August 26, 1964
My dear Vocha:
I did not expect to write so soon. But yesterday the last coffin nail was hammered into a career of seeming negativity which was nothing but a war against personality-metaphysics and obscurantism passing as valid knowledge. I have fought here and elsewhere against the selection of European professors, career diplomats and newsmen as being the “sources” of Orientalia. And the fact is that as soon as departments in Asian studies are placed in the hands of Americans and Asians there is the warm welcome, cordial relations are established and factual materials are received. The pictures on the top of the sacred mountain of Japan remain as symbols which I shall not explain here, but they are objective data which obscurantic egotist refuse even to examine.
This year the Polish “experts” on the Near East left his audience in the air; the Frenchman lost them; the American started the chain of my papers being examined and even accepted. But this is ironic because I am today in the top ranks in the Arab, Iranian and Pakistani worlds and not even admitted to the bottom levels where our British brethren control so-called “Near East Studies.”
There was in the audience yesterday one Dr. Pande who came from Berlin and knows Surindar Suri. He has given the best lectures on Indian philosophy and literature I have ever heard, the same being extremely factual, informative, devoid of hyperbolic and obtuse language.
The speaker himself was Dr. Richard Robinson now at Wisconsin University and I was permitted to stand and remark it was the best lecture on Buddhism I have ever heard delivered. He began by an attack on British “experts” whom he referred to as fiction writers, charming and welcome to be sure, but nonetheless fiction-writers whose works should either be ignored or consigned to the fiction stacks where they belong.
He then simply and clearly explained and described the real Mahayana. The subject was The Foundations of Mahayana Buddhism. I shall not detail it here but it was the sign for me now to give what I might call “the esoteric Philosophy of Nyogen Senzaki” which is not esoteric at all but totally in opposition to British and Beatnik forms of Zen from any and all sundry and whosoever.
It is a noteworthy thing that there are three Americans in this vicinity who among and between them know about everything of true Buddhist culture, especially contemporary. They have all been forced into hiding by the popular acceptance of fictions and Beatnikism and sometimes will not see people or talk at all—this in the today of “communication.” One man lives within walking distance of Don Hayakawa, too, and having read the Etc. versions of Zen and Buddhism has reached some pretty sardonic conclusions about Semantics. But there you have it in the world of facts. I don t know whether your remarks will influence people as a whole, but individually and privately I know it has.
After such talks I feel like The Lone Ranger. And I certainly intend to campaign to help sell Robinson’s forthcoming works. They will at least have the backing of the cultural world, and the next step—and it is easy—is to acquaint the Japanese Buddhists and the World Buddhist Federation, both of whom are at sword points with British and Beatnik “Zen,” the former tacitly, the latter openly.
This has nothing to do with the “truth” of Dr. Robinson’s remarks as their objective validity. I have been able to tell him—but not the “experts” of course, of my own living in the Gandara country and my explorations therein which heretofore I have not been able even to write up. They substantiated in every respects his logistics and throw more light on Swastika-ism and some forms of Buddhist ceremonies—of which I have attended far more than the British and Beatnik “experts.”
The Oriental classes prevented no from carrying on further the scientific program. Needless to say my suggestion anent “Silent Spring” have not only been accepted but accepted with joy wherever I have gone.
I am now proposing for Plant Medicine a program which, to begin with, is philosophically derived from Pasteur’s methods and the whole science (which I do not know) of medical Immunology. I know to begin with the scientists will accept it—they have so far in every instance; and the popularizers who are frightening the public with their abstractions from “Silent Spring” which itself is far from abstractions—of several orders, than direct personal experience.
I told Stanley that G.S. will never be a science until Semantics equate or disentangle the orders of abstraction in any argument or thesis or works. We have gained nothing by rising out of Aristotelian thing-logic and multi-ordinality if we land in a confusion of abstractions of different orders.
Ultimately I hope to introduce into several Asian countries a semantics, general or otherwise, which will be free from personalisms, and stick logistical by and psychologically but not rigidly to “Science and Sanity.”
Faithfully,
Sam
January 11, 1966
My dear Vocha:
This acknowledges your splendid letter which I did not intend to answer. But the signing of the treaty between India and Pakistan coupled with the death of the Prime Minister of the former suggests a reply.
This country is in international affairs so devoted to High Order Abstractions over facts that both the warring countries feel they are in the position of the dog and cat who had to face the monkey over the pieces of cheese and lost everything. The fact that Russia succeeded where we did not is nothing but the victory of low over high orders of abstraction, something that can hardly be communicated in this land.
The cutting of the pattern to fit the cloth may or may not be all right, but our constant emphasis on analysis and differentiation and our repugnance to toward integration in the Reiserian sense has placed us in a most awkward position regarding history. Historians do not consult press reports and historians do make corrections when their manuscripts are not correct and historians have long since learned not to mingle much in society, especially a society which places personalisms and personalities above truth.
The morning press indicates that the army—whichever it is—that has been occupying the estate where I was supposed to work, relieves one of a portion of “worries.” The other is my family estate problem.
With the growing requests for my memoirs abroad it is going to be awkward for my country and not my person when in writing I list a whole lot of Americans who have been worse off. Worse than treason is to be present when an historical incident occurs and what has happened to such people is a blot on our culture. But names are names and facts are not so important outside the sciences.
I may have to face the music Saturday when my presence is requested at a meeting on Vietnam. Having manuscripts and signed letters has meant nothing so far—for the public. And has meant everything so far on the UCLA campuses. We are back to “Science and Sanity” and this is exactly the way the world moves.
Am enclosing this in a letter to Harry. Love and best wishes,
Sam
April 14, 1968
My dear Vocha:
This is in a certain sense “resurrection Sunday.” I am not referring to any particular historical or religious event but to the hard fact that there is a law of karma and am not in the least interested in objections to it, any more than a physicists would listen to arguments against gravity based on subjectivities or Aristotelianism.
One writer of the age has said that Aristotelianism consisted of conclusions without premises. But this is the way of all egocentric people and parties. And one looks upon the world with its conclusions without premises pouring out in all directions.
It is very hard to adjust not only to being permitted to present one’s own point of view, but having it taken more than seriously. While one’s friends tell one that you should drop your resentments about the past and yet show all the interest possible in Julie Medlock, Julie’s former friends think Julie should drop her past, forget and they in turn have accepted the data of my meticulously gathered information which I have hardly been able to show to anybody until recently.
Bryn stands out as the sole exception and all he has done was to accept factual material from the persons who have gathered facts. This is not done, it is not yet done. We are trying to have both the word of “science” based on careful collation of facts without regard to the investigator; and also policy-making in which facts are thrown out willy-nilly when we can’t accept the persons involved.
“The Triumph” by former Ambassador Galbraith continues, though in a different geographical setting, the same themes as “The Ugly American” and “Sarkhan” and so many of us accept the fiction but won’t accept hard facts, from even our closest acquaintances. And the acceptance by Bryn from my diary was followed almost immediately by very favorable correspondence from those who are having an international gathering this year in Darjeeling, India. It is still an irony—and now utterly ridiculous, that Sam Lewis who has sat on panels, would be welcome to the panel in India and not yet welcome to audiences in America anent Asian problems. One does not care anymore.
While on the errands for Bryn I came upon a “World Without War” group that is seriously discussing ways to end the Vietnamese crisis, giving more than due consideration to any well-known American who has a following but apparently shutting out all possibilities of the “Sarkhan” view. And during the week I met a young woman raised in Bangkok whose father is with SEATO and communication was as easy with her as it has been impossible with “peace” groups that are very proud of their dialectical conclusions into which they try to Procrustes all humanity without any consideration for that humanity! This is called “the democratic way’!
Tonight we consider Paul Reps. He is attracting the young people. He has adopted so many views derived from the real Oriental philosophies of real Asians that it is almost impossible for mature people to comprehend; as for the young, it is so easy and they are way ahead of me. But I have enough savoir to accept the young human beings, not the dialectics of older people, as harbingers of the lure.
This same sort of madness which sets up the dialectics of older people as indicating 2001 as against the actual views of the young also appears in my life. Older people simply will not have it that Sam Lewis is becoming a leader of the young any more than they have accepted his Asian “madventures.” Our walk in Hippie-land was remarkably successful and the repercussions as coming—from the young! My friends will accept Julie Medlock and her friends will accept Sam Lewis and do, but the direct acceptance of one’s direct reports is not part of our culture, yet. So we have the struggle between Lord Snow’s “The Two Cultures.”
So much of my philosophical background has been accepted by the Philosophy Department at the university—where the views of G.S. got dimmer and dimmer. Now the instructor in Logistics is accepting my backgrounds, too; and Wednesday night I speak on Fabre D’Olivet. I was the actual heir of F.D.’s unpublished works and if there had been normalcy in the G.S. movement they could have had lots of background material to support their contentions. But these materials got in the hands of “The wrong person.” They were destroyed in a fire in 1949, gone forever.
But already professors have accepted my knowledge of the teachers of Fabre D’Olivet and accepted objective evidence. So now here I am doing work for the professor in Linguistic what I had wished to do for the G.S. movement. It is no pleasure to me that Don has a very bad name in academic circles, but I am tired facing the disciples of Max Black and others. They have accepted my backgrounds, and so I am going ahead to bring in sooner or later some of the materials used by Fabre D’Olivet which lead to his “The Hebrew Language Restored.” Personalisms have no part in culture. And the first lesson in Linguistics was a severe attack on value judgments and everybody knew what was meant.
After Reps and Fabre D’Olivet I shall end the week by discussing Julie Medlock and what is going on at the Sri Aurobindo Ashram. It has taken years to get people to accept eye witness reports from a person who was there but sooner or later this is bound to be true. The verbal anti-Aristotelianism which continues “conclusions without premises” is not even worth confuting. When important or self-important philosophers accept criticisms of their positions, why bother about those who will accept no proof and no evidence from value-judged “peasants.” This is not what I wanted, so later on I shall have to resuscitate Cassius Keyser. I can see this coming.
My God-daughter is retiring from work until her baby is born and is organizing my efforts. She was compelled to examine the tremendous amount of materials collected during the years, the annotated diaries, etc. and she is now organizing many of the young to help me. The young are as fervid in accepting, with or without evidence as their forebears were in rejecting, and never mind evidence. This is a new age, Vocha. The year 2001 will be made by rising generations and not predetermined by the dialectics of seniors. I have seen that happened to Nicholas Roerich and Boag Carter and Eli Culbertson. Older peoples accept this type; young people will have nothing to do with dialectics, no matter how prominent the individuals.
Love and best wishes,
Sam
April 26, 1968
My dear Vocha:
Finding a letter of yours unfiled I am taking this opportunity to report. It is with no ego-satisfaction to say that everything is going “right.” They are mostly things which should never have gone “wrong” and all items fit in tightly to Lord Snow’s “The Two Cultures.”
It is noteworthy that in trying to report my findings in actual Asia, every single scientist accepted everything, and it was years before a single non-scientist accepted anything. But this is characteristic. The economists and social scientists do not accept the in situ experiences of their colleagues and they do accept the official reports of nations and the UN as if these were sound facts. The resignation of Arthur Goldberg based on his experiences will not change the policies and attitudes of politicos and social “scientists.”
Recently “Asia Survey” of the University of California gave a whole issue to “Food Problems of Asia.” I have had exactly one interview with one of the editors. I am fortunate. None of the horticulturalists or engineers on the various UC campuses have been so granted. Money is used from the coffers of a vast institution but is not used to promote the very successful researches of the staffs. It is all “The Two Cultures.”
As G.S. is based on personalisms and not any system of logic (unless a change can be made) it is impossible to convince editors that when PhDs, use the term “Asia” and mean Thailand, Pakistan and India as did the conference on “Food Problems of Asia,” there is nothing one can do. “Asia” means whatever experts say it means. But it happens that Thailand, Pakistan and India are the Asians countries where I have not only lived, but studied agriculture in situ and have piles of field notes. It is these notes which will be willed with a bequest when I am gone.
Fortunately Prof. Malebaum of Pennsylvania did accept my in situ reports. One place where I was so obvious was the existence of Mangla Dam in Pakistan, an operative institution built by a local corporation (Guy Atkinson) and hardly mentioned in the press. Indeed the reports of the chief of surveyor of its operation, another former UC big-wig (Milton Fireman) has equally been ignored. Etc., etc., etc. So I can’t complain about Sam Lewis. It is our existence in two cultures, that of science and that of the “literary-humanist” people. But this is not a single instance, it will not be a single instance and it will require a great deal more objectivity than we have today.
I have taken this opportunity to criticize the resorts from Pakistan, taken without a whimper, and am pointing out to the Pakistanis that they need G.S. I shall take it upon myself to introduce G.S. or rather A.K. into Pakistan because all the doors are open.
I shall present to them exactly what Bartlett presented to me, very comprehensible because of my studies of Russell and Keyser.
It is not necessary to whimper. My instructor in “Linguistics” has accepted everything which has been previously rejected by so many in so many ways. I feel almost ashamed. I know he will accept “The Creation of a New Language” which I tried in vain to get over to the GS people. It is real, it is operative, and it is indirectly connected with the career of Julie Medlock.
I am now top adviser to two independent international conferences going on respectively in Pakistan and India, covering somewhat different subject matters. But the man whom I suggested to report on subjects which I am acquainted with has already been made Vice-Chairman of each. And I am now preparing a disciple to go to India in my stead. He is well known in this world but he belongs to a culture we simply will not recognize.
Speaking of cultures we do not recognize, I am planning to be in Vancouver, B.C. before the national election. My uncle wants me and I would stay with him. This will give full opportunity to call on the S.C. people who control the provincial government—American paper ‘smusn’t copy. “Right” and “left” equally ignore the existence of realities which do not fit into their sub-Euclidean schema, and I regret the G.S. people have accepted this.
Indeed in the last issue of Etc. there is a question to be answered “right” or “wrong”: “The sum of the three angles of a triangle are 180°.” If that is not murdering A.K. I don’t know what is. The norm would be to recognize nonsense and sensible questions. The name “Carnap” would be honored, but the same egocentric rejection of his logistics.
I am also concerned with the odd situation at the University of California where the editor refused to grant an interview to two other mature persons and myself (the ladies were friends of Whitey too) who had lived in Indian villages. He was giving courses on Indian village life. Now in the reports on Asian agriculture he has published that the dearth of mineral resources is one of the reasons for the non-development of these lands. Well us poor nobodies who have lived in villages and climbed mountains and seen mines and minerals, we can do nothing, especially in a democracy. And Julie Medlock will be honored by those that do not know her because she is a friend of Oliver Reiser and her friends honor me and not her and the right in a democracy for editors and “big people” to a priori reject is a constitutional “right” and we are stuck.
