[date unknown]
Samuel L. Lewis
c/o David Sapp
The San Francisco Oracle
460 Magnolia Ave.
Larkspur, California 94939
Dear Mr. Lewis
I read your Introduction to Spiritual Brotherhood in the Oracle and it seems to me that you express very clearly the lay of the land before us around us and behind us as individuals and as a tribe of New Age immigrants and Pioneers. There is an old Durer wood cut that comes to mind of the pilgrim, his hind quarters hunkered on tierra firma and his head piercing the veil of sanskara into the starry grave of firmament. The question that comes is, “What does he do now?” The answer gets your head and your hind quarters together. Your introduction to Spiritual brotherhood boldly outlined all in an integral, way the necessities which pose themselves as conflicts that have to be resolved if one is to be at one with the Uranium ray of union of opposites which characterizes the psycho-sensorium which is the world we are coming to know in the biblical sense at this New Dawn of man.
This letter is an invitation for you to contribute a tape or series of tapes of half hour duration to be incorporated into a radio series, which I am responsible for, to be entitled Tentatively The New Age Ark. The purpose of the program is to experiment with the media as a means of transmitting a state of being which alone with the Yankee ingenuity which is its humble servant is going to affect a mysterium conjunctionus in the psychics of three brained beings breeding on the planet earth. I do not wish to seem grandiose but the time has come, I feel, and I don’t think this is a personal feeling, for an accelerated exteriorization of essence. If you plan to come to the East Coast always feel welcome at our place (the East-West Center For Self Exploration). If it is fated that you do come we could arrange a conjoint radio, television, as well as more intimate and immediate gestalt workshop program for you. I am sure there are many here in or around Boston who are within range of the frequency of your message. Hoping to hear from you soon I remain.
Yours in good faith,
Richard Harvey
105 Marlborough St.
Boston, Mass.
106 Ethel Ave.,
Mill Valley, Calif.
June 13, 1958
Carl T. Rowan
c/o Minneapolis Tribune,
Minneapolis, Minn.
Dear Rowan:
In re: “The Pitiful and the Proud.”
Pardon me if I do not call you “Rowan Sahib.” I wish I could call you “Rowan Sahib.” But I am afraid you have gone to the Orient and returned as Mr. Rowan.
I am very happy that this country has been sending persons of any complexion and non-European ancestry to visit parts of Asia and to try both to get the feeling of the people and also to act as interpreters or even apologists (in the original sense) for the United States in parts of the world where we are, to say the least, misunderstood. Or are we?
I do not think the Americans go so far as the Germans and certainly not so far as the French in keeping to themselves interiorly while visiting “exotic” places. It is often the other fellows that misbehave. And I think you have done very well for the United States. In fact I could well recommend your book to the American Academy of Asian Studies (one of whose specialists will receive a copy of this), and to the Department of South Asian Studies at the University of California in Berkeley, to mention no others.
The interest in the Orient has been constantly growing in these parts. The World Affairs Council of Northern California has been conducting “study” courses, and yet your book is not on their shelves. These “study” courses show a growing interest on the part of our citizenry and yet do not show a growth of sympathy and understanding coordinate with the march of events.
One cannot object to your factual reporting. I think you have given us some excellent pictures of parts of Pakistan and the Bandung Conference.
Now, although you have been acclaimed, and I find your work far superior to nearly everything turned out by American writers—Dr. Gardner Murphy a most definite and clear exception, I am wondering how much service you have done for your country, and yourself.
I suppose I am prejudiced. About race, good Lord, no. I even have eaten meals with the most outcast Negroes in South Carolina of all places, just as I have supposed with Harijans in India. But I find myself one with Jesus Christ who condemned the scribes and the Pharisees, and alas, my good friend, you are both. And while Ambassador Mehta brings his hands and pleads for us to send disciples of Emerson and Whitman to his country we continue to send representatives of the Fourth Estate who never seem to be able to converse as men to men with others say, as we might meet them in Holy Communion.
I do not think the representatives of the Press in the Western world, by which I mean the whole Western world, is capable of combating, the accusation of materialism put before us by so many Asians. Our very conceptions of “reality” as well as our ways of life only confirm their charges. We simply cannot accept, if we indeed understand, one of the Islamic traditions about Jesus Christ whom they said uttered: “The world is but a bridge. Pass over it quickly and be not waylaid by what you see there.”
The Western world has never accepted the teachings of Jesus Christ concerning the Pharisees, which means, in modern terms, dualists. We nearly all are dualists. We nearly all have been conditioned by either Aristotelian-psycho-logics or Hegelian-psycho-logics and we do not recognize it. When we meet people whose backgrounds are totally non-Aristotelian and non-Hegelian we simply cannot understand them. But they can understand us.
Our modern science has grown out of the strait jackets imposed by traditional thinking. True, the Russians substituted one form of traditional thinking for no thinking at all. From the freedom or anarchy of ignorance they passed into a straight jacket of dialectics. But so many of us are also dialecticians if we are not Aristotelians, that we cannot meet the challenge of what is unusual, to us.
The discovery of radium, Plank’s constant, relativity, etc. has affected the deep thinking of the world. The superficial thinking remains much the same.
I often wonder if newspaper men are not conditioned by their very training to be unable to do two things, the two thing which I have considered the most important in going to India:
a. To meet the people. Not just to go to press clubs, and of all things, to indulge in alcoholic beverages in lanes where alcoholism is decried much more than either capitalism or communism (which are not understood anyway). To get facts from the public and not from one’s fellow craftsmen.
Your “Blitz” staff represents no more human beings biologically or spirituality than the two poorest beggars on the street. It is we who give them importance.
Undoubtedly you saw many “holy men” of various descriptions and of real or questionable sanctity. Have you talked to any or many of them? Have you learned what their views are? their sympathies? their outlooks? Have you met real dirt- farmers? Have you gone into villages as a human being and not as a representative of some kind of power?
b. To delve into the philosophies. I myself think you missed the whole of India. Without defending the political or economic or historical forces there, I have found very few Americans who have looked into their psycho-logical habits, and of those few or not so few, there is a general antipathy toward things political and social.
Whereas we are excellent analyzers, I found people in Asian countries who are champions of one or more of these: (a) Eclecticism; (b) Synthesis; (c) Integration; (d) Intuition (or insight); (e) Unification. These outlooks are more universal than we should care to accept. Consequently when one meets an important Indian and we know nothing of most of these approaches to life and thought we are demanding of him expressions which fit our dualistic-dialectic-matrix, and that he often will not and cannot accept.
I have seen Mr. Nehru do things which the American press simply will not accept as serious. I have been where Muslim and Sikh, Sufi and Hindu dined and embraced—and nothing reported. Yes, there were forty representatives of the press more interested in the food than in the events. I know whom Mr. Nehru’s close friends often are, and they are not among the classes we wish to associate with his name. So we build up legends on partial facts.
Here I am forced to defend U Nu more than J. Nehru because I have his writings. It is rather interesting how I first obtained them. Field explorations in Thailand, India and Pakistan compelled me to accept certain Burmese traditions which are denied by the British Museum. Because the British Museum denies them we accept their findings and do not mind whether this has caused ill-will among 18,000,000 Asians.
The more I read U Nu the more I was compelled to conclude that everything he said as true. That is to say, Prime Minister U Nu’s brand of Buddhism offers explanations of the universe and all its phenomena which, to me, are vastly superior to anything dialectical, whether the dialectics be straight Hegelian or via Karl Marx.
But U Nu, with all his profundity—and compared to anything from American politicians other than Senator Fulbright it is profound—has perhaps not fully grasped the Integral, Intuitional, and Unifying approaches all of which are taught in the Vedanta philosophies (of various grades) and which have affected the thinking and lives of a large number of Indians. This thinking has no doubt become sub-conscious but it is there and it cannot be circumscribed by anything the Western world has to offer, yet.
For my own part I see no reason why tremendous amounts of Indian psychology, philosophy and discipline cannot be accepted by us without changing our basic religion(s) or way of life. We have not come that, although I understand that Harvard University is giving serious consideration to its possibilities.
Armed with this background I had no difficulty at all in meeting any charges from communistically briefed personnel of whatsoever sort, in whatever place I appeared in India, or Pakistan. I found that the race question was brought up mostly by people who themselves had retained or had had such prejudices earlier in life. There was little sincerity about it. I found that India is mostly a country of villages and then of small towns which would fit our theoretical Social Economy of about 1820-1840 and that the masses were as yet unprepared by modern technology associated with any dialectical approach.
I also found that when one has a respectful attitude they, meaning anybody and everybody of all classes, will listen and will probably listen in a friendly manner and show little hostility in cross-questioning.
My case is perhaps unusual for I went to the Orient with some knowledge of the history, arts, philosophies and religions of each land and was much respected therefore. And by “religions” and “philosophies” I do not mean more book learning but actual disciplinary training, comparable, in a certain way, to the laboratory disciplines of natural sciences, which I also have had.
I trust you will accept this in some good faith but I am always worked up, perhaps too much, when I find criticisms of Prime Minister Nehru whom I consider so far beyond the average man of the United States, that I do not retain the attitude which is proposed by the greet spiritual teachings of India, and non-India alike. Very sorry here, and so the apology is on my side.
The prosecution rests.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
Morland House,
16 Sharia Kemal el din Salah,
Kasr el Dubara,
Cairo, UAR
December 31, 1960
Editorial Department,
Harper’s Magazine,
49 East 33rd St.,
New York, N.Y.
Dear Sirs:
Can you realize that the principles laid down in “Listen Yankee” which appeared in your December issue may apply to the major portion of this earth? Don’t you know that the “authorities” for Asia are invariably European professors and Americans newsman, never American professors and European newsmen, and that Asians, per se, are held to speak only for themselves and never for a parent body?
Hasn’t Koestler abolished Dr. Radhakrishnan? What American magazine of newspaper has printed the speeches and philosophy of the Hon. U Nu?
But perhaps the biggest not-news of all concerns the Dervishes. There are probably 50,000,000 (fifty million) of us—the number is indeterminate because many belong to more than one order.
The press, the encyclopedias and the “authorities” excepting at Harvard hold them in contempt, referring to them as long passé, or charlatans, but more likely parasites and, of course, fanatics. The Arab word for dervish, fakir, is derived from the practices or institutions Jesus Christ gave to his disciples, and applied everywhere to everyone but the actual fakir-dervish.
Some day somebody is going to pin-hole some UN delegates on this matter and get a shock. And never mind the actual governments of Sudan, Libya, Indonesia or the first Ambassadors sent to us by India and Pakistan.
The actual dervishes include some of the top scientists of today and that’s how I came to contact them here. They are all 100% anti-atheist, anti-materialist and anti-dialectic. But we have to throw nasty names at them and compel them to be neutralists in a war wherein we have already compromised with the other side in regard to dialectics, clothing and compulsory technology.
When man bites dog in Asia, it is not news.
Sincerely,
Ahmed Murad Chisti
772 Clementina St.,
San Francisco 3, Calif.
December 10, 1964
Hollywood Citizen News,
Hollywood 23, Calif.
Attention: A. Conover
My dear Mr. Conover:
Following my recent visit. Herein copy of a long and somewhat detailed letter to Dean Parrish of the University of California in Los Angeles. The reason for its length is due to the series of challenges I have had to face from all quarters, and this in turn has been due to our subjective selection of “experts” who, not having clear pictures of the scene before them, have tried to impose abstractions on the American public. Those abstractions in turn have lead to innumerable articles which clarify exactly what is going on in the minds of men, but tell us nothing at all of peoples abroad and little of events abroad.
I once met you for a short time some years ago stating that given an Asian problem, there is an answer here in the State of California for most of them, largely in researches done on campuses of the University Of California, largely also in persons who are citizens of California, not all of them UC graduates; or in the vast alumni of the University of California, considering all campuses on the continent of Asia.
While the Alumni associations have been most cooperative, there are strange road blocks. The chief of these blocks have been “foreign PhDs” imported to various UC campuses to take over “research”—a term hard to define.
Full advantage has been taken of the turmoil on the Berkeley campus to compel the most simple courtesies which sometimes one cannot get for years. The departments set up on the campus to deal with the problem’s of Southeast Asia are manned by persons who have fronted assumed dignity for their lack of direct knowledge and for their unwillingness to receive reports which do not harmonize with their already established dialectics—and I mean dialectics.
When we adopt the same system as we do in our law-courts, and for which this Republic was established, of listening to eyewitnesses and of minimizing opinions and abstractions, we shall establish friendships throughout the world. I can only mention here that Dr. Gardner Murphy, the only important American who took that attitude in Asia is one of the most popular Americans in Asia.
I shall be glad to send you copy of any reports received in private capacity as representative of the World Buddhist Federation, or otherwise.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina St.,
San Francisco 3,Calif.
June 18, 1965
Ed Lukas,
Managing Editor,
Hollywood Citizen News
1545 North Wilcox,
Hollywood, Calif. 90028
Dear Mr. Lukas:
In response to your letter of the 7th, let me say that what started out to be a series of personal gripes has become, in a sense, very fundamental. There are some people, even with the welfare of the country at stake, who do not seem to be able to rise up above personalisms, and it is strange, with all the complexities going on in Vietnam and neighboring lands, the President of the United States, or somebody close to him, knows more about the merits and experiences of various personnel on the campuses of the University of California and those who have made themselves key figures in dramatic events.
It started out in these very rooms when years ago the late Rev. Robert Clifton (Phra Sumangalo) told me of the communist infiltration into Buddhist organizations in the then Annam and Tonkin. This was at the time when “The Ugly American” caused so much furor. But the living example of a then living American was only an element of confusion to those in the public light and the author, Prof. Eugene Burdock, not only refused to meet Rev. Clifton but seems adamantly fixed in his position of superiority over all who enter his domain, factual or fictional.
I must say her that after some very dramatic occurrences the Institute of International Affairs connected with the University of California has asked, and will receive, my memoirs and files covering a rather unfortunate part of our history. But this action has not affected either the position of Dr. Robert Scalapino on the Berkeley campus who has never answered any letters and has refused to grant any interview.
This would hardly matter excepting that he is involved both in the S.E. Asia imbroglio wherein he has made himself an expert and both he and Burdick have taken leading roles in the Free Speech and Vietnam dramas, refusing to associate with those they consider as their inferiors. This is just a side-light on their refusal to meet almost anybody in the open on any basis of quality, and again this would not matter excepting that it is in direct opposition to the purposes of the Institution of International Studies which purports to be the center of research in several foreign field and which publishes, under the editorship of Robert A. Scalapino, a monthly called “Asian Survey.”
During the lifetime of the above Rev. Robert Clifton I was moved to devote myself to a theme, “How California Can Help Asia,” a theme which has reached its finality in research but has only entered the initial stages of writing. Let me say, given a problem of Asia, one can invariably find the answers in the research, experience and personnel of Californians, covering almost the whole continent outside the red orbit and sometimes then.
In 1956 I was able to retired from gainful employment to devote to “How California Can Help Asia” and on arrival in Japan was greeted immediately by top horticulturalists (my profession) who also were top Buddhists. As I had started my studies in real Zen Buddhism here in San Francisco (later in Los Angeles) with the late Rev. Nyogen Senzaki, I personally was accepted both by the monks and lay people and became the guest of the late Baron Nakashima who was a veritable Pooh Bah. During the course of events I was a guest at the Royal Cemetery, the Shrine over the Ashes of Lord Buddha (Mount Takao) and the Imperial Gardens themselves, the first time a small foreigner had even such honors.
I was then commissioned by Baron Nakashima to present a petition with the general theme “Anti-communist Buddhists of the World Unite.” Socially this was a total success and details can be furnished. It was facilitated by the return of Rev. Clifton to Thailand the same day as I arrived and the fact that Princess Royal Poon Diskul was to be my host (we had long become friends).
Princess Poon Diskul has since become the President of the World Buddhist Federation and is one of the few people in the world to have caused Mao to lose face.
None of the above made the slightest impression on the Foreign Service and when I was sent to the Embassy in Bangkok by the late Makathero (Chief Monk) of Thailand it was only to be snubbed. Yet this is history.
The sad part of it is that Rev. Clifton returned again to this country to warn about Laos (he had worked for the King of Laos, as previously for the Kings of Cambodia and Thailand). He died of a broken heart because of the refusal of our State Department to take him seriously.
Beholding so many refugees in South Asia, my research was changed from that of general horticulture to food problems and continues in this field.
Snubbed constantly on the Berkeley Campus by all the different departments labeled under the various “social sciences,” a longer visit was taken in 1960-62. Returning here, five campuses of the University of California were immediately visited (San Diego, Riverside, Los Angeles, Berkeley and Davis, in that order.) Everywhere there were welcomes and interviews with men who had been to parts of Asia, who had done research there and had made friends.
But on my second tour I met so many graduates of the University of California both nationals and Americans, that it was amazing and on my future trips careful notes will be taken and detailed reports. Some time back I had accosted “Princeton-in-Asia” which is one of the few universities that keeps in touch with its people abroad. These alumni are one of the best channels to promote international good-will, but the State Department—until these recent events—seems to have either ignored them or kept very quiet (perhaps the latter).
My previous trip to Los Angeles ushered me into the presence of a Mr. D. Wilson, whose history of Thailand seems to have won the good-will of the State Department. This is an excellent work excepting for the final chapter dealing with “Problems” and while these problems are no doubt well-meant, overlooked were the surveys made by teams sent out from other campuses to that part of the world. In other words, there are some gaps in communication from one campus to another.
During the Free Speech brawls on the Berkeley campus not only Profs. Burdick and Scalapino have been active—certainly earning the will-will of the vociferous, but President Clark Kerr made some important remarks about the “Multiversity.” Personally I think these remarks are far more important than the “excitement” reports which fill the press. And it is certain that a large majority of the teaching personnel have backed up the protestants and this has been interpreted as being “left-wingism.” Actually I have seen very, very little sign of Marxism on the Berkeley campus or on other UC campuses (this must not be generalized too far). People who want freedom know they will not got it under Marxist regimes. Why then have so many instructors turned against the seeming power structure?
We are in turmoil in S. E. Asia. The Berkeley campus publishes “Asian Survey.” There are all sorts of men on other campuses, but have they access to the editor of this publication? Are they taken into account as human being? I have already affirmed, that given a problem of Asia, in most instances one can find the research, the projects and the personnel involved which could solve such problems.
The meeting with Mr. Wilson produced another phenomenon-on the Berkeley Campus the “social science” professors ignore their colleagues, and I mean especially those who have gone on Missions to Asia. On the other campuses they do not. The grill-organization which would require a real cooperation has been used elsewhere and would be very necessary to make studies of any given part of the world.
Going over the articles in “Asian Survey” I found the contributors as follows:
University of California (all campuses) 7
Other California Institutions 2
Other American Universities 25
Asians 10
Others 3
Last summer there was a conference at Asilomar under the aegis of the then Chancellor Strong. Although there are ten Asian Consuls-General in this vicinity not one appeared at the Conference. The writer tried in vain to have a local important Chinese invited. He was snubbed. Our moneys were used to import British and European diplomats for a conference on Asia, also newsmen. There was a single Asian and he not official.
Early this year there was a conference on “China”—any relation to China being very doubtful, in which the most important speakers were a communist, an editor-publisher of doubtful integrity, and an Australian. We have all kinds of Chinese in San Francisco—not one invited.
This snubbing of great peoples (Oriental) no doubt infuriated the writer so that during the Free Speech imbroglios he was particularly around against Messrs. Strong, Burdick and Scalapino for this state of affairs but then these were the men who tried to still the crowds and were booed. It was then bad enough for me that public funds had been used to import such bizarre “experts” but since then, one by one, sections by sections, I have found personnel on the UC campuses who have covered every part of Asia outside the communist sectors. Why were they excluded from conferences on “Asia” and “China?”
The same tone has continued in the discussions on Vietnam where “Dove” and “Hawk” alike seem to shun Asians and their colleagues who have worked in that part of the world.
Returning to Riverside to collect more material on my “How California Can Help Asia” I was again welcomed by men who had been to Asia and who are my colleagues in every respect. They have learned more of the real religions, the real folklore and folk-ways of the real people of real Asia than anybody else. In fact Prof. Perry had just come back from a survey in Indonesia and his reports do not jibe with those of commentators and politically minded persons. This does not mean that the present Prime Minister is in any way a fit administrator, only there are other ways to deal with him and his people.
He gave me a number of instructions both as to agricultural and political problems. Finally at UCLA I met Prof. Orr who has been to many lands and who has been sent to SE Asia—beginning at Saigon, to head the Mekong River Development Survey.
Differing from Prof. Burdick and Scalapino, Prof. Orr has lived with these people, he knows them from the inside and outside and is dedicated to two theses:
1. Stop the communists
2. Introduce our skills, technologies and methods at human levels and in accord with people.
In contrast with several Peace Corps returnees both Prof. Orr and Prof. Perry seem to understand Asian peoples from within. Both favor the “grill-system,” but they and their colleagues see the road-blocks on the Berkeley campus by “social scientists,” and this despite the fact we are in a near-war.
Anyhow a team has already gone, a team of men who know how to coordinate with Asian-Asians and who are acquainted with the backgrounds and problems of peoples involved. We can only give them God-speed.
No doubt there are emotional involvements here. But the more one delves into matters and finds that the UC campuses are filled with people even of equal excellence with the famous Seaborg and Teller, and that we are facing problems, even the killing of our military without any seeming alternative but an ignominious retreat, and we may be having “all the answers,” it is time we Californians learn something of the intellectual gold in our midst.
It is satisfying to know that Washington recognizes it and we can hope there will be more. Sooner or later there will have to be some corrections. The writer will not testify before any legislative or Board of Regents hearing nor appeal to them without clearing every one of the above points with the proper personnel.
The war in Vietnam started because we would not trust our own citizens. It continues because there is not mutual trust between those who are in charge of channels of communication and those who have to carry on operations.
Any of the above is subject, of course, to any type of editorializing, correction or rejection that is seen fit. It is necessary to stop the growth of communism as it is and to work on positive programs dealing with population, food and “poverty,” etc.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
772 Clementina St..
San Francisco 3, Calif.
May 10, 1966
S. F. Territorial News
3041 Fillmore St.,
San Francisco 23, Calif.
Dear Sirs: The stone which is rejected is become the cornerstone.
This is the first time I have ever perused your publication and it hit immediately at what I consider the terribly weakness or disease which has epidemized our whole culture.
In the case of Charles and Miriam Lindstrom I feel particularly awful because there I felt their crucifixion without being able to foresee their resurrection. In the case of Benny Bufano I have justified that he did not wish to become a Schubert. Our greatest hypocrisy is to memorialize certain dead heroes and to keep on creating more and more rush martyrs to be rescued by later ages.
If the Lindstroms had been functioning in Berkeley there would have been not only a local but a national revolt, for that is a city of the young. But Francisco and in particular our museums are for the old, and if a man or woman lives in eternity, as do the Lindstroms, they do not have the same opportunity. And a growing lot of us are revolting against the hypocrisy of our present form of Pledge of Allegiance with its “liberty and justice for all.” This was not in the earlier form of Pledge which did not have this hypocritical apology for wrong doing.
There are some particular items which you have brought up and this can cause considerable complexities later on. The Brundage Collection is international in scope and in particular Asian. There are been many persons in high position in the De Young Museum who have known very little of Asian arts and have considered it an insult if you try to correct their spelling or misstatements. But it is even more true that there are many sensitive Asians who become furious over wrong spellings or statements. And the normal corrective would be to employ persons who had the proper knowledge to prevent these occurrences.
No doubt the Boston Museum of Art could be a model for us but this remark is redundant because as a remark it is useless (we have useless remarks, aphorisms, mottoes).
This may have to become an issue in our next election, but having adopted a motto, an aphorism, a shibboleth, “San Francisco Knows How” we have been satisfied with that.
The essence of the Lindstroms among people of high renown stands in utter contrast with the opinions of the trustees. Sometimes we ought to have examinations for trustees as well as for the staff. The situation is, of course, parallel to that of the University of California. The trustees include men of power and the University itself has been able to turn out more Nobel Prize winners than any other institution in the world. Yet even these Nobel prize winners are supposed to be subservient to what you call “the interests.”
The Ugly Americans. This follows your well-taken “The American Rejection of Edgar Allan Poe.” The first real Ugly American was Lafcadio Hearn. His very ugliness lead to his rejection yet his birthday is celebrated in Japan. Japan has two American heroes, India two and Iran one. You never hear of them in the papers, although you sometimes do of ersatz “heroes.”
I am sitting in a chair once occupied by one Robert Stuart Clifton. He came to this country twice to warn of events in Vietnam. He had all the Accouterments of “The Ugly American” yet not even Prof. Burdick would interview him. He died of a broken heart because the American press and State Department refused to interview him. We are fighting an interminable war therefore. This is our norm.
I have suggested to my Assembly (John Burton) a JEW society—it has nothing to do with Jewish matters although the line-ups will be almost the same. By JEW I mean the Jefferson-Emerson-Whitman outlook.
To Assembly Burton I accuse Senator Burns of being a pro-communist for he certainly will line up with the communists against the American-American JEW outlook. All over Asia I can assure you people want Jefferson, want Emerson, want Whitman and we give them … Marx. True, we take the other side but we advertise Marx, we do not advertise great Americans.
We have some great Americans now. These includes I believe, the Lindstroms. They ought to be sent abroad an USIA missions. That would be unfair. We could beat the communists overnight without throwing a punch. The world needs their knowledge.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
P.S. I have cut the subscription blank and will send it after my next pay day.
772 Clementina St.,
San Francisco 3. Calif.
March 25, 1967
Stewart Alsop
c/o Saturday Evening Post
641 Lexington Ave.,
New York, N.Y. 10022
Dear Mr. Alsop:
Written in the spirit of François Villain as in “If I were King.”
I am enclosing a letter to Senator Kuchel from this State. Things like the events of yesterday happen all the time and it is one way not to make friends and influence people. The most nauseating was the visit of Her Serene Highness, Princess Poon Diskul to this City when she came forth and greeted the writer before looking at anybody else. That was the fifty such occasion in my home town but since then it has been happening with increased momentum, coming up yesterday with first a call and then a visit with one of those totally forgotten and ignored men, a Vietnamese.
I found in this case he had learned about me from his secretary-driver, one of those few Americans who have studied Buddhisms with Asians and not with “experts” who may come from anywhere at all.
The other day a Dove challenged me and when I answered him correctly he asked, “How did you know.” I said, “Simple. I have documents in my files. I had a friend living there.” Sure, I have documents, and I had some time recently working out an heir—my brother and I have no children and no poor relatives and we agreed that the documents—I have piles of them—would go to the University of California at Los Angeles because at least I have had interviews there. But there has been more than that including at least one official history and the engineer who has been heading the Mekong River Development Scheme. But hard facts and hard persons and hard reasons have nothing to do with our foreign policies or the comments on them. We do not live in that world.
Recently I convinced a newsman, who is away to test, “Reality versus realism.” I have no doubt of the outcome. But the type of what passes for “thinking” in international policies could not last five minutes in a scientific laboratory and I doubt much longer in a law court. We must—no matter what our point of view—we must not let facts confuse issues. So your seemingly pessimistic forecast is based on nothing but that.
Although I am far, far from being equal to any “expert” during World War II I did some GII work in an office and there met my “war hero” whom I have not encountered since. It just happens his name is Edward Lansdale and he has gone up a long way since, but facts must not confuse issues.
In the next office was a department broadcasting in Japanese on “Buddhism.” I mean real Buddhism, not the guff and stuff and even filth that passes for “Zen” today. We had to do it, we did it. When I came to Japan later I was informed—all first hand—the beneficent effect of those broadcasts and the effects on General McArthur’s policies, all eye-witness stuff and therefore impossible, I am not “equal.”
During the course of years my prowess in real Buddhism lead to my being initiated and ordained as a Zen Master and recently I inherited a library. The donor-owner was looking for some American who studied Oriental Philosophy with Asians, not with the conglomerate mass of Englishmen, Germans and outcastes who are heralded here.
When later I had a long and very satisfactory session with Prof. Orr at UCLA on the Mekong River Development Scheme it was wonderful to meet an American who understood and had deep respect for the real peoples of real Asia.
I am not going to give you the rest of my history but it was enough to cause me to write to Lord Russell asking him not to press charges against LBJ. Not that LBJ or the State Department or CIA has ever acknowledged any letters—we do not do that in “democratic America.”
I am taking Photostats of documents abroad. Audiences are awaiting. It is as simple as that. The originals will at my death go to UCLA and there will be funds to back up this gesture. The history of Vietnam in Asian researches is so different from our public reports here. I can only say, without going into detail, that recently New Republic published the speeches of Abraham Lincoln when he was a member of Congress on the Mexican War. (I am not a Dove but I accept facts.)
My proposal for Vietnam is simple—treat the Vietnamese as equal humans like we did in the Dominican Republic.
The first great tragedy is that we praise George Washington’s career as Colonel in the war of 1754-1763 and follow Braddock’s tactics.
The second is the totally discarding of the very successful Buddhist campaign of World War II.
The third is the substitution of propaganda which pleases comfortable audiences and does not appeal, and does not have to appeal to any Asians whatever. Hawks want force, and Doves call Asian nationals who are opposed to communism, “traitors.”
When I return from abroad I expect to open Sarkhan House. Everything is exactly as in Burdick and Lederer’s books. Must not change, mustn’t. But I am determined come hell, come high water to give lectures on real Islamic and real Buddhist cultures. We can win the hearts of peoples.
When I return from abroad—provided the schedule goes through—I shall be working on “How California Can Help Asia.” It is based on real facts, real opinions, real projects, real researches. Most will have been on the campuses of the “Multiversity” of California, the rest by the United States Department of Agriculture and by successful enterprises, agricultural and non-agricultural going on in this State. All objective and therefore contrary to the cultures which control public information at the moment.
There are many ways to win the hearts of people, there are many ways to contact human beings as equals. I am hoping to see my country try a few of them. “It is not what your country can do for you, but what you can do for your country—Nertz.
I expect to spend some more time with Dr. Thich Thien-An and then visit him down at UCLA. Remember, everybody counts but us Sarkhanians. I know a lot of them.
In memory of the late Prof. Burdick,
Samuel L. Lewis
February 13, 1969
To the Editors of “Playboy”:
I wish to thank you for a most marvelous service you have consciously or unconsciously rendered to the world. You mention that this person is a Sufi, indicating that you believe there are such beings. This is a new departure for many of the Englishmen, Europeans, and even those of Jewish antecedents whom we have put in charge of so much of the “only in America” “Oriental culture” have either denied their existence, or so complicated the situation that very few Americans and otherwise cultured people have little idea about Asiatics. Europeans are human beings; Asians are thought-forms.
Although you have identified me as a Sufi and Sufis have identified me as a Sufi, our British, Europe an end Jewish mentors either refuse this or exclude one from attending conference as a representative of the still extant and rather flourishing Sufi Orders.
It may come as a shock to you that the President of India has been a disciple of Sufism; that this person shares a spiritual teacher, a Pir, in common with President Ayub; that the first government of the now controversial Iraq was established with the aid of Sufis (vide. Gertrude Bell etc. etc. etc.)
So long as we live in the two cultures of Lord Snow, a scientific one based on facts, observances and data; and a literary humanist one based on the importance of the persons involved, it is very difficult to have honest, objective communication with the latter group. Pressures and emotions are more important than facts— in other words, we find ourselves here in the world of propaganda.
It may also come as a shock to be informed that there are more disciples of Sufism in the world today than there are Vietnamese Buddhists; that there are more Vietnamese Buddhists than there are Zionists, and that we are constantly jumping back and forth between quantitative and qualitative values.
Mr. Jennings has chosen to adhere to the qualitative, quite safe, because Sufis have few votes. At the same time, if Playboy is read by members of UN delegations, as it well might be, the proportion of personalities, both in the lower and higher echelons of UN personalities, who may be associated with Sufism on some basis, could also be a shock.
As I myself have been a professional reporter and writer in this very same field as your Mr. Jennings, I know the techniques of the trade only too well. The difference is that when I wrote articles they were based on fact-gathering; now everything is based on excitability. You can take any group of our dialecticians from super-Trotski-ites to fascists to Hunts and all betwixt and between and they all agree that excitability and propaganda are more important than honesty and objectivity.
It may also be news to you that the first real religious toleration came from two great emperors, both contemporaries of Queen Elizabeth, Sultan Suleiman of Turkey, (called the Magnificent) and Emperor Akbar, the great Mogul. Both of these were advanced disciples in Sufism, among the most learned of rulers of all times, and only too often conveniently by-passed by propagandists with gimmicks.
Among the minor achievements of Suleiman was his opening the doors to refugee Spanish Jews (Sephardics). Among the minor achievements of Emperor Akbar was the summoning of the congressmen of all religions to which Jews also were invited and they were a matter of record (unfortunately American East-West gatherings where Jews are invited have never followed the sane policy—Sufis are not permitted to participate (want some facts?)).
It is difficult to promote a philosophy of love wherein a culture identifies love with lust on one hand and with ego-negativity on the other. I don’t believe this is what Christ meant. Mohammed said, “Allah loves his creation more than a mother loves her offspring.”
This is the norm of the Sufis.
We are beginning now to appreciate the poetry of Jelal-ud-din Rumi and other Sufis. “Realism” may ignore; reality cannot. Nor can we separate love from wisdom and insight—at least this is the Sufi view. I am sure you have had articles on the Taj. At least a some of your companion magazines have. Can you accept that this most noble structure was built by a Sufi monarch who seems to have had a deeper love for his wife than would appear in all the western world? It is unnecessary to go on.
Now as to personal matters.
April 8, 1969
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
World Union,
Pondicherry 2, India
Dear Ram:
This acknowledges Volume VIII, No. 4 of your remarkable issue. To me it is not a question of principles involved but who is going to put them into operation. General Secretary A.B. Patel writes (full agreement):
“World Union was established to work for the realization of the high ideal of complete oneness. It believes that modern conditions of life provide propitious circumstances for an endeavor to realize this pristine dream of unity.”
“World Union attempts to make people aware of creative forces of unity and their consequences….”
My whole life has been operative in this general direction, inward and outward but too often has one seen the mountains of words and the failure of those announcing verbally to put into practice what is said. One is now in and awkward position that one had to take to task another world movement because while its deals are perfect, in its practices it has fallen back on the same procedures of appealing to name-and-form to lead and “important persons” are given important places regardless of their integrity because of the supposition that this will draw membership and masses. In this case they have summoned a man inimical to most of the real leaders of the real religions of the real world and evidently there is no way to stop it. Or maybe there is.
Karma is karma, moral law is moral law. One had seen one failure after another in verbalized “world movements” which at some point of other stressed some personalities at the expense of their goals and so the goals were not achieved.
The other day there was a picnic of the Indian’s students of this area. Not a single “expert” on Oriental Culture was there, not even some of your own countryman who have achieved a medium of fame. The fame for prowess is among other than Asians. And the leader of the affair referred to this one as the “Avatar of Dara Shikoh.” One’s whole life had been in the direction of the Moghul Prince and now one has reached the stage that one can no longer sit by and say “yes” to people who themselves do not know how to say “yes.”
It may be of no importance to you that one’s paper on “Vietnamese Buddhism” was rejected thirty-one times and then stopped because one received a better paper from a Vietnamese Buddhist residing in this country. (You never hear of it either, we have too many “experts.”) But it must be of some import to you to find that one’s efforts to have a paper on “The Religion of the President of India” have been given the same coup de grace and as the President of India is very much alive and is dedicated fully, I believe to the same Ideas and Ideals that the writer has, it becomes very awkward.
All efforts so far to call attention to the life and work of the Moghul Emperor Akbar have been ignored. And in my personal capacity, continuing and perhaps in the eyes of God fulfilling the efforts of Prince Dara Shikoh, which depends on spiritual awakening and conscious operation of Vijnanavada, to find that not only are these efforts ignored but praise is given to world politicians qua re their worldly positions, I fail to see how this can help the World Union or bring into operation the predictions of Sri Aurobindo and others.
It is not true of leaders that they accept Sri Krishna’s “Praise and blame do not faze me” for praise means acceptance and criticisms, no matter how valuable, mean rejections. Failure is accepted, but never warnings and too many great movements, great for the moment, have disappeared because personalisms are more important than ideals.
This week-end one is going to a seminar to present the report on actual experience into the Divine. One is no longer concerned with the rejection of this by important and unimportant people. To support the themes of universal consciousness on the one hand and then to herald famous people and ignore mystics is hardly the way to come into any New Age.
The Upanishads are very succinct, if not clear, on the grades of sentient beings of all ranks. The accommodation for Ananda, predicated in these sacred books, is I believe, and absolute measuring stick for this. But the continuation of manasic outlooks cannot bring about the fulfillment of these greater experiences in and accommodations for Ananda, nor the replacement of Manas by Vijnana. Sri Aurobindo has been called Vijnanavadin. But I do not see the fulfillment of his life and predictions while the analytical and dialectical methods are used and what is called “integration” excludes spiritual and integrational movements of the past, and present.
You will be sent copy of The Oracle, a local paper, as soon as it appears. It shows what the young people are attempting here. It may show a new groundwork. I see nothing in Sri Aurobindo that the evolved souls are necessarily going to appear in India or any other country. Nor do I see anything that older people, who are not so evolved, can forever lay down dictums and promises by which these evolved souls, generally younger in body, can and must work.
My first efforts to send some disciples to you have not been very successful. I am now preparing to send another disciple who is going to India to study dancing and who will be a representative of the class working on “Dances of Universal Peace.” These are very real and they come from the transcendental experiences of a living person, not a politician, not a dialecticism, not a traditional philosopher. They are dedicated to The Temple of Understanding in Washington and also to Sri Surendra Mohan Ghose and they are demonstrating exactly what the Upanishads promise.
But I cannot omit here references to Fatehpur Sikri and indeed to all the life and work of Emperor Akbar. I am tired of appeal.
The story of Boccaccio from “The Decameron” was also used by the German Lessing in his “Nathan the Wise” and again in my poem “Saladin” which will someday be read, Inshallah.
One of the best things in this issue is the remark of Norman C. Dowsett, “Education has to be revised to accommodate the New Consciousness already descended into earth-nature.” God bless you for that. That is to me marvelous, perfect and true. Now what are we going to do about it? A person who is doing is not in the same class as a person who is saying. I feel entirely at home with your ideals; I am not at home with by-passing of history and selectivity despite the verbal and mental support of Vijnanavada.
God bless you,
Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Ave.
San Francisco, Calif.
11th June, 1969
W.B.F. News Bulletin.
41 Phra Athit St.,
Bangkok, Thailand
Dear Aiem and Friends:
There is a vast abyss between the word “compassion” and the extension of this magnificent quality to others. The common misusage which is quite approve is to “extend it to all mankind” and in the name of this verbal extension refuse it to the one next to you. This means, of course, the decay of Dharma, and I shall continue to use the Sanskrit terms because they were taught to me by the late Dr. M. T. Kirby the hero of our good friend, Dr. Malalasekera. Besides, in general, Sanskrit is in use now in this country.
I have no intention of imposing my own elevation as Fudo Bosatsu in Japan because any such report is regarded as “egotism.” But the training and discipline and the hard adherence to honesty and experience more than doctrine, till now gaining no friends, is just as rapidly gaining friends and “followers.”
No sooner had this letter been written than a letter was received from the Department of East Asian studies at Harvard accepting my report on the late Trebitsch-Lincoln and I shall certainly send facts to these people although my own papers were destroyed in 1949. But religionists in general and sectarians in particular do not like facts, no matter how substantiated, which interferes with their theologies, claims and speculations.
I spent a whole year once studying nothing but Tipitaka to give a single lecture on “Buddhism” During the years I have found all kinds of “experts,” “authorities,” and of course, “sectarians,” who do not have to do any such thing to be accepted and the acceptance of the deniers of Tripitaka as “Buddhists” is going to work out its own cosmic karma. And as a Fudo I cannot help “seeing” the karma of pretense, ignorance and egotism.
I do not see where the speculative so-called “Mahayana Philosophy” by Bhikku Yen-Kiat has anything to do with anything but book-pseudo-knowledge. There is a vast difference between such speculations and either the Bodhisattvic oath or the application of this oath to the dally life. Like the American Walt Whitman, one practices, “In all men I see myself.” But I do not are anything in the speculative Philosophies of anybody about anything.
The article by Bhikkhu Khantipalo is, of course, true both theoretically and practically. Some day we are going to have impersonal, quasi-scientific disciplines which will remove any statements of whosoever because “he” said it. On this point Lord Buddha and “Buddhism” (which he did not teach) are far, far apart.
I believe that here in America we shall soon have, and indeed we have already Arya Dharma. I know of several professors in universalities who are offering what none of the temples, churches and I-me-Sangha groups are offering. I see no sign that any Parami is running around telling somebody, anybody, much less everybody that they are right, etc.
We are rapidly moving to a day when many of us will get together and listen and accept those who have had Enlightenment experiences and stop once and for all the egoists (who, of course deny ego) from stopping those who have had such Enlightenment experience. The influence of Kapleau is spreading, but I believe there may be many other Upayas which work, including the four Jhanas and others, actual Upayas and not speculations or discussions about unsuccessful Upayas. Tathagata spoke endlessly against useless means. And so long as means are important and more important than experience, we shall no doubt have “Buddhism” but we shall not have Arya Dharma, we shall not have Enlightenment.
No, I do not expect any answer, no, I do not expect any of this to be published. No, I do not expect anything but karma operating and not just to please authorities and important people. When those who write about “selflessness” become a little more curious about the Enlightenment experiences of others, we shall have a better world.
Metta,
Samuel L. Lewis
910 Railroad Ave
Novato, Calif. 94947
Oct. 1, 1969
The Saturday Review
380 Madison Ave
New York, NY 10017
The Great American Tragedy 1969
Dear Sirs:
One reads with utter sadness and futility “The view from Allenby Bridge, a report from the Middle East,” by Theodore C. Sorenson. O yes, the article is very fair-minded and not a single fact or statement is refuted or may even be refutable. But it is impossible, not nearly impossible, but impossible to convince the literati that we have two cultures as Lord Snow claims, which he calls the scientific and the literary humanist. We could have never gotten to the moon with the logistics of the literati. We had to have hard, sound thinking, supported by demonstrable facts and some knowledge of the laws of the universe and of nature to accomplish this. Private opinions, folklore, and the dominant anti-Marx dialectics would have been useless. Apparently we can conquer time and space and even the universe itself, but hardly through the logistics of any form of dialectics.
The other day I wrote to Dr. G. Malalasekera of Ceylon. When he was delegate to the UN he had the impudence to say: “How can we trust a nation which does not trust its own citizens?” We gave him the boot and thought we were winning a victory. The hard, hard fact which this country has absolutely refused to accept was that our mutual friend the late Robert Clifton, better known as Phra Sumangalo, had lived in Vietnam 15 years. All his reports, all his substantiable facts, were ignored in toto by the press and the State Department, excepting Mrs. Meyer in Washington. We are now paying a terrible price, and we are going to continue to pay terrible prices until those in high places at least listen to Americans who have been to odd places, mingled with the populace and who have information that could be of help to this land.
Mr. Sorenson’s late friend and buddy President Kennedy used to say: “It is not what your country can do for you, it is what you can do for your country.” Have you ever tried it? I remember one man who was kicked out of Pakistan for alleging there were communists in certain places. He was not kicked out of Pakistan by the government of that country; the US Embassy ordered him removed as a trouble maker. Six weeks later I fell into the hands of these very communists after the “trouble maker” had warned me. I am fortunate to be alive. Or perhaps, to quote from Mr. Sorenson, “The United States, or the United Nations, or another great power, or a modern Saladin, or Allah Himself” might have something to do with it.
I can assure you it is no fun to travel abroad to be hounded at the same time by real communist emissaries and black-listed by our State Department. besides this, I have had the temerity to have turned a mob on communists hecklers in the same places newsmen had been mobbed. This is against protocol of course; an imaginary “communist” of a fourth estate representative is of far more importance than scores of foreign emissaries met by unimportant persons.
It has been part of my life to have been a guest of honor at the imperial palaces of Japan and Thailand, and to have had tea in the Presidential mansions of Pakistan and India. Asians constantly wonder why I am not recognized by the State Department. In 1960 I had planned to go to the Near East. The State Department was interested. I had constant letters from them, fixing a date for a meeting, and showed up promptly at the hour they had selected. When I arrived at that office not a single person with whom I had corresponded was present. There were no notes around. In fact there was only one person around and he knew nothing about it. And since that time not a single person from any branch of the State Department has ever answered any correspondence from me on any subject!
In the year 1928 I first met Dr. Henry Atkinson of the World Church Peace Union. He was then seeking plans to bring about world peace through religion. I submitted a paper to him. He retired (this was in the St Francis hotel in San Francisco) and 15 minutes later came back, held out his hand, and said, “Mr. Lewis, I have been around the world 3 times, met perhaps every king and prime minister on the face of the earth, and you are the first man who ever brought me what I wanted.”
At his behest, I began a very serious study of all the religions I could. I have had the doubtful experience of love-attunement with such various persons as the Hasid Rev. Schlomo, the late Rufus Mosley, the still living Dr. Radhakrishnan, Roshi Yasutani, etc., etc., etc. But the successors of the late Dr. Henry Atkinson reused absolutely and unequivocally to look at my reports.
I had the very strange notion that we had to have peace in the Near East to prevent the communists from coming in. But it seems that Dr. Malalasekera is correct: in foreign affairs we have a State Department which does not trust its own citizens. Although originally I had the blessings of the late John Foster Duller—that was all. When I actually accomplished the mission, it was ignored. We have to have peace through the “right” persons, “right” organizations, etc.
While loving in Cairo with the blessing especially of the UN representatives, I worked out a proposal by which I found at that time even the most recalcitrant Arabs expressed their willingness to accept Israel. Undoubtedly I was the wrong person. The Israelis, the Arabs and the UN might have accepted it; the State Department and the so-called great peace foundations turned it down cold.
Later, it is true, I sent portions of this program to the Senators Cooper of Kentucky and Baker of Tennessee. But I am no longer concerned for the doors are opening whereby above-board the hard facts and the accumulated knowledges will be made public. I have already written epic poems on this subject from the Israeli point of view utterly rejected by the synagogues; and from the Israeli point of view which has not had much better treatment from the so-called Muslims. But there is a New Age: the local universities and more and more the various groups of the young called or misnamed hippies have opened their doors and their floors.
The great American tragedy is the verbal adherence to aphorisms and slogans and the deaf ears of the persons attached to the very same aphorisms and slogans. The young are being tired of our policy, not the Vietnamese policy, but the general foreign policy selling guns and goods to Jordan and Israel; to Nigeria and Biafra; to India and Pakistan, etc., etc.
Someday I hope there will be some group in this country which will permit “The United States, or the United Nations, or another great power, or a modern Saladin, or Allah Himself” to stop this slogan mongering and to bring human beings together. I have had the doubtful honor of being black-balled from attending conferences on the above and related subject matters by an “only in America” institution: The European and English experts on Asian culture. We may talk about “justice” forever and ever, but how many American-born, or for that matter, how many Arab-born professors are there in this land on Arabic civilization? We do not only not want to keep our skirts clean here, we do not even seem to want to have skirts to keep clean. Why, out in this region, the fairest-minded professor on Arab civilization was a Zionist. The others were all English- or German-born! I think this is slowly changing, and I am delighted to find a replacement of European and English “experts” by Americans. Some day we may even permit; indeed we are slowly permitting Asian professors to lecture on the culture of their own country (this does not yet apply to Vietnam).
I sometimes say that if you want to get kicked out of a synagogue just try to read the very last words of the very last prophet of Israel, Malachi.
My whole life is now being centered on the success of The Temple of Understanding in Washington, which is bringing into manifestation what the Bible repeats, “My house shall be a house of prayer for all peoples.”
I think the worst evil is our slogan mongering, a constant use of aphorisms, and the setting of traps into which we ourselves fall. At this time I am teaching spiritual dances in which Zionists, Jews who are not Zionists, people of mixed races, orthodox or heterodox Christians, Muslims, and the followers of many different Indian outlooks have joined. They have not only joined, they have fraternized. But you never hear about this in the press, and the only time I have been interviewed was to be “exposed.”
No, this is unquestionably a hard letter, and I do not really have any ill-will toward Mr. Sorenson at all; in fact I admire him, I even think I can trust him. But you must understand the rising tide of honesty, integrity, zeal for truth etc., which is widespread among out youth and which is going to compel the laying of cards on the table; presumably anybody can write an article or editorial. It is something else again to bring people together to mingle and comingle regardless of sex, race, religion, or any of the artificial or real distinctions that divide us.
I hope this will be taken seriously. Soon it will probably be published or read aloud in such a way as to arouse the young who are tired of slogans, aphorisms, and questions.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Sept. 1, 1970
Editor, Life Magazine
Rockefeller Center
New York, N.Y. 10020
Dear Sirs:
I am not able to speak very much on the justice or injustice of the women’s liberation movement, but I am able to say and say definitely that the title “The revolution that will affect everybody” is a bunch of hokum and nonsense. It will not and does not affect 98% of the human race. It overlooks or by-passes all these people who for some reason or other have wished or been forced to accept Communistic governments and societies. It does not take into consideration in the least the position of women in non-Christian societies. Whether we like it or not those who live under Communistic or non-Christian societies belong to the human race, at least I think they do. And they are considered in statistics.
Those people who pall-parrot “peace with justice” and who think this empty phrase will solve the problems of the Near East, entirely overlook what Mr. Nasser has done for the women of Egypt and what the socialist regimes in certain Islamic countries have not done for their women. One wonders whether your “everybody” includes anybody at all, and I do not believe that the women involved in the so-called revolution, ever meant that.
When one looks at the picture on 16B one wonders whether any of those women have ever given consideration to the endless conflict in Vietnam or to the hostilities in the Near East, or to the sub-standard existence of multitudes in many parts of the world.
It is too bad that these last people do not belong to the “everybody.”
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Jan. 12, 1970
Religious Studies
Cambridge University Press
32 East 57th St.,
New York. N.Y. 10022
Dear Sirs:
A copy of your issue of December 1969 was sent to my former address on Clementina Street and then forwarded here. At the present moment I do not know exactly what my status is as a subscriber, but I do know what my status is as a human being.
Among other things—and there are a lot of other things—at the bequest of the late Dr. Henry Atkinson of the World Church Peace Union I studied all the religions of the world and I mean all the religions of the world. The original intent was to use religions and their teachings to promote world peace or a reasonable facsimile thereof. Nothing has come of this. Neither did anything come of the efforts of one Dr. Charles Weller of Chicago who seems to have started a rival organization. Now we are considering, but just considering, sending someone to another “peace” conference to be held in Japan in 1971. At this writing we are between two entirely different situations: being ignored by the elder groups no matter how little we have to offer, because that little (to establish institutions) is what they are seeking.
I cannot but contrast your publication with that of History of Religions published in Chicago by Prof. Eliade and others. In that book they consistently check subjectivities with the actual belief of actual peoples in the presumably actual world. Some of the contributors are more prone to clash over their discoveries among human beings than over their private opinions. I think this is most wonderful.
My impressions (and to me impressions are a limitation whereas some of your contributors rely almost entirely an impressions) include in the first place the use of the term ethics as a substitute for human morel behavior.
That is to say, the writings on ethics seem to have nothing to do with love, compassion, human consideration, etc. Sometimes, but only sometimes, they seem to have a vague relation to ethos. For example, referring to Buddhist Studies by David Bastow, I have been one of the few Americans who have read, so far as available in English, the entire Tipitaka. I have never been forgiven for this; you would have imagined perhaps that such knowledge would have been welcomed. For the past two years or so it has become welcomed by a new type of instructor in religion and Oriental philosophies. In fact, I once shocked an audience by challenging a well-known professor, saying I had lived in Thailand, and the behavior of the people I found was entirely different from what he had read in a book written many years before. The audience was shocked at my impertinence. In fact the professor was the only one who accepted the valid in situ report.
Here we practice the jhanas, and I have found that every effort to perform a jhana results in some change in the personality of the devotee. I am not here going into real Buddhist ethics or metaphysic. Nor do I consider the ethics of any one religion as necessarily or unnecessarily different from the ethics of any other religion.
Unfortunately, I can tell you where writers on Buddhist and Christians ethics are remarkably similar:
1. They seem to ignore functional compassion, selflessness, etc.
2. They disdain to reply to any consent or criticism which differs in the slightest from their promises.
3. They assume an ignorance on the part of readers and audiences of certain fundamental writings and backgrounds of which they are aware.
It is not my place to relate the experiences wherein the very top leaders in Buddhism acceded to my contentions, but they seldom forgave me for it. So the term ethics in literature and the term ethics in human behavior are often far apart. As to the Christian Ethics. The very contentions of your writers seem to prove my point. I am not the least entertained by subjectivities. The mere assumption that a man knows or represents an entire religion is to me hyperbolic and fanciful. I keep on telling my Sermon on the Mount, “A little child shall lead them,” “Love ye one another,” etc., etc.
I am preparing to attend at least one international convocation of all religions. I am hoping to have cards put on the table.
As background material. Years ago I read a little known work; little known but because almost purposefully neglected, “Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North West Frontier Province.” The book was written in 1896 by one H. Rose of the Royal Asiatic Society. When I visited the same region in 1956 I found things little changed despite political upheavals. You might think a report would at least be examined. My notes are still dormant and will remain so until we get into the world of objectivity. Fortunately this is now coming to pass. A number of professors in different universities are accepting objective reports of persons without going into their so-called “credentials.”
I am hoping we can establish an ethics which is based on the relations of people to people and not on the subjectivities of important or self-important writers. I consider this situation unfortunate, most unfortunate.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Jan. 12, 1970
J.I. Rodale and associates
Rodale Press, Inc.
Emmaus, Pa. 18048
My dear friends:
I have before me Prevention January 1970. I began reading this with considerable “bias.” And having completed the reading of several articles the “bias” has increased. Or maybe it is not “bias” at all, but innate or natural wisdom.
I am born in this state of California before the period of refrigeration ears, when the glutted markets dumped all surplus into this city. The result was that early in life I consumed a tyrannous amount of fruit and this before the advent of sprays, pollution, or even advanced technology. But I did examine certain operations, like the law of diminishing returns in economics, and some of my beliefs were sent to you for “Organic Gardening.”
At this writing Organic Gardening is definitely on the way up or up and up. Tonight my own friends and associates are meeting with Mr. Fred Rohe concerning progress of expansion, but the fact is that I am running into all sorts of programs of expansion. Most fortunately this is neither religion nor economics, and all these groups are seeking some sort of entente with each other.
Subjectively I have never been a hundred per cent for organic gardening—subjectively. But my diaries are full of notes. I could even write on “the law of diminishing returns in Japanese rice.” And the corrective is actually not hard to find. My first visit to agricultural experiment stations in India produced annoyances if not shocks: the tests showed that all grains benefited far more from organics. So far as the press was concerned there was a war between ammonium sulfate and urea. The latter won out. Huge shipments of urea went to India. The hydroscopic phenomenon etc. The packages became useless. The farmers lost out. The Peace Corps didn’t lose out, foreign aid didn’t lose out, the peasant farmers of Asia lost out.
Even more telling would be my field notes on maize in Pakistan.
Even nicer was my sojourn in Southeast Asia where only organics are acceptable. Thailand and Burma using organics have prospered; East Pakistan and Bengal using the chemicals of civilization have suffered.
So you can see I have been reading Prevention with a considerable amount of bias and prejudice to the extent that headaches and similar aspects of pain phenomena have disappeared. Not only that, there is every prospect for a much larger scale organic garden in this region.
The result is that I am reading Prevention with an open heart and reverence. I want to enjoy good health, and next year I am hoping to enjoy my “diamond jubilee.”
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
910 Railroad Ave.
Novato, Calif. 94947
February 18, 1970
Saturday Review
380 Madison Ave.
New York, N.Y. 10017
Dear Sirs:
I have certainly enjoyed Manfred Halpern’s “Israel’s Incoherent Response to an Incoherent Arab World.”
Rightly or wrongly I have reached two conclusions:
a. that no matter how much direct experience a person has had, it is almost impossible to be taken seriously by editors and dialecticians in general;
b. most unfortunately, but quite true, such rejections today open the doors to the young who will believe anybody on almost any subject if he is so rejected and ignored as the writer and what I generically call “the ugly Americans.” I do not believe any problems have been solved, are being solved by dialectics of any kind. I am even adamantly stubborn on this point, realizing that I, too, may be over the barrel.
Part of the new age psychology is that the young are attracted both to eye-witness participants in world events, and to those also who have been ignored by what they call the establishment.
I am seeking neither help nor recognition, but feel that someday like Benjamin Disraeli and others, many others, like me who belong not to “the silent majority” but to the silenced. I do not believe we can have a society half-dialectic, half free. The natural sciences have opened the door to liberty in the universities. There is hope. When the rest of us place facts over opinions, there will also be hope.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
P.S. Being ignored, rejected etc. does not prevent one from respecting honest opinions and objective report from anybody, including “The Saturday Review.” I believe wars and misunderstandings will continue until the humanity is accepted and respected—not the thoughts of humanity in or the thoughts about humanity, but the humanity itself.
March 25, 1970
Manas Publishing Co.
Box 32112, El Sereno Station
Los Angeles, 32, Calif.
Dear Sirs:
You have been very kind in sending copies of Manas here. I must confess I do not understand what you are striving for:
1. You say religion without dogma—I do not see any religion at all.
2. Science without materialism—I do not find any science, and I do not know what is meant by materialism.
3. I do not know what is meant by “Integrity in human relations” at all. The term is simply incomprehensible to me. I am about ready to leave for a conference of all the religions of the world. They are at least meeting together. They are at least listening to one another, which of itself is to me a grand achievement. They are not imposing; they are mingling. Consciously or unconsciously practicing brotherhood, not preaching it. I think this is marvelous, but it isn’t news. This sort of thing is seldom news.
When I have attended the sessions of the AAAS of the top scientists of the country and perhaps of the world, I found great eagerness not to express, but to listen to others who are expressing. I think this is marvelous; I think this is ideal. I cannot accept any criticism, valid or invalid, to this type of behavior.
Our own work it here is now receiving public attention, but I have no time any longer to write articles that are going to be rejected. If editors have other ideas and ideals that is fine; that is all right. I have no intention of trying to change the views of others, but neither have I any intention to contribute financial]y for their efforts, or to embark on anymore one-way-street undertakings.
God bless you,
Samuel L. Lewis
Chronicle Features Syndicate
March 25, 1970
Mr. Samuel L. Lewis
410 Precita Avenue
San Francisco, Ca. 94110
Dear Mr. Lewis:
Not mingling with the young? Sir, I have one fifteen year old daughter, one twelve year old son and one ten year old daughter. We mingle. The children have friends. I do not hide from them. Some days I mingle like crazy.
When you contemplate the blessings of letting a little child lead them, recall the Children’s Crusade. As to the Kingdom being in and with the young, where do you get the idea that it is only there? In the Gospel you cite, Jesus keeps quoting oldsters such as Moses, Elijah etc.
Indeed, “You can’t have it both ways”: man is not both a soul and not a soul. Tell me something new.
Granted, some of the young are very honest. You have clouted a straw man, a poor effigy of sweet me. However, I cannot be unimpressed by a man who claimed to “leave off in mid air.” Jesus walked on water, and He got transfigured, but he matched your performance only once—when he allegedly disappeared in the temple.
Seriously, I am sure that your intentions are good.
Regards,
Lester Kinsolving
April 29, 1970
To the editors of Holiday
641 Lexington Ave.
New York, N.Y. 10022
Dear Sirs:
It is very difficult to read “How much do you really know about the Taj Mahal?” and not react. This country, the United States of America, is now going through a cultural revolution. It is a real revolution, not only totally effective, but so far almost totally ignored by the channels of communication, by what Lord Snow calls the “literary-humanists.” This revolution consists in the gradual replacement of European “experts” on Asia by Americans who have lived in Asia and by Asians themselves. But many of these Americans have also lived in Asia, often educated there, and in other cases they have submitted to disciplines in Asian philosophies, real spiritual philosophies and not just the superficial gymnastics popularly known as “Yoga.”
Sooner or later both this article and a copy of this letter will find their way into the hands of Prof. Huston Smith of M.I.T. He is an American accepted by Asians and gradually becoming accepted by Americans themselves. He is not a German or Englishman or European prowessed but “only in America.” In the meanwhile one has the temerity to disagree with the high caste men, the author and Mr. Mukerji.
Even England has produced men like Stanley Lane-Poole and much later Major Yeats-Brown, who know better, but who are seldom quoted by the “experts” who misinform us and keep us misinformed.
Well I have lived in Agra. I have seen the Taj by moonlight, by dawn, by sunset, and at noon, to say the least. Not only that, I have visited the workshop where the artisans were trained before they came to Agra. Worse than that, I happen to be a member of Sufi orders, including the one in which Shah Jahan himself was initiated. Neither Mr. Menon nor Mr. Mukerji dare relate the hard hard fact that Emperor Akbar, his son Emperor Jahangir and Shah Jahan himself exempted the Hindus from the jizya. It was Aurungzeb the son of Shah Jahan who restored this deplorable burden on the peasants.
Mr. Mukerji is downright dishonest and this sort of dishonesty impairs both knowledge and good will. Shah Jahan was not a foreign conqueror. He was born in geographical India. This part of the world was never united in all history until the time of the late Mahatma Gandhi under any Hindu who was not a Buddhist. It was only the wonderful Asoka and after him the wonderful Akbar, who united its peoples. Even the somewhat biased Cambridge History of India has been more objective than either Mr. Menon or Mr. Mukerji whom you have foisted on your readers.
One is not surprised of Chandra Mukerji’s attitude toward beauty. Nearly all the great aesthetic and architectural monuments of India (a few in the south excepted) were Buddhist until the 11th century, and Islamic after that.
I am glad that Aubrey Menon states that “Mogul Emperor Jahan … ruled the greater part of India.” There are quite a few Indian movements of the day somewhat chauvinistic, and with good reason, who nonetheless ignore the whole Mogul period. This matter has been taken up locally with the students at the University and even many strongly anti-Islamic Hindus do admit history and facts, hard facts.
To begin with the statement, “The Moguls were originally robber barons who had lived and plundered in the area we now call Afghanistan and Pakistan.” To begin with the very word “Mogul” is a linguistic modification of the word “Mongol.” The Emperor Babur, who established this dynasty in India was descended on his father’s side from the tyrant Tamerlane or Timur; and on his mother’s side from Genghis Khan. He thus had a legitimate dynastic claim. He was nothing like the Hohenzollerns who began as robber barons.
Yes, in India the conquerors were Muslims, the conquered were Hindus. But northern India and Delhi had long been occupied by Muslims before the advent of Babur. There are too many records including the Kutub Minr just outside Delhi.
The Islamic invasions were successful because of the damnable caste system which was in operation in India, which crushed and mistreated the peasants, and so deprived the exceedingly despotic Rajas of the support of the lower classes. True, the Muslim invaders were not always deliverers of the exploited masses but they certainly did not start any such social oligarchies. Can either Mr. Menon or Mr. Mukerji offer the name of a single person other than a few earlier Buddhists who did not keep the masses utterly downtrodden?
On page 70 it is said that in order to keep this system working smoothly, a number of Abyssinians and Negroes were imported to form a constabulary. Wherefrom this damnable utterly false fiction? Sure, the Muslims brought in a constabulary; sure they exploited the masses. Sure they were not always more lovable than the Indian Maharajas, but we should have a few facts occasionally. The constabulary consisted for the most part of turbulent Turks and Afghans. They were not always angelic; even one can say never, but they did not come from Africa, far from it.
Mr. Menon says, “Not a rupee was spent in what we would nowadays call social services.” It is this kind of absolute falsehood which has promoted the stirring up of Asian peoples from one end to the other against Western imperialists. I admit that the Hindu Maharajas may not have spent any money. They were exempt. The Dharmashastras are absolute class documents. But Islam includes the institution of zakat, though perhaps the beneficiaries were mostly Muslims. I was not there when Emperor Akbar distributed zakat. He certainly did.
One cannot compel Mr. Menon or any Mukerji to read the Ain-i-Akbar or the Akbar Nama. They are just as available for perusal as the Dharmashastras. It is so easy to take advantage of real or presumed ignorance.
I have just returned from Geneva where the religions of the whole world held a conference. They were represented by their own leaders and certainly not by some carefully brainwashed ersatz “experts.” The convocation was called by the Mayor of Geneva who immediately paid tribute to Emperor Akbar. This man who stood staunchly against every form of bigotry, has himself become the butt of all bigots, including Mr. Menon and Mr. Mukerji.
Neither the virtues nor the foibles of Akbar or Jahangir are directly responsible for the construction of Taj. I am glad that Mr. Menon says Shah Jahan “was famed as an enlightened patron of the arts.” Can he say the same about any of the Indian Maharajas whom he seems to exempt from tyranny and exploitation?
On page 72 we have the contradiction by Mr. Menon himself. On page 70 it was “not a rupee was spent on what we would nowadays call social services.” And on page 72 it says he opened a few soup kitchens and gave a sum equivalent to $30,000 toward famine relief….” Which Mr. Menon is correct?
While Mumtaz Begum was alive Shah Jahan remained a devoted husband. After that … he became a Justinian. But what about the Maharajas who controlled all of India not in the hands of the Moguls or other Muslims? And what have they to offer in counterbalance to their exploitations and tyranny?
There are of course other factors, plus and minus. These would take us far afield no doubt. What we need are unbiased examinations. True, I feel under the influence of Stanley Lane-Poole early in life and of Flora Annie Steele later on, and later became a member of some of the Dervish Orders, which has not stopped me from having Hindus as my very best friends in this world.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti
410 Precita Ave.,
San Francisco, Calif. 94110
May 22, 1970
Cambridge University Press,
510 North Ave.,
New Rochelle, N. Y. 10801
Dear Sirs:
You will find check for nine dollars ($9.50) fifty cents to cover invoice J 21820 for Volume 6, Journal of Religious Studies.
This was not paid sooner as one was out of the country. This was chiefly to attend a conference of the leaders of the real religions of this world help under the auspices of The Temple of Understanding. This group is interested in privatizing, so to speak, “My House shall be a House of Prayer for all peoples.” The impetus came from a woman, a housewife, and she seems to be having the same influence on the religions as an “uncredentialed” Darwin has had on Biology and an “uncredentialed” Faraday on Physics. Whatever be our tendencies there is no doubt to me that God selects from His Bethlehem-Ephratas just whom He will choose and not necessarily certain classes, let us say, of intellectuals.
It was noteworthy when the leaders faced each other it was not necessary to sermonize of moralize them. They proved their superiorities by their behavior. True, some representatives of minor faiths made stirring appeals for “love” and “compassion” but most of us were more impressed by the loving and compassionate behaviors of the vast majority than by rhetoric.
It was a great break in the life of one who has been, so to speak, “scorned and rejected of men.” That is all right in closed quarters, but when we are “face to face” we have to prove by more than verbalisms and arguments. My secretary and I were probably the only ones present who could easily communicate with all the delegates—two-way communication, too, and not just lesser ones listening to greater ones.
I remember some years ago attending a conference in the general field covered by the Journal of Religious Studies. The speakers and panel got into a fierce and apparently unsolvable dispute. After it was over I presented what I thought were facts. They all said, “Why, you have the answer. Why didn’t you speak; you have the answer.” But what followed is characteristic of the “Judeo-Christian ethic,” which has happened so many times over:
I wrote up what they called the “solution.” It was not only not published, they never answered a single letter after that! And this has been so characteristic of so much of one’s life it was marvelous to find the real leaders were real people and did not behave that way at all.
I cannot demand my point of view from others. Studying Botany and Horticulture, each Tree has become a living reality. Studying Soil Science, each specimen has become a wonder. And studying religion, “God” and “University” and the “Ineffable” have become realities of which one can become conscious, just as conscious of as the Trees and Soil.
I shall not try to prove this in a letter. It is being proved in the daily life. Every week more and more young people came to my meetings or send for me. The young want the living God and Living Religion and not theologies and dialectics and subjectivisms.
When someone comes to me and says, “Problems of Suffering in Religions of the World,” do not know what is meant. What Christ said, what Buddha said, what Mohammed presented—that is one set of words, ideals and values. What the separative religions practice is something else. You do not see the religions preventing any of the great evils of the day. A “good Buddhist” who is Secretary-General of the UN offers pious words and empty pleas. A “good Christian” who is President of the United States is remarkably unconcerned with the shooting of young people in his own country or the genocide of Buddhists anywhere.
Having met intimately the actual leaders—some of whom I have known for a long time I am not concerned with the views of Mr. Bowker or anybody. I am concerned with the pragmatic application of the purposed teachings.
It was only after threatening open exposure that a Rabbi was willing to grant an interview regarding efforts to bring peace among the living peoples of the Near East. Fortunately we were able to reach a harmony on a higher dimension than the universal dialectical, analytical fault-finding of others.
The same is even more true of the Protestant leaders. Yes, at the conferences all presented their theories. But now we have to do more and the young are going to see to that. The young are doing concerning suffering and they are demanding that religious leaders do and the religious leader are sometimes complying today. This is a wonder. I wish you would take more attention to wonders.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
910 Railroad Ave.
Novato, Calif. 94947
July 10, 1970
Mr. L. P. Elwell-Sutton
New York Times Book Review
New York Times, NY
Beloved One of God:
It is not often that a mystic is given an opportunity in this country to write on mysticism. We have read your review on recent books, more or less related to Sufi mysticism, and can understand a kind of quandary. But the bald and simple fact is that Sufism has been excluded from our culture despite the fact that it has considerably over 40,000,000 living adherents.
For instance, a number of years back I was openly derided in public and shamed because I declared that there were living Sufis. The man who was most. responsible for this was a European, then highly regarded in our culture as an exponent of Asian wisdoms—he had never been in Asia but was a friend of the Emperor of Morocco, and this was regarded as sufficient qualification. A few days later I was suddenly hailed by a group of Indonesians who welcomed me as a fellow in tarikat, i.e. the Sufi path.
These two relations have persisted, extreme affability and cordiality from and with Indonesians and extreme contempt from European exponents of Asian cultures. (Their leader is Dr. Arthur Arberry, an Englishman, who is highly regarded in many of our cultural circles but disdained by the Royal Asiatic Society, etc.) In the course of years one has been accepted as a disciple in a very large number of Sufi Orders. But when one attempted to give a talk on the late President Zukair Hussein of India who was a member of several of the same Sufi Orders as the writer, one was also treated with contempt by the intellectual authorities on Asian mysticism.
Once an Englishman tried to ascertain the number of Sufi disciples in Sudan and came up with a larger number than there were inhabitants of Sudan; then he found that many persons belong to more than one Sufi Order (tarik).
Unfortunately in the West there are a number of legal organizations and also successful writers who present themselves—all in competition with the others—as being leaders in Sufism. The basic teaching as laid down by the eminent Persian divine, Imam Ghazzali, was that Sufism is based on experiences and not on premises. But all intellectuals disregard this and try to build it either on premises or personalities; to build on personality a mystical teaching which declares that nothing exists but God (Allah)!
We in the United States have blindly accepted certain English and European writers as spokesmen for a mysticism of which they have had no experience. In the meanwhile a German, Dr. Titus Burkhart, went to Asia, studied with Asians, and came back with the thesis that no one could understand mysticism without having valid experiences and a qualified teacher. He has since become allied with one Dr. Frithof Schuon, who is an advanced mystic, with the celebrated Marco Pallis and others. They publish a magazine, “Studies in Comparative Religion,” which is published at Bates Manor, Bedfont, Sussex.
This same group is closely allied with Professor Seyyed Hossein Nasr of the University of Tehran, who has been vouched for by Harvard university and the Harvard University Press.
One has found by direct experience that there are millions of members of Sufi Orders in Pakistan, India, Indonesia and Sudan—to begin with….
In 1896 a book was published by the Royal Asiatic Society writer one H.A. Rose: Glossary of the Tribes and Castes of the Punjab and North West Frontier Province. In 1956 covering much of the same territory one found almost exactly the same conditions as Rose did at an earlier time that the country was largely inhabited by members of Sufi Orders. In fact I once spoke to 20,000 members of a single Sufi Order in Lahore, West Pakistan.
Sooner or later my own memoirs will become public, tearing the veil from a lot of nonsense which passes as Asian culture. Inasmuch as the Sufis do not have votes in the United States or bank accounts—they have in some countries—and inasmuch as Sufis are associated with Islam, and Islam is an Arabic culture, even our finest so-called East-West centers see to it that true Sufism is not presented to the public.
Therefore we are going around to the young people who intuitively accept the existence of God and the teachings of Jesus Christ, “God is love” and “Love ye one another,” and sooner or later the underground press is going to give solid facts which are going to be accepted by humanity because they are accepted by truth from both the subjective and objective points of view. Sufis are not supposed to argue but we can wait on in patience until the world becomes more curious and then we will not be barred from platforms and colloquiums.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
August 6, 1970
Editors, “Portal”,
Post Office Box 15068,
San Diego, Calif. 92115
Dear Sirs:
This is an unfair and biased letter and may so be received. There is complete verbal agreement but there is not always the same definition to the words. And there is now a manifestation in my life that there is either a God of Mercy and Justice, or of Emerson’s “Law of Compensation,” or even of the “truth” of Indian Cosmic Metaphysics, only we know so much better than the “ancients” it is not even necessary to discuss that.
I have always declared that the greatest two achievements of my life were the invitation (and I was—fact totally unimportant, of course, wrong person) to be guest of honor at the Imperial Palace Grounds in Japan; and the free dinner received from the Armenians. But I must add to that the thirty-three rejections of the paper on “Vietnamese Buddhism.” After all we and the communists are totally in agreement in efforts to eradicate Vietnamese Buddhism although there were actually more Vietnamese Buddhists than Jews of all types when we began interferences by force. This does not mean that the Jews are defective in anything but quantitative statistics. But we with our verbal-verbal-verbal “Peace with Justice” simply cannot see the points of view of the exotics, especially Gooks.
On the other hand I am in such substantial agreement with Professor, Dr. Archie Baum, that I do not feel comfortable in even the most indirect criticism which may disturb him.
I have before me the article on “Psychic Transformation” by Ralph G. Warren but for this purpose any article would do. He follows the late Dr. Dewey in using or misusing pronouns in such away there seems to be “logic” but the pronouns have a totally different context every time they are applied.
Now I will say this—that the person has been validated by the actual spiritual leaders of all Asian faiths—whom I can name and give facts and referents—as a “master” but I have no intention to try to convince any older people whatsoever. At this writing not only the young are coming to me in ever greater numbers but now university professors. And I am overwhelmed with invitations.
At this writing I am also being close to being overwhelmed with the greatest of American virtues: $$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$$. But how the devil I can share it with any of those who rejected, “Vietnamese Buddhist” is a little beyond my comprehension.
I am totally prejudiced any that fearful, diabolic, satanic “peace with justice” which any Hitler or Tamerlane would accept. Or the modern version, “peace with justice (and genocide).”
We are spending billions to stop something we call “communism” and have cultural exchange with the Russians. We have no cultural exchange with any Asians. We tried the “Peace Corps,” perfect American one-way traffic. We have a lot of “world” and “cosmic” and “international” and “integrative” movements and over 90% of the directions are British, Americans or Englishmen!
I have been to Geneva to meet the real leaders of the real religions of the real world. My secretary and I were warmly a greeted by the only Negro and the only Chinese there—nobody else received such welcomes. But it did not take two hours to win the warm embrace of the son of the head of the wealthy Birla family of India. Indians believe I know Indian philosophies; most Americans and Europeans differ; the Japanese and Chinese believe I know their teachings; most Americans and Europeans differ. And as for the Arabs! The Arabs have given us more literature than almost any other Nation, but we don’t want to offend the Zionists so Islam is not represented at our international and inter-religions gatherings.
This is all over. The simple fact of rejections, usually a priori, on Arab culture and Vietnamese Buddhism, is making the writer a hero. And on top of that a very wealthy publisher, looking for real mystics, those who have had mystical experiences, who have had the actual transformations of satori, samadhi, tauhid, etc. wants everything some of us may have.
In addition to that some of your people were involved in the efforts of Dr. Sitko, an attempt of “nice” people to establish a private Shangri-La. It went the way of Dr. Roerich and this will continue. But the young are building their own Shangri-Las and both succeeding and prospering.
I don’t accept Jung as a sage at all. He stole the word, the word, the word Alchemy and subjectivized it beyond conception. Alchemy means “Egyptian wisdom” and not all our heroes can change that. It has to do with transformations, not symbols; actualities and these are going on. But you can’t differ from certain certains, and especially in a democracy you mustn’t.
Love is the highest aspect of alchemical transformations.
This Love is being applied to and for the young and they are responding. But I think every university professor who has attended any of my meetings has been impressed; sometimes more than impressed. The day is over when anybody can speak or write on mysticism but the mystics themselves.
Love does not mean compliance with every remark or idea of others. I am not a sociologist and do not try to go into their operations. I am not a psychiatrist. I am not an economist. I am not asking for free speech for realized mystics. But now the doors are opening beyond my endeavors. We are growing, we are moving. And not all the negative professors of the “important” European and English Professors of “Oriental Philosophy” can stop.
We have met the top Orientalists in England. We were warmly welcomed at the Royal Asiatic Society. And best of all by Dr. Marco Pallis—we can name lots of persons.
Our work today includes:
a. Spiritual and mantric dancing. (One is the god-son of the late Ruth St. Denis.)
b. The existence and functioning of the three-body constitution, but emphasis on the presentations of St. Paul in the “Gospel to the Corinthians.”
c. The complete presentation of the Sufism of the valid Sufi Orders with all aspects of occultism, mysticism and esotericism.
d. Peace in the Near East by getting common people to mingle with each other. One has accomplished such atrocious, impossibilities as having Muslims repeat the Shema and Jews the Islamic Kalama….
One won’t go further. We have no more time for rejections. We have no more time for verbal “brotherhood of man” which excludes, with US (any particular US) on top.
This is not a nice letter. Have our own break through. The integration which integrates; the “world” movement which includes and does not censor or hide actual history and actual facts; the humanity which overlooks nobody— these I believe will succeed. I am very nasty here, even inconsistent but I am one of the few Americans who has been validated as a Zen Master, by Japanese, Koreans, Vietnamese and Chinese—most certainly not by “experts.”
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
September 2, 1970
Saturday Review,
380 Madison Ave.
New York, New York 10017
Dear Sirs:
While I believe The Saturday Review is one of the finest of American publications, I am seriously considering whether it is worth my continuing the subscription. I used to go around saying that the greatest achievements in my life were being the guest of honor at the Imperial Grounds in Tokyo and having a free dinner from Armenians. I later added to this the 33 rejections of my paper on Vietnamese Buddhism. Liberals and conservatives, hawks and doves are not interested in what Asians think. Indeed they are often united in programs for correcting what they think or do not think. Anyhow I am enclosing copy of a letter to a local editor.
I am all for Lord Snow. Every letter ever written to scientists on pollution problems has been answered. We are in entire agreement. And I was amazed to find my chemistry teachers think I’m one of the most qualified in this field. This only proves Lord Snow.
A squabble or an invasion of the Berkeley campus meant world news. I was an eye witness which at once discredits me. But the hard fact that a professor of the University of California found a way to obtain food from leaves. But that just ain’t news! And it is a very small item in the discoveries and achievements of the professors on the Berkeley campus. Which in turn is a small item in the total discoveries on all of the campuses in California which in turn is a small item compared to all the wonders coming out of the American universities in general.
The Russian efforts to build Assouan is news. It may not be history, but it is news. What the Americans and Germans have done to help solve the water problems in Egypt may be history, but it is not news. The liberation of womankind by Prime Minister Nasser may be history but it is not news. The discovery of a formula for the maximal production of proteins in grains in Egypt may be history but it certainly has not been news. Nor was it any different from a similar discovery by the Rockefeller in another part of the world nor a Texas farmer in still another part of the world.
The hard fact that the Japanese and the Indonesians know the food values of all the “so-called weeds” is not news. The discovery of all kinds of proteins by the scientists of Egypt is not news.
The press howls about the need for sex education. Which does not disturb the young very much, but nothing about food problems which do interest them.
Regarding “Danger of Cancer in Food.” I am sorry I was trained in logic and philosophy by one Cassius Keyser of Columbia who wrote The Human Worth of Rigorous Thinking. This has made it impossible to accept current emotional trends. Although a non-smoker I am not in the least convinced that bad food habits are not far more to blame than anything from nicotine. Once the late Nicholas Roerich discovered peoples in Asia who did not suffer from cancer, and he tried to establish a research center in that part of the world. But cancer research pays. If you solve the problem, it no longer pays. So!
Some medical doctors may conclude, have concluded, that there are mental and emotional factors in cancer. Some people have found no cancer in parts of the world where there are heavy smokers who have the “right diet.”
Now I am too busy with my associates accomplishing the impossible bringing Jews and Christians and Muslims and Palestinians and Israelis together. In fact I have very little time to read at all. As said before I think you have one of the best publications in the country, but you are still “realists,” accepting the opinions of important people as against the direct witnessing and participation of unknown persons.
It is probable you are among those who advocate “peace with justice.” In the legal profession justice depends upon the testimony of eye witnesses. In other aspects of life, there are other policies. I am not asking nothing from you to be reconciled from my cancellation of my subscription.
Sincerely,
Samuel L. Lewis
Sept. 19, 1970
Mr. John A. Victor, Publisher
San Francisco Magazine
120 Green St. 94111
Dear Mr. Victor:
I am very much interested in anything connected with San Francisco, but I am going to leave it to you whether I should spend any money for your publication or any other. I am the last of a four-generation family, although I have relatives in South San Francisco. I was born in this city and still remember quite well the streetcar system from before the fire. Louie Lurie was my first employer although he has probably forgotten me, and it doesn’t matter.
One prominent group of San Franciscans once asked me to send them $10 so I could meet famous people. I wrote them, “Why should you expect a person who has been a guest of honor at the Imperial Palace grounds in Japan and Thailand and had Presidential teas in Pakistan and India to send you any money?” They, the “important” people felt insulted and would have nothing to do with me since then.
I once wrote a letter asking whether I was slipping or not slipping, for it took me six days in Japan to be a guest of the government, and they sent a Rolls Royce, and five days in Egypt, and they sent me a Buick. The most important event, to me, in Egypt was the hours spent with a men who listened to me. No prominent San Franciscans listened to me, nor am I ever invited to speak, but one UN official in Egypt gave me hours and said I had the best plan be had ever heard of for the Near East. His name was Gunnar Jarring. San Franciscans simply won’t believe it, but now we are putting on, right in this city, joint Israeli-Christian-Arab dinners, which can’t be news, because we who are doing it are not the “right” people. Or are we?
Like most San Franciscans and most publishers you know all about Aswan Dam. I lived in Egypt and do not know about Aswan Dam. I lived in Pakistan and know all about Mangla Dam, a very successful operative engineering construction, built by a firm whose name appears in the San Francisco telephone book.
And as for Egypt, I have seen the most marvelous engineering constructions by men from the University of California—not news of course—we don’t do things that way. Or can we?
Right now we are sending a team which is taking pictures and sound of holy places. Fortunately this is of some interest to the American Society for Eastern Arts, whose headquarters are also in San Francisco.
My secretary and I—unknowns—went to a top-level peace conference in Geneva this year. We were recognized by all the leaders of all the real religions of the real world, and thank God, we are getting cooperation from them. This was not news darling, but someone suggested inviting a Communist next year.
I love my San Francisco. I know its restaurants; its parks, its educational institutions, etc., etc., etc. I am also in favor of one-way streets, but have had enough of one-way streets in the non-material spheres. And am hoping to save my money for a peace scholarship at the University of California in Berkeley.
I have lived in cities which have solved the problems of pollution but know enough not to mention it publicly here. I have lived in cities which have solved the housing problem, but know enough not to mention it here. No, I have never been to a Communist land and do not agree with their “realism,” so called, anymore than with our so-called “realism.” I am a lover of facts and realities.
I leave it to you whether I should subscribe.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Sept. 25, 1970
Peter Rowley
335 E. 51st St.
New York City
Dear Peter Beloved One of God,
I am replying immediately to your letter because of your deadline and for other reasons which I will shortly go into.
I’ll just take up point by point places where clarification might be made or where errors either typographical or otherwise took place.
The “commune” in Sam Francisco where Pir Vilayat was staying is the office and residence of Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti) . I am his secretary and disciple. He has over 100 disciples in the Bay Area and many more attend his numerous classes every week. He is 74 years old and one of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s original disciples. (Hazrat Inayat Khan is the father of Pir Vilayat and the founder of the Sufi Order in the Western world, as per his commission from the traditional Dervish Orders in the East, principally the Chisti Order which has its headquarters in Ajmer, India. He was told by His Pir-o-Murshid that he and his students “would united East and West through the power of music”. The Chistias traditionally use ecstatic singing as a means of spiritual development. Pir Vilayat is his father’s successor as head of the Sufi Order in the West.) Murshid Samuel L. Lewis is cooperating in every possible way with Pir Vilayat. Each treat the other’s disciples as their own. Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) is teaching chiefly through his creations—Dervish and Mantric Dances. You mention those later in the article. Those dances involve many different sorts of movements of groups together, usually in a circle, and always involve the saying of one of the Names of God. (I would appreciate very much if you could get this information into your story.)
Perhaps you intended to say “Melvin Meyer, a young disciple of his … etc.” The change of name to Wali Ali was done by my Murshid in keeping with traditional practice of many esoteric societies.
The quote “They (i.e. Sufi mystics) don’t believe … etc., was actually made by this person, if that’s important.
The man whose name you have as Steve Gaskell is actually Steve Gaskin.
The “Family Dog” is a San Francisco Dance hall somewhat like the Fillmore West, only it is being run as a “commune.” Definitely not a night club.
(This Wednesday past, the 23rd, Murshid S.A.M. and Yogi Bhajan had a joint equinox celebration in Golden Gate Park. We had some 1000 young people there. Murshid taught his spiritual dances. The Yogi gave breathing practices to those interested. Much love.)
The youth camp in Paradise was quite successful. About 125 people. Everything spoken of in the camp brochures was realized, and even more.
Thus ends the point by point thing. Murshid left this morning for New York city. He will be speaking at 7:30 Monday the 28th at the Philosophical Research Center on 72nd St. Be also maybe speaking there, or certainly elsewhere the 29th and 30th. He will be staying at 27 West 71st St., telephone (212) 787-7576. Pir Vilayat will be speaking, I understand, at the same Philosophical Research Center, the next Monday after Murshid—the 5th.
Thank you for sending your transcript. Trust this letter has been helpful. love and blessings,
Wali Ali
October 3, 1970
Mr. Francis Brabazon
c/o Garuda Books
PO Box 6,
Woombye, Qeensland
Beloved One of God:
The book, Stay with God was purchased for perhaps an unusual reason: to study the literary from and to evaluate it, especially in the day and age when poetry (to the writer) has lost its direction. However, one does not understand the title at all because one had to wait 15 minutes to purchase the book while two of the attendants were fighting each other, and their anger rubbed off on this total stranger. One does not demand the acceptance of Saint Paul: “Show kindness unto strangers for many have thereby entertained angels unaware.” Anyhow this makes it very difficult to understand the philosophy of your creative effort.
On Page 112 there is a reference to Ezra Pound and, in some respects, one finds you a sort of Poundian without involving the languages. This is questionable because so many of your referents are form other languages.
From the standpoint of aesthetics this is a most interesting work and might stand on its own merits. But from the standpoint of communication it is rather bewildering. Jesus Christ has said: “Unless ye be as little children yours is not the kingdom of heaven.” One does not see how this book can appeal to children at all. Perhaps Jesus has been wrongly interpreted.
Or again, Jesus has said: “A new commandment I give unto you: that ye love one another.” Perhaps we have passed that. Perhaps we have evolved into an age when it is only necessary to love God whether in the form of man or otherwise. Here one dissents, but one believes everyone has a full right to his point of view, and one dare not judge the value of your work by personality agreement. But one suspects that you do judge the value of work by personality agreement, so we seem to differ. It the writer is wrong and you do not judge by personality but see beyond a deep apology is needed and is offered right here!
One certainly does not urge any acceptance from a point of view which sees God in everything and everybody by which is meant everything and everybody, by which is meant everything and everybody. This point may not be clear. The scientists are certainly ahead of others because the ultra microscope reveals that everything is made of light, generally with color. Let it go at that. With apology for this bad typewriter.
Love is love, and can be absolute, one believes. A confined, a restricted love is not absolute. Nor can love, true love be traded. Spiritual teachers may be judged by their disciples, what the disciples are. When the disciples emanate love, they exonerate the Teacher. If they exude anything else, the Teacher is dethroned.
Love and blessings,
Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti
Samuel L. Lewis
c/o L. Less
27 W. 71 Street
New York, New York 10023
October 4, 1970
Justine Glass
c/o G.P. Putnam’s-Berkley Publishing Corp.
200 Madison Avenue
New York, New York 10016
In Re. They Foresaw the Future
Dear Miss Glass:
This book was ready without any skepticism whatsoever, but with extreme uncertainty as to its purport. For an example, I am a scientist, and all scientists admit it, and most non-scientists do not admit it. A good scientist is often able to predict, and sometimes the mark of efficiency is based on the ability to predict. So, there are types of people who can see the future within certain concepts.
I am also something other than a scientist, or I wouldn’t be writing. I definitely foresaw World War II long before it happened. My home and all my manuscripts were burned in 1949, excepting my poetry. There are a lot of predictions in my poetry. Once one editor accepted one such poem—one. In more recent years, my poetry was read by serious persons. They reacted most favorably, opening doors. Not one of those persons who reacted favorably is even of the type mentioned in your book. For example, once I went to a meeting where two important persons were discussing reincarnation. It came to a word-throwing contest, and finally both of the speakers who had never previously ever permitted me to address their respective audiences, asked for my view. I arose and said: “I am quite incapable to speak on this subject, as I remember some of my former lives, and in particular my last one.” The meeting was immediately adjourned, and this has been standard practice, and I repeat, this is standard practice among the so-called metaphysical, psychic, and so-called occult groups. It is: they want personalities, not facts.
The astrologer Gavin Arthur in San Francisco and I discussed the impending death of the late John F. Kennedy many times. These discussions were on public record outside the so-called occult and esoteric groups. The public accepted; the “seers” did not. I have the very wonderful record of 100% rejection by Eileen Garrett, Professor Rhine, and the followers of Edgar Cayce, although I am on good terms with them personally.
I must call to your attention that a number of famous “seers” predicted the destruction of California where my homes are. The only ones who really accepted my predictions were top G-2 Intelligence officials of the U.S. Army. One of them is still alive and living near Washington, D,C., and I expect to see him shortly.
It is remarkable that in Asia, even groups whom we know do not accept reincarnation and occultism, heralded this person because of his accomplishments in former lives, Amen.
Most interesting to me was the absolute rejection by all the “good” psychic researchers and so-called mental telepathists of my reports of my good friend, Khalandar Ali Mustana of Rawalpindi, Pakistan. But I could add a lot of others, and I mean that, just that.
Someday, no doubt, my poetry will be published. I cannot yet afford to do this myself, and all the “good” people have rejected it, you name them.
I may be the first person in the history of the world, although this does not matter, who has been validated as a Zen teacher and Sufi teacher. This year a number of the real leaders of real religions saw that there are some people who have faculties mentioned verbally by so-called occultists, but never faced by them. I am not now in the prediction business, although I agree entirely with my guru, the late Swami Ramdas of South India, that there will be no third World War.
I myself knew by 1910 that World War I was coming; in 1936 I knew World War II was coining, but I already knew what was going to happen. This meant to be shunned, lambasted, and socially exiled, although everything forced me in exactly that way. I understand Sir Winston Churchill had exactly the same foreboding. In the real sciences, the foresight of the different persons would be equal; in so- called “esoterics”—not on your life. It depends on the person who saw, not what is seen.
But we have a New Age, an age of honesty, an age of impersonality, an age in which multitudes of young people already have their third eyes open while their seniors by age and inferiors in spiritual development write endless books.
As no psychic research organization or occultist, etc. ever answers my mail, I have become quite indifferent. Indeed, the young people think I am a hero because of this. But some day we are going to have honest occult and psychic research as we have honest research in the natural sciences—and remember, I have been a laboratory flunkie.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis
Mr. Perry Young
c/o The New York Post
New York, New York
November 1, 1970
Dear Mr. Young:
This is in appreciation of your article on “The Mideast; a Reporter’s Notebook” which appeared in Saturday’s paper. It is in appreciation of a man who once happened to be a traveling companion of Dr. Jarring. Dr. Jarring gave him four hours’ attention and said his plan for the Near East was the best he had ever heard, period. Period. In other words, the boot from all the important persons and organizations contacted, it just couldn’t be until recently. But there is a very hopeful anti-climax. The world is not entirely made up of subjectivists and dialecticians and so-called “realists.’
Yesterday for the first time a gentleman of the press gave me an interview. I said I had three things to be proud of in life: a) A free meal from the Armenians; b) Being a guest of honor at the Imperial Gardens in Japan where Vice Presidents have not been particularly welcome; c) Thirty-three rejection of my paper on Vietnamese Buddhism. You name them; they rejected it. Then I ran into an old friend of mine for whom I did some research when he was a G-2 official during World War II, viz. retired Lieutenant General Edward Lansdale, my war hero. He said he was going to devote himself to trying to clarify the complexes of Southeast Asia (the fact I have lived there counts against me rather than for me).
It happened, for private reasons, that the income of this comparatively poor man began rising, and be decided to devote himself to working for what used to be called peace in the old days before he embarked upon imperialism. This had a rather Hollywoodian sequel. I got into a class at the University of California, a seminar on Southeast Asia. Practically everybody in the class, including the professors had lived in Southeast Asia. Not one person in the class ever had a single article accepted by the press! My paper on Buddhism was accepted.
Then I turned to the Near East. It was not easy; however, when Dr. Jarring’s name became public it was time to do something. Not write articles to be rejected by the literati but to do something. It seems this year my secretary and I went to a peace conference in Geneva. Utterly unknown, we were accepted by all of different delegations of many nations, outlooks, and religions. At first the declaration that I was an incarnation of “Nathan the Wise” was regarded as humorous. It is not now. All the persons present, some quite important in this world, have extended utmost cooperation to myself, colleagues, and disciples.
(I use the word disciples as I am perhaps the first person in history to have been validated both as a Zen Roshi and Sufi Murshid, i.e. by Asians). But we are coming around to it.
It seems one had to listen to tales of woe by former Israelis. You must know that there are two things absolutely verboten, and I mean that: an Israeli who turns against his government and a Muslim who turns against his traditional religion. You can take your pick.
One could write endlessly about the “humanitarianism” of this type of personality, but my young friends began to do something: to put on joint Israeli-Christian-Arab dinners and functions. Why, they have even done it in Jerusalem! Of course such things aren’t news. But gradually public attention was called to their very successful endeavors, and very slowly the press and the radio-TV are giving a little publicity. Perhaps more will be available when we rise out of “realism” into reality.
Just before being given your article I was planning to write out again the plans for the Near East which so impressed Dr. Jarring. So far as I can remember, the churches, the humanists, and the so-called peace groups were unanimous in refusing interviews or giving me the floor. Amen. But once I was permitted to speak at the “narrow-minded” Jesuit University of San Francisco on “Water Problems of the Near East,” and when I completed my talk the chair had the audacity to say, “All problems have been solved; let’s sit down and eat.” You can bet your boots the chairman was a civil engineer and not a sociologist. It was right down his alley. The incident was not repeated. But that day is past.
I am not afraid of even attacking the Chamber of Commerce of the United States. Why is it so much publicity is given to the Assouan Dam? Why is it there have been no reports at large on the accomplishments of American engineers in UAR? Why is it that so few Americans know about the companionate Mangla Dam in Pakistan which is operating and helping to raise the standard of living in the end (I mean actually rot editorially)?
You are entirely right. The majority of Arabs, not only in the UAR but elsewhere, are Muslims. They are Muslims even more than they are nationalists. I personally am under the belief or illusion that the Arab peoples have given to the world far far more than all the Communists combined. I even spent weeks of research at the National Research Center in Dokki, Cairo. I have piles of objective material always welcomed by agriculturalists and engineers, Period. I am now going to have this material properly collated and put into some literary form. I have found a publisher, of course; but the success of my young friends in bringing Israelis, Arabs, Christians, and ever unbelievers together is far more astounding.
I do not feel it is necessary to repeat here facts and information of which you seem to be well aware. I know the leaders of the anti-Russians in UAR but dare not mention their names. The American foreign office has not been interested. The Russian foreign office is, of course, and you can tell what would happen then.
I considered Nasser as one of the greatest men of the century without agreeing with his international policies. I am one of those believers in scriptures which makes me, of course, a great enemy of established religions. “The earth is the Lord’s and the fullness thereof.” “My house shall he a house of prayer for all peoples.” In other winds, I find the world divided between the atheists and the anti-theists and see no value in either, although one can sometimes more readily forgive the former.
I have had the best of goodwill from former Ambassador Badeau, now at Columbia University, and others. They understand. Communication with them has been as simple as it has been impossible with the literary community until necessary. We are going to inform the world, and the young are supporting us.
I do not know who are the more ignorant, the noisy rabbis or the noisy imams. I publicly insulted a rabbi this last week, and then he apologized to me. The only imam in New York I have met is so ignorant that an insult would be an honor. Yet these are the men we listen to. We let them arouse our emotions, and in this age when “excitement” is excellent business, what else do you expect?
As I come from the West, let me assure you that all over the Western states the vast majority of young people are for peace and brotherhood. I don’t know of any paper in the country that has published the results of elections on the Berkeley campus, how the students feel there. They are far far more under the influence of Mahatma Gandhi than under the influence of Marx, Leary, Agnew, some of your ivory-towered colleagues, etc., etc. But they are also somewhat under the influence of American pragmatists and philosophers who once held forth at Columbia University and who have been buried in this age of dialectics, existentialism, and masses of subjective European nonsense and perversion.
We are going to Washington shortly, and then I will go west. But my
secretary, Miss Sitara
Tessler, can be reached at 551 Hudson Street, New York, New York 10014. Or, if
you are really interested, you might write to: Mrs. Benefsha Gest, 176 Sixth
Avenue, San Francisco, California. She is the president of our group, which has
been sponsoring Israeli-Arab-Christian dinners and affairs in that city.
At this writing there is a fair chance that either the Columbia Broadcasting Company or American Broadcasting Company may cover my return. I am teaching “Dances of Universal Peace,” being in a sense the godson and disciple of the late Ruth St-Denis of Hollywood. I led one thousand young people in a version of this just before leaving San Francisco. (The idea of peace trough the arts came to me years ago when the old Roerich Museum was functioning during the lifetime of that once celebrated but now forgotten artist.) Unlike Nicholas Roerich, I am appealing to the young and not to “les fameuses.”
Again expressing my appreciation of your article and hoping you will have more.
Faithfully,
Samuel L. Lewis