Understand the Game
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. If this was forwarded to you and you haven’t subscribed yet, you can do it here.
This week’s issue includes excerpts from Shamcher’s Sufi correspondence in the late 1970s, and the second and final part to his serial: Ask, And It Shall Be Given To You.
Seekers After Truth
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.
(from Correspondence)
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.
Intuition
I know you have been waiting excitedly for this follow-up: Susanna Kjoesterud, sufi leader in Norway, once said to Inayat Khan “But you said so, I read it in the papers, the report.” Inayat looked at her with that utter compassion, “My dear Shaika, when you hear something directly from my own mouth, you know I said it." To some of us Inayat did not need to say that. We knew.
Some people meeting a man they don’t like, put their noses in the sky and say: “We’ll look him up.” So they look in reports by Government agencies and Credit Bureaus and wallow in the muck and lies. It is not that bad with the sufi papers and reports, though sometimes almost. Every single human is a source of endless nonsense. All reports, rules, laws, “established facts” are so much trash.
Yet one’s duty is studying carefully whatever reports one wishes to study, with utter attention, yet again (and here comes the difference) with utter humility, knowing some or most of it may be worthless trash. If one strives for exactness along with this humility one may find a new vehicle. Most of the people who attended Inayat’s lectures don’t know as much as those who entered this other vehicle, though of course even if you did attend Inayat’s lectures you still can enter that other vehicle. It is called Intuition, Divine Intuition. And I am telling you this because in your future there is definitely this possibility, if you grab it, the possibility of entering the gate of divine intuition. It will be a shock, but welcome in the end. Many things you now believe you’ll have to discard. Your respect for all sufi and other leaders, and top hats throughout history will change color and sense. So many mistakes were made throughout history, yet it does not matter, they were steps to achievement by others.
You may be able to follow all proceedings as they happened, and no longer depend on the little hieroglyphs we call letters and jumble together into sentences. You may see ditchdiggers having the larger vision than the Yogacharia, or, as happened when Shankaracharia looked over his crowd of upper class pupils: “Where is Singh?” Singh was the kitchen help. He wasn’t really good enough but he was the best he could find to represent his teachings when he was leaving. For another world (which is still available to those who have entered the vehicle of intuition.)
(from Correspondence)
Titles
Through ancient times the authorities were so cruel the sufis and others had to teach pupils to obey and no nonsense. The sufis had mock hierarchies to be acceptable to the worldly powers of mock hierarchies. I have more experience with hierarchies in business, government, and religious organizations. One of my little duties is to gently help the new trend along when there is a question.
Pir Vilayat is right in using titles, since many need it and demand it. His brother is right in stressing the coming trend. Otherwise the sufis might eventually work against the will of God. I am with both Pir Vilayat and Hidayat. I see both. Pir Vilayat also sees both. There is no problem but a challenge. One of many. Pir Vilayat and I can never be in disagreement. We both live in another world than talk. But occasionally we come down to talk and then there may be an appearance (to the ignorant) of a difference - because we have talked to different people at different times, which, who, need different advice.
Yes, Inayat Khan is not only in constant touch with Pir Vilayat but with all of us, as God himself is, and we catch what we can and no more. And his being in touch means that he gives to each what each should need just now, his special message to the world. For “the Message” is not a pat set of words. It is a thousand messages, delivered by each one of us, in our own way.
You indicate that I am stirring things up. Not for the stirring, but for truth, and sometimes truth is stirring but that part is not my concern. Don’t worry about the stirrings. If someone bawls you out because you have followed your conscience, enjoy his confusion. You cannot help smile. Your clearer vision may eventually reach him.
Love,
Shamcher
P.S. Talk this over with anyone if you wish, but in that case, show him the letter so he sees what it is all about, and don’t try to condense it in a few words of your own which would not give the picture.
(from Correspondence)
Ask and It Shall Be Given to You (?)
Second and final installment
Earnest seekers in cities, forests and mountains, near and far, picked up the question raised in a previous issue of why what is asked is not always given.
From ancient times people have asked and prayed for water, which is a condition for human life. This prayer has often been granted, though usually after practical steps and hard work were applied by those who prayed. Some prayed or wished that water courses should be diverted to their area and forgot or didn't care that this would deprive others of the water they regularly received. How could a just and compassionate provider grant such a request?
Some pray eagerly for a million dollars. Why wouldn't a compassionate provider promptly grant such a modest request? If a hundred million Americans asked for, and received a million each, half of us would quit our jobs and try to buy a cruiser to sail the Caribbean. There wouldn't be that many cruisers and besides, what would happen to the structure and backbone of this whole nation? The food and the homes of the very people who thought they had it made by getting that million? What would the dollar be worth? The Lord's Prayer asks "give us today our daily bread", a more modest request. Who needs a million? This is a free country, you may work for your million, with a hope and a dash. A prayer ls another matter.
So, some discrimination seems to be required, in choosing what to pray for. Some would only pray for what they really need, at this moment, and so that it wouldn't hurt or deprive somebody else. Some have tried to go further, and make up a list of what can be prayed for and what not. Some have even gone further than that, and said that they won't pray or ask for anything, for if there is a compassionate and all-knowing provider somewhere, he will know what you need anyway and do the best he can. They won't even ask for health for themselves or others. There is courage and logic in this attitude.
Yet, man (and woman of course) is so much part of this all-knowing, compassionate provider that he can, if he will, contribute, by physical or mental labor, or by spiritual participation, often called prayer, though with the understanding expressed by one beloved prophet "Not as I will but as Thou wills". One feels that the Provider himself will have the best knowledge of what can and should be done.
Möngke Khan's fountain, from Pierre de Bergeron's Voyages faits principalement en Asie (1735)
This attitude of playing down your own person is often but not always guiding those who successfully pray or heal or predict future events (mystics will never do that) or acquire money for charities. Many people whose prayers are often answered, become so convinced that they are specific instruments of God and conveniently forget the many prayers that are not answered. Every one of us is a specific instrument of the Creator, and to have prayers answered is a natural state of affairs that happens to all whose minds are not resisting it. Every person is a "faith healer", though this term is resented by many healers, for it implies that it is only the faith of the healed, not the healer or any other phenomenon, that cures.
This is incorrect. Babies, even cats, dogs, and horses have been radically cured by prayers conducted at a distance and without the horse or cat or baby knowing anything about it. The moment a person sends out a thought, something is happening. Recently this effect of thought has been measured by instruments. Before that happened there was a sharp cleavage between healers and the scientific community - except with such deeply thoughtful medics as Dr. Jacques Menetrier of Paris and, lately, the Association of Humanistic Psychologists in the USA, which comprises many MDs.
Healing can take place without any philosophy or even without intent. However, many would like to see or understand what takes place. How can it be explained? It cannot. Language and words follow already experienced images. The subtle things happening when thoughts go out and act may in part at least, be seen or felt by sensitive hearts and minds. But there are as yet no words covering these facts. Mystics sometimes create such words and they are adopted, revered and fondled by followers, more or less correctly. In the future a language will be created about these things, which will be interpreted individually and differently.
The closer a person snuggles up to the spirit and intent of the Creator and Provider, the more successful will his prayers and intents be and the better will he understand the game. The mystics, after whose lifetime sometimes religions were started, told us this in so many beautiful, poetic ways. This is the theme of the Message of Inayat Khan.
Shamcher and Mansur Johnson, 1977, photo by Sa’adi Rothenberg
I’m grateful that Sadiq Alam includes an interview with me about my correspondence with Shamcher, as one of the fifteen features in his new book, Sohbet: Conversation with Contemporary Sufis. (Originally this sohbet occurred on his website several years ago.) Mansur Johnson, seen in the photo with Shamcher above, is also included, in relation to his book Murshid, about Samuel L. Lewis.
Top photo by Victor Garcia on Unsplash
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The Shamcher Bulletin is edited by Carol Sill, whose newsletter, Personal Papers, is HERE.
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