Even though we are in and of that LIFE, one with it; yet, at this point in the prayer we dualize ourselves and think of that LIFE IN SPACE as coming to us (even though we are it) and purify, revivify and heal us. It sometimes is a little easier to think of it that way. In fact, it is so much easier that most religions and their sects today think only in dual terms and have forgotten the next essential step for each one as he is ready — the step to THE ONE of which each of us is a part and, potentially, the whole.
Through this morning prayer that vital step has been brought back into use. From the first whispered “beloved”, one surrenders oneself to the creative forces and, in response, a flow of new, fresh life pours into you and “heals our bodies hearts and souls.” You know and feel that you are a new and whole man or woman.
In another letter to SAM…
Incidentally, in your later letters there has been some indications that you know what a murshid is. Most people under this title do not know. This, again, does not matter. But remember that everything and everything that you do and think is clearly recorded and can be read, so do not write or talk about not being recognized. You are, by any and all who can read. The others matter no more than the silent rocks. Never try to disappoint me, for I know before you write — know truth, and all the spirits know you, whether in Asia or in Europe or America, in fact there is no Asia, Europe or America.
Thanks for responding, sharing, and subscribing!
If you like this post, please click the heart. And check out the Facebook page.
Open for comments. (You can “mute thread” if you don’t want to receive email notifications about these.)
Please reply to this email if you have stories, photos or correspondence to share.
The Shamcher Bulletin is edited by Carol Sill, whose newsletter, Personal Papers, is HERE.