Jeremy M. Ets-Hokin
551 Mission Street
San Francisco 5. California
July 12, 1967
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, California 94110
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Thank you for your letter of July 6, 1967, complete with ancillary documents.
I think you have some good thoughts here and there, but, quite frankly, it strikes me as poorly organized, and some parts as totally an effort to reconcile your own Judaic/Christian version of Marxist morality with what’s happening in the world today. Most points of view in the cosmos are wrong when examined individually—collectively, of course, all points of view must be right!
As Eshkol recently said, “God owns the world, but knows not the boundaries established by states” (paraphrased). Generally, neighbors, if they are to get along with each other, have to talk to each other and recognize each other’s existence. Non-neighboring third parties can be brought in as mediators, arbitrators or what have you, but the two neighbors first must agree to negotiate. In order to do that, they obviously must acknowledge each other’s existence (semanticists call this circular reasoning. I call it obvious common sense).
I am not familiar with the mystique of the Arab world, but I do know mass exploitation of societies by demagogues and despots, and I am particularly sensitive to religious dogmas being used as a tool for the Establishment to maintain its privileges and powers at the expense of the masses it leads and/or governs.
The entire Mideast is, of course, a glaring human tragedy, and, I think, a reality which even you might be loath to deny is the fact that Israel is the only government existing there wherein all members of the society receive the blessings of those rights which you and I hold inalienable.
Your grave, and perhaps gratuitous, concern over the Mideast brings to my mind Ralph Waldo Emerson’s criticism of the New England shopkeepers of the late 1850’s, who waxed grave concern over the plight of the black man in the South, whilst themselves exploiting child labor.
If you have a field to hoe, my friend, why not hoe it? I think a great deal of the Mideast tragedy has been caused by Western politicians’ intervention, largely fermented by a myriad and unlikely variety of “amateur do-goodniks.” The net effect of all this is, of course, legend; e.g., communist and Arabian Knight-type despots, eating caviar and baklava together, while the people under their inspired leadership are both narcotized and starving.
Israel provides a solution by both principle and example for several million otherwise doomed souls, to cast off the miasma of tyranny and enslavement.
Why not respect the fact that this can be done and probably will be done, even though the parties concerned might have no knowledge of your existence whatsoever.
Sincerely,
Jeremy M. Ets-Hokin
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif.
July 14, 1967
Jeremy M. Ets-Hokin,
551 Mission St.,
San Francisco 5. Calif.
Dear Mr. Ets-Hokin:
I was very happy to receive an answer from you. You are the only person so far who has replied to my letters, and it is perhaps significant that all the other pro-Zionists approached were clerics, and I am still hoping to find a cleric, any faith, who would consider himself equal. And the one thing that strikes me as funny is your remark that I have a Judaic/Christian version of Marxist morality.
I do not know what is meant by “Marxist morality.” At one time I read Engels and then Marx and I have great respect for K.M. who said, “I am not a Marxist.” Personally I think he had a more pragmatic view than his so-called followers and I never forget that both Marx and Engels were concerned with the abolition of poverty and the freedom of suppressed classes; that Marx himself (to me) was a great humanitarian but not necessarily in the way we interpret this word today.
I am not an economist, a social scientist, or anything of the kind. I went into the Near East in part as a Horticulturalist and am concerned with Desert Reclamation projects on a large scale, and today have contacts all over the earth, and continue my research. This week arrangements were made for consideration of a Desert Reclamation Program based on the activities of the “Multiversity” of California and the accomplishments of its graduate students. Practically all of these accomplishments are unknown here.
One is amused when the statement is made that the neighbors must negotiate. Having lived with both Zionists and Arabs, having talked to each and also to the UN officials from the Gaza strip, I have been working from the integrational, not from any analytical point of view. Having two positive programs to get them together—accepted by each but by very, very few Americans, that could be a starter. It was easy to talk with the late Prof. Zarchin, it is almost impossible to reach most Zionists.
