Jacob Needleman
2308 Divisadero Street
San Francisco, California 94115
June 9, 1976
Sheik Wali Ali Meyer
410 Precita
San Francisco, Ca.
Dear Wali Ali:
Thanks so much for sending the transcript of our conversation. Looking it over, I've had to cross out quite a bit. Please publish only those parts of our conversation that deal explicitly with Sam Lewis, as indicated on the enclosed.
Also, please send me an advance copy of the final manuscript containing any parts of our conversation that you may use. I will probably want to make some changes or offer some suggestions before it goes to the printer.
It was very good making contact with you again, and I wish you all the best.
With very warm regards,
Dr. Jacob Needleman: on Sam Lewis, 5/24/76
[parts Dr Needleman crossed out are in red]
WALI ALI: Do you recall when you first met Sam?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Well, let's see now, I guess it was about 7 or 8 years ago. When did he die?
WALI ALI: He died in January of '71.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Well this is '76 now; it was more than that, it must have been about 8 years ago, 3 or 4 years before he died.
WALI ALI: '67 or '68?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, that's right; he came to my class.
WALI ALI: He must have taken several classes; I recall one he brought me with him. That was the one you were doing on the New Age Religions. You were reading from your book.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh, my latest book; then it must have been around '69.
WALI ALI: And he had gone before that to some prior course that you had given at the U.C. Extension.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh that's where I first must have met him, at the U.C. Extension class. I saw him, I think he was carrying a stick. Which stick was that?
WALI ALI: It could have been his Zen stick.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, Zen stick. And he put down as his occupation: Sufi master, and Zen master�something like that, and I laughed, and really I said, "Oh, my God!" My first impression of him�and I'll be very frank about everything on this�I was just beginning to see what was happening in California, because it was just really starting around then. I occasionally would get some elderly people who came in, and they sort of were not too educated and not too bright, and they were a little nutty, and they had their own horse to ride, and they were usually very amazed to find that finally somebody in the establishment is speaking about things which they have worked on by themselves maybe for 40 or 50 years�self taught, without having had, or hoping to have, much interaction�producing a lot of�and some of them really quite interesting people, I don't mean to put them down; but some of them are quite uninteresting people.
WALI ALI: I know, I met�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: They get very subjective, they make their own discoveries and they don't check them with anything else or anyone else, and I felt that here was another one, and when he would speak in class he would make statements that the class would find funny sometimes, silly and sometimes outrageous, and I at the beginning found�well, I humored him along. And he would go on and talk and talk, and for some reason after a few times�he would come regularly to my classes�so after a few occasions when he would come and interrupt�not interrupt but raise his hand�
WALI ALI: When he would say something he would stand up�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: He would stand up, and it was so funny. He would stand up, and there was something comical, not ludicrous, but comical about it. His ways of presenting something were so theatrical; you just couldn't take him seriously from one point of view, and the class didn't know what to do with him and I didn't know what to do with him�although I found myself enjoying him very much. I liked him personally, but intellectually I was very dubious; as I said, personally I started liking him very much, and then after a few times with him I began to feel something about him, that he was just a very fine person. I just could not put him in any category�he seemed to be in that category in the beginning, but after awhile I said, "This guy has got something, he knows something, he's done something, he doesn't communicate in any ordinary way as most people do in classes, and so forth." So, I just started liking him enormously and being very interested in what he was saying. Sometimes it didn't fit into anything that we were talking about. He would just go on in some direction and make some attack that was both ferocious and mild at the same time�something like that. I mean he would come out with claws but he would never really�so I just started liking him, and being glad he came, and listening to what he said, and not knowing how to respond really. Sometimes when he would go on too long I would have to day, "Well"�I'd have to be sort of mildly curt and just get on with the class. My impression is of someone who just sort of entered my feelings which I wasn't aware of until he had done so. I got to respect him, I got to respect him very much, and looked forward to his coming and was always glad when he came, and was pleased that he was interested in what was being spoken about. So that is the answer to the first question; I have no specific memory other than that.
WALI ALI: Do you recall whether he attended�I know he attended the class at U.C. Extension, and I know he attended the class on the new religions, did he attend other classes?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, but I've forgotten which ones. I gave several classes that he came to.
WALI ALI: There were other teachers that he sort of chose; you were one of them, another was Dr. Becker Colonna. Do you know her?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I know who she is.
WALI ALI: I think he attended every course that she gave on every topic. I've been trying to get in touch with her without any success. Do you know if she is still teaching?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, I think so. She's not there at S.F. State?
WALI ALI: Well maybe we didn't find the right source.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Well call up the Dept. of Archaeology or Anthropology and asks and they'll look in their little directory.
WALI ALI: The other one was Dr. Huston Smith. Did Sam send you lots of letters?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh yeah.
WALI ALI: Usually carbons or originals?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Carbons, He sent me personally some letters, and then he sent me carbons of a lot of other letters.
WALI ALI: What was your impression of this barrage of letters? I don't know if you got a real barrage.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I got a real barrage. There was a period when I was getting two or three a day sometimes; it was just astonishing. What my impression of that? Well, it was very similar to my impression of the man.
WALI ALI: Did you end up reading them all?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh yeah, I read them; I didn't read them right away sometimes, but I always read them, because they were always worth reading.
WALI ALI: He had certain themes that he would repeat over and over, that he would never tire of.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, he'd never tire of them, but he wrote so well; it was really well written stuff, you know. It was verbose as hell, and it went on and on but it was always well written. I felt a little sorry for him because I felt that some of these letters that he was writing to some of these people they would never read or answer. They would just laugh them off.
WALI ALI: Well of course this was the history of his life; I am involved in trying to put some things together. I think it makes a very interesting history. You see, he had been interested in�to put you a little bit into why he was interested in the academic circle, because he didn't have to be interested in the academic circle; but he had been told by Inayat Khan, who was his Sufi teacher that he should be the person who would serve as a link between the mystic and the intellectual, and that he should make the effort to bridge this gap and be involved in publication and writing and so forth. He was cheered towards the end of his life to find a number of teachers who could see past him�he had no particular control over the way he came on�and where there could be some communication in spite of his manner. Because his experiences in the 40 years prior to that had been very disastrous.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh I see!
WALI ALI: I want to get to Dr. Spiegelberg if I can, because he had some encounters with Sam in the '40's or '50's which were�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh Yeah?
WALI ALI: Was he involved with your new publication?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: No, the main editor is a man named Homatz (?) a friend of mine, and I do some things for them, but Dr. Spiegelberg has nothing whatsoever to do with it. Spiegelberg is a very interesting man, and was, of course, a pioneer in this area of a lot of this stuff. So he'd be very worthwhile interviewing. I didn't know that he knew Sam.
WALI ALI: Yeah, he knew Sam, in fact Sam used to go at that time, just like he went in later years, he would go to all the courses that were being offered. On the one hand he would be receptive and he would listen and on the other hand he would be wanting to have his own�he hoped that by coming in as a student he could somehow have some opportunity�maybe he had some idea about a class that didn't exist particularly in the West at that time where there was more of�like a colloquy�that went on in the classroom�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: He didn't�he said things which were needed to be said in a different way; he didn't say them in a way that students in a classroom listen to very well; I knew what he was saying most of the time, but it was just a little bit sad the way that nobody could take in what he was saying. It wasn't difficult what he was saying, it was just that I guess he was so used to being on the defensive with all this for forty years and never being taken seriously, and then suddenly there was a point where he could be taken seriously and I guess he wasn't used to it.
WALI ALI: I think that was part of it, and certainly in the academic circle, he had that defense thing built up in the circle of the Sufis in terms of functioning as a spiritual teacher. The same thing happened, but it was a much more clear break through at the end because the response was at the level of love rather than at the level of mental acceptance. It was much clearer to him that there was acceptance and he could let go of a lot of his stuff. A very curious sort of life situation. Am I right in thinking that he was the one who brought the Studies of Comparative Religion to your attention? I know he was very high on that publication.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: No, no, I had known about it before; he was interested in what they were doing. What did he think of them?
WALI ALI: Oh he felt very highly of them; he actually felt they were his intellectual counterparts. He really felt that those were the people who were doing the work in the intellectual field that needed to be done. I recall on one occasion his bringing over that publication to your attention.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, well I had known about them; I did a book about them later that you may have seen.
WALI ALI: I know, that was one reason why I asked the question.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Didn't he feel something about their sense of orthodoxy? He must have had a little bit of question there; I mean they have a very severe sense of being the only ones who are doing right.
WALI ALI: Of course he had a way of overlooking things when he wanted to overlook them. His relationship with Islam was very friendly. In fact he used to love to tell the story about how he was converted in every mosque in Cairo. If you can imagine, he would go into a mosque, and they would say, "Are you a Muslim?" And he would say, "Oh, I wish to become a Muslim," and then he would take the Shahida and do the thing, and everybody would celebrate, and then he probably would go to the next mosque. He thought a lot of Islam as a religion personally, and he was able to function for years when he lived in Pakistan and be accepted as a Sufi teacher and be quite compatible with Islam. It was just that he didn't think that that was the way to present Sufism in the West. He was ideologically at home with the teaching of Inayat Khan, which was broad and not limited to that way. From his own standpoint he had no axe to grind. He did end up writing some very strong letters I think to that fellow who was the editor of Studies of Comparative Religion�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Clive Ross�
WALI ALI: Clive Ross, yes. He probably sent you a copy.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, yeah�you have a complete collection of all those letter, I think?
WALI ALI: We have a pretty complete selection and there are more coming in all the time. During the last three or four years when he had secretarial help, and the letters, carbons etc. were kept more clearly and filed. Before that he would type everything himself and often he would go so fast when he typed that the spelling would be�like the whole typographical thing would be like a code in itself to try and understand.
What else do we need to talk about? Oh I know, do you recall any sort of anecdotes or incidents or anything of a humorous nature or whatever that took place in the classroom or anyplace?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Just a general picture that I have of him standing up with his stick and proclaiming and declaiming�but no specific incidents really, that I can recall. I remember going to the house�about a year before�actually I was doing my research for writing the book, I think, and wanted to interview him in a sort of more formal way. I think you were there.
WALI ALI: Yeah, was there.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: And there were no incidents particularly but I remember the feeling of warmth�at that point I began to see what a positive influence he was having on young people, and I hadn't seen that because I had only seen him in class, you know. But somehow I got to see, and then shortly before he died, and then after his death I began to see that what he was giving was something very precious to the young people that were working with him . There were no particular incidents there, but there was just the sense that here was a person who gave the kind of love that just was not had to be had around very much at all in this world, this Western world, so there are no particular incidents. I'm sorry�
WALI ALI: Did you see the "In the Garden" book by any chance? It was something that was recently published by Lama.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh that beautiful book with that fabulous cover!
WALI ALI: No, that was "The Jerusalem Trilogy."
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh, that's right.
WALI ALI: The "In The Garden" thing was much more anecdotal; there are lots of stories�Ram Dass has got some wonderful stories of his encounters with Sam. It's got some wonderful stories. It's kind of like an anthology on one hand with people's anecdotes and on the other hand some of the excerpts from his diaries and some of his short poetry�it's just sort of a hodgepodge of pictures and things. Crown published it through the Lama Foundation.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh yeah?
WALI ALI: I know you wrote the book about the studies that have come out from a lot of these people who are in the European Sufi work. I wonder if you have had any personal contact with Schuon.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I've met them all. Huston Smith is very interested in that.
WALI ALI: I know he is; I spoke to him about it right after he had come back. I know he was quite amazed that a man of Schuon's intellectual depth would pause and do the Salat�you know put his head down on the floor several times during the day.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Schuon is a very impressive man. What did you want to ask me?
WALI ALI: I was just interested in your feeling as an historian as to what is going on in contemporary religion and mysticism about�it's hard to verbalize�what you see going on in relation to the spirit of Sufism and how what you know of what Sam was doing fits in with this.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I think Sufism�of course there is the group in Berkeley, they just left�what are they called?
WALI ALI: The Habibyya.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, well I didn't get to know them very well. The people who are connected with Schuon, and then there is Idries Shah. Shah has made the biggest dent I would say. I don't feel in Shah the sense of scale, the sense of the�what shall I say?�the highest�and this may be my fault�but I feel Shah is making a big mark, but I don't think�I just don't feel that it's necessarily�it would take me a long time to define what I mean here. I don't wish to be misunderstood, but I don't find in Shah what I feel to be the spiritual dimension�
WALI ALI: You know, Sam would agree with you. He felt it was a certain pandering to mysticography or something, and that some of the deep spiritual dimension was missing.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, I had that funny feeling that Shah really doesn't know what he wants to do. You know, he is a Sufi teacher, so one always has to be reserved about such a judgment�
WALI ALI: Did you read the article about Shah in "Psychology Today?" It really gives away a lot of the games he is playing.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, well he covers a lot of bases at the same time. You always feel he is one step ahead of you, but I don't feel�at the same time there seems to be a lack of some discernment there. He is sort of like a�I feel he is like a�this isn't going to be quoted, I hope?
WALI ALI: Anything I would quote I would show to you first.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I just feel that he is not�when I read Rumi or something like that, I have a sense of another call from another part of reality, and I don't feel that in Shah. Now with the Schuon people they are obviously extraordinarily serious and with tremendously fine intellect.
WALI ALI: Did you find when you were there that they had any sort of�the dimension, let's say, of the Order? I mean, was there a group of people that were training with them or was it in relation to the youth culture?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: No, no�nothing with the youth. I think there were a group of people that I was not invited to participate in, but my impression was of a group of mature adults�very well prepared intellectually, very serious, very much not interested in spreading out, but solely interested in only doing their own practice, which was very orthodox, very formal and then having their influence through the written word, through thought, which they are great at. So, no, I don't think they had much connection with the youth at all. And I am not sure how much of a mark that they are going to make, for their work is so difficult. I think they will eventually have an impact for people like Huston Smith and in the academic community�
WALI ALI: It'll be reinterpreted in such a way that the others will not have to do all that hard work by themselves. Also, it's hard in our�you may know�his name escapes me, I've gone and talked to his class a couple of times�
SABIRA: Dr. Dols?
WALI ALI: Yeah, Dr. Dols, Michael Dols�he is very sharp; he teaches a course in Sufism down in Hayward.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh does he? Dols, h�mm.
WALI ALI: In any case, he's an historian�the Middle ages and so forth�he's into the Middle East effort�we've had some real interesting discussions as to what is going on in the world of thought in Sufism. His concern as a person who is interested in it is how to penetrate into a scholarship which seems to be a committed scholarship, and I think that that is the veil that is over a lot of their work, because they are obviously committed to Islam in some very deep way that doesn't seem to sit so well with the presuppositions that the scholar has in the West, because he deals with a lot of date.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Well, they are not interested in scholarly evidence; they are interested in their understanding which comes from intuition and experience and all that, so they are very, very aggressive and they are even truculent sometimes.
WALI ALI: Oh I know, I'm that way�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: But they have an awesome intellectual power, intellectual capability, there is no question about it; there is no question about their intellectual ability, I think it is magnificent. I think they have tremendous blind-spots, though as a result of this kind of sense of, "We are right, we have the only path."
WALI ALI: The commitment side of it.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Commitment is a nice word for it. There is another side to it. One is�they have two sides�one is a very fine grasp and you can learn a lot from them about everything, and the other side is a kind of fear that makes them violent in certain ways of thinking and acting, where they close off to you�a spiritual form or a spiritual force, which is not taking the orthodox form that frightens them in some way. They lump it all together as being the anti-tradition. And they are not quite sensitive to when something new is appearing. And it may be taking a different form, and it may be going against what they are used to, and it may be a seed of some very new life. Ninety percent of it may be terrible but the other ten percent that may be happening, they get very upset about. And this closes them off to what really may be the most important thing that is coming in the twentieth century.
WALI ALI: I may want to quote you on this�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Well, then please send it to me, because I have to be very careful�
WALI ALI: I know, because this is obviously hitting the nail on the head in terms of where we stand in regards to the Sufi tradition in our own work. What you verbalized is what we feel we are trying to work out and work through without being limited by the tradition, but respecting and drawing from the tradition. Of course it arouses the strongest emotions in people. You know, the curious thing is even apparently�you saw the book on Al Hallaj that was put out by the Habbiyya people. They roasted the Schuon people. Isn't that pathetic?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, even this teapot, this little tea pot�you have holy wars going on�I mean it is absurd�
WALI ALI: It's terrible�it hasn't always been like this; it seems to be one of the signs of the times that people are most likely to attack those who go by the same name, or more inclined to be tolerant to someone who is entirely different�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, that's true. Are you familiar with the very interesting Sufi master that visited here last year named Nur-baksh?
WALI ALI: I didn't meet him, I happened to be out of town at the time.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: He has a little group, now know, here in San Francisco�
WALI ALI: So I heard�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: A Khankah down on 19th Avenue�6 or 7 people.
WALI ALI: In fact someone phoned me last week and asked me how to get in touch with them and I had to tell them I didn't know.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: They are very serious, open, loving people; they are connected with a man who is�
WALI ALI: This is the Nimatullahi�there is going to be more and more of the actual seeds of the traditional Orders coming over. I mean, I can tell you of a lot of them�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I bet.
WALI ALI: There are things that are going on in that way. My concern is to try to work for some sort of mutual harmony or at least tolerance. For their own protection; this is a different culture. If you are living in an Islamic culture, you can come in and have things your own way, but there needs to be some sort of acceptance of what is going on in this very fertile ground that is being seeded from so many different sources.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Terrible, isn't it? The Sufis, on the whole the Sufi Movement doesn�t seem to have made much of a mark in America on the whole, compared to Buddhism, I mean.
WALI ALI: Right. At the present point it seems, at least from what I know about of what is going on, it is on the rise. Idries Shah has sort of made Sufism something people have heard of�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah�
WALI ALI: And in a sense I think he has done�I mean he is the most disliked of all the people from some people's perspective because obviously no one can come over here now and simply say that to become a Sufi you have to become a Muslim and that is the way it is, and there has never been anyway different, because they say, "Well you know, I've heard differently." Of course the effect of Inayat Khan has been different. He has had an effect but in a more quiet way, and it seems to be also on the rise. Now Gurdjieff has been identified with Sufism. I know you've had some experience�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh yes, I know quite a bit about the Sufis and Gurdjieff, but Gurdjieff was not a Sufi, there is no question in my mind about that. He was certainly with the Sufis at some time, but his teaching comes from another source, and I don't know what that source is. I don't think anybody is ever going to know exactly where Gurdjieff got his teachings.
WALI ALI: What do you say about that book, "The Teachers of Gurdjieff?"
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: It's ridiculous: It's an absolute fraud.
WALI ALI: I heard it was written by Idries Shah.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Well I wouldn't say that, but I wouldn't say�I wouldn't be surprised if somebody working with Shah wrote it. I wouldn't be surprised about anything about Shah, but I don't think that he necessarily wrote it.
WALI ALI: You don't think there is any historicity in it?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: No! That's absolute Not. There are some nice passages in there, which obviously were written by somebody who either knew something or knew someone who knew something, but the historical side of it is ridiculous. I've checked that out with people that Gurdjieff had worked with, and that knew Gurdjieff, his pupils, and they said, "It's a laugh�that book is a stupid book!" Bennett's book is a little more interesting, J.G. Bennett's book on Gurdjieff.
WALI ALI: I haven't read that.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: It's much more solid with his investigations. I think that Gurdjieff is wrongly identified with Sufis. If you study Gurdjieff's teaching, you'll see parts of�there are times when you think this man must have been a Tibetan Buddhist, and then other times when you think that it all must have come from Mt. Ethos�Christianity�and there are times when you think he must be a Sufi. He seems to have drawn on a source that was something more of�at the core of traditions, and it is quite wrong to identify him with any one of the known traditions. And this I feel certain of.
WALI ALI: Do you feel as though that there is something in the Gurdjieff transmission that is going to live on and serve as a new place for some growth�?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Very much so. I know many of the Gurdjieff pupils, and the group or the foundation which they have started here in America, in Europe and in South America, and there is no question in my mind that that state of mind is very, very vigorous, and that there is something very pure about it. Now there are many other groups calling themselves Gurdjieff groups who are not connected with that, and they have taken different forms. Some of them are more interesting, some of them less, some of them are just improvising from their own interests and using Gurdjieffian language. And some of them have been with Gurdjieff or with a pupil of Gurdjieff and have broken off�you know, like this thing happens in any tradition, so there are many forms it is taking, but on the whole, I would say it is one of the most hopeful energies in the West. Do you know any of the Gurdjieff people at all?
WALIA ALI: The only person that I know, or that I think I know is Ralph Silver.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, Ralph, of course is very, very interesting�
WALI ALI: Let's see, I don't know what we are talking about�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Well, getting back to Sam, I wish I had kept the letters that I had; I moved twice and you know they say that three moves equal one fire, and I had left all the stuff, but someday I may come over and look over the letters just to remind myself. He was very interested in this Temple of Understanding? What was that?
WALI ALI: This was an effort on the part of some people to form on the one hand a Temple where all the religions would come together, and on the other hand having conferences and getting the spiritual traditions together. It was a vision of Inayat Khan some years before.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I see, that's what it was.
WALI ALI: It was his desire that this was a thing to be done.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I was wondering about some of the things that Sam wrote in his letters and how the books, "The Jerusalem Trilogy," and things of this sort, has there been much response to that book outside of your own sort of community?
WALI ALI: There has been some serious response to it in a few places. It is more destined to be a sleeper since it can't come out with any publicity to speak of anything. It's like "In the Garden," which I compared it with which was put out with much less effort and scholarship which represents the best serious writings from his part too, has already sold something like 12 to 14,000 copies.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Really? That's something!
WALI ALI: But it was done through Crown and it was done by the people at the Lama Foundation along with us who had a sense of doing things in the "Be Here Now" style, so it touched into that market whereas we did �The Jerusalem Trilogy" ourselves�and I think they have sold about 2500 copies. You know, it's been sent around to people in the academic world that he would have wanted to receive it, so the response from Pakistan, and Jerusalem and India has been pretty strong.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Has it?
WALI ALI: Yeah, pretty good. I'm not sure what Sam is going to be remembered for, you know. The large part of his life he spent in writing, and poetry and letters and articles; he was a very prolific writer. Lot of his stuff was destroyed in the fire, and so far as his writing goes I don't know in what way it is going to be valuable. I'm interested in what comments you would make as an historian on his writings and his intellectual respect.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: I'd be interested if he has anything on�I know some of his work is connected with the teachings of Judaism and Christianity�because there is so much�I mean people are now looking for something in their own traditions in Judaism and Christianity and I know he was interested in Kabbalah�although I don't know how much he was. Did he ever write anything on this? I know he made connections occasionally, in letters and things.
WALI ALI: A lot of this was in the earlier periods of his life when he did this writing; he had everything destroyed that he'd written prior to 1949 with a few exceptions in a big fire that burned down the old Sufi Khankah at Fairfax. A lot of the Khankah Kaaba Allah was burned down, in fact it was part of his personal disasters. In fact he was blamed for burning it down because he was the only person there, and at that point had decided to leave because they had gone over to Meher Baba. But there are a lot of references around in a lot of places but there is nothing per se. And then he gave a lot of talks. To him the Kabbalah was deep interpretation of the Scriptures�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, of course�
WALI ALI: Rather than the kind of symbolic stuff that Manley Hall got together and a lot of those things just never were recorded. At the time nobody was into it. There was so much material that was coming out, or whatever it was, nobody was into recording it, and only the last lectures that he gave on the Corinthians were recorded and then they were turned into a book.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: What book was that?
WALI ALI: "This Is The New Age in Person."
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh, right, of course�I think the problem of getting it into the hands of people who are not on the path or like academic people or lay people is that the form in which they are published�I think he has ideas and perspectives that are very valuable as part of the existential meaning of these things as apart from the scholarly, you know, but the way they are published�if somebody just wanted to know something would probably not pick it up. It is more for people who are sort of new-age people who would pick up those books. And I would be interested to see if something�like in a magazine or�well you know "Parabola" which is a new magazine?
WALI ALI: I haven't seen it.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: It's very good on myth and culture; it is possible that you might get some of these things published or written up in a way�
WALI ALI: They need to be edited�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: They need to be edited and presented�
WALI ALI: Like modern astrology has been�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: That lay audience, that lay educated audience�someone who is interested in ideas and don't want to feel that they are being exhorted or converted or anything like that. Because I found his ideas interesting and very illuminating but mixed with lots of invective and very personal and subjective and poetic and all that. And I of course was delighted, but as far as communicating outside, I'm not sure how it's going to happen. Could you say what he stood for intellectually? It would be interesting if somebody would really put that down, now that there is so much going on, where would you place Sam Lewis? What is the place of his thought? Not as the people see it that�s something else, but the thought, what were his ideas�
WALI ALI: I certainly have in mind doing some serious work in relation to what he has to say about Sufism and Islam which he wrote a considerable amount that is very deep and serious�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: That would be very helpful�
WALI ALI: I would like to put together say like twenty pages of something, which would be on the subject�and when I do, of course, some of it has to go together for the book because it becomes a central theme�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: If it helps you in any way�why don't you come to one of my classes�the teachings of Sam Lewis: Sufism and Islam�I give several courses, any one of which you would be welcome.
WALI ALI: That would probably help me to�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Yeah, it would help you�people could ask you questions, so you'd know, because I am not sure how many people you come in contact with who are really outside of the group whole.
WALI ALI: It's true, and it's so seductive. I see it all the time when people begin in this community to talk their own private language and they speak also a language of commitment and consequently one talks about different things. I'm committed in trying to maintain, like Sam did, the bridge with the universities and the intellectual community and I try to make an effort to keep some doors open. When I was in Hawaii I spoke at the U. of Hawaii, and I've gone down to Dr. Dols' classes a couple of times�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: Oh, you have! So then, that's what I mean.
WALI ALI: And I would be very interested in doing it; it helps me keep my own head straight and not get lost inside my own box.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: That's right. It is very easy to. So, I'd be glad if you come, and then the students would put questions to you, and you know, they are not committed to anything�
WALI ALI: Whenever you think the time would be right, just send something or�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: October might be about right; I wish I could tell you more about Sam, I mean personally. I saw a lot of him but�
WALI ALI: I'm interested in the way in which you felt that you had to know him better. He was such a person that could be so veiled. In other words, if he came into see somebody, he could pigeonhole what his relationship with somebody was going to be like in a certain way. In other words, if he was going to be in a relationship with you in relation to the study of ideas, then he would always�you might want to get off on to something else, but he would always be on that subject�or gardening or whatever it was�with somebody like Lloyd Morain he must have gotten two or three letters a week from Sam full of invective telling off the semantic movement because he became a symbol in his life of all that was wrong with surfacial scholarship and the semantic movement and Hayakawa and all those people. I spoke with Lloyd Morain once, and he said, "The strange thing to me was that I would get all these angry letters from Sam telling me off about how I was doing things," and then I would see him and he would be just so glad to see me; he was a symbol in his life of something.
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: He never told me off particularly, but he did tell a lot of people off and he showed me what he was telling them and, as I said, he certainly didn't fit any of the stereotypes for me, so I am as rigid as the next person�so I had a time with him. And time passed before I began to be able to see into him, so I just can't be more specific than that.
SABIRA: Did you ever save any of his university papers or do you have any record of his class work?
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: He didn't really take any�but he did, of course he did! That's right, he handed in several things, oh but they are all gone, I threw them all away. What a pity!
WALI ALI: As a matter of fact, a lot of his articles were saved�he took courses and he did a lot of articles for people, always personal�I mean there would always be that personal dimension in them so that one would have to be willing to sort through them�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: But he took one course that was at U.C.; I don't think he took any of the courses at S.F. State; he just came and sat in and talked occasionally. I think it was weird that I didn't think of those courses. He did send me his poems, he sent me lots of stuff but nothing for the course. It is maddening how there are some things one saves and someone throws away, ridiculous! So how far along are you on this book?
WALI ALI: Right now we are just gathering data; I'll have to set aside a clump of time sometime to write�
Dr. NEEDLEMAN: That will be hard, I know. Who else have you seen in the academic would? Huston Smith, have you seen him yet? He'll be out here this summer.
SABIRA: We've written him but�
WALI ALI: Yeah, I hope to see him; I've met him on a couple of occasions.