May 19, 2011
Subject: early memories of Murshid

Just saw this early transcription of an interview I did in the early 70's.  {Rainbow Bridge was operating, and the kids were still very young.} Someone transcribed it into word.

Can't remember giving this interview, who transcribed it, and how it wound up on my current computer… but it certainly sounds like how I used to speak.

Please also note tha there was an error of exclusion - when I named the Shiekhs in robes who sat around Murshid, I forgot to include Mansur Johnson.

Anyway, don't know if it's worth including in the web site, but I thought you may be interested.

all blessings
Saul in Amsterdam

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This is Saul Barodofsky here talking about my dog Wuta and Murshid. Anyway, Wuta really loved Murshid; I don't really think that it was quite as much for the donut holes that he would get as because Murshid really loved him. Murshid went to Switzerland for the World Conference of Religions, and while he was gone, Wuta didn't go down to the Mentorgarten, which he used to do literally every day, and hang out there, but he didn't do that while Murshid was gone. One day it was really, really early in the morning, and Wuta was sitting on the roof of the house (my windows overlooked the roof) and he would look over the street and he would lean over and bark at people and sort of have fun. All of a sudden (I guess it was about 6:30-7:00 and I was getting ready to go to work) he leaped up he stood straight up and every hair on his body just radiated out and his tail was in the air and his ears were perked up, and he was sniffing the wind. You could just really hear him listening, and then he shot out like a bat out of hell, and I called out to him and he didn't hear me. I thought, "There's a dog in heat, or something,” and so I walked out, figuring Murshid's getting back today and he probably won't want to be hassled with a lot of people when he gets home, and I'll see him, like, later.

So, after work I walked by the Mentorgarten, and I went upstairs and there was Murshid and he looked at me and he says, "Who was the first person to greet me when I got home?" And I was thinking of, "I don't know, uh, Wali Ali, Moineddin, Amin, Akbar, Shirin, Basira," all these names of these people, and all of a sudden they all just washed away, and I said, "Wuta!" He said, "That's right!" (Laughter) So here was Wuta tearing down the hill almost knocking him out of the door with joy and expectation, and the first thing he did upon arriving in San Francisco after this triumphal world tour that he had taken was take Wuta out to buy him dog food. (Donut holes and day old pastry.) That says a great deal about the man.

INTERVIEWER: How far away did you live from the Mentorgarten?

SAUL: About two blocks, up the hill. I lived on Ripley Street, the Mentorgarten is on Precita; I lived almost directly behind him, so it was about a four-minute walk. Or about a two-minute run down the hill!

Here's another story. When we were coming back from the Lama Foundation, we stopped in Camarillo to see Bhakti Engle—she's a disciple of Inayat Khan, an old lady, very, very beautiful. For some reason I brought up Mother Mary. It turned out that she knew her. And I told her about Mother Mary's passing and how hard I had taken it, and she hadn't heard about that. So we talked about that, and I could see that Murshid was very upset that I was talking about something other than Sufism. So I looked at him and said, "I just want to tell you one story about Mother Mary." Murshid was just glowering at me, and he couldn't kick me because I was sitting across from the table! (Laughter) And I could see him reaching under the table to kick me. So anyway, I said "Before Mother Mary went out of the public world, she held a big meeting for everybody in Mount Shasta and her message for that meeting was, "You can always trust the Sufis." Anyway, Murshid sat back up and went "Ahem, well, I guess that's all right, Saul." (Laughter)

Let's see, Murshid stories.

INTERVIEWER: Did Murshid in any way give you the idea to start this business?

SAUL: It was his inspiration, but it wasn't his idea. I used to have a book store in Santa Barbara and when I got here, I told him what I was into. He said, what do you do, and I said, " I do healing," and he said, "Good," he said, "I don't have anybody that does healing, you do that," and I said, "Good." I said, "I'm studying numerology," and he said, "Oh, I got somebody that studies numerology, no, no, don't do that." And I said, "But wait, I've been doing it for like three years. (Laughter) And I'm really getting into it" and he said, "No," and I went, "Huh?" And I said I was doing color therapy, and he said, "Nahh, I've got some other people doing color," he said, "You stick to healing." So all these other things I was doing got left by the wayside. And so I said, "Look, what happens if I want to open up a bookstore?" And he said, "Hassan already has a bookstore. Hussain and Hassan already have a bookstore, and that's enough bookstores. If you want to open up a bookstore, you'd better talk to them." So, Hassan actually got me to open up the bookstore, because his closed, and so I figured it was all part of that. Murshid wanted me to be more or less concentrating on one thing at a time, instead of splitting up my energy.

I guess I should say how he initiated me as a Hakim. His god-daughter and his Khalifa and one of his first disciples, whose name was Saadia Khawar Khan, was in from Pakistan—an interesting lady. She had never had a man touch her before, and I was working on her back. She kept looking at me and saying things like, "You're the first man who's ever really touched me besides my father, and because Murshid said it was all right, I know it's all right." It was a totally different society she came from. The only people that touch you are your parents and your husband, besides other ladies. You would go to a doctor and you would have a model, a doll, and you would point to what parts of the doll hurt, and he would tell you what to do. Physical examinations weren't too good. So I was working on her back, massaging and adjusting and doing all these things, whew! And she started getting better and she was very pleased with what was happening.

There was a meeting (it was also at the Khankah), and everybody was there, literally, the whole family. I think it was the only time I've ever seen Murshid with his full Jamiat in one place all dressed up in robes. Akbar was there, and Saadia, and Moineddin and Fatima, and Wali Ali and Amin, and everybody was there, and they were all in robes and they were all sitting in this big crescent around Murshid. He was the center point of this crescent and there were all these people coming out and they were like the whole back of a room, all in robes. We were all sitting in the front of the room doing a Wazifa, I don't remember which one, we were probably doing the three Wazifas, we were counting them off on our tasbihs and I remember that there was this shift of energy in the room and I just felt it and I felt my hand make an involuntary movement, and all of a sudden he said, "Saul, I make you Hakim." And I felt like there were these incredibly huge shoes just thrust at me and I was swimming in them, and I felt myself stand up, and there it was, I was a Hakim, and I thought to myself, I don't want that, that's just too much, it's something for maybe twenty years from now, fifty years from now, not something for now. And everybody was coming up afterwards and congratulating me (laughter); I was really freaked out. Later he told me that it was something I would grow into and not to worry about it. Interesting!

And, let's see, once upon a time, I was living at Rancho Olompali. There are a whole bunch of stories connected with that. I was brought down to the Bay Area ostensibly to help maintain the energy center there. It was a spiritual community that had gotten very heavily into drugs and out of spiritual activity and they needed some leaving people there, so I brought down to work with that. And I found that there really wasn't anybody really to work with; the few Sufis there were really chaotically disorganized; Shirin was there, and she wasn't a great deal of help; she was some help, but she wasn't a great deal of help. She probably felt the same way about me! But anyway, she brought me down and I always felt like they wanted me to do a miracle, but, whew! Lots of violence, and lots of strong dope, and very little respect and a number of stories connected with that.

Murshid walked over to see me one day, and we took a nice walk around there and he said, "If I have my way we'll own this place, and where I'm gonna have (that's the holy mountain, pointing to the back of Mt. Tam, about 4,000 feet high); he said, "Which of my disciples can live at the top? In a progressive order, in other words in terms of their grades?" And I said, "I don't know" and he said, "Those that get up the earliest can live higher to the top, that’s how they do it. If people want to sleep all day they can live at the bottom, people that want to get up early in the morning can live at the top, people that want to get up between that, right, they can live in between that. Getting up early in the morning is the key to the spiritual life." Anyway, the kids wake me up at six o'clock! Whew! (Laughter)

Anyway, I was wandering around the ranch one day, when I had a few spare minutes of my time; I was just wandering around and there was this funny little man in a big orange robe and he was short and fat and he had long, white hair and a long, white beard, and looked sort of like an Indian Santa Claus. I thought he was this ubiquitous guru that everybody there was waiting for who finally came and he was, so I said, "Oh, are you [?] and he said, "No." I said, "My name's Saul, and I'm a Sufi, and I want to welcome you to our land, would you like some tea," and we started talking. His name was Nataraji Guru, and I was very impressed with him.

There were a number of things that happened that were pretty much on the miraculous level and I figured he was a real teacher and he wasn't out for points, so I told Murshid about him, and he said "Oh, he sounds like a nice guy," and one day we were driving by this place where he lived and I said, "Oh Murshid that's where Nataraji Guru lives, and Murshid said, "Stop the car, and he looked at Danny Lomax (Abd-ar-Rahman) who was driving the car, and he says, "Go find a place to park the car, Saul, lets go right there, right now." And we went walking up to the door and knocked and there he was and these two guys met and what they said to each other was, which I was very impressed by, was "Hello, welcome to my city, thank you very much," and they talked for awhile, "Do you know this, do you know that, I was with Papa Ramdas and I studied with him, and him, and oh, I know him, I loved them, and isn't that wonderful," and Murshid looked at him and he said, "I need a lot of help in San Francisco, please stay here and teach and I will get you students." I was very impressed by that because he wasn't saying, "This is my territory and it doesn't have room for you, and it's only so big enough for both of us and why don't you go back to where you come from." What he said was, "There's a lot of work to do here, you're a real teacher and I respect what you're doing, you're not making points, you're a real teacher, come into my world and I will find you students. I will find you students because real teachers are needed." I was very impressed by that. And Nataraji Guru said, "My world is very busy, why don't you come to India? I'll get you all the students you want." (Laughter) Anyway, they're a couple of characters.

He served us Prasad, he was making potatoes, and he kept touching it with his hands before he would give it to us which I thought was very cute. And he really kept inviting us both to come to India. Constantly. He came to a couple of our meetings and he talked about when he met Inayat Khan in Switzerland, in 1921 or something, and that was the only other contact he had with the Sufis, but he liked Inayat Khan very much and he liked us very, very much, and he thought we really had it and that was all good. Um, that was interesting. What else, what else would you like to know? How about a miracle?

Murshid didn't go in for miracles. He didn't, but he was sneaky about them. One day, there I was at the Khankah in Novato and we were having our Sunday afternoon class and we were dancing and singing and having a picnic and doing all these nice things we did every Sunday, and Murshid looked up and said "Where's Hassan?" And we said, "He's sick," and he looked at me and said “SAUL” "That's your job!” And I caught it, and I said “sure.”

And I walked into the room and Hassan had a really high fever. He was just radiating all this energy and so I stood there, because he was asleep and I didn't want to wake him up, and I found my hands involuntarily, without volition, just pointing themselves at him, fingertips forward, this incredible energy was going through them and I saw him wake up and look at me, and look of my hands and smile and I remember as he closed his eyes I felt this energy coming into my back and I looked behind me and there was Murshid standing there pouring this energy, doing exactly what I was doing, only he was doing it to me, and I was the conductor sending it to Hassan. Well, Hassan got better, his fever broke.

I remember telling him this story. It was about two or three months ago, around May of 1975, and this happened I guess around April or May of 1969 or 1970. He looked at me and said, "I didn't know Murshid was there, Murshid was behind you, really?" I said, "Yeah, he was in the doorway." "Isn't that interesting," he said, "I could see the doorway and I didn't see him there."

So, that's sort of interesting. I remember telling this story to a couple of people and they asked the question, ""Was he there in his physical body," because the dancing was going on downstairs, the dancing didn't stop. You could hear the chanting. I'd never thought about it until then.

When I was in Mt. Shasta, everything was a miracle, and when I got to San Francisco, everything was hard work on the physical plane and you did your share and didn't stop and think about miracles and look for people popping up under rocks and walking through walls. I don't know if that was him in his physical body or his spiritual body. I don't know if it matters. It really doesn't matter, but the work I've done which is important that’s what’s important. But, anyway, that's one of the miracle stories.

— continued