My active interest in the Near East began in 1928 when I met the late Prof. Henry Atkinson of the World Church Peace Union. He wanted me to study all the lesser known faiths to see what they might contribute toward world peace. This has been done and this has been accepted by such persons as Dr. Radhakrishnan and Princess Poon Diskul of the World Buddhist Association; but not much in this land. We have our own “versions” of several Oriental religions which hardly resemble the originals at all. I am not defending any religion, and I think every people should have the liberty to their own superstitions which are generally anathema to others with different bodies of superstitions.
In 1930 I presented an “integrational” program for the Near East which Dr. Atkinson accepted. The same appears in another version in a kabalistic poem I have written. I did not study Kabbalah as part of religion. I had to study it as secretary of a lady linguist who has long since left the world. All my notes on the above exception the poem were destroyed in a fire in 1949.
The whole situation of the present time might cause grim humor from a cosmic, or a “Puck” point of view:
a. The idea that the Nobel Peace Prize winners do something. In one of my poems I have written:
Every ten years a Nobel peace Prize,
Every five years another war.
b. The Qur’an—which we have every right to reject—forbids any alliance between Muslims and unbelievers.
c. Russia was the first country to acknowledge Israel on the ground, the so-called Marxist-Leninist ground that hit proletariat should always support the liberal-bourgeois revolutions against the predatory feudalists. And we now find Russia arming Jordan and perhaps Saudi Arabia!
At one time I was in contact with Rabbi Magnes—and had my life threatened by “both sides.” But I do not uphold many of the points of any parties.
1. Here we have never granted the existence of Asian culture on the same level as European cultures. We have had many, many conferences on “Asia” here in which the Luces and the British Communist, Felix Greene were engaged in tugs-of-war. I have tried in vain to have Asian speakers at such affairs and got the boot. In the last three so-called conferences there was at least one Indian speaker; there were no Muslims nor Buddhists of any kind, and no Chinese.
2. Anti-defamation should be universal or each faith should be willing to face the fact that its very existence brings forth criticism.
I see only three outlets now—and I neither praise or blame them: (a) War; (b) Chaos, (c) UN intervention.
My work is in the field of increasing food supplies and desert reclamation. I have been all over Asia and been quite well received; and for that reason have been excluded from the people you call “do-gooders.” I now only belong to the World Federalists and that as gadfly.
I am a little amused that David Ben Gurion should on one hand champion what he may be called “Judaism”—I shall not press the point—and on the other hand, resorts to Hindu yoga and Buddhist meditation practices. I don’t think he had to go to Israel to do those things, but that is his life.
Actually I have studied a good many Yoga systems and done a good deal of Buddhist meditations, and that is my life.
Now, my friend, the fact is that today several Arab Nations have cast off tyranny, at least in name. I do not know the social gyrations of either Algeria or Syria; Iraq is run by family—we once had four political parties in this land all financed by Duponts! but we have failed to study the social polity introduced by Mohammed himself and kept for a single generation—it was, as Shaw would say, “too true to be good.” But the literature is there though we do not study it.
The question seems to be how to get dissidents to sit down together. This demand is made mostly by people who will themselves not sit down with others, but I should rather accept the “wrong” side than to concede to the shibboleths, maxims, slogans, morals and high-sounding empty words that come from our press and our foreign offices. It comes back to a saying found all over the world: “Big men argue, little men die.”
Having, as I have said, the rare privilege of being threatened by each side, I hold back my program which has been well thought out too—until I am sure of a hearing. Your statement “The Mideast tragedy has been caused by Western politicians’ intervention” stands in contrast with the American myth that Russia has stirred up all the trouble. I know it is something else. But an eye-witness is still the last person to be consulted.