At this moment I am stuck too for there has been a procession of persons which continued far into the night, hard facts which simply cannot be, because…. Most of the visitors were Hippies, and they do not respect the opinions of their elders any more than the elders. And they respect one who is rejected by their elders just because….
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July 24, 1968
My dear Vocha:
The Eyes of the World. Do you remember this book by Harold Bell Wight of many years back? That a society matron who considered it to her duty lay down all the rules and regulations was finally exposed by somebody tearing the clothes off in public and revealing a tremendous scar?
Do you realize that your mere mentioning you are going to see Soen tears off the clothes of Don Hayakawa whose blind insistence that Zen was a creation of certain Englishman whom he once admired and anybody who contradicted him was out? And the intolerable position of this person is over. Barred from the top echelons of Harvard University because I have defended General Semantics it is time to bare the scar of Don who has the audacity to proclaim certain friends of his as the top Psychiatrists of the world when they have not been able to heal the scar in his own family? And there is such a thing as “compassion” which Don does not understand. But his last egocentric antics must put him down in time and way down. And if “General” Semantics is going to follow “generals” instead of its original principles, it is only a question of time when this will come out wholly, and holy.
I feel like Alice, at the end of the “Wonderland when she finds she has been dealing with “only a pack of cards.”
Everything is bursting. I am about to edge into the seminars of the philosophy Department of the University of California but have decided to do this from the top down as well as from the bottom up. Art Hoppe of the Chronicle here has used my reality versus “realism,” and he understands fully the difference between observed facts and the pompous editorial “facts” proceeding from everything but the cortex. The day is over when rah! rah! cortex can be substituted for rigorous thinking. But I have no time to contradict the smarty-aleck stuff put out by Etc. as human or undivine wisdom.
Sheila has been a most faithful disciple from before I was ill last year and she has observed the difference between the vocative powerful persons and one who is able to touch the hearts of humanity, and no nonsense. But Sheila has one tremendous asset, which is a$$et, and that is going to squelch the whole gamut of value-judgment rejections of whomsoever. I have already met two of her close wealthy associates and she promises soon the wealthiest and most prominent and that is going to squelch once and for all a priori and other rejections.
Sheila is preparing to go to the Orient to real summit conferences of real people—nothing ever in the press. No doubt the most effective will be the Auroville of Julie Medlock and we went on some errands and not figments of Englishmen and others passed off as “Asians.”
She had her first experience of the day at the Indian Consulate, some of which staff is in bad repute with “experts” because of the high esteem they hold this person. And as my first Indian epic may be published soon, it is going to make a dent in the a priori rejecters who keep this country in darkness and ignorance and only do not become effective because all rival phonies are also rivals of each other.
The we visited two schools of Asian Music (where they present real Asian culture) to each of which I gave a donation in the name of my late departed “Godmother,” Miss Ruth St. Denis. Of course the money is always “real” even if the donor is not. But there is a different kind of American in those places and no nonsense.
After that we went to a Persian Bazaar and Afghan restaurant in turn, totally impossible (French pronunciation) because the owners are Sufis and there can’t be any Sufis because the great “experts” are Englishmen and Germans who say there ain’t and therefore there can’t be. But there happen to be 40, 000, 000 more or less and probably more than less. This includes the president of India (others too) who has to be by-passed because his existence does not fit in comfortably with American realism.
We have already dedicated the International School of Meditation, proposed originally by Paul Reps and if Soen ever comes this way again, or when he comes it will be a new day. The relations between him and the three unwise disciples of old Senzaki, Reps, Reich and Lewis, is wonderful. It belongs to the realism of Prajna and Alaya which can’t be because the “experts” know nothing of such levels of consciousness and “expansion of consciousness,” not only Etc. style but others is limited to the proper persons!!!
Sheila saw firsthand that Universal Love which is beyond the ken of mind and yet which is so close to wisdom—and one demonstration after another.
Sam has been approached by the new editors of The Oracle published in Haight-Ash and they are willing to accept his diary records which can’t be, and sooner or later The Eyes of the World are going to be turned on an objective Asia as they may have been on an objective Europe and America.
Seven days a week, from 6 A.M. until far into the night and “not a cough in a carload.” I am sending a copy to Lloyd. I see the need to fit American-European and Asian cultures together, but no more “generals. I have today a firm, wonderful following of what Rudolph Schaeffer calls the most beautiful young men and woman around. All my old inhibitions of father-function, etc. are out in the open, and all my classes are binding an ever growing number of young. I shall be most happy when you can come here.
Love,
Sam
August 17, 1968
My dear Vocha:
It is not yet light. The Law of Compensation, human justice and [?] is carrying the Punic war over into Africa.
I have your splendid letter of the 10th. Having passed a most successful, vigorous week with human beings excluded by “humanists.” It is impossible to give all details, and there will be a separate letter over the events of last night. Out of courtesy and human consideration copies are being sent to Lloyd and Russ. But also copies are being made for others, including my “non-existent” disciples who are very much in the flesh; and so to colleagues who are very much in the flesh.
Dr. Huston Smith who has accepted two papers rejected by Don told me I get an “A” in his course regardless of my examination. And some day my ci-devant friends will have to learn that Zen and Asian Philosophy are not inventions of modern Englishmen whom they admire (or once did).
It is all over. It is almost twenty years since Don Hayakawa. Too busy with a seminar of his own asked Sam to address a group of scientists meeting on the San Francisco Santa Campus studying G.S. Sam went and spoke on “The Use of General Semantics and Keyser’s Rigorous Thinking in the Modern Laboratory.” The scientists asked Sam to write it up. The paper was sent to Don—and regardless of atheist’s “God is everywhere” and in the presence of a mutual acquaintance the paper was deposited in the wastebasket. From that point in all one got was “The trouble with you Sam is…. This is “liberty, democracy, humanity and peasants, shut up.” But particularly the latter. Now there are too many peasants and they are not going to shut up.
With a full week to begin with and five days with Dr. Huston Smith Sam had still to carry on interviews, classes, etc. (which Etc. ignores, along with a multiplicity of actual-facts). Everything in every direction went “right.” And today Sam must write a blurb on some aspects of personal history. This blurb will go on for a new generation, tired of “Vietnams” will accept the testimonial of little people who were these as against the dialectical pomposity of important people who will not. The rape of Tibet and the Vietnamese war are two outstanding examples of this Vatican nonsense from egocentric dialecticians and “experts” and we are paying a terrible price. Science and Jurisprudence depend on the collation of factual facts and not editorial opinions. Real Semantics is going to be rescued and return to the worlds for factual material and scientific honesty and rigor.
Soon my picture, my history and my knowledge of several subjects will be out on full display, and as soon as my personality is better known—and it will be—and is becoming so, the next steps will be taken. Amen.
For now efforts are being made to have Sam either conduct or join in on a Seminar on the campus of San Francisco State University, the campus of Don Hayakawa. I had already planned a reception for a teacher in another Department who is a very eminent scholar, and have friends in high places who know a little about my rejections by “experts.” The “experts” of course, being important people with a minimum of facts, come and go. The young are tired. They want information. They want knowledge, and the right of every person to determine their own conclusions with their own minds.
I shall, of course, accept this offer and will also visit the campus along with representatives of one of either of the new groups with whom I am affiliated, and who do not look kindly to vaticans either of Rome or Mill Valley. I shall follow this up also by contacting personal friends in Mill Valley which town doesn’t look kindly on “generals” who have tried to make themselves arbiters of the human race.
This is very regretful, of course. But as personality judgment is part of the equipment of unlicensed psychiatrists, they must in turn accept the judgment of others, especially when the “judged” get together and far outnumber the vaticans.
As to the Buddhist meeting—no Englishmen but Chinese—it was safely steered in such a way that personality squabbles were calmed down and a willingness to be objective and work for common goals was accepted. While us old fogies held the “rower” it is obvious that young and potentially more vigorous and sometimes such better informed people are not going to dominate.
The day when “liberty, democracy, humanity and peasants, shut up is over. The products of our modern educational system are educated, many have traveled abroad and have wisdom as well as knowledge.
Plans are progressing rapidly about sending disciples of Asian-Asia and sooner or later they will take semantics (without generals). I am glad Julie Medlock has sent you material. We are doing things, and we leave it to the “non-verbalists” to write and talk. There is a very close relationship between meta-geometry and Paul Reps. The “young at heart” are going to accept it, are accepting it.
Love and blessings.
Sam
September 25, 1968
My dear Vocha:
I was not going to answer your postal of the 21st owing to pressures but I am answering it because of the very nature of still more increasing pressures. I am also sending copy to Russ and we shall see where he stands on his own: “Do not let facts disturb the issues.”
I am sure there are a great many people who believe in the actual principles which have been verbalized as “General Semantics” and have not been confused by identifying these principles with the words, making a reality of these words and then permitting a movement to be annexed by a small group of people utterly without scientific training.
Independently there have been two seeds (interpret in the Rudhyar fashion) on the campus of the University of California, and the events of the past few hours shows that these two seeds may be placed in the same garden. One man is a leader of the non-Aristotelian philosophical movement. Any resemblance between his non-A and that of the “generals” is purely coincidental: that is to say he actually is a professor and he actually presents in his classes the alternatives to Aristotle, something Etc. has refused to consider. They are stuck with negatives, God bless them (and, of course) personalities. Sam had not been able to attend his seminars owing to other pressures (all of a positive nature).
The second were two independent movements to bring Asians together to present Asian-Asian philosophies without the aid of any renegade or reformed Englishmen. Sam was not ready for the meeting called and it has been delayed but we are going to have real alternatives to Aristotle from people who were never influenced by him anyhow.
Nyogen Senzaki brought this out in his material on Nyaya, and if I get loose ends together we are going to see some real alternatives to A-logic from valid historical and philosophical sources. These will be discussed openly and none of this “liberty, democracy and peasants, shut up.” I have every reason to believe it will go over.
Last night Sam received a telephone call from his god-daughter, Miss Khawar Khan of the University of Punjab, Lahore. He had sent her copy of “Science and Sanity.” Now with her in the country Sam will go to Powell St. with his check book and start buying. We do not need any help from “Etc.” to put over G.S. and they are not in any position to stop the flow of Korzybskian and other ideas that words are not things. This is part of a large number of unstudied Asian philosophies anyhow. You would think that a part Asian, part Occidental personality could be the first to champion such an amalgam, but it just ain’t so, darling, it jest ain’t so.
In the mail yesterday Sam received copy of The Bamboo Basket and was surprised to see that a lot of his words, taken down on tape recorder, have been published. They are of the same order found almost “only in America” where everybody is permitted to get into the Vietnam imbroglio but the Vietnamese themselves. The fact that they are out will gradually get around the world—no generals to stop one here, and I am going to see you get copy if you are not already on the mailing list.
I have signed up for two more courses at the University extension, both in classical archaeology; one class full, the other open, and I feel this may be my last term. The teacher’s visit to Cambodia was only partially successful and she will return either this winter or next summer to finish her work there. It is notable that there I am called “Dr. Lewis.”
Yesterday also two of my disciples left for a summit conference in real Asia where certain leaders of the rally real world will meet to study international problems. The hard, hard fact that the leaders of this conference are very close to Sam must be ignored because we must not let “facts disturb the issues.”
The visit here of one of Fritz Purls’ secretaries was amusing. She was suffering from one of the very type of problems for which he is a expert and therefore a representative of Etcience.
I know nothing of Kairos or anything going on in southern California. This winter I shall either come south or go east to see my god-daughter or both. Very slowly financial affairs (which have not been bad) are improving. I am now joint owner of a house in Novato in Marin County where we hope to demonstrate communal living but here again, I must warn, facts should not disturb issue.
We have open house on Sundays and Thursdays, different types of Asian-Asian philosophies and techniques, approved by Asians, of course. But I should rather you could come to my partially closed meetings on Monday nights or Saturday afternoons and you will see demonstrations which exemplify what am is doing, not trying to do, but doing. But remember, “facts should not disturb issues.”
Indira Devi would probably do well here. Tremendous increase of interest by the young in all aspects of Indian music.
The program “Joy without Drugs” goes on unabated and next month will add Sunday morning activities. The young are awaiting; their elders will snub, of course, until we attract public attention, and believe me, Vocha, that is in the offing.
Gavin is well and attracting young also but on a smaller scale. Love
Sam
San Francisco, Calif.
February 1, 1969
My dear Vocha:
A little event at Gavin’s last night is determining new policy. There is no use trying to convince mature people of anything. The absence of any capacity for the expression of innate honesty is so great. The same energy needed to “straighten” out a senior can be used to direct a dozen young people. They want honesty, integrity, facts; the older people want confirmations and conformations.
The dishonesty is compounded. The Third World front is composed of a small minority of professional agitators. They are as little interested in honesty and objectivity as those in office, if not in control. The Power Structure wants it that way. They use the existence of the “left” as an excuse to discipline real liberals and the Third Front wants it that way so they can attract (in their minds) more students to them. Dialecticians understand each other even though they are in violent disagreement. Neither cares a bit for facts.
In being permitted to speak Sam won the good-will and affection of more young people. He is finding that in the University too. Older people are not the least interested in anything but being “proven right”—whatever that means.
Sam is now being accepted both as a father-image and sometimes as a Jungian archetype. There is no use compounding that one’s campaign to become a Pied Piper has “failed”—only the young show up, and more and more and more.
Unwelcome facts must he ignored, a point on which those in control and the so-called revolutionaries are quite in agreement. I shall turn to the young more and more because also they are turning to the little man who has been “there.”
Love and blessings,
Sam
February 18, 1969
My dear Vocha:
Thank you for your letter of the 13th. The dreams Luther and I had that “Science and Sanity” would solve problems is the one dream that has worked the opposite in life. The other day, in class, when I said that Americans were unable to listen to Asians the reply was that Americans were unable to listen. Later when I pointed out that UCLA add UCSB had in their curricula the very courses that the Black students are agitating for, neither the revolutionaries nor their opposite number cared. They were not interested in facts. The very use of the terms “power complex” and “establishment” shows that the parties involved are concerned with power, not with justice or integrity.
In preparing for some lectures on Asian Philosophy I ran across a passage in “The Awakening of Faith in Mahayana.” I am copying this now and sending copy to Russ. I had to choose between two wars. On advice of friends I shall not go to war with Playboy but instead have thanked them for even mentioning my person and background. Professors A Priori Rejection have refused this and several Professors A Priori dejection (all of whom use the words, “liberty,” “democracy,” “humanity,” would have none of it. So I thanked Playboy had have let it go at that.
The University of California has scheduled at least one course in Semantics. It will be a course in Semantics, and not of generals. So I send Russ a copy. Of course the world needs Semantics and it needs Korzybski and it needs a thorough understanding of the men and his methods even though after examining much may be discarded. But G.S. does not depend on examining anything but the personality involved. It is not scientific, and at times is not even dialectic but personal. So it is necessary to have an art-science which stands up, not a theological pseudo-philosophy masquerading.
It is not only that the demands (?) of non-students have not been granted. Every campus cannot afford a cyclotron and every campus cannot afford specialty studies but let a “peasant” try to bring information and the skies descend. Nevertheless, encouraged by a lot of things going on, I am going to copy and have circulated first this selection and then others, all of which have gotten the usual from “Prof. A Priori Rejection” and this name is likely to stick.
Had another reply from Art Hoppe. He is slightly more clever than others but despite the headlines, the TV time and space, etc. a lot of people who have no sympathy with so-called “campus revolts” do not wish dictatorships and that is what they are getting. This came out sotte voce when the person tried to get into the Marin Rod & Gun Club. Between his atheism and the fact that he kicked out of his class at least one scion of a prominent family (he should have thought about it but did not) the elders would have none of him. He began to cry about race, he the man that accepted that Zen is a modern invention of prominent English-men whom he once admired!
Now as to Freud. I have rejected him because “my” psychology is based on an examination of the whole cranium, the whole cerebrum and, of course the cortex, as they are and how they function. A good general will use the word “cortex” and that is it. He does not rely on cortical functioning. Nor is he able to judge Freud because selecting (in his own manner) a portion of the cranium he cannot refute others who use only part of the cranium. Further he has selected particular persons as exemplified by the same nonstandard. And if education is going to be based on such methods, why not Mao? That is what he does.
“The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking” having been laid aside, there is no place to stop and no place to go. I am now in a position to repurchase all of Keyser’s works and probably shall. I shall then argue from a position of strength against the passing parade of vocabulary snatchers who seem to control some of our culture. Of course youth won’t accept that.
I am now busy all the time giving instructions in “Aquarian” Asian Philosophy, a nice word which has nothing to do with the stars at all. It is simply that one brings the Asian Philosophy of Asians. And now my ties are being strengthened all over the Rand-McNally work (reality), and I pay no more attention to the social world (‘realism”).
I shall ask one of my secretaries to enclose a few papers for your perusal. I am now going out to complete reading one of my rejected poems. These poems will live on, I feel it. May go into the theory later.
Bryn Beorse is backing me all the way.
Love and blessings,
Sam
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco 94110
February 27, 1969
My dear Vocha:
This is an unscheduled letter written from Novato. Because of my first name, I am only too often reminded of Morse, the inventor of the electrical telegraph. In the last part of his life he demanded that “justice” be done. He sued his detractors and evil-doers and won every time.
A sense of humor rather than any consideration of justice or mercy instituted other behavior patterns. I cannot impose on anybody that there is justice and compensation in the universe. Emerson has been dethroned (?) and national morality is both in flux and confusion. Many young Americans are seeking the spiritual values in their own peoples. The immediate spark that instigated this latter is an inquiry into Cora Williams. As Lloyd 1968 is so utterly far froth Lloyd 1928 or Lloyd 1938, objectivity seems far away.
In recent interviews with the various personnel in charge of Asian studies at the University of California, the whole tenor is to support reality against “realism,” and to give, at least, normal respect to those with knowledge and experience. But added to that is a disgust for the so-called experts, the men I have called Professor Suez Canal.
In simple words a man translating Russian scientific articles becomes neither a specialist in Slavic languages nor in the sciences dealt with in the articles. But our policy has been that a person who can even read Hindi or Sanskrit becomes a scholar in both Indian languages and the subject matter of literature. This has established such a gulf that we should not be surprised either with the termination of Peace Corps or other institutional activities abroad; or with the shock to the Peace Corps people themselves in discovering how much they have been brain-washed.
I have kept both Lloyd and Russ acquainted with the darts being aimed against Don Hayakawa. It is one thing to ignore his personal religion or lack of it; it is another thing to decry and deride the philosophies of the majority of mankind simply because he and others have chosen to be opposed to religion, in toto.
There is one class of detractors I could never understand: those who deny the hard facts of a man’s personal history. Thus some of the people whom Don has listened to—he does not listen to many people—have denied that Sam was a San Franciscan. Don and company reject Sam’s relation with Cassius Keyser. This is nothing but stupid biased and egocentricity.
Out of the past Sam has re-encountered a man important today both in general history and the affairs of South- and Southeast Asia. This comes at a time when there is dickering going on for Sam to speak for some real Vietnamese in regard to their culture. I can no longer appeal to the humanism of some humanists, but I am sure if I went to Humanist House they would accept my history, if not my views.
Finding justice and a compensation in campus affairs etc. comes at a time when more and more young people believe that the little man who has been there should not always be excluded, so that audiences are restricted to listening to the opinions of important persona whether they have been there or not. I not only have 7 classes or lectures each week, I am being called upon to address audiences covering a larger district and with more persons of course. There is a vast difference between disliking a person and snubbing everything that comes out of him.
I may hear Senator Church Friday night. If so, I shall ask him pointblank, “How can we establish any foreign policy if reports are not accepted seriously from eye-witnesses, and public policy is determined by weighing the opinions of important people, many of whom have no knowledge of the groups involved?” We certainly cannot terminate crime by ignoring eyewitnesses, but we insist on establishing foreign policy not on facts but on factors.
There is one thing that is certain. Absolutely and positively certain. Sam is a successful pied-piper, and the snubs and semantic reactions of the important people who were never there mean nothing any more. The caution is now not in any further dealings with privileged or unprivileged persons who delight in their own semantic reactions, but how to assimilate, how to love and guide an ever increasing “family” of love-starved young people.
I have never accepted materialism, because I have never met a materialist (so-called) who gave equal weight to the functions of every portion of the cranium. Or who has a balanced outlook on all the functions of this very material body.
Despite the seemingly ponderous tones of this letter, the whole life is improving. My brother, so long my worst enemy, is fighting on our joint behalf tooth and nail, and there are other signs of financial improvement from this point alone.
Partly by my own efforts, partly by the favorable intercessions of Paul Reps, and partly by the valuable assistance I am getting from my young followers, both autobiographical and creative articles are in demand. I believe they will be in demand more and more. Perhaps it has been good that one has had to have bucked up so many uncalled for roadblocks.
There is lots more to write—not a dull moment any time—but now I am going into the constructive aspect of life. People who make a profession of standing in the way of others, sooner or later must meet their own come-up-edness. The cry for Love, Sincerity, Human Consideration, and Human Understanding will not forever be unanswered.
With all love and good will,
Sam
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif.
March 1, 1969
My dear Vocha:
One is sandwiching in a reply to your letter of the 26th. The time is coming when we shall have objectivity outside the strictly scientific fields. The fact that some top officials of the University of California asked one for advice concerning the various so-called “experts” on Asian matters and that Sam only confirmed them is going to lead to the gradual withdrawal of the importance of the European and English “experts” on Asia, accepted but “only in America” and the real cultural interchanges which are growing apace though entirely ignored by power-structured groups and individuals.
The course on G.S. at the University of California will be given by one Bernard R. Chalip of the Alameda School District. I cannot abstain from taking another step forward and will send a carbon to either Russ or Lloyd, and sooner or later we are going to have Semantics without generals. Hardly have I begun to send out the paper on “The Awakening of Faith”—and this will go all over Rand-McNally’s world, when I perused a recent issue of the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society (of which I am a Fellow and I doubt whether a single “only in America” expert on Asia is!
This article was on Buddhist Logic. It is not only lucid but gives may examples of how Buddhist logicians would face problems, including some of the problems of the day. The way the generals have it they have a phrase “infinitely varied logic” which any sophist can and would accept at once. But there is no application to real problems or the real day (if the word “real” has any meaning at all) such as Vietnam, defoliation, DDT, food problems, etc. At the present time only remarks from “properly qualified persons” are accepted and this has set one or two generations of young people against this egocentric nonsense, and I think it will be once and for all.
My talks in the Haight-Ashbury district have not only been well receive but the story is going around about the people who has been given the a priori bounce by the (self)-important persons and groups. Gradually it may make me a folk-hero. And with the invasion of Sonoma county coming up and two or three rather big writing assignments coming up, plus invitations to extend my speaking area-arena, it will expose once and for all the a priori rejection people.
Last night attended a party. It was at the house of my only Mulatto disciple. The audience had a fair sprinkling of “blacks,” and was of three groups—my disciples, the actors from “The Committee” and various personal friends. In the absence of disturbing elements it was marvelously integrative and harmonious. The only thing is that one finds the lonely and heart-hungry people and one dose not like to “answer” their inquiries too much. It is so easy to break the veil with the young, so easily easy. But just as it to almost impossible to get Americans to see from Asian points of view, so it is very difficult for self-centered mature people to appreciate any viewpoint of the young.
A similar point arose this morning in the class on the effect of the traditional religions of Asia on modern progress. Sam made the point of Multiordinarily of the word “Confucianism” and the fact that it was used so multifariously there would be no one or even several lucid policies. There being no “generals” present Sam was able to speak and the teacher accepted each and every contribution.
My final point was on predictability. As the “important” people in G.S.,
especially the parlor and bedroom “scientists,” do not accept
predictability, I mentioned conversations in Hong Kong with a Chinese savant.
From the Yin-yang standpoint we predicted that the next Nobel Prize in science
would go to a Chinese. Sam who has studied Organic Chemistry in the laboratory
and not in the parlor or bedroom, at that time pointed out the similarity in
principles between dextro- and
levulo-retentions in Sugars to the Yang-Yin polarities. We agreed. Before Sam
returned to this country, a Chinese won a Nobel prize on this very point. If
there were an honest science of G.S. as Korzybski pictured it, this could have
come out in public. It will come out.
All the present confusions arise out of setting personality above objectivity; this is the current dominant note and is the source of the riots, mobs, Vietnam impasse and everything.
I stop at this point, for there will be a class in a few moments. And will write a later note after reading OLR’s letter. I shall ask Daniel to take up the points of Sufism. This is “out” with the Playboy article and next week will break out further at the UC class where they do not pooh-pooh and a priori reject.
Love
Sam
2 March 1969
Section 2. It is very early Sunday morning. My secretaries have read your letter and they have the highest feeling. They want to meet you. The whole social life is different. One is surrounded by a growing number of young and beautiful people, almost out of H.G. Wells. And perhaps out of Sri Aurobindo and Bulwer-Lytton. But solid facts do not disturb egocentrics. One receives a lot of letters from egocentrics and all have the same criticism that one is an ego and then they come up with “solutions” and nearly all these “solutions” consist of asking or demanding one follow some other ego. No principles, no standards, just one-sided diatribes leaving no alternatives. This shows the universal sickness.
The class on Dancing and Walking was beautiful. The reactions were all one could look for. Instead of being a lonely old man, one is surrounded and they respond to something more than ego, and especially the a priori rejection systems of their elders. Received another one last night, all that can be expected from the usually mature in age, but otherwise what Korzybski calls “Infatiloides,” an excellent term.
There has been a strange series of fires. The house at Novato got it first, more water damage and clothing and next week the insurance company repair. (One of the fires was stopped by a hailstorm). This means you may be invited to visit the place. We have two cars there. We have two here but both in the “hospital.” We are also gradually changing this place to an Inn, but this will take more time. I think you will be able to get some sides of the “Cultsville, U.S.A.” in Playboy. It is not all wrong. Besides Luther and I well covered the field years ago.
Going over all the institutions known as “Meditation” Sam is more won by the attitude, “By their fruits ye shall know them.” As “Logic” consists of heeding the words of important people, many would gain by reading what Lord Russell said about Meditation years ago. The body is treated always as a percept excepting by the Existentialists; but the mind is treated one moment as a percept, the next as a concept, and back and forth to please the “important” person, i.e. the speaker whosoever he happens to be. This is also “Logic.” Paul Reps has won an interminable number of debates by the simple device of showing that the other person was constantly jumping from fact to concept to abstraction and back and forth, using the same word also. This is now called “General’s Semantics.”
Oliver sent me a nice note of acknowledgment. As one does not know which way the Generals will turn, one wonders what they think of OLR’s attitudes on the “Psychic World.” The refusal on the part of nearly all contemporary pseudo-philosophers to consider the devices of Keyser and Spaulding has resulted in philosophy being relegated to the dumps. So there are no standards, just rampant emotions and that is what so many of the young do not want. I don’t wish to infer that there are not new hostile forces and persons. Of course there are. But to have two well-knitted families end homes, all ersatz but all providing all desirata which are presumed to constitute family.
There is another side and this will come out when the university has seminars from which Sam will neither be excluded nor refused the floor and for the moment I shall refer to them under the word “spiritual” which is undefined here for a purpose.
Having successfully pointed out the multi-ordinary use of the term “Confucianism” in class one will be able to proceed. The professor also accepted the hard, hard fact that Sam was involved in the Sun Yat Sen movement (still accepted by some Chinese, but nevaire by “experts” until yesterday).
One realizes fully that any clarification of one’s position will be immediately used as a basis of criticism. But the hard, hard facts and the reactions of human beings, real ones, will, sooner or later, arouse some people to accept these facts and these persons. Radium would never have been discovered, much less permitted to play a role in the pure sciences if the type of people known as the Establishment had their way. I have already told you I think, what happened in circles against Frederick Soddy, and his immediate success only resulted in a later reaction which led to his untimely old age—one of the tragedies of science. A “beaten Galileo” is treated as non-existent.
Next week I shall probably put on two “scenes.” One will be at the University where I shall come, no doubt, in the guise of a dervish. As dervishes are excluded by the “only in America” East-West Congresses, it is time to make a scene. Sooner or later this will also reach Don’s associate who is in charge of the East-West congress in Hawaii, Jews and theists most welcome! Others have to have “credentials.” So Sam will show some of his “credentials” in public. Why not?
The other will be with the young. At the party the other night there was a young women who also knew Ruth St. Denis. More of this will come out. And as soon as there is enough dry water, we shell go to the young and do! Yesterday ten solid couples and two extra men as musicians, all as real and with as many votes as self-important persons. In the hospital and finally in the morgue they are no different.
But on the positive side, Vocha, there is something more. There is the whole universe of Heart and we are working in the direction both with words and acts. No use writing on this, but it is all demonstrable and all patently avoided by older people. As Sam has been writing, his campaigns to be a Pied Piper have failed miserably—only the young show up. If the forebodings are correct, there will be more and more and more. And my forebodings in poetry are gradually being published.
Love,
Sam
March 9, 1969
My dear Vocha:
The week has been so pregnant with events that last night I retired at 7 and slept until 6 this morning. I am making copies for both Lloyd and Russ, and it does not matter whether they see that one is “negotiating from a position of strength” or not. And inasmuch as some people are very much more equal than others—if the others “exist” at all, the very exigencies of the time impel, if not compel one to enter into the arena.
It was certainly not Cassius Keyser and I doubt whether it was Alfred Korzybski who proclaimed a psychology based almost entirely on value-judgments and personality criticisms. Nor can a way of life be scientific if it exempts its followers and even more its leaders from its own provisions. And the assumed right of privileged s.r.s shows that the ETCemanticism is theological in the Comtean sense and has not even reached the metaphysical state. The public behavior of its High Priest-Pope places him in a delicate position.
I have during the past two weeks met one after another university professor, all of whom are in movements against the temporary president of San Francisco State, and each one has granted one the courtesy to speak and none have indulged in personalisms, so dear to the high priests of ETCemantics. Not only that we reached an agreement in each instance, in the one case the professor willingly retreating; in the other instances it was only necessary to become acquainted—one after another after another, real professors or real subject in real universities in this presumably real area.
Not only that but the telephone is ringing more and more both in San Francisco and Novato residences; the attendance at lectures goes up; the increment advances; and the invitations to speak, at almost every institution not having an ETCemantic head, shows that there is a humanity and even humanism. Sooner or later Lloyd will have to choose between the cosmic Humanism of Reiser and the Value judgment ETCemantic dialectics.
Cora Williams. It is young people who are doing this research and they are all opposed to the value-judgment dialectics of the editor of ETC.
Agent. I am giving a birthday party to one of my disciples this coming Tuesday and will place the letter in her hands. She has friends and relatives in high places in the publishing house business.
Articles by me are now being welcomed but I do not have enough secretarial help. And it is easy to resurrect one after another the themes a prior rejected by the high priests. But mostly anecdotes of my life are wanted. These are going over big in my Pied Piper campaigns which reach only the young but more and more every single week, actually.
The meeting with a Prof. Williams Saturday was in such contrast with our American, English and German “experts” on Asia, and now I am sure of Americans who did not learn from “experts.” (All articles in Etc. are of course, from “experts.”
In copying the article on Buddhist Logic from the Journal of the Royal Asiatic Society I do not find a single “expert” in this region listed as a Fellow, only this rejected person! And I have already evoked some surprising statements from friends of the General that he would not reject articles on non-A logics. But he has. Now I am in a position to write all over the world and am also going to present it to a few congressmen, that in America “we” are not interested in non-European logical systems, and much prefer prolonged “green tables” to any kind of communication on a humanistic, if not human basis.
When one of our cars is available I shall certainly go to Humanist House and ascertain if Asians are human and if an article on Asian systems of Logistics would be welcome either as a lecture or printed subject-matter. The dethronement of Aistotelianism has meant very simply the restoration of Sophistry, and problems are never solved, and they can be solved.
I am now ready for a public campaign unless some sort of letter is written to me. The long—years of it—of personality judgment, sneers, scoffs and derision also happened to others. And it is only that the leader in this approach has been made on the one hand head of a great educational institution, and on the other hand one constantly meets only protesters, but professors and dignified intellectual that are excluded by ETCemantics.
Now on the position side. A philosophy of love, tenderness, compassion, forgiveness, is only of value if demonstrated. Samuel is demonstrating a moral purification through the dance, inherited from Ruth St. Denis (which cawn’t be but it is) and it works. One is next ready to champion William James who certainly cannot be accepted by the systems and in re-reading him I find even stronger encouragement than in reading AK. And Sam will not be excluded from the floor or scoffed next month at UC.
One has had nothing but lovely letters from ones God-children or lovely contacts with the local one. So one is becoming now an ersatz grandfather. We gave one public demonstration of overflowing a meeting when the manager did not believe one could do it. Now one has a longer and constantly growing following, people who want both subjective and objective truth. At Sonoma State it was noted that every statement made by this person was exemplified by subject matter itself, which might be controversial. But the methodology was not controversial (despite previous years of priori rejections by the “free speech”—wallahs). That is over.
Paul Reps will be at Stanford soon and I understand Sam Lewis may follow. My health has been fine. But still have legal problems needing attention. It may mean the result and choice between comfort and actual wealth. I am not worried but after all what argument better than the $$$?
Love,
Sam
March 15, 1969
My dear Vocha:
It is not yet dawn. Had to go to bed early last night because of a slight case of flu, slept vigorously and feel well excepting for a slight cough. Or maybe it is because of too many things mentally. The rejection of all Asian culture (I mean of Asians) by Etc. has meant one could fall back on one: “The enemy of my enemy is my friend.” This is an awful non-atomic bomb to us but I had intended to use it. I am among the few fellows of the Royal Asiatic Society out here. I do not find any of the “experts” on Asia listed in the membership. You have to pass an examination on Asian-Asian culture to become one and this is too much for most “experts.” But this does not nullify that “the enemy of my enemy if my friend.”
Encountering a splendid article on Buddhist logic and how it could be used to face, if not solve problems, I was ready to circulate it far and wide and tell the world that it was a terrible thing that the Generals of Semantics would have nothing Asian despite that the Generalissimo is half Asian himself; and copy the article in question and circulate it. Then I got a surprise phone call from Russ Joyner and have called off the warfare, at least temporarily. I have more than enough to do always.
The article in Playboy is too long to copy. Of course I am sneered at. This is “liberty, democracy, humanity and peasants, shut up” but in the end the writer finds the “company” in which he has placed me too terrible even for this one. At least he has admitted I am a living human being.
I am about to write a friend at Penn that a remarkable thing has happened, four professors in a row have accepted my verbal reports concerning Asiatica and one comes from Penn. There, but not in California, you have to have studied with Asians to become an authority on Asia. And I shall follow this up with an article on Pakistan! This man was long at San Francisco State and so knows all about Dons and Don’s. He said there were no authorities on Islamics and tried to close off a debate when I arose and said, yes, there were no authorities on Islamics accepted in this land but I was an accepted authority on Islamics in Islamic lands.
I then proceeded to solve a debate between the various Pakistanis in the room who were fighting each other. (My temerity! my bombast!) While the Americans gawked and snickered I ended by giving answers that were accepted by all the Muslims and the professor. The idea of a peasant interfering with such matters! This, of course, is typical.
Now with the impasse in Pakistan I shall draw upon my diaries and files (veddy unscientific you know) and have no doubt at the results. In fact the other day they permitted a student on the air—not really on the air but at a public hearing—to say that there were no silent majorities, there were just the majorities that the fourth estate ignores, that every revolutionary and radical was at once given the air, that many were not students at all and that the students were and are being by-passed. This has been Sam’s experience on the various campuses of which he has visited several. The very sweet groundwork for ETCemantics!
The story is out that Sam’s philosophy may not be acceptable, but that his methodology of always using referents was and is. It is on this point, that of using referents, that Asian logics differ from Aristotle’s but it is also on this point that ETCemantics has refused to accept either this sterling fact, or the alternative that Sam Lewis says it is. I do not want to go into the latter, but Russell is getting a copy of this.
Now my colleagues have their own publication. It is called The Oracle. And it may have some things of mine, beginning with a prediction that came true—most of my predictions did come true. It stands in contradiction to the “famous” and “important” people whose predictions do not have to come true. Thus Cayce and the earthquakes to destroy California! Well, having weathered a few more earthquakes than most people (facts are not important, people are) it is very confusing. But I have given up the prediction business after being almost 90% correct because you ended up with no friends at all. Besides for a Zennist this moment is the important one.
I have taken some steps about an agent here but can promise nothing. Involvements have become more complicated because now letters are answered. There is a Prof. in Oregon interested in real manuscripts of or about real Zen masters. Then Lottie is in town and the matter of publishing Nyogen’s works is still up. We have written Tuttle to find out what happened to the manuscript sent him because others are interested.
Shortly we have a plethora of birthday’s including Gavin Arthur’s. Sam may meet some of the “Zen” experts, inclining all the Etc.-Zen experts at Gavin’s, at least he has invited them. This time, a position of strength. Sam has a goodly following and growing. There will be no more “liberty, democracy, humanity and peasants, shut up.” One can be kind, gentle, forbearing but is no longer a door-mat for the “important” people and one may give them either a Zen or Dervish technique.
You are correct about problems not being solved. Whitie and I thought that kingdom had come when Science and Sanity was published. I successfully applied it twice to groups, only scientists. That alone was enough to get on Etc’s blacklist. I still have such problems as Vietnam, “The Silent Spring” etc. which could be faced with the matrices of AK but not now, darling, not now. Only Russ is very fair and fair-minded. And I think he will realize the dangers of articles being published elsewhere on non-A logics and their potential applications to problems of the day.
The probability of expansion in the Haight-Ashbury district may mean getting publicity but it also means putting the foot down. “Everybody” wants to get into the act and for free; I don’t mind teaching Dervish dancing for nothing but I shall have discipline, or else. For instance no drunks, under no circumstances.
Another thing happened on the same day that Russell phoned. There is another man whose name has been in the papers a lot, another one of the many “messiahs” of this region. He was going to destroy Sam by bringing in a real Guru. He had as much “reason” for wishing to destroy Sam as the Generals have for rejecting the articles and persons from this source.
This “messiah” has lost all his wealth or rather all his control and has had to appeal to the public to put on a “thing” to rescue him. But his followers have been coming to Sam one by one, generally secretly but also to his public meetings, now overcrowded, but only with the young, darling, only with the young. Sam has made no effort to convert or convince them, having enough to do.
One reason I did not sue Playboy because my brother is in entanglements with the Estate. So far, by playing it coy there has been a raise in the allotment. Of course all the people who reject articles will be glad to take this burden from Sam! Also there are two different campaigns to bring me out in public for pay and believe that a bird in the hands is in the hand this may be the better course.
So today with more income and many more followers one can proceed on a positive campaign. The question of whether we are to have General Semantics or General’s Semantics will be settled for there is absolutely nothing in the way now of having an article published on General’s Semantics and Vietnam. It would be published and perhaps by more than one source. Based on facts, of course.
At the other end is the hard situation that the young are seeking love, appreciation, consideration, tenderness and friendly advice. One has to be parent, psychiatrist and a lot more and is succeeding. I think there are also some enclosures.
Love,
Sam
May 30, 1969
My dear Vocha, Mother Divine:
I guess you not only come by this title rightfully but with the passing of Ruth St. Denis also you inherit it. Sam has been going through a series of climaxes and these may become ones Norma—why not?
One of these was an anti-climax. Just had a scene because of some obeisance to John Cage who is a sort of composer and has made a lot of notoriety with his far-out arts. I see nothing in them but chaos and if it is “wrong” to oppose chaos then Sam is not only “wrong” but will follow such a “wrong” path. After some unlovely episodes Sam picked up the booklet on Sound which is so full of the proper cosmic approaches one could not say a word. One is not for one’s negativities but perhaps more or all of them are based on art or science.
Then the inheritance from Nyogen Senzaki. One is the constant diatribe against speculation and the constant runs with those love speculation and accuse you of lack of love and consideration if you do not assent to every speculation coming out of their egos. I have never found a single one effective but during the times of negativities one becomes very unpopular and perhaps this is best anyhow.
The other thing inherited from Nyogen Senzaki has been his papers. It is all “right” for a Paul Reps or Ruth McCandless or Robert Aiken to become a joint author to Nyogen Senzaki by putting up money. That is just, noble and proper. But for Sam to make on step forward with Senzaki’s papers, that is presumption, egotism and confusing. It is so. Of course Soein and Tan-san and others think if Sam does one thing that is wonderful, that these others never had any Zen experience anyhow and it is only their egos which pushes them forward.
One used to make much of Emerson s mouthtrap inventors, but now there is a slow movement toward Novato. The first important element is an editor who has even printed some of Sam’s stuff on Vietnam. Maybe millions of Vietnamese—whom Sam has presumed to be in the human evolution—are suffering and more than suffering, but the important thing is that we desist from Carrots who are not growing organically; or grow the wrong kind of Bean sprouts; or do not construct our sentences correctly—these are the important matters. Let us have wars, disputes, etc., etc. These are not our (?) concern.
Got so high the other night that the whole audience responded in love and ecstasy. It is notable that there were not middle-aged people there and excepting my very faithful Krishna Das, hardly any of the disciples in their Thirties!
Sam must now get ready for the coming of Master Seo, Pir Vilayat and Khawar Khan, one’s God-daughter. But what really matters is his adherence to the wrong pronouns. Never mind important things—the self-important things are more important! But behind this is a place for cosmic improvement. It is coming out. It is real in the sense that all human beings are real and not just vague forms in somebody s thought.
My friend John could not get into Denver this summer so I am sending him to Russ and told him to ask about Oliver. This may be a good door opening. Today nobody wants to really face serious problems with seriousness but none of my “good friends” stand in the way of a serious approach to Vietnam, or to food problems, or to the campus strife or anything.
You remember years ago when I sent you a book on the salving of sunken ships and the kind of logistics needed. One has not changed. And now there is a new approach to evolutions and it has some sense. And Sam has some data.
No wonder my new found friend, the editor, wants all the things that have been rejected by Me-Important and “I”-important who always criticize Mr. Nobody for this egotism. I have oodles of things—not only Vietnamese Buddhism but even worse shockers.
The day of superficiality is over. Daniel was excellent received on the Berkeley campus—other things are going on besides and surface drama which gets in the papers. This is so big I am overwhelmed but then I am always overwhelmed. And in the midst of this I have placed a whole field—okra, all kinds of squash, and transplanted various kinds of Broccoli. Between times working on the commentary to Inayat Khan’s “Cosmic Language” and correspondence, I did get one free night—a free night, not a free day. Such a thing as a free day is out of the question excepting for health. Lots of suggestions but no help and am so used to that can only laugh.
Well, glad you can get away from some things but don’t envy you. Will cross your land in August but now that you have gone no need to take the train.
One more person to the Khankah—Fatima away soon; Mansur away and returns only to join Vilayat Khan and with Vilayat, Seo and Khawar Khan coming can hardly look but expect to live through it.
Love.
Sam
P. S. There is a Japanese Photographer who has become a sort of press agents. He has seen my work, he thinks it is wonderful. The idea of peace through religion and the actual acceptance of all faiths and no superflage has impressed him. He has gone back and forth across the country.
It is some four years since I presented this idea to Paul Reps. No good. When somebody else presents it, marvelous! But The Temple of Understanding is stuck and I am not stuck. Discussed with Mel today more spiritual dances, both Om Namo Shivaya and next real Jewish, real mystical dances.
910 Railroad Ave.,
Novato, Calif. 94947
June 11, 1969
Dear Vocha, Mother Divine:
One answers your letter of the 7th in high spirits and also thanks you for your Los Angeles Phone number. The next few weeks my geography will be uncertain but much more time here than in San Francisco. Gwen is back and all things are going along beautifully in both places. Also Mansur read your letter today.
I am purposely sending Lloyd a copy of this—not that I can ever get an article in Etc. One of the great honors of my life was to have been bowled out for not speaking when the top scientists met in Berkeley a few years back. After that I was never ashamed, but people who are “on the side (?) of science” are so different from the scientists themselves.
Have not even had a night off and will not till tomorrow for a long time. Articles concerning me appear in the new Oracle and Planet News, both of which have given me long interviews. My letter to Playboy was published and this shows that there are editors who accept honesty, integrity and objectivity and do not judge on the (de)merits of personality. But your letter plus Mansur’s report shows that something must be done for we have lots of material that will interest OLR and he shall get it.
Had to write Pondicherry that it was no “New Age” thing to defend oneself and try to sell oneself while ignoring others who had the same aims, objectives and same philosophies. The way the dualists, dialecticians and analysts have seized the word “Integration” without any of the contents or promises is remarkable. Indeed the phrase “New Age” is also being treated in the same way. It seems even people who proclaim that words are not the things they represent indulge in this game, a sad and sorry game and certainly not attuned to the word “science” the way the magazine Science uses it—always objective material, references and referents and a minimum of ego-interpretations.
Anyhow I expect to go to New Mexico to have a “post-graduate Whiteman-Lewis career” with the addition that these people actually accept that I have lived in Asia, met Asians and may know something about it, it is certain that the University of California has blacklisted a number of “experts” who turned Sam down at every step. Of course the “experts” are still accepted in the old places but this will not be for long.
Perhaps the climax came when I entered Prof. Lancaster’s office. Unlike his predecessors and the “experts” and those who admire the “experts” he had already accepted Sam’s objective reports. And shades, no lights of marvel, he was a discipline of Nyogen Senzaki and was around during his last days!
This most welcome event came in a train of other welcome events in which both Daniel and Murshid are involved.
Rainbows and pots of gold! This is the great virtue, of course. My income increases and there are hidden angels. Several of my disciples have excellent plans end outlooks and they are turning objective. The way in which this person has succeed with “Hippies” is going to make history, not because of itself being eventful, but because the problem-shakers simply refuse to investigate. This being the non-lab-”science” which emotionalists love. Indeed the geography of my audiences enlarges and the age increase slightly.
My brother is in the hospital having what he regards as a capital operation. He is reconciled to the hard, hard fact that his passing will leave Sam, for Sam’s purposes and standards, a wealthy man. Already the rumors are out. But the money will be used either for traveling or building up a home.
Another thing will be to get out all the material which has been rejected during the years by Etc. and others. The great problems of the world such as malnutrition, low standards of agriculture, increase of world’s water resources, unemployment and a lot, lot more, including those arising from “Silent Spring” will be aired. Also a sterling defense of the “Multiversity” of California. The young want facts, their elders “opinions” from the right people, with some division over whom the right people are.
A short trip south may mean seeing Carroll Parrish and also some small gifts to UCLA. I am not anxious to raise my standard, and am also wise in not throwing money away, but nearly all my disciples have become gourmet cooks! It is marvelous, to say the least.
When I return I have two conferences at the University Extension. One is on Vietnam. Prof. Nottingham of Long Island U. gave me an “A” just for sitting in the class and this policy is promised also by others. Then I am ready to submit my poetry to the class on “Creative Poetry from the Study of Oriental Philosophy.” But the big thing is to note Lancaster’s plans. He will accept anything I have from Shaku Soyen, Tai Hsu, etc. etc. One can let the dead bury their dead with regard experts.
Saturday night at a meeting of “Frontiers of Science” and there met another “Julie Medlock,” a woman ex-newspaper reporter who had the audacity to be present where history was being made and got the same coup de grace as all of us have, but it will not continue much longer. Honesty, integrity, objectivity—the younger generation want and the younger generation are going to have unless we are thrown into limbo. “Objectivists of the world unite, you have nothing to lose but your enemies and they are enemies of each other.”
Love,
Sam
P.S. After writing Daniel came in. He now has two full time paying jobs—one in music!
June 13, 1969
My dear Vocha:
Thank you for your last letter with some very valuable suggestions which immediately “took fire.” I shall leave it with Mansur, as Moineddin and I leave shortly for Los Angeles. This letter itself will probably be dropped at Las Palmas, for it is certain we shall be stopping on Cherokee in Hollywood for an important contact. I shall also get a message to ancient Prynce Hopkins for everything he wanted and dreamed in life is coming true and largely in connection with some aspect of my work.
Now Harvard has accepted my Zen-material background and sooner or later we are going to get out non-Etc.-Zen and no nonsense. The letter from Harvard coming immediately after the Lancaster interview opens the door wide for honest, objective studies in real Mahayana without any more interposition of fameux, especially English fameux. And I have just told Mansur I shall see he is “healed” when Huston Smith comes here.
Next Wednesday I shall attend the introductory seminar on Vietnam. No more of this “liberty, democracy, humanity and peasants, shut up!” I shall bring at least one of Phra Sumangalo’s letters and the corroboration of the other “Ugly Americans” will effect some serious, impersonal studies which will promote understanding if not peace. As soon as any answer comes from General Lansdale, I now have the doors open at Berkeley, and other local colleges (University of San Francisco and S.F. State despite Don or all the “dons” in the world).
In going over real Asian notes I came upon the following in I Say Sunrise by the late Talbot Mundy:
“Words and phrases are such vague and inaccurate symbols of thoughts that even French, which is said to be our most accurate modern language, became the favorite medium of diplomacy—an art whose practitioners delight in undiscoverable, deadly meanings and even deadlier evasions….”
While Lloyd gets a copy of this I am not going to waste any more time. I have the young with me and more and more and more and more. And the day of a priori rejections is over; and even more so the day of determining “truth” by the personalities involved instead of by objective factuality alone.
I have to see Vilayat Khan this morning before departure and can easily adjust to his plans. I am not interested in the politics but am interested in the legal moves. With a rising income, growing following and the possibility of considerable increase emoluments sooner or later I must have legal protection. Other than the plan to join the a reactive poetry class there are none now but there is now an agent working for me secretly and silently. I shall no doubt see Harry and as soon as possible.
Love and blessings,
Sam
P.S. I shall also make endowment to UCLA through Carrol Parrish as soon as possible.
June 18, 1969
Dear Mother Divine:
Arrived this afternoon and found your cordial letter with material on calligraphy. This will come in handy at the Fall semester. The only way to write a good term paper is prepare way before hand.
When thieves fall out the honest men may get their demand; when generals fall out the yard-birds may be permitted to testify. On my return from L.A. and vicinity I found Etc. with a debate (?) between Generalissimo Rappoport and Allen Walker Read of Columbia. The subject of Rappoport was “The question of Relevance” and it is on excellent expels of a General’s Semantics A typical sentence is “This mental image is contradicted by facts, which can be checked by anyone who will take the trouble.” He does not give a single fact. A General never has to. At least in Nyaya Logic you cannot make a statement without offering at least one fact but a General is a General is a General and as for a Generalissimo, no man may dare stand up.
The article is full of general sociological metaphysics, and at the same time many of the conclusions are “true”—i.e. we agree. Only this part of the “we” is neither a General nor a ???
Rappoport is full of sympathy for “Buddhists” but I never found him or any General of Semantics paying the slightest attention to the human beings who are Vietnamese Buddhists. After all wasn’t Buddhism an invention of an Englishman who has since gone wrong since he partook of marijuana—or was it peyote? It does not matter. He has gone wrong.
As for that I shall probably be in on the seminar on SE Asia with some historical documents—the worst kind of referents! I think I wrote you about Lancaster. More is coming. Carroll Parish was away but his office greeted me most cordially.
So far I have not found anything in Allen Walker Read with which I differ. I doubt whether the other Generals have studied all of Science and Sanity. I have seen no evidence of that!
The debates over DDT continue. I was ineligible to speak on Silent Spring being only a retired professional spray operator. Any good nurse, doctor, lawyer, Indian chief, policeman or anybody with a PhD. in anything, they were all eligible. Free speech you know. And as applying Science and Sanity to this discussion, nothing must interfere with noblesse oblige, not even in a democracy. And entomologists do not have many votes. So the debate continues and the whole thing could have been solved if Korzybskian matrices had been applied.
Now the doors are open to articles to show that present G.S. does not want to solve problems, only to keep the pots boiling with articles. Just like others. And the door is also open because a permanent English nobleman has thrown the whole problem of world agriculture on to the fore4nsic table and this time I want be a priori’d and very gradually my research will be made known.
Going over Read I am totally satisfied but just assure until there is a public bang-bang the Generals will not permit a peasant to say anything.
My trip South was gorgeous—new contacts, all kinds of people, all kinds of
kind people generally concerned with bringing East and West together without
any “experts.” But now my people are going to Colorado for a mountain
retreat. I am sending this to the Desert and hope it reaches you there. Have
not read the rest of Etc. excepting a book review on Bali, original edition
1936, by
Coverable. That is where Etc. is. 1936.
Love,
Sam
Garden of Inayat
October 1, 1969
Dear Vocha;
This is a sort of apology. Several days back I wrote at length in answer to one of your letters and failed to mail it. It is in San Francisco, I am terribly busy excepting that now “the sheaves are coming in.”
Yesterday I received a letter from Lloyd and have refused his protestations of respect. He has failed utterly to accept any contributory article, and with both the G.S. and Humanist movements locked up in his person, he is the last person in the world (he gets a copy of this) to pretend to believe that “words are not things.”
What has happened is this: there are more and more calls for my time and accumulations of purported knowledge by more and more people. I do not know how I can fill these dates. My recent trips have brought nothing but favorable responses and it is only in San Francisco that one has remained a door-mat and whipping-post.
There is nothing easier than finding fault and there are professional people also for that purpose. Years ago I said to my friend, Robert Clifton (Phra Sumangalo), “Grand Phra, you and I aren’t are mere nobodies. Together we have not been able to get 30 people to listen to us in this city. But I do not think there is a king or prime minister, or cabinet official or university president or professor or holy man or for that matter peasant from one end of Asia to the other whom you or I cannot meet if we have not met them all ready. But who here believes us!” “Too true, Samuel, too true.”
He lived 15 years in Vietnam. Could he get an audience in Vietnam? We prefer war and catastrophe to listening to the “wrong man.” And it is for that reason that I am furnishing as many as I can with Encyclopedias of Buddhism. We have the audacity to interfere with the private affairs of exoteric nations and pay no attention to their history, religious, folk-lore and ideals. That is “U.S.” And the young want none of it. Without two weeks I may be in the hearts and minds of a lot more of young people. And the day is over when the self-entered, the proud, the domineering can misuse words such as “liberty,” “humanity,” “democracy,” etc., and etc. and keep poor “peasants” only as door-mats and listeners. Lloyd has to face this and a lot of others.
I have no ill-will but will not permit such people to permit attacks on my personality as substitutes for honest debates on serious questions. The problems remain and will remain until we can discuss passionately or dispassionately without indulging in personalities.
And what is needed is a good public thrashing, and when the President of S.F. State is compelled to express his religious views, most of his so-called “followers” will have to desert him.
Why, even all my filthily complexities are being straightened out and a lot more. And the day is over when the proud, the self-centered, the pompous can any longer a priori reject and add to such rejections an attack on the personalities they deride.
Humanism demands the use of human worth. We are going to get it in Cosmic Humanism, not in the Aryan verbalisms being used to cover narrowness.
Love and blessings,
Sam
November 28, 1969
Dear Mother Divine:
The other day Mansur received a letter from you in which you affirmed your remaining in Hollywood for a while. In your last the interpretation was that you were coming to San Francisco soon. My vacation provided me with a new schedule and a provisional day off. I also hoped to use that day to watch football on TV. It has not worked out that way at all. Always emergencies.
I think we have new reached a plateau and the young people who have lived, are living at 410 Precita also wish to have a sort of family commune. It has been very difficult to get them to accept their financial obligations, the chief reason—and it is a reason, was that one had her car smashed, another his car in difficulties and the third, the car stolen. It has not been “paradise regained” but a better sense of responsibilities. And as soon as they began to accept their financial responsibilities Sam got a swelling of the check book.
Se we had a glorious joint thanksgiving dinner, twelve persons with Sam, Mansur with his relatives. It is so glorious to have a happy and loving family with the best personality relations one could expect, and such excellent relations of each to each and all to all. No wonder there is now a “leak,” so far confined to New Mexico and the Massachusetts areas, but this may be augmented. And as I used to write to Art Hoppe, my efforts to become a Pied Piper have failed miserably, only the young show up.
My meetings are not large but there is either a steady attendance or a slight growth. Dancing is action, singing together is action and the young want action, not sermons, theories, harangues. It is laughable how so many write of a “generation gap” which has caused me to add to my Reality vs. “realism,” Facts vs. factions.” The most outstanding of the latter being the Vice President versus the commentators.
On the last Moratorium Day I had the audacity, temerity and extreme bombast to be entertaining a real Vietnamese who invaded my home without notice and was received with love, veneration and joy. This is something Americans “cawn’t” do. Then a few days later I received some appeals from the Vietnamese Buddhists and in January will take this up. We have given the Vietnamese the “democratic” choice between outworn Christianity and reactionary communism, and they cannot even determine who is to assassinate them, though now the “Christians” are in first place (Pinkville).
I did sent a copy of The Encyclopedia of Buddhism to Carroll Parish and had a nice letter from him. The idea of studying the actual faith of Asians, especially Asians whose countries we invade is atrocious. Haven’t we got enough English and German experts! I still believe that every people have the right to their own superstitions.
My relation with real Buddhists is awful! Why, there is new a lady Roshi (shades of L. Adams Black) in San Francisco. An she was the disciple of Phra Sumangalo, my friend who lived only 15 years in Vietnam and our absolute, adamant refusal to accept his reports is behind this whole miserable conflict. Eye-witnesses are not welcome; “lie-witnesses,” i.e. members of the Fourth Estate, they can do no wrong.
The meeting with Kenneth Roshi was not particularly different from that with Roshi Yasutani, but why bother with facts? Why make any exception?
Meanwhile the philosophy classes at “Hayakawa State College” are studying modern religious movements and we have taken up Tibetan Buddhism. Here we have thrown “realism” out the window. Yes! An actual Tibetan Buddhist has been consulted!! Yea! How come? One of my disciples went to see him and he came back with techniques, net sermons, grandiose metaphysical or humble-Meee!
This class is the most free or fall groups I have ever encountered, all views are welcomed and no personality squabbles and none of our hypocritical presentations to democracy and free speech. But such an event at “Hayakawa State College” cawn’t possible be news. It would upset everybody, even Vice-Presidents and the Super-encyclopedists called “commentators.”
In the meanwhile the Poetry group which I have joined has shown even more remarkable trends. They are actually moving into new dimensions. I can see this but I hear it in the choral groups. Although he does not know it we are demonstrating Dane Rudhyar and not, most certainly not, John Cage!
I have submitted a few of my poems drawn from real scientific studies of real events and real characteristics of real nature (nothing like Extensionalisms). I can do more and my disciples listen to my talks on “The Harmonics of the Chemical Elements.” Finding real beauty in real nature may convince scientists but it can never touch the dialecticians who dominate what is supposed to be “thought.” But with the success among the poets and the young and infiltrating the philosophers, it may be possible to illustrate some real wisdom of real nature. (The scientists are demonstrating this aesthetics with the ultra-microscope—no “existentialists” and dialecticians and commentators there!)
Anyhow I am preparing, so to speak, for two grand tours, one philosophical and the other scientific, but we can discuss that later. Am always busy but guess I cannot complain. (Written in Novato, will return in three days to San Francisco.)
All is wonderful in Novato, superbly wonderful and the mutual love and cooperation beats always anything anywhere.
Love and blessings,
Sam
November 28, 1969
Dear Vocha:
About an hour after I had written to you but not mailed, a phone call came from San Francisco that there is another letter from you giving Books in Review return address. I have therefore changed the envelope here and am getting this off.
A funny (or unfunny) thing has happened that my bank account was attached because somebody with a name something like mine had reneged on a note and apparently without investigation or notification I was it. This really demands an apology.
It has been very beautiful in Novato and warm in the day time. My week is “long” now because of the Thanksgiving holiday but there will be a “short” two weeks to follow because of the coming joint meeting or classes of the University of California and San Francisco State. There are now no European “experts” on ?Asia? standing in my way.
I used to write Arthur Hoppe of the San Francisco Chronicle anent Vietnam: “Kill them all; the Lord will know His own.” I see this policy has been adopted or has it?
Tell Harry and Jack I am all tied up until sometime in January and then there is a “must” visit to L.A., etc. I have a lot of books to purchase but no time. There are constant processions of young people to both addresses. The next generation will simply laugh at the subjectivism of the present and passing prevalent “realists.”
Love,
Sam
Nov. 30, 1969
My dear Vocha:
I have returned to San Francisco and am sending you this letter in duplicate. There is nothing wrong except one matter in which I have failed entirely. People do not realize that it is possible to have a surplus of money and no time. Of three others who have been my secretaries it must be said they are all working now, which has cased my financial burden somewhat. Also the people that live in both houses are now entirely aware of their financial obligations, so in both instances these pictures look comfortable if not rosy.
I realize you are on in years today and I have not been disturbed that you did not reach San Francisco, only I was uncertain whether to write or wait. Fortunately I can laugh at some of my own dilemmas—for instance now correspondence both from far and near which shows that sooner or later what is objectively right will be accepted by more and more people. This characterizes more than anything else my present existence. There is also encouragement to write my memoirs, which will be a diatribe against the passing subjectivisms mislabeled “realism.”
In one special case I kept on writing Art Hoppe “Kill them all—the Lord will know his own.” This comes from medieval history. Or does it; I have always held the people of Vietnam have been forcefully given the terrible choice between Communism and Christianity, or rather who do they want to have them liquidate themselves, the Communists or the Christians. In addition to what I have written above, I have now received a number of letters from the real people of real Vietnam, and unless there is some obstacle expect to put on a program of some sort for the real majority of people who, we seem glad to liquidate either by force or propaganda.
I think I have told you that there is a New Zen Roshi here, an English lady; she was friend and disciple of my dear friend the late Phra Sumangalo, the first real victim of this Vietnamese tragedy. There was a program on the intellectual station here, KQED, moaning. I went to them years ago with authentic documents concerning Vietnam but they brushed me aside because these documents had some theoretical material offensive to the great English expert on the Far East who was also, among other things, the founder of Etc.-Zen. No doubt Etc.-Zen has long since been repudiated, maybe.
I have submitted three articles to The Oracle which for practical purposes is in my hands. I should rather wait until they are published, and I have reasons to believe some of them will be published. And I am preparing more such material, It is become totally inconsequential whether “realists” of any camp want actualities. But a few more Pinkvilles, which I have predicted on and on and on, may cause a few elder persons to accept that an eye-witness may occasionally know as much or more than an ivory-towered commentator thousands of miles away. I am not particularly happy over winning debates in public based on the great abyss between parlor science and newspaper science on one hand, and laboratory science on the other. I am sure AK meant laboratory science. Too bad the GS people are in such on awe of the word “science,” with or without content.
According to my present program I should be in Los Angeles by the early or middle part of January. I should remain here until March when I must go East, and perhaps to Turkey. It is a mockery on our culture that an American having access to facts, knowledge, and information must go abroad to get an audience. Fortunately it will be a real summit audience of real leaders of the real objective world.
Outside the paucity of time everything is progressing form me just as if life’s outline had been blueprinted. I am being accepted more and more by young and by intellectuals in every direction. I shall therefore wait in patience either for a letter or for your personal appearance. The people in both homes join in sending love and blessing.
Samuel
Jan. 4, 1970
Vocha Fiske
Books in Review
3010 Wilshire
Los Angeles, Ca. 90005
Dear Mother Divine,
A happy new year and please excuse me if I am going to refer to some other woman as Srimati.
The year starting off most suspiciously. We had 80 people at this house for Christmas eve, two middle aged, all the rest young. It was their affair. The decorations, the lighting, the program, etc. Sam, praise to Allah, was able to act as treasurer, but not as boss man Guru. New Year’s eve had 100 people due to the cooperation of the Vajrayana Buddhists. I have never experienced anything like it in my life. It was followed immediately by Moineddin’s birthday. Fatima made a “pizza,” and neither have I experienced anything like that in my life either. What a way to start a new year’s wonderful!
My financial affairs are now in top form. Mansur and I are preparing to attend the session of all the world’s religions originally scheduled for Istanbul, now for Geneva. This time “Professor von Plotz” and “Dr. Shnozel” are not going to attack my credentials. Besides, the Dances of Universal Peace are moving on with such rapidity that there is not a dull moment day or night—dreams and inspirations during sleep, but the last two nights I have really slept, and never felt better than at this dictation.
I have purchased three copies of Miss Ruth, one for each house, and one for the American Society for Eastern Arts, whom I shall visit shortly. I am sending a carbon of this also to Walter Terry, care of the publisher. It will be necessary no doubt to purchase all of his books, and if there is a copy available at Books in Review please tell Harry and Jack, I want all of these.
Fatima has been so inspired by this work. She realized and I realize that our genre is derived from Srimati Ruth. Of course, coming from the land of Isadora Duncan, and knowing about her from early childhood so to speak, I am interested in Walter Terry. It certainly is karma, important or otherwise, that every time I change my religion and sometimes my politics, Mother Ruth was there before me. Never once did she have anything to do with my changes of attitude and yet every time I changed, finding myself in a new fold, there she was.
I am not going into this. At her studies on Cahuenga long ago she showed me how to pick the dances out of the ether. Despite H.P.B. and her “akashic records” I do not know any theosophists who followed therein, but I do find, have found, and am finding, the dances in the universe itself. Hindus make a lot of the Divine Mother, and we disregard Homer’s “Sing Goddess the wrath of Achilles,” which I once knew in the ancient Greek. The Goddess is still singing, and it is most wonderful too that Fatima is following here in the footsteps of her Murshid who is following in the footsteps of Srimati.
This letter will be followed by one to Walter Terry. I do not know what I want if anything. But the Dances of Universal Peace are now progressing in all directions, and I shall soon be meeting Vilayat Khan in Hollywood to discuss their future. I am not concerned with this, for Mansur and I are preparing to attend a parliament of the world’s religions which has accepted these dances in principal at least. Besides, amid the rejections, they have been accepted already by enough groups to warrant their success, their place in history and in art, and their effectiveness in my program Joy Without Drugs. I shall not write to Walter Terry until I have actually completed the reading of Miss Ruth. As you know, I have her picture, with her writing in my front room. And another with Ted Shawn in my hall, and no other pictures except those of well known spiritual teachers in the house at all.
Other than my incessant busyness, there is hardly anything more to report, nor any need.
All love and blessings,
Sam
Jan. 6, 1970
Walter Terry
c/o Dodd, Mead and Co.
New York, N.Y.
Dear Mr. Terry:
I have before me a copy of Miss Ruth, a very unsatisfactory back. If it had been satisfactory, it would have been atrocious. How can one verbally analyze a sunrise or, better yet (which I have seen personally) a dawn in the Himalayas, or the upper flows of a river, or a partly cloudy sky, etc., etc. When you say the late Miss Ruth was half Mick half mystic you have said everything. The rest is embellishment and you know it, but there had to be embellishment.
Three copies of Miss Ruth have been purchased, one each for my two respective homes, and one for the American Society for Eastern Arts with its headquarters in this city. I was born in this city years age a little after Isadora Duncan and Nila Cramcook, and Harold Lamb, each of whom has made a mark while I am unknown. In my last conversation with Miss Ruth I said, I have started the Dance of Universal Peace at Fatehpur Sikri in 1962. She said, Ted Shawn and I did the same thing in the same place 30 years previously. I think we understood each other perfectly. No physical resemblance of any kind; I am short and solid, and yet she treated me, especially in her later years, as if I were her flesh and blood son.
Perhaps I would not dare to write this unless Vocha Fiske, whom you have named, was my very best friend, and has been my very best friend for many years.
In a conversation some years back I said, “Holy Mother, I am going to revolutionize the world.” “How are you going to do this,” she inquired. “By teaching little children how to walk.” She arose majestically to her full height, pounding on the table with her fist, “You have it; you have it; you have it.”
I am now teaching young adults how to walk. I am now having rather small classes, it is true, on spiritual, esoteric, and mystical dances, all of which can be explained semantically, no nonsense. All my life was determined, perhaps predetermined, by the joint tour of Miss Ruth St.-Denis and the Sufi Pir-o-Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan in 1911 (I believe). I have learned from each and both how to draw inspirations form the universe, though the only thing of mine published, and that by friends, has been The Rejected Avatar. I am enclosing a copy of this, not because of its intrinsic or extrinsic worth, but because it exemplifies the source of inspiration, the Divine Mother, whom to me Miss Ruth exemplified on the flesh.
There is an autographed picture of hers in my living room. The only other things on the walls are credentials from the real masters of the real Orient, and no nonsense. And on the altar, so to speak, pictures of actual Masters whom I have met and who have been either my “Gurus” or friends.
For some time we were in the poetry groups of Malcolm Schloss in Hollywood. Evidently her very presence activated the muse to bring the same sort of inspirations to me on the Dance as in Poetry, and this is now being exemplified in the daily life, in the growing following, and the occasional grapevine reports which may soon catapult either this person (not important) or the Dances of Universal Peace (most important) onto the world scene.
In my seventies today, I can certainly say there is physical and mental vigor, perhaps more. But it has been Srimati Ruth St Denis who showed me how to “see” and draw dances out of the cosmos, out of the akasha, out of the alayavijnana. At the Psychedelic Conference I spoke 5 times on “Joy Without Drugs.” It was unheeded by warring factions anxious to get at each other’s throats, but today it is becoming objectified.
Looking over this book, regardless of the intellectual, dualistic remarks, I intend to order others of your work. I used to lecture on “Isadora Duncan and Nijinsky.” This brought me no satisfaction excepting the friendship of the rather bizarre daughter Kyra of the great Russian. With a solid background in Oriental Philosophy and Mysticism, I see the human body as the temple of the holy spirit, and activate it. Miss Ruth to me was, above all, the divine temple itself, appearing in human form.
While in a certain sense this is a request to quote from your work, I shall not do so without your permission, and will gladly furnish any information should the occasion arise.
Most faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Jan. 25, 1970
My dear Vocha:
Your delightful card of the 22nd is here. I had not intended answering, as living situations good and bad, both increase, and I am fortunate to have even an hour surcease at any time. My brother is in the hospital under surgery, and this will be mailed before I find out what the situation is. The way matters stand, if he does go I shall slowly or gradually become quite wealthy, which is the merit of the passing culture, no matter what people say.
Yesterday morning we attended Indian Independence Day celebration. It was shocking. The Indians themselves had taken over. There was hardly and “expert” or an “near expert” in the audience. The second speaker was our old friend Dr. Lal. He was scheduled to speak on science in contemporary India. He lost the audience; he spoke on humanism. As the organized humanists do not recognize Indian cultures the Indians in turn are very cool to it. No doubt we shall sometime have integrationalists who integrate. I think we are coming to it, but not yet.
Of course Dr. Lal was right in his appeal for morality and humanity, but while the humanists themselves have little inclination to include humanity, such appeals, though morally and logically correct, fall on deaf ears. It is remarkable how many people expect the others to listen.
The main speaker I had come to hear was a Dr. Stout, and I established immediate contact by the semi-trickery of mentioning people whose ideas I have appropriated, real scientists doing real things in the real world, not hyperbolic archetypes. In fact I left confident that if the whole literary-humanist culture turns one down it does not matter. The scientists themselves do not think the way humanists and the newspaper verbalize them to be thinking. All one has to do is to read the articles in Science.
I have kept all my real scientific notes from all over. Art Hoppe today pokes fun of those devils, cyclamate, the “pill,” etc. It is subjects like those that I have dreamed of some organization, calling itself semantic or otherwise, would discuss dispassionately.
Surrounded by quandaries as above and otherwise, life has become delightfully complex. It seems that youth, and others elsewhere, want Sam. I wish to get over a scheduled trip to Europe so as to fulfill these invitations. Yesterday I had to skip my class on Southeast Asia. Professor Richard Kozicki, in whose class I am enrolled, actually lived in S.E. Asia with the people thereof. Not only that, he has annotated all the literature published by the various professors and campuses of the Multiversity of California. He is a true Integrationalists, and not an exclusive verbal bastard using this term. I think he will accept my report of the proceedings of India as part of the term program.
Everything else is proceeding, and I mean proceeding. Not a dull moment, and please excuse me if this letter is not too clear, for I am utterly swamped.
Love,
Sam
Jan. 30, 1970
My dear Vocha:
Thank you for your post card of the 27th. From one point of view I am hopelessly overworked, but if you want to order any books for me through Harry and Jack, okay. I am not only overworked, but have dangling over me the situation of my brother’s health, when either recovery of ill-health could radically change my whole situation. No doubt it was necessary to go through all the phases of rejection by important people.
I still see the two cultures of Lord Snow—the scientific culture in which solutions are worked out by an amalgamation of logic and human experience, and the “other culture” in which pseudo-solutions are presented because the persons involved are important. Indeed I am now getting ready to write to Perry Stout at Davis, both regarding real food problems of the real world and the logistics of materials, chemical or natural, used for plant protection. The career continues to show practically 100% acceptance by scientists and a slight, very slight acceptance by those of the “other culture,” the literary-humanists who determine by personality and personalisms.
You can understand my almost sardonic laughter at the usage and misusage of terms such as pollution, ecology, etc., which have been taken over by the literati, adding endless confusion to the problems of the day, knowing that what they write will be discussed publically and otherwise, and realizing what scientists do is very seldom considered in the forums of the literati.
