Sema at Fort Dix, a Rendezvous With Rumi

Ft. Dix NJ,  Feb. 1986.

We're Companies Alpha, Bravo, Charlie.  I'm with Bravo.  We're all on "bivouac" training.  That means, we're out in the woods somewhere, freezing our asses off, combining my own rain poncho with that of my buddy's (Vince N., Civil War freak), to make a tent for two.  Our M-16s and "combat gear" remain in our tents as we go to chow.  One company after the other.  We're up.  Alpha and Charlie are finished, or at least Alpha, I don't know where Charlie is - probably in the trees sniping - a little Vietnam humor there.

Some other dude and I show up a tad late for instructions of how this buffet works:  There's a big concrete slab outside the Drills' tent (a real tent) - on this are a couple of long tables set up with grub.  Sorry - chow, grub went out with WWII.  At the end of the chow line are 3 big water drums set up, one with soapy water, one with plain hot water, one with...whatever.  And that was the rub:  We'd missed out on the instructions and weren't clear as to which drum came first when you dipped your chow-smeared mess kit and utensils to wash them clean.  And like a day out of my 12 years of Sufi training, there were consequences for missing out on instructions and not being clear about the micky-mouse rules.

Out came a big Alpha Drill Sgt. with dark hair and glasses (we spec-wearers all carried the field-approved "rape-prevention-glasses," or RPGs, which were like the black horn-rimmed '50s model - later at Monterey's Defense Language Institute with my David Niven-regulation moustache the glasses made me look like Groucho Marx in "You Bet Your Life", or like the glasses-nose-moustache you buy at gag shops...which we did there at DLI when I became captain of our running team and I led with my own face, 16 other guys carrying the gag number, so that you had 17 "Sams" running the two mile race for Bravo Company at DLI...we always came in second, but as that was the start of a new gag each month we had more fun than the other companies and everyone loved it - but I digress and I didn't want to do that.  Another story, so back to ours: Ft. Dix, the woods)... Out came this Drill from the other company, and barked at me and this other guy for using the water drums in the wrong order: Penalty!

For the penalty to come across I have to explain:  of the basic principles of a soldier, one of the first we learned, after the Greek one about never leaving your buddy's behind, was never to leave your post (for example when on guard duty) until your relief comes or you are dismissed.  This I could understand and relate to - after all, how many years of Sufi training... So this in itself was for me, a no-brainer.  And in context here, it recalled for me the term "Post" in regard to the Mevlevi Sema, where the dervishes turn in reference to the Sheikh in the Sema functioning as Post.

"Hey, you!  Yeah, you!  The dumb one with the glasses."  That was certainly me he had in mind.  We both had to go back and get our respective combat gear (as if for guard duty): flak vest, M-16, Kevlar-helmet, combat belt, the whole 9 yds. - and return pronto to "guard this drum" as if to keep others from falling into the same mistake, which was pretty humorous as we were the last two anyway.  But alright, thought I, I'll bite - I'll play your silly little game.  You have me for 8 weeks.  So I returned, the other guy didn't.  Drill wasn't even around anymore to check.  I just followed instructions, and a little something told me to treat my Drills as "Sheikhs".........see what all those years do to you?  So the following actually occurred, exactly as it reads - my thoughts, what was occurring, the timing, the effect on me.

In full gear, I turn my "guard duty of this stupid drum" into a circumambulation around my Post, or around that imagined Sheikh sitting on the red sheep skin.  I am entering dervish-heaven.  I "march" around this drum in a sema rhythm, my mind is absorbed in zikr and Mevlevi music and overtones.  I don't know anyway how long the jerk's going to make me do this stunt so I'm resigned utterly to possible hours of it.  (The total running time of this unique meeting of dimensions if not universes, was indeed a solid half hour.)

As I'm doing this a truly extraordinary event takes place about 50 yds. distance or more.  These "grunts," these hormone-stupid numb-nut kids in Charlie Company are about to add their own, albeit profane - and that's the Rumi-inspired beauty of it! - Hadhrat (Sufi ceremony of zikr, or remembrance through repetition), and all for the benefit of my psychotic fantasy that we are maybe not in Ft. Dix after all, but Istanbul or Konya.

Someone among them had a birthday and received a cake from home.  Nice.  One of their Drills, a short guy with eyes right out of Doonesbury, was about to pass out to each of them a slice of cake.  That meant, they all had to line up in an orderly fashion, in formation, and receive that slice from his hand.  In their very grunt-mentality they created a loud festive atmosphere.  Now think for a moment of what it sounds like when dervishes recite zikr in an overwhelming rhythm and some ecstatic God-intoxicated idiot among them shouts "ya Allah" or such out of turn, and yet in no way disturbing the procedure but on the contrary embellishing it with........mood.

 This was neither being imagined, nor hallucinated!  As I did my "Turn" they began to chant, yes, chant in one united husky college-fraternity voice:  "Piece of cake!  Piece of cake!  Piece of cake!"  Just like one might have heard "Allah-hayy, da'im-hu!" or similar.  This was already sending me into fits of quiet ecstasy.  Their Drill "became" a Sheikh handing out prasad, plain and simple.  Period.  But that's not all.  In the midst of this chant, one or another would suddenly shout out above the other voices, "fuckin'-ay!...........fuckin'-ay!"  This went on.  And on.  I was beside myself with joy and ecstasy.  It was purely God-inspired, I felt so un-alone and un-forsaken, I wished it would continue without end.

Then as suddenly as it had started, it stopped.  They had their cake....yes, and ate it.  And at that exact moment, as I was sort of coming down from my peak, the big Drill who'd put me there came out of his tent, he'd forgotten the whole affair, told me to quit and go, asked me where the other guy was, I told him he never returned, he shook his head and that was it.  I could have apparently ducked out as well, but didn't, and received this very off-color blessing form the Sufis in the Unseen.  All directed and arranged by that clever sonofagun we call God, and it should be no wonder that I am in Love.

Where Peace is Power, Prayer is Sovereign

I share this very very rarely with anyone, normally where it's applicable to present a living metaphor. But it's no metaphor, I'm telling this as always, as it happened, to the letter and without any further embellishment, as the events in my life, when they occur like this, stand on their own as living metaphors in actual literal expression:

It was in my earliest period in Berlin, maybe '89. I lived on a barracks installation which had once been Adolf's own private HQ and installation, complete with private 'Praetorian Guard'. There where I massaged as a side occupation, Gestapo had onced ripped bones from flesh. There where our dental facility was were the bullet holes still left from the 'Night of the Long Knives' when Adolf purged his SA command. I rejoiced in the irony of being part of the Allied Occupation which now raised its stars and stripes every morning where this motherfucker once ruled from. A Jewboy from Colorado-in-America.

Every morning (sometimes I even had the honor of this duty) the flag would go up with the manner of ceremony which I've only ever known among us Americans, dismayed that not even the Brits did this half as well with theirs. Now the "German-national" guards employed by us manned the gate, and they put on the recorded 'Reveille' on the raising and lowering of that flag. On the minute. That meant mornings exactly at 0600 hours, x7, rain or shine. You could hear that recorded Reveille for a span of blocks. Now to what happened.

The windows in my humble quarters, the room I shared with friend Brad, faced in the direction of that gate and that parking lot where the flag went up, blocked from view only by the next barracks which stood between us. Every morning, without fail, I was up early enough to do my set, whatever form that took, before the 'Army-world' even woke up – to the sound of its 'Reveille'... Normally I had finished my breath practices, my 'morning set' of Sufi prayers, and would sit in the lovely morning stillness until I was finished or until that 6:00 Reveille broke out.

On this particular morning I had neglected to notice the time, and on this particular morning, a Saturday where everyone slept-in anyway, like my roommate Brad snoring through this entire episode - on this particular Saturday at one minute to six, sitting on my prayer mat, facing that window (because it was a window, the direction being of no consequence), I was in a particularly intimate feeling, having nearly completed my set and just sitting there with The Beloved, continuing my concentration. It was that soft-morning-light-after-having-just made-love feeling: intimate, close. Not to be disturbed. I'd forgotten to register that my timing was off, that Reveille would blow before I was finished, with a thoroughly obnoxious interruption. It did.

The problem was not merely that it made a bumptious and crude interruption, it was the fact that I was just in the middle of completing my prostrations, toward that window which happened to overlook the area int he actual direction of the recorded military-national music blaring its guts and the raising of the flag which under any other circumstances would be okay, just – not – this – circumstance. That was too much.

Without 'thinking' but with a colossal mega-wrath pointedly directed at that flag and trumpeting, there went a vector of thought energy, literally a command out of my third eye, wordless and nano-second swift, yet robust and vulgar, that is, if I were to put it into words, which it nearly was but nano-second time: 'Shut the fuck up – right now!!! Now!!! I am prostrating to God and never to you!!! Now you shut...the-fuck...up!!!' Like a finger pointing, this went out from my third eye not as a wish but an order. Exactly seconds after that occurred, the music went haywire: obviously, in the physical world, the recorder was eating the tape in the cassette, could happen any time, I knew this.

Only this time it happened now, on command, I knew this as well. I found it later remarkable that I was not for a second the least bit surprised at what was happening, it felt very very natural. And I knew that since a tape had just gotten eaten, they'd be scrambling for a reserve one, find it, slip it in and start over. Until then the flag itself had to wait. And this would take at least a good couple of minutes, which were all I needed. And as I sat there those next seconds, the next wrath-command-thought shot out of my third eye – never once did I think 'wow, gee, didja get that?' - sovereign, one-minded, exactly as follows, 'pointing': '...And you'll stay the-fuck shut-up until I'm finished...until I'm finished!!!' And it did. As I was really finished and satisfied, I sat there erect, at peace, and only then it cranked up anew. And that was okay.

Right after it all happened, and I was sitting there, having "made" the US military tradition and custom "bow" to my morning practice, so to speak, and quietly remarking to myself, "So. ... So be it" - and I could hear my Teacher all the way from the West Coast clearly laughing in my skull between my ears, bellowing with characteristic humor and irony:  "SO!  NOW WE KNOW THAT GOD IS GREATER THAN THE ARMY!"

Now being methodic and scientific, I went out to check whether I'd dreamed the whole thing up. Only I needed to know objectively what had happened with me, no one else, but I needed to corroborate with the outside whether what had happened 'out there' was objective fact or merely subjective on my part. Brad had slept through it, the compound was all in slumber, those who'd raised the colors had long since gone, but there were the guards, they had duty. I asked them casually if anything odd had happened. They confirmed the entire occurence, down to the minute, down to the detail. I kept my side of it to myself, they'd had enough excitement for one morning.

"Balm of the Arab Masses"

I had a dream of which I very rarely tell, and at the same time have referred to in one or two poems ("Cornerstone of Your Faith," for example).  The dream's importance in my life turns on the time and place and circumstances in which it came, but also as a task (or so I 'd understood it) for me to fulfill in my life, and to this day I am wondering whether and how, and whether in the literal or universal sense, but there it is:

Summer of 1976, I'm 21 and leave Boulder for the one and only "Sufi Camp" I would ever attend, and it was at Neve Shalom, a piece of land smack at the midpoint of the boondocks on the Latrun road between Jerusalem and Tel Aviv.  Across from us was a Benedictine monastery which produced wine - of course.  Neve Shalom was already an established plot of land used for the purpose of Peace Alternatives, of bringing groups of youth together, Muslims and Jews, Christians, Israeli and Palestinian...here was where the four week long camp was to be held and was held; preceded by a three week long work camp to set the camp up; I was in it for the full 7 weeks, and it was all and altogether an experience that's remained with me for life. 

Three individuals were to have been the main feature, not the only but the main, here:  Banefsha Gest, one of the earlier pupils of Samuel Lewis in San Fran, Murshid Hassan who she first introduced to us in the first place, in Boulder, and Rabbi Zalman Schachter who taught in Penn., a wonderful and dynamic man.  The Camp's intention was to bring Jews and Christians and Muslims, Arabs and Israelis to work together, worship and celebrate together and to eat together - and together we performed the Dances of Universal Peace given by Murshid Sam Lewis with all the Hebrew and Arabic and Christian phrases, etc., to finally sow these seeds on Israeli soil, where Sam Lewis never set foot (he'd been practically everwhere else).  This did happen.

As as it so happened, Reb Zalman was certainly there and we in-joyed each other's presence very much.  Banefsha was most certainly there, it was sort of "her" camp - there was much to appreciate about her, but she had this ego.  And that was the rub, why Sheikh Hassan was not physically at the camp, she'd had a falling out with him, and that was its own story.  Where was he while I was there?  He was with us at our house in Boulder, staying there on his 2nd of 3 visits (I got to catch him on the 1st and then later the 3rd) - so in a typically comically "Sufi" madcap way, it was all perfect.  He was where he should be and I was where I should be.  And after his first visit with us in Boulder I carried plenty of what he'd put out there in me.

A quick background, so as to put the dream in still better perspective.  Since the age of 19, now going on just over 2 yrs., I had gone around washing, literally washing, and massaging feet (with almond oil and intuitive reflexol.), as my inner discipline/ love-task to connect as directly as I could with the beginning of the Last Supper in John.  I washed the feet of street transients in Boulder, of students, of guys and women, of the hot and beautiful and the far from hot and not very beautiful, in fact as much and as willingly even-mindedly, the very shabby and dirty, and of my compadres in the house (our khanka / at times ashram), and of every guest who came to us - and that meant as well some pretty prominent ones, including among others, Pir Vilayat.  I had my wash cloth and plastic basin, my hand towel and oil - for a long period I was even seen going around in a Moroccan woven jalabea, sometimes barefoot myself, sometimes with sandals or shoes.   This was all okay in Boulder back then.   And I did this at Neve Shalom where I also brought this concentration to a close.  Pir Vilayat had told me after doing his feet, I should go on to full-body and work on that, which I already had but now expanded more to it.

Among the various Zikrs / Dhikr-Allah (ceremonial Remembrance of God through repetition) evening sessions (often called Hadhrat, or Presence) we did with Murshid Hassan in Boulder, there was one very soft and mild one, or a version of it, where we stood clenched together in a line or a wide circle swaying left, chest, right, chest, left... intoning like a breeze:  Ya...Huu...Ya...Huu.   (By the way, the original "Jews" addressed God with Remembrance of "ya hu," hence Yehudim, its form YaHuwa may appear familiar: Yahuvah, Jehova...)

So I'm on my flight to Israel via Tel Aviv.  I'm starting to compose my Christ-poem which you have already read, "A Prophet's Reward," making myself very receptive, primarily through the text of the gnostic Gospel of Thomas which was unearthed at Nag Hammadi some 30 yrs. earlier, and through the Shiva Sutras of which there were some 107 or so listed at the end of Paul Reps' Zen Flesh Zen Bones, and I found myself picking one and concentrating on that, it was focused on the outgoing breath and holding that point between the exhale and the inhale.  And "dying".  I believe through these two practices, the Thomas Gospel and the Shiva Sutra, I received all the impressions I needed for this poem which was also centered on the washing of the feet.  On the evening I finished this poem, that August in '76, in a big tent at Neve Shalom, Ramadan had just begun.  It was about 1 a.m. and I went into the open field and zipped myself up in my sleeping bag and was out.  I woke up around maybe 8 a.m. with tears streaming from my eyes after having the following dream - which I'd tried to crawl back into but that didn't work:



In the dream I was in  a hole in the ground - in later reflection clearly a well, but there was no water in it, we were standing dry.  We were three:  myself, Reb Zalman and Banefsha.  Murshid Hassan who was not with us there but was thoroughly present and dominant in spirit - or literally, on and in the breath - in that we performed the "Ya Hu" dhikr between us three, hands and arms clenched, swaying in that dry well.  While there was no actual water in which we stood, the entire atmosphere in it and surrounding us and reflected in the dhikr was full of the water element.  And added to this we were weeping together.  Why?  Well one, we were so deeply moved.

And two:  what is most sacred to desert dwellers?  Water.  And where was this well?  In the middle of the fucking desert.  While we were in this condition, there surrounded us inside the well a voiceless voice, that is, no one spoke and yet the voice-impression surrounded us and permeated the place even as the element water had - you could say, it spoke in our hearts and addressed us there.  It said, and I remember this, it referred to our dhikr in there and the condition it brought us to:  "This is the balm of the Arab masses."  - 'of' or 'for' are the same here, the 'balm for the masses' was meant and I also strained to grasp later whether 'Arab' or 'poor' was said, and remained certain with my first impression, that by 'Arab' was meant 'poor' - and not in any positive or any coddling sense.  I did also understand - or misunderstand, but I maintained for a long time - that this was more universally meant, not just 'the Arabs' - today, I see that differently, as I also always maintain:  the real enemies of Islam are the Muslims themselves.  But the dream:  it was really clear to me afterward, that this was the voice of Prophet Muhammad, and the 'well' was his own heart.  Period.

And our instruction, to take this out there, struck me while still in the dream as being like - or being literally, in dream-symbol - carrying a pan full to the brim of water on our heads over the desert to the thirsting masses without spilling a single drop - some undertaking, that.  And this made us weep further.  And with that I woke up, still weeping.  And with, oy, such a headache!

And my Christ-poem was finished and would be read aloud that morning by Banefsha to all present, and my dream was intact even if I wasn't - don't ask me whom I then told this to, I don't even know any more, I was no longer in touch with anyone there interestingly enough.  Except one correspondence to Zalman in 1980, where I hand-typed some 100 letters to Jews and Christians and their respective organizations and congregations, of my intention to some day and somehow make it to Germany as an American Jew and, yes, in the spirit and reality of Christ (some Jew, eh?), on my own recognizance and following my own inspiration (with encouragement form my Teacher but in no connection with any group or sect) to connect specifically with the population of the post-war born generation, mine and the one just prior - of younger Germans who MUST largely be normal feeling human beings like myself (yes, they were) and therefore, if I as a Jew was still so affected by the Shoa, I figured - and I was right as rain here - how thorough and yet ignored, unrecognized by everyone else must their burden be as children and grandchildren of the perpetrators and members and accomplices and those compliant, of the Nazi generation!  I had to meet them and let them meet me, to listen and share with each other, to find each other, to let them know that here was at least one American and Jew who wanted to meet them and hear them out and join with them - and to expose myself to exactly what not one single Jew or American I ever met even once ever considered or considered possible, ever mentioned or even wanted to look into.  Where was our compassion!  If I were the child or grandchild of Nazis, I figured, I'd want to shoot myself.  We needed to meet and we needed to embrace.

As fate would have it, I wound up in the Army in '86 and without my asking and without asking me first, they sent me here to Berlin - really, the Army was the horse I rode in on.  So I joyfully got here, joyfully stayed, stayed longer, remained.  And my hunches were all true and produced 23 yrs. of relationships.  So fine, I'm in Berlin, now what do I do with all these Arabs and world's third largest Turkish population in one city?  The trend is not, nor ever was, toward Sufi thought, Sufi tolerance, Sufi dhikr and universality - rather toward nationalism, mythological Islamic supremacy, playing the victim while milking the generous social system here for all its worth, producing more kids while barring them from normal schooling, i.e., from participation in important and normal activities if not keeping them home altogether, maintaining a parallel society which no politician has the balls (or ovaries) anymore to challenge with any teeth, and of course keeping a tight hold on family holdings in Turkey and shuttling between the two - keeping the wheels greased so that they can get what they want out of Germany without holding a whit less onto the Anatolian illiterate, superstitious and controlling village-mentality.

 I advised a dear American friend who wishes to travel to Pakistan to bridge understanding between Christians and Muslims, that what she is bringing with her there is not popular, certainly not now - and is this an understatement!   On the other hand, when Murshid Sam Lewis (also known, in fact specifically there in Pakistan, as Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti) was over there and in India in the '50s and the '60s, as well as Egypt, Japan... meeting Sufis and dervishes and roshis and masters and saints and swamis of a whole range of caliber and standing and attainment and energy, he was constantly running into them, as American as you could get and yet recognized everywhere he went as one who'd "got it"  - and initiated into and brought further along by several orders and schools - his life demonstrated that when you are there in the breath and conscious of what you are doing there, magical things do happen, which "don't get written up in the papers, as not-news" as he often loved to point out.  This all fed into his eventual breakthroughs in San Fran.

He passed away in Jan. '71 at the age of 75, after tripping in Dec. of the top step of the flight of stairs in their house in San Fran and suffering the expected concussion and any other such injuries as a fall like that can bring on.  That was the entire story as I always had it - there was never anything else to it.  Yet at the beginning of this year, I received word which was from pretty unquestionable sources, and supposedly corroborated when my source asked further (by certain former pupils of Sam's from that time), and that this was already well known among at least some in the Sufi Order - but news to me and very disturbing at that:  he was supposedly or evidently pushed down, at that dawn hour, by a Muslim fundamentalist (what one was doing in THAT house and moreover at THAT hour, beats the hell out of me).

He did not have "friends" among the Muslim Association of San Fran, although he was due to meet with them in the near future. He never had anything to do with them, he just did what he did (and cnfirmed to him by Sufi Barkat Ali in Pakistan) and was better at it than they ever would be: he brought hundreds to chanting "Allah" - and the Muslims blocked any dialogue he may have offered.  Once they approached him in regard to the Dances of Universal Peace which he'd received in inspiration directly from the spheres and the instruction to manifest this directly from real Sufis, the "Muslim Bruddas" approached him there around '67, and said, "We don't appreciate what you're doing," they meant using the sacred Arabic phrases in Dance, praising God and producing actual joy - they didn't like that.  He replied, without losing a beat, "Oh I'm sure you don't - but the only matter of importance here is, whether Allah appreciates it."  He said they took off in a huff without another word, and that he knew then that their arrogance would net them a smashing loss of face in the '67 war with Israel, he saw that coming.

I went on to advise my American friend to always stick with what she knows and come from experience, to stay open to inspiration but trust Allah and no Muslims.  S/He's got your back, I cautioned, they'll try to put a knife in it.  And last of all, I offered her this as a Great Concentration:

"On the in-breath:  TOWARD THE ONE, on the out-breath:  TOWARD THE ONE.  Let it sink deep, take it in, anchor it, let it guide you and energize your work and cover your ass."

Editorial pic, 1986 and today, 14 centuries' tradition

The cartoon is from my DLI years, showing a Shi'ite and a Sunni muezzin screaming at each other from the ivory towers of their respective minarets, instead of allahu-akbar (God is most great) to the mass of worshipers: "my god is greater than your god!" underneath reads: "the big problem in the Middle East...." the German headlines in the accompanying two articles (go to the link) reporting the situation in Afghanistan and Iraq respectively, exactly reflect my editorial cartoon. I still plan to get this out to the Arabic-speaking world. Whether it unleashes another Danish-fiasco, remains to be seen...insha'llah.

editorial cartoon in arabic

By: Sam Inayat-Chisti

Photos: 3
http://www.facebook.com/media/set/?set=a.10150352222844114.371352.521239113&type=1&l=48b09dfe40

"What's love got to do with it . . ."

No one realizes God through fixation on "reward" and "punishment" - rules and regulations and laws and codes and creeds:  all dogma and doctrine, binding one to a belief.  Belief is not faith and faith is not realization.  Belief is "taught-religion", faith is at least something like conviction, but neither of these is realization.  Realization or Knowledge of God can only come through love,  and through nothing but love.  Everyone is on the path, whether atheist or fundamentalist.

Ultimately love is its own reward because it bestows a sovereignty which no dogma ever will.  Nor does its mere absence mean God wants to "punish" one.  Hopefully we mature, because love is mature.  Love is objective, non-sentimental, stimulating one to love more and to give oneself into it.  I've seen more humanity, more empathy and openness among some "non-believers" than among any hard-core fundamentalists of any faith, Muslim, Jewish or Christian.  Envy, spite, judgment from fear & loathing of the "other", supremacy and self-pity based together on a deeply insecure self-loathing which extends outward.

Every mystic from any tradition knows this, that's why they recognize each other right away when encountered, but are respectively never understood or recognized by those in their own traditions who are still ruled by dogma and doctrine, by hope of "winning paradise" and fear of "courting hell"...

The mystic doesn't love God because s/he believes in God, s/he believes in God precisely because s/he loves God, call that what one likes, God-Goddess-AllThatIs.  The mystic might then say, reversing the logic of this world:  "I believe (or place my trust) only in That which I love, and I can only love That because I know That."  This is why the mystics demonstrate "remembering God" - not like remembering your car keys, but in going back into a deep and intimate knowing, perhaps first only sensed, then followed - and this is really religion - a knowing of one's own origin and source of Being.  And how can one not love That?