If you want the story or my life, just read Burdick and Lederer’s The Ugly American and Sarkhan. I have the rare privilege of having both the American and communist foreign offices against me when I travel. But I have had for me the Asian governments at all levels.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Jeremy M. Ets-Hokin
551 Mission Street
San Francisco 5. California
July 18, 1967
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, California
Dear Mr. Lewis:
You are both prolific and prompt. I also understand that you are at the venerable age of somewhere in the mid-seventies and probably qualify in every way as a spiritual leader. Apropos of that, I would like to quote to you from the third book of the I-Ching, from an anecdote on the double “Li” hexagram:
As a leader of leaders in your twilight years, bathe in and exude the yellow light of the sun, which is your proper color. If your vanity goads you into feigning an aura of white light, as does a young warrior, it will not be blinding as you think, but will make your protestations fatuous and feeble, as are the tantrums of a child.
I think that you should get acquainted with J. K. Choy, truly a great philosopher, possibly, in his own way, a guru. Why not call him at San Francisco Savings and Loan, where he works. He is now 85 years old and, at one time, was Sun Yat-sen’s personal philosopher.
There is nothing new about configurational thinking. Aristotle used it in his concept of the aesthetic whole. Spinoza “proved” geometrically that any other kind of thinking, at least in metaphysics, is a fool’s errand, and started to prove this also to be so in his “Essay on Political Science,” but, unfortunately, he died in the middle of this latter effort. Leibnitz developed integral calculus by configurational thought. Hume’s criticism of Thomas Aquinas” “proof of God,” which, to date, is the only valid one around, used the configurational method. Kant’s whole concept of the a priori synthetical is configurational, and Koehler’s theory of the gestalt is probably the latest refinement. Unfortunately, logical positivism, a philosophy of bean-counters, convinced the preponderance of Western academicia that reasoning from the specific to the general, “for all practical purposes,” is just as “valid” as reasoning from the general to the specific. In other words, a priori equals a posteriori.
Mathematically, dichotomous posteriori thought, now so much in vogue among the blockhead’s who are in positions of leadership, can be delightfully demonstrated as a priori absurd:
2 + 2 = 2 * 2; therefore,
2 . 2 = 22; therefore,
2x = X2 qed (sic).
The “bean-counters” are in control now—creativity and love, even, are dissected by them, and, of course, vitiated at once by the act of dissection. Keep the faith, Mr. Lewis, but don’t bother scraping your ancient, and, I am sure, venerable knuckles on their concrete heads.
Sincerely,
Jeremy M. Ets-Hokin
Jeremy M. Ets-Hokin
551 Mission Street
San Francisco, California 94105
August 27, 1968
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, Calif.
Dear Sam:
Thank you for yours of August 23, 1968. You, who have devoted your lifetime to cosmic liberation in our space-time coordinate, know that the dialectic instant in the world of being seems like an eon in the world of creation.
I believe that it is Ahriman’s hand when one’s karma presses him to neutralize the gathering forces of the ring chaos in an instant at the creation level. As a matter of fact, this kind of effort can only wrench the ring chaos and obscure the yang of cosmic light. In other words, most diabolically and most ironically, one champions the cause of the ring chaos against the ring cosmos, while believing he is doing the opposite.
During the past week, Sheyla, whose karma leads her this way (and you have performed a minor miracle in subduing or “soothing” this destructive tendency in her) has somehow cast a spell over Don, who, after a hinneyana experience in the hills of Olompali, has been possessed by the forces of Ahriman, although believing he is a champion of Mazda.
I am sending a copy of this letter to Don and to Gavin, hoping that all of our collective balms from our inner Ramas and Krishnas will soothe his soul. Early on Friday morning, I am proceeding to Olompali to lay my hand upon Don. I ask that you join me there and by copy of this letter to Gavin that he also do the same.
Sheyla must proceed to India, because her yin is now vectored to dead center of the ring chaos and away from Athman.
Peace my brother. Hare Krishna, Hare Rama. Ommn
Shando Raggi Dathamatra
September 12, 1968
My dear Jeremy:
This letter is written of my own free will and it is not intended to influence you, only to state some facts which may or may not be pertinent either to the affairs of the week, or to any other affairs.