Beside the uncertainty produced by my brothers ill-health, there is a “conspiracy” to make me famous. More and more people have the nerve to accept my geography, to accept the claims that when I say I have been to a place, I have actually been there. But of course I am meeting more and more persons with the same background, with the same sort of objective experience, and with the same sort of rejection by self-centered “experts” and authorities. Indeed, it has become a most welcome annoyance to find oneself the un-victim of objective facts and experience.
Art Hoppe of the San Francisco Chronicle now realizes the deep significance of my letters to him: “Weep for the Biafrans.” I myself saw more starving people in a single small corner of Pakistan than all the reports from Biafra, assuming these reports are correct. You must understand that the Biafrans are potential rice-Christians while the refugees in Pakistan were “fanatics,” that is they belonged to other than those who accept the Judeo-Christian ethos, whatever that means. In fact, a little financial boost, such as may be possible if my brother leaves this world, would lead to the publication of “Eye Not-Witness” or something of the sort. It is certain that the young people in ever-increasing multitudes are accepting both the facts of my life and the caustic remarks from this tongue.
A number of years ago I was permitted to say a few words at the Psychedelic conference here. This was largely due to the presence of too many factions, with too many outlooks, and of course the rejection of real integrational positions, by all forms of analysts, dialecticians, etc. One of the leaders of the forum was a Professor Richard Alpert who was not only a top researcher at Harvard, but also a scion of a very wealthy family. At that time, I did not have a chance. But now former Dr. Alpert, having assumed an Indian name, has come out flatly in public for this person. This at a time when another person is ready to film one both in class and in public efforts, in such a way as to produce fame. It may not astonish you. It is most edifying of course to find that there are now many more people who prefer reality to “realism.” And in such case, I am the anti-victim of efforts of others and by others who are tired of delusions and phonyness, etc. This last week one of the editors of the San Francisco Chronicle published the outlooks of young people on their own problems. With all the experts and authorities, someone thought it would be a good idea to let the young speak for themselves and they did.
I am not going to make any attempt to argue predictability is important in life. I have been saying that it was time for the silenced majority to be heard, and if they are heard, and as they are heard, I felt that that alone would do much to clarify many real or presumable problems of the day.
Monday I shall have a secretary for my dance work. This will be a great relief. Tomorrow I shall be seeing Prof. Kozicki again. It is such a boon to find more and more of the young professors working with reality instead of “realism.” I suppose the future generations will recognize, they may have to recognize, the accuracy of predications and the folly of accepting conclusions only because they come from important personalities. It was remarkable how the young stood almost solidly for objective honesty above all else. I think youth can and will speak for itself, and when and as it does, I see infinite hope for Whitman’s America. I do not know how clear this is, for everything I now do is under pressure.
Love and Blessings,
Sam
February 3, 1970
My dear Vocha,
Your letter of the 31st is here. I am still overwhelmed but health and finances are in good shape and I have had some of the needed rest, via sleep. And it does not help too much if I need a vacation and help, that the vacation does not settle what is here.
The immediate result of India’s Independence Day was excellent contacts. Friend Lal went to India as the guest of the government and Sam went around mingling with the people. Friend Lal is a welcomed speaker at the groups which verbalize “Liberty,” humanity,” democracy,” etc. He does not have to mingle and obviously he has not and the result has been a great deal of resentment from the students. He attacked the caste system but gave no sign of having mixed with the multitudes and this person has mingled with every sort of caste and outcaste there and has been an outcaste here. It is now too humorous to cry about.
That last spelling is in memoriam Bertie. I read all his early works and have never been “forgiven” by the generals who had no capacity for that. But he also was able to lecture on “democracy” and “humanity” without mingling. I admire intensely his works on mathematics, logic, the basic sciences—there he was definitely in the science camp—but his stuff on sociology and sex and philosophy showed him as a leader of the literary-humanist group.
Incidentally the leader of Great Books wants to see me. If Mansur is not working I may take time off as soon as my housekeeper returns. As for Harry and Jack, they may ship or hold but I can promise a good order.
I was telling David here of the need to increase my scientific library. Increased contributions to the Academy of Sciences and was terrifically responsive to the two new scientific books ordered because of the literary style as well as their information. I am appalled at our custom of having the commentaries taking over nearly all the scientific programs on the air and overflow them with emotions and verbal idolization.
Wrote Art Hoppe a paper, “Pollution yes! Solution, no!” The literature on DDT is terrible. I have not seen a single report showing actual contamination as I have seen, continuously in Science, reports on atomic fall-out, etc. Why, I have read articles that there is not an animal inexistence that does not show signs of DDT contamination. And when I get up to debate, unfortunately I always win because of the complete lack of logistics and proper information on the part of emotionalists and it is the emotionalism which is, to me, the great pollution.
Sunday I had the audacity to compel critics to define pollution and not one could. They all claim to be conservationists and are filled with propaganda, etc., and constantly jump the subject under consideration. And if that is not a “pollution” I do not know what is, or isn’t.
Among my “sins,” which are innumerable—I mean those for which there is no forgiveness—one was learning speed-reading from T. Roosevelt and W. Wilson, both Presidents of this country.
Now as to what’s happening. My dance classes are so overflowing I may have to start others, organize legally or otherwise. Also there are more dances. They just pile on me. That is the easiest aspect of it.
In the last few weeks no less than three persons separately are trying to film my work. It has gotten out. Dr. Richard Alpert, now lecturing as Baba Ram Dass, has acclaimed them. We see him tonight. He has all kinds of connections, quite separate. We have been joined by a teacher of Indian dancing who is not so exclusively-”democratic.” So far the only democracy I have even seen from certain quarters is in the funds collected. But you should have seen the greenery for Ram Dass—all these “rejected” hippies. They have far more money than their detractors, and it is silly to find them blamed for the closing of stores and the running down of businesses.
The New Age Food Chain is being started. They are overwhelmed with customers, and profits, mostly coming from the same young people whom the press derides. And my easiest prediction was that propaganda never stopped children from growing up. You can be sure the “generals” dissent. And it looks now, if I ever get my Europe trip off my back, I shall easily establish a Trans-Semantics Society in which we won’t use words to prove that words are useless—we communicate and that is equal a sin to having studied and understood the early Russell.
This will also upset the Freudians and anti-Freudians alike and the worst thing I could do would be to sign up for a course on “Gerontology.”
I am going to let David read your letter. We are concerned with color, lighting, etc. Gwen-Zeynab is doing fine at the Rudolph School. We have lots of colored candles and this house is being brightened and illuminated.
The class on Southeast Asia is marvelous. No editorials, and I think I told you the professor has the “unfortunate” background of having lived long in Asia with Asians! The only difficulty now is that quite a few professors are willing to accept that the little man who has been there just might occasionally, rarely it is true, know as much on something as the big man who has not. Anyhow I got another kind of Zen delegation and am beginning to unload unpublished manuscripts, all turned down by the big boys, and I am not worried.
If Books in Review has anything along the art lines you have described, I want them. perhaps the chief reason for a surplus is the inability to find time to go out and shop!
As there has been no word from Europe I am pretty sure I shall be here at March 10. I don’t think the semester will be over that soon either.
There are more things but tempus does not fugit, it just zeroes.
Love,
Sam
August 3, 1970
Miss Vocha Fiske
Zen Center
300 Page St.
San Francisco, Ca. 94102
My Dear Mother Divine:
I have your very pleasant letter of August 1. You are entirely correct that the outer outlooks are changing and changing rapidly One is getting more and more letters from more and more distant places. One also realizes that what one does in one’s home town will not be taken seriously until there is either a dramatic outlook or something very newsworthy, important or not important.
I am now being approached by publishers and writers, and the very fact that the so-called “good people” have turned me down make them all the more interested.
I am re-reading The Manhood of Humanity. The temptation is to write to Lakeville. There is no faith in Etc. Semantics has not been used to help solve or even clarify some of the complexities and problems of the day. But if one reads scientific articles, there is a definite use for some sound system of logistics. I find there is and organization in Oakland dealing with logistics. But there is no time in my life today to expand interests in even the most worthy causes.
I was living in the midst of the woods in New Mexico; like Emerson’s hypothetical inventor a number of people found their way to my doorstep. I then felt that when I returned to society there might be an even larger number of personalities beating their way to my front door, and this is exactly what has happened, is happening, at this writing. Hardly a dull moment, and more and more plans for movements. My meetings are now being excellently attended. The quality of education of the newcomers is very high. In addition to that there is real interest in promoting efforts toward world peace—not the stupid nonsense of verbalizations which have been substituted for realities in dream vagueness, getting nowhere. Efforts to bring Arabs and Israelis closer together have been succeeding at such a rate I am amazed and almost stupefied. The only ones not interested are the so-called peace-mongers who have substituted mottoes and maxims for human endeavor.
Last night was glorious and sad. It was glorious because of the quality and quantity of the audience. It was sad because no people have more ignored the suffering of the actual inhabitants of Vietnam than the so-called American Buddhists. There is not common denominator among these American Buddhists, most of whom are not on speaking terms with each other. Many do not even recite the Tri-Ratna. Few are concerned with the problems which aroused the comfortable Prince Gautama Siddhartha and led him to offer the world the most profound teachings. Escaping is not wisdom, but many think it is and maybe they are right. But I personally prefer to be directly sympathetic and compassionate with and to human suffering. I have seen too much of it; I have been directly caught in it.
The whole picture of what is going on today is directly contrary to the situations of the previous two generations. More and more seekers come to these doors, now including University professors. The day of shams is to me over. I have been approached by publishers, literary agents, and writers. I am finding the moral laws operate. I feel very much like Alice at the end of the Wonderful story when she found that she had only been dealing with a pack of cards. I am satisfied; I am quite willing to let people who wish to live with their limitations continue that way. The youth of today are so different. They want happiness and are spreading happiness. They want wisdom. They do not agree with their elders who beguile themselves and others.
I have found some very valuable art works in the packages willed to me by the late Nyogen Senzaki. I gave one to Kennett Roshi in Oakland, with whom I am on excellent terms. I believe her disciples understand love and compassion in their true sense. Her movement is growing rapidly and has in the membership the most brilliant type of young and joyous people I have yet encountered. As the popular song says. “Can you ask for anything more?”
I have also written to Professor Lancaster. If he wished some of Senzaki’s former possessions he will get them. Otherwise they may go to our good friend Carroll Parish in LA.
Written under great time-pressure.
Love and Blessings,
Sam
Aug. 11, 1970
Miss Vocha Fiske
Beresford Hotel
635 Sutter St.
San Francisco, Calif.
Dear Mother Divine:
I don t know if this is the kind of letter that should go to a Zendo, but it is quite evident that every time I move in a Samuel Morse direction, there is success. It is so evident to me that we have two cultures—and that the non-scientists are very sure they are on the side of “science.” Indeed if parlor-scientists were compelled to read the magazine Science published by the AAAS they would be more then shocked at the conclusions of the laboratory-scientists.
Last week I received in quick succession a very fine letter from the Editor of Science and unexpected laudation from some Chemistry professors. They all highly evaluated my researches and knowledges on subjects which the elite rejected on the very noble, logical grounds that I am the wrong person. Or, as I tell the young, problems are complexities which can only be solved by the “right people.” I have received a beautiful apology from one of the master-literati who always snubbed my reports. Now I have written to one of the local Rabbis, a grandmaster in receiving peace awards, who has never answered any letter written since 1967. And I have told him that my letter to him would be published. And I am going to simply have published letters to a lot of people who have given me the a priori snub in the past and thought it a social virtue. We are doing, and I mean doing, in our efforts to bring peace in the Near East. Oh we are doing, and I mean doing; and the fact we are doing is winning the plaudits of more and more young people, so that I am busy every hour of the day and night here in San Francisco with “impossibilities” because according to the important I simply cawn’t be doing it.
Our next mission apparently is to go East. At this writing it would appear I may be taking my young secretary Joan. She has a car in New York, and this would solve any problem about rental. I have a lot of incomplete business, including the revival of Keyser s teaching, which the “democratic” proper people know it is impossible for me to have. But although they must be right because they are they (logic) the philosophy departments of both the University of California (Berkeley) and the University of Southern California now want me.
In addition to that, the editorials in this week’s issue of Science are all on subjects about which I have spoken in my own home (the liberty, democracy, humanity, and peasant shut up groups won’t even give me interviews), and the only difference between the conclusions of the scientific-scientists and myself is that they have been more explicit and written longer articles.
We have a common fear that the literati are going to make it most difficult to clean up pollution. While much money is being spent to invent smogless cars, we pass endless smokestacks belching endless poisons into the air, while the commentators and editors say we are all to blame. Unlike these grand experts, the present issues of Science are pointing out specific instances of specific kinds of pollution and poisoning produced by specific industries. It is quite evident that the scientists are being misled by their doubtful conclusions, as they refuse to blame everybody. Inasmuch as it is impossible for Etc. to accept an article in this field, I am going to write on this subject as soon as my editor contacts me, and we are going to do something.
I haven t the slightest doubt future generations will compare me to Samuel Morse. I think we have come to the end of the dominances of “democratic” institution’s champions of a priori rejections. I never wished it this way, but things are moving and moving rapidly.
Bryn and I discussed yesterday about the black-balling of Frederic Soddy late in his career. I was amazed and delighted to find that Bryn placed Soddy in the highest ranks of the worlds thinkers, where I have always placed him. Instead of accepting his conclusions, we are permitting endless problems to run rampant. Bryn and I agreed that there are no problems other than ego-rejections of people with answers by those in power, especially the literati or what Lord Snow calls “the other culture.”
Therefore after Bryn left I turned down offers to write or speak on pollution. Among scientists this means one sort of phenomena and their complexities. Among the “smart people,” including sociologists, it means something quite different. It takes two years for a scientist to get a paper out which might solve a problem; it takes five minutes for reporters to produce smog in the psychic and mental atmospheres.
The more I read AK the more I see the need not to revise him but to present him to an American public. I have no more time to waste on high priests and generals who judge by personalities instead of by knowledges. The recent exposure of breakfast foods was almost predicated by him, but of course it is only little people who have to obey the traffic laws. Personally I think this is both sad and unfortunate.
My dance career which the “polite people” know I couldn’t have gotten from Ruth St. Denis has expanded just as rapidly as I can assimilate that expansion, and there are many signs it night expand more this coming weekend, whether I am ready or not. Older people simply cannot accept it that there may be a generation as honest and as objective as the little boy in the story of “The Emperor’s New Clothes.” They are creating all kinds of legends to excuse their inabilities to accept honest, objective communication as a reality. And, if this growth continues, I shall certainly be able to finance a trip for two persons, even without help.
There are rumors now also that certain very very smart experts, who blocked me at every endeavor are conceding they may have been wrong. I am more interested in solving problems than in doing a complete Samuel Morse. But every time I take out the hammer I either get an apology or a victory. I don’t like it, but I guess the world is that way. I have again had to give up the idea of a day off, but good things are happening exceedingly rapidly and no longer living in the woods there is a constant parade to this mousetrap inventor’s domicile.
Love and Blessings,
Sam
Novato,
August 27, 1970
Dear Mother Divine:
One must thank you for your last from Hotel Beresford which will be shared by Mansur and others. There is nothing so easy as The Tyranny of Words. To answer all the requests to keep cool and “take it easy” would keep me perpetually busy. After all I lost my dearest and best friend who lived long in Vietnam and ultimately died of a broken heart. All the “good people” refused to give him interviews or hearings—the churches, the anti-churches, the “peace” organizations, the patriots, everybody turned him down and his seemingly bizarre report was corroborated absolutely by the retired secretary of Secretary Dulles.
This man, incidentally, is the only senior person outside a university campus that has permitted this one to give in situ reports. Our whole culture of what I call “gappists” is united in turning down us “Jude the Obscure” from speaking or reporting. I have already told you that the scientists have answered and there is entire agreement on pollution problems and not a single non-scientist!
But the situation is so out of hand. We are prospering. My “Dances of Universal Peace. The heritage so to speak from Ruth St. Denis—whom all the “Good people’ know I could not have known—has broken out in two directions. One is the filming and this project may become world-wide—excepting of course in San Francisco! Money has been raised and six men are departing soon to meet “non-existing” Asians, who ain’t because “important” people said they are not and that closes the subject—for the “good” people, the churches, the anti-churches, the “peace” groups and such.
Now, when the scientists, the AAAS met, I got the same balling out the “good people” give but for the opposite reason—for keeping quiet. But the silenced point of view is exactly the same as is now being taught by one of the top philosophers at the University of California and my chief local disciple has arranged for my meeting and even speaking there. A copy of this is going to both Russ and Lloyd, and I have become totally indifferent but cannot prove this indifference is right.
The rereading of AK Makes me feel that he and Mark Twain have been the two great American heroes neglected today while we go off in false directions, for or against French and German thinkers. The last debate I won—and it was not pleasant –came because there was a Deweyite in the audience who immediately arose and championed me no end. Maybe that is that first time.
By agreement with a very, very important person I agreed to work for peace in the Near East while he worked for peace in S.E. Asia. I remember the time when I broke up a meeting by “respectable” by bringing in a picture showing Princess Poon and the Pope. No one asked me how I could get such a letter. But the Princess knows what I am doing and one of the paper secretaries at least acknowledged my letter—which is more than “good people” do.
Now all my secretaries have good paying jobs—all rising out of the “impossible madventures. A team goes to Asia this week to film and Mansur is in charge of film work here. Daniel has been entirely successful in Arizona and is awaiting the return of the wealthy publisher who wants all my things and will not doubt accept what I write on A.K. etc—although it is barely possible that the #1 Humanist will accept a real human being on a real problem.
For the one man that listened to my plans for the Near East was a Swedish gentlemen whom I had the audacity to be traveling with in the Near East, the top local representative of the UN, whose name is Gunnar Jarring. He had the effrontery to tell me that my plans were the most complete, valuable and sane things he had ever seen. He could say that. This also from the retired secretary of secretary Dulles, but not the “good people,” not them, they know I am a braggart, pretender and phony. And so the young come more and more and when I tell them something and tell them who turned down my reports or chased me away they cheer to the rafters.
I am calling off my very well attended Wednesday night meetings, but this challenge has brought a reaction for a larger hall, larger audiences and more money! They young actually prefer the little man who was there than all the ivory-towerists who determine public attitudes.
And all this while Gavin, Ed and Moineddin on and off in hospitals. But I have wonderful disciples who are calling on them knowing that Sam has not the time himself—at least “Allah” has assured me of good health.
Then Melvin and Jonathan decided to practice what Sam preaches and it worked so well they got caught. The little people, the peasants of Jewish, Christian, and Islamic backgrounds, Israelis and Arabs and Palestinians are dining together. This was the first step and this very “impossible” daring—impossible because it came from the “wrong” person has flooded. The dinners have been over-subscribed and money is being promised by my non-existing Sufi brethren.
The retired secretary of Secretary Dulles is away on his vacation. He is the only local man that ever listened to me and he even broke with his colleagues, “big” people in Washington. But I have the ears of at least one Senator and may be living with the mother of another Senator when I get to Washington.
Phones ringing all day long, both houses and invitations, more and more, especially long distance calls.
All the top Protestant and Jewish representatives at a real international peace gathering flooded me (Sam) with apologies. And over in Berkeley they now recognize that I have been collecting data on the accomplishment of US professors and departments to help solve the actual problems of earth.
I started to put up a thousand dollars for a peace scholarship. I know that complexities would hold it up but the chances are tremendous that this will becomes a real undertaking for real people—not the opinions of the “gappists,” so divided among themselves. This leaves me very high at this writing.
My latest dance ventures have been overwhelming also. The young come to me more and more and more, and the professors whenever I can contact them. So plans to go east are forming and welcomes are awaiting. So you can understand why I call myself, “Timon of San Francisco—in reverse.” Wait and see. I have nothing to lose—but a priori insults from the “proper” people and they are fading away. Even everybody is shocked by my latest debate with Alan Watts—no, it was on problems of Plant Physiology which is outside the ken of the “big” people who occupy the floors and write the articles on involved subjects. I am always forced back into Lord Snow’s matrix. Some day I hope I am wrong; some day I hope some non-scientists or parlor-scientists will let me speak before throwing the book.
Tired but high.
Love,
Sam
Sept. 21, 1970
Miss Vocha Fiske
c/o Books in Review
3010 Wilshire Blvd.
L.A. 90005
Dear Mother Divine:
I am delighted to have your letter of September 10. There is no excuse for the non-delivery of the first effort. This house is a sort of drop for all kinds of letters from all kinds of people. A postman is not supposed to subjectivize, however, there is constant change of deliverer here, and at least we have the letter.
I accept everything but the aphorisms. Words do not say. If you had been a mother with a dozen children all in danger at the same time you would know very well that life would depend on your activities, and not on advice. I have gone through the last two weeks with two nights sleep each week. No day off; no time off, but at this writing in excellent health and perfect spirits.
The day is over when problems can be “solved” by selecting some insignificant person and giving him a whack. Regarding Mitchell. If I read an article from or by a young person and differ from him, I am willing to give way. If I read articles about young people by oldsters and should be agreeing with them, I become skeptical. For better or worse I accept the writings of youth about youth and reject the writings of others about youth. Young people are coming to me more and more every week. The house is packed. Young people accept and old people sneer at the simple hard fact that Gunner Jarring gave me hours and agreed with my proposals. Older people, the realists won’t even give me a chance to talk and I am letting myself now become a mock-martyr. I am leaving Friday for New York and will be welcomed at Ithaca (Cornell), and for New York and will be welcomed at Columbia.
My friend the editor-publisher is now ready for anything from me and I am going to let the realists, so-called, sweat. We are going to have a better world based on facts and the experiences of even the most “unworthy.”
I feel like a mother with a dozen children all ill at the same time and that I have to look after and am doing just that. In excellent health and ready to upset any seminar on gerontology by middle aged people. We are constantly getting wonderful letters from all over the world of “God and Rand-McNally” and will take every advantage of subjective rejections by “realists.” My home is being invaded, or rather my homes are being invaded, by more and more young people who want peace in this world, and who want facts that are facts, and do not like opinions of ivory-towered or diamond-encrusted “experts” who dominate our press. Lord Snow is right and all the parlor scientists in the world can’t change it. I wish parlor-scientists could be compelled to read the lives of Charles Darwin or Marie Corelli or Frederick Soddy. But I have no more time for that nonsense. Nothing but classes and joint Arab-Christian-Israeli dinners. Shunned by “realists” as impossible. And we are even getting apologies, as I have already, from Rabbis. I think it is a new age. We can’t solve crime by excluding eye-witnesses, and the common practices of the dominant “realists” is to exclude and even torment actual eye-witnesses. Boy, don’t I know it.
Look at my former secretaries. Daniel came to me on love and trust and began working at $10 a month. He has now a good job with our editor-publisher in Arizona and may even have a home. Mansur is connected with the filming and recording of the work which began around this person, and he is now helping me financially and in everything. It is hard to believe. But I think anybody not a “realist” will accept that.
On the negative side, I have had Moineddin in the hospital and my cook, Leslie, and others, ill. But these very illnesses have opened the doors for great possibilities in the futures which look wonderful. It has perhaps been very good that even that best of my acquaintances would never let me tell of my objective experiences. Those persons who have been foremost in imposing the psychic, occult, and mystical have also been the foremost against any reports of geographical, scientific, and social experiences. That day is over. I have no ill feelings. I have taken the apologies of some of the biggest men in the world, and I mean just that, and gone right ahead to work for peace and understanding.
It is no doubt awkward to have the religionists accept one’s social and geographical experiences and the humanists reject them. So be it. I am sorry I haven’t time to write further; everything is coming, and I mean coming, lovely, and we leave Friday morning. The crops are the best evidence against the “realists” who are the champions of staying away from reality in every form.
Love and Blessings,
Samuel
October 25, 1970
Vocha Fiske
c/o Books in Review
3010 Wilshire Blvd.
Los Angeles, California 90005
Dear Mother Divine:
There is almost no bad news. There is a traffic jam. Like a lot of latent seeds all blossoming at the same time. Also the great problem is concerning rest. But I have friends at Westport in the southeastern part of Massachusetts, and we had two days off. We also visited the Herz family whose son Hassan is at the Khankah, husband of Jayanara. Our visit to Boston and Cambridge was entirely successful. Fine visits to Harvard and M.I.T. Excellent response in the dance programs. Wonderful new-age restaurant. Years ago it was the duty for every Harvard man to try to look like every other Harvard man. Now it is the duty to look different. It was a University of California, only more so. On top of that, the weather has been marvelous—not yet down to 50 anywhere.
At Cambridge I called on my “Black Christ,” Karmu, who has adjusted our bodies and minds wonderfully.
Well, you have reduced your possession, but here little me is on the way to controlling, if not owning, as many as four motor cars, let alone other things along the same line. Our peace efforts to bring the Israelis, Arabs and Christians together have won the goodwill—guess the whole world and the one you would think last is pretty nearly the first. That is to say, we have with us not only many professors at San Francisco State, but the grapevine is that at the Don of Dons is also with us!! Apparently he doesn’t know that Sam Lewis is the power behind the power. Nor was my name mentioned to him. So anything can come of anything. Had a most beautiful birthday party at a new-age restaurant in Cambridge. It seems wherever I go I meet friends and have hardly any time for my old relative and pals. Maybe it should be that way. In fact, my chief complaint is the recessional of something to grumble at.
At this writing, I hardly know my own itinerary, but wish to be back by the
middle or
November.
Love and love,
Samuel
410 Precita Ave.
December 1, 1970
Dear Mother Divine:
This is in answer to your letter just received from the Zen Center. No attention will be paid here to international matters. We are so busy and the hardest thing in life is to impress others. Wali Ali is now on the Berkeley Campus to lead in the very dances you have written about. Jemal-ed-din is in his office in another part of town and is preparing to go to New York, leaving on the 5th. I shall leave your letter for him to see and we may answer jointly or separately.
The reason for this prompt answer is not only because I shall be speaking on the Berkeley campus tonight if things work out but I shall be speaking under the very auspices which will interest Russ who is getting a copy of this. It is astounding how a letter from a disciple who is teaching in the English Department was like the other side of a coin, as if a coin had a questioning side and an answering side.
The disciple is very active and even more optimistic. He not only sees changes taking place but is doing, doing, doing. He is very active and almost non-verbal, and in his reports he says he is very successful. No doubt I shall see more of this tonight. But I am amazed in going over his detailed letter how much he is trying to do, to do and not to plan what Russ wished.
The ruckus at San Francisco State College shows how far realism is from Reality. I have been attending courses at the Extension where if fifteen persons pay they can have almost any course they wish. I have attended so many classes on American Anthropology and Archaeology and was astounded at the absence of Negroes and Muslims. On the surface it looks as if they wanted others to pay for courses where they could be teachers, with or without credentials.
Well, my disciple tried to get 15 students to go into my work and got 50. It s not only dancing, but it is Oriental-Oriental philosophy. A European professor of Oriental Philosophy (an “only in America” institution) kept me off the campuses in Northern California and another in Southern California. This is “realism.” In the meanwhile I am almost under contract for my autobiography and it is Sam, not the publisher who is holding back. Those stupid Asians and of course all Geeks have very different ideas from our “experts” do. And I am now coming out openly and may in publication mention that “only in America” have we accepted lechers and drunkards as “experts” in Orientalia—and a lot of other things.
But I must first deliver and as things look think I shall deliver. But what then? I have no concrete plans being too busy in my own affairs, but after this week should get my disciples—and I think that even Lloyd may accept that sometimes a humanist can accept the reality of human beings, that they can get together with Russ & Co. and promote the very approach that he wished.
Am rereading for the seventh time Manhood of Humanity with utter delight.
Love,
Samuel
Dec. 13, 1970
Miss Vocha Fiske
300 Page St.
San Francisco, Ca.
Dear Mother Divine,
I guess I should be thankful for Allah and Saul. It is so easy to say take it easy. This does not stop the telephone nor people coming here at all hours. In fact I have one young man here just for that purpose but he can’t stop everybody either.
Added to that there is a great division between myself and the young. I will accept almost any kind of alliance or misalliance between the young. I am not trying to establish any sex norm. But when I don’t put my foot down it seems that some of them have become more interested in separation and even divorce. In other words, my objection to the misalliances are simple and unfortunately they tend to promote egocentricities. And these people constantly disturb me with their difficulties.
Financially, the skies look very bright. Mansur is doing very well. My godson is doing very well. The general picture is excellent. The meetings at the University of California have been marvelous.
There is going to be a benefit Bazaar for our work at Sausalito next Sunday, the 20th. It is keeping many people very busy indeed. Moi aussi. At last some of my disciples have discovered that I actually am overworked and that I am not just making noises. This of itself is a great gain, but I am also getting nasty. I am telling people I am not equipped to be an expert on Zen. If I were a lecher or drunkard I would be a famous teacher of Zen; I am not. The young people are honest, sincere and enquiring. They may be selfish or unselfish, but they are not easily bamboozled. This is keeping me very very busy. It is very easy to suggest, but it is another thing to get actual help. Hence the Bazaar next week. But even there unfortunately the person whose original idea it was has walked out on the whole thing leaving it to the efficient Saul and others to carry on, which they are doing very well.
Love and Blessings,
Samuel