Hugging and Kissing

"At the end of his life he was hugging and kissing men and women all the time.  He originated the Dances of Universal Peace and dedicated them to the Temple of Understanding which was committed, as was Hazrat Inayat Khan, to providing a house of prayer for all peoples.  These dances, which take sacred phrases from all the world’s religions, have since spread worldwide.  He originated the work of the Sufi Choir and instituted spiritual instruction through music.  He credited his “fairy godmother” Ruth St. Denis with his ability to draw Dance forms out of the cosmos and for his inspiration to teach through the Walk.

In 1968, he joined forces with Pir Vilayat Khan, the eldest son of his first teacher, and there followed a great flowering of the Sufi work in the United States.  Murshid Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti, as Samuel is now known, appointed his own spiritual successor, Moineddin Jablonski, from among his disciples, named several Sheikhs and Khalifs.  In December 1970, a fall down the stairs of his San Francisco home gave him a brain concussion, and after two and a half weeks in the hospital he died on January 15, 1971.  His work is carried on and spread by his energetic and devoted disciples.

“For years,” Samuel said about himself, “I followed a Gandhian attitude, always yielding, and got nothing for it.  When once I was able to be firm and take the path of the master, everything came my way.”  The events of the last years of Murshid Sam’s life were so full they deserve a chronicle all their own.  This brief biographical sketch focuses on less-known periods of his early life.  At the end, all the seeds of his earlier efforts and experiences came to fruition.  Not knowing how to face all this abundance, he received the Divine instruction: “Harvest what you can, and leave the rest to Me.”

—Murshid Wali Ali Meyer