As matters stand it is certainly up to my disciples and myself to establish a sort of spiritual commune which may (or may not) become an example for others to follow! It was not until two months ago that a university professor pointed out that my earlier work in, let us say, the sociological field, had drawn recognition many years late. And when this is combined with personal experiences of all sorts, there is a wealth of presumable material here which has not been examined.
If anybody examines it it apparently will not be operative idealists communes. And today being more interested in either feeding the people of America with spiritual food and the peoples of Asia with material food I can hardly be effected emotionally by emotional groups with high (or not so high) ideals which think they are God’s only outlets into the external spheres.
The test of Love comes when one has to face enmity. I shall have to do this, in a sense, tomorrow night but there I shall be facing enough intelligence as to feel optimistic. Anybody can love those who favor one, who fawn and flatter. The worst Hollywood producer has his “Yes”-men. And while I believe in a New Age, it is the result of integration and integrational thinking, not of destruction, and still less of parasitism.
As I believe that God-Brahm is in everybody it is forbidden to me to ignore the criticisms of others. That is an opportunity to explore both oneself and the Divine Wisdom which is in the sphere.
Last night there was an event in Sheila’s house which was a demonstration of real Love. If I did not catch Don I certainly had a retired secretary of the famous Psychiatrist, Fritz Perls, and this was, perhaps, a bigger and more important “fish.” She found a “family” which operates as a family with mutual love and joy and togetherness and no nonsense.
So we are going to have a spiritual commune and in Novato which could be an example to the Esquire-utopias which seem to be growing in number. There is no opposition to them, only they do not seem to be building manhood and womanhood.
I do not know what arguments either you or Don have and I do not know whether it is worthwhile to be entangled although I personally have the utmost love and tenderness toward Shirin (Marion). She has not expressed herself.
While you were outside arguing I read in Hazrat Inayat Khan that success in worldly affairs need not be against spiritual attainment. My real fight in the real Orient was that it is not a case of materiality vs. spirituality but egotism against spirituality. It is not wealth or poverty, but self vs. God. I see no reason to change the stance.
A disciple is supposed to lay down his thoughts, not his possessions. If he gives away his possessions and holds on to this thoughts, he must be assured that God may not accept them at all. What basis is there for this?
If we are going to have a commune it should begin with communion on the spiritual plane and then a willingness to share in the thought world. The common sharing of things should come later. This is my position. It may not effect this case at all. Indeed we hope to show by example, and it may be a pretty poor example, but all the disciples are encouraged in the worlds of thought, self-expression, artistic creation and even, if you will, in money-gaining.
I do not know whether I have any more time to be called in on such matters. I have a large and growing family of lovely and even beautiful young men and women who want spiritual training and believe they are getting it.
I am not seeking any out of court settlement, or to intervene or anything. When self comes in the door, love flies out the window.
Love and Blessings,
Samuel L. Lewis
910 Railroad Ave.
Novato, Calif. 94947
March 4, 1970
Jeremy Ets-Hokin
Ferry Building San Francisco
My dear Jeremy:
Sometime ago I was sent for by the Consul General of Indonesia, and on leaving, passed by a door with your name on it. I did not wish to intrude, but a few days later met Sheila, whom I rarely see, and she chided me for not dropping in. Nevertheless I do not intend to intrude unless you yourself invite me.
We are now preparing to leave this vicinity primarily to attend a conference of the world’s faiths which will be held in Geneva. It will be one of those rare occasions, very rare indeed so far as this nation is concerned, when the religions of the world will be represented for the most part by their own devotees and not by carefully selected orators (as is usually the case) who do not represent the exotics, the fanatics, the ignorant of faiths which are strange to us, whomsoever we may be.
The main subject matter is going to be “Peace through Religion.” I have worked 40 years in this field and then threw up my hands. Not even the people who begged me to use my funds, to use my mind (insofar as I have a mind), or to use my social entries. Someday, no doubt, my autobiography or biography will be written. It will either be called “I More Than Accuse” or “When Men Bites Dog it Absolutely Mustn’t Be News.”
