Once upon a time, also at the Khankah (a lot of things happened at the Khankah), because I spent a full year living in Marin and about a year living in San Francisco. I moved into the area in February of 1969, and moved into San Francisco in January of 1970, and then he passed away in January of 1971, so a lot of my early contact with him was on a kind of working level, because I wasn't really working while I was in Marin, I was just kind of hanging out, and when you hang out you have a lot of time to do things, play kibitz, work in the office, run errands, etc.

Anyway, there was an evening get-together at the Khankah in Novato and Drew Langston was there and he was showing his movie (Drew became a disciple). He was showing this movie that he had, in the dining room and I was feeling really weird about what was happening and Ayesha (Bless Ayesha) dragged me out of there and she said, "Saul, there's going to be an explosion." Everybody was laughing and having fun, and I could feel it and I looked at her and she said, "Saul," and I walked out of the room and she ran upstairs to the sewing room and I found myself huddled against the door and all of a sudden the prayer room door just burst open and it was like an explosion and Murshid came through there; man, he looked like he was eighteen feet tall, and about eighty feet wide, and he was just absolute pure radiant power and energy and pissed off. I tried to just literally merge into the wall that I was standing against, I just did not want to get in his way, and he looked at me and I felt