It's A Grace

Thinking is more stinking than drinking,
but to feel is for real. - Samuel L Lewis

"The first thing that struck me about Samuel L. Lewis (called Murshid, or teacher, by his disciples) was his deep humanness. He had a gruff manner behind which shone a mischievous smile and quick wit. For all practical purposes, this was a man of the world, yet somehow a man of deep religious experience.

His favorite musical comedies were those of Gilbert and Sullivan, which he used to sing in doubletime at parties. If Murshid had been billed as a stand-up comedian, he would have packed them in, and yet, because he came representing the spiritual path, hardly anyone knew whether to laugh or not -- so many just sat at his public lectures in self-righteous disbelief. Few during his lifetime could see his spiritual gifts through his humor. Now, after his death, many of his most devoted disciples don't remember his great humor for his spiritual gifts.

His rhythm was that of a man who'd started falling forward and had to run to keep from landing on his face. He would get wound up in the morning after certain spiritual exercises and virtually fly through his days.

His personality, his voice, every aspect of his being, constantly radiated positive magnetism, a sun-like energy that the Sufis call Baraka. He was an energy-transformer capable of bringing other transformers to life through a harmonizing of their energies with his, and his with the highest.

He was born of wealthy Jewish parents; his father was a vice-president of the Levi-Straus Company in San Francisco. And his great-grandfather, who came to California in 1848, invented the copper rivets used on Levis, the blue denim pants famous to America and almost the uniform of Sam's youthful disciples. His mother was Harriet Rothschild, a member of the international banking family.

Born October 18, 1896, at 2:20 a.m., San Francisco, California, Samuel L. Lewis lived a simple life working at many jobs. Due to disagreements in his family, he never was well to do. The family dissension, it has been reported, came from certain of his relatives who were convinced that he was a "crack-pot mystic." It was not until the death of his father in 1954 that a trust fund was established from which he used the small income to support the Sufi work in San Francisco. In the intervening years between his "disinheritance" and the establishment of his modest trust fund, he developed himself as both a student of comparative religion and philosophy, and as a first-class gardener with outstanding insights into desert reclamation.

Well into his seventies, Murshid was active from dawn into night. His time was given to teaching spiritual dancing and walking, counseling with disciples and spiritual aspirants, worldwide correspondence, lectures, creative writing, cooking, gardening, and more and more to trying to bring peace to the Holy Land. The amount of work he accomplished each day would have exhausted a man half his age. He explained such extra-ordinary accomplishments, saying, "It's a Grace."

No other man I have ever met so fit the Sufi saying: "Sufism adapts itself to time and space." For Murshid was a spontaneous presence in himself, a perfect Taoist actor, "in the world, but not of it."

~ Walter H. Bowart, Tucson, Arizona, 1972

Photo ~ Sam Lewis in Pakistan