I am not going over old sores and I am not going to permit new ones. You have seen the flop of Olompali and Morning star. You have not seen the successes of New Age cooperative methods based on love, humanity, and wisdom, wisdom which is innate in all of us but interferes with our ambitions and prestige. We much prefer war, and are kidding ourselves when we say we do not—just kidding ourselves. But the young are different, and I am hoping later in the year to call a meeting of real Israeli peasants and real Arab peasants both of whom belong to the silenced majority.
But the prestige will largely depend upon the effectiveness of my person and my remarks in Geneva.
In the meanwhile we have planned a spring festival which is a blending of the celebration of Gavin Arthur’s birthday and my farewell for the nonce. We are going to demonstrate and I mean demonstrate and nothing but demonstrate a number of dances and ceremonials which, when they become public, will do much to breakdown the differences and distinctions which divide men.
A number of years back, 1967 to be exact, I was planning to visit England to make some studies in problems of pollution and ecology before these words fell into the hands of the Philistines. If there is one thing worse than Stuart Chase’s Tyranny of Words, it is tyranny of names, and boy what a tyranny. Indeed it was as much a comfort to be called out at a top level convention of scientists for not speaking, as it would be for being permitted to speak at any other kind of convention. It just isn’t done.
Years ago I made my only appearance before the San Francisco Board of Supervisors. There were traffic problems. We have never solved these traffic problems. I told them what was being done in Brooklyn, in Boston, in Washington, etc. and then I mentioned Los Angeles. I was summarily dismissed—immediately.
Well Jeremy, I have seen where real pollution has been cleaned up. I have had ample opportunities to study the disposition of sewage. I had all the introductions and then became sick, landing in the hospital. I took that as a sign not to be involved in such matters. Inasmuch as the Philistines have taken over, one does not expect to be heard any more on these subjects than on international affairs where one has been strangely involved.
But now the young people are listening to me. You can hardly be unaware of the career of Thomas Alva Edison. I read his entire autobiographical record. He has something to say, and I understand he is being resuscitated. Jeremy, I do not know a single problem that has not be already solved. We do not permit even educated laymen to say anything about the diseases of the flesh. But we do permit the most uneducated personality connected with the professions of writing and politics to say almost anything on the problems of the day, and by so doing, polluting the mental atmosphere. So to me the tyranny of personalities is worse than the tyranny of words.
This applies to this letter also, and if I do not put into action everything inferred here I am no better than anybody else. But now the doors are being opened. I am leaving on March 28th, and would certainly welcome you to attend the spring festival for Gavin which will be held near Lake Nicasio in the center of Marin County, beginning at 11 o’clock on March the 21st. We are assuming here that high noon will be the exact moment of the equinox, or if this is to be corrected we will rearrange our program accordingly.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
September 13, 1970
Jeremy Ets-Hokin
305 Golden Date Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94902
Dear Jeremy:
I do not know how much you would be interested in some hard facts which are excluded 100% from the “realisms” of the day. As one great diplomat said: “How can you trust a Nation which does not trust its own citizens?” But I am leaving shortly for New York, Boston and Washington and will probably appear in places which, if a left-singer approached, would be headlines. The greatest lie, and it is the most dimmable of damn lies, is the old saw: “When man bites dog that is news, but when dog bites man it is not news”. Quite contrary. News is the strange reports on new methods of dogs biting men.
I am leaving this city and perhaps when I got to New York I may call on Gunnar Jarring. The “good” people, the churches, the “peace” organizations, those who “study” international affairs are always too busy to grant interviews and for the press!!! Haven’t I been told by communist after communists that they were going to be published; they told me exactly what they had planned and it worked out that way.
I have found a newspaper publisher who wants my life. I used to say what the two outstanding things were a free meal from the Armenians and being a guest of honor at the Imperial Gardens in Japan. If a communist had that invitation it would be a top headline. Nearly all my colleagues are from Marin County: Bolinas, Lagunitas, Novato, Larkspur, Corte Madera, Belvedere and now Sausalito. I am making one last desperate effort but if not mentioned that will help my autobiography and how! The stone that was rejected, etc.
When I went to India last—and it was on a peace-feeler mission from Pakistan—I saw the Chief of Protocol, the President, the top Sufi and the top Vedantist, when they were not giving interviews to others. I got … from the foreign office and they called in or accepted Kosygin. That is “the American way.”
I added to a achievements thirty-three rejections of a paper on Vietnamese Buddhism. Then I met a lot of real Vietnamese Buddhists, and finally a professor at U.C., who had long lived in S.A. Asia—what? not a graduate of Uppsala or Heidelberg or Cambridge!—accepted. And then I met my old pal, the retired Lieutenant-General who also come from Marin County and whose sees lives in Novato and as he was working on the Vietnamese situation I threw myself into the Near East.
I had worked voluntarily forty years for the World Church Peace Union and they treated me just like Hayakawa—into the wastebasket. This is the “Judeo-Christian”-ethic. But I had the knowledge and when we went to Geneva and I told everybody I was an incarnation of “Nathan the Wise” the Jews and Protestants, especially, offered profound apologies and are now cooperating on what has been “not-news” levels.
Although all the “good” people have refused even interviews on the Near East, excepting my friend Admiral Evenson, a man thought he would play a trick by arranging a knock-down-and drag debate between Rev Schlomo of Jerusalem and myself. We met and rush into each other’s arms, and kissed. The witness was flabbergasted. Then I went to Schlomo’s “Love-dances.” They were too awkward.
You see, Jeremy, I am also the god-son of the late Ruth St. Denis which of course is bluff and fluff and she gave me the blessings for “Dances of Universal Peace.” They are spreading like wild-fire. I told Schlomo that I was a champion plagiarist and he said he was the same. Anyhow we have done the impossible-impossible-impossible—so impossible, it can’t be, but was and is: Joint Israeli-Christian-Arab dinners with dances and prayers.
My agent, the former underground Phillip Davenport of Larkspur, had already arranged or had arranged the same in Jerusalem and this is coming out. I have seen Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs embracing and kissing and not a single news-reporter—they all came to eat—reported it. It has not been done. It is being done. My message to the young, “Youth of the world, unite, you have nothing to lose,” is gaining headway and it will more and more.
Unlike the anti-communists I really believe in a God, a most magnificent, beneficent, wise Supernal Being. Anti-communist editors believe in no such thing. They play games. Let them; there will be more Chiles.
The anti-communist(?) publications tell all about the wonders of Assouan and nothing at all about the great engineering accomplishments of Californians. There is hardly a problem I know which has not been solved by some professor or department of the Multiversity of California, but it jest ain’t news. “We” don’t do things that way.
I am trying to put up a “Peace” scholarship at Berkeley. At last one organization in this city has answered—not concerning money but their willingness to listen to factual reports.
My colleagues have not only assisted in putting on these inter-religious affairs, they have been very successful in getting permission from the Indian government to take films and records of the “non-existing” Sufis of whom there are at least 40,000,000 but they do not have votes at our elections. They joined with the Israelis in a dinner recently and there will be more. And we are getting the cooperation of the very top Protestant clergy—mostly elsewhere, but we are getting it.
Next week I am joining some Hindus also in Golden Gate Park. It is part of the program, “Youth of this world, unite, you have nothing to lose.” You go to the campus at the University of California and get nothing but “yes’s” to substantiable facts. Elsewhere, “too busy.” Amen.
At Geneva the “great” Sir Zafrullah Khan was challenged, what had he to offer but emotion and oratory and he sat down and admitted, “Nothing.” That day is over, Jeremy. Youth is rising, a little confused but they are interested in doing something else than murdering each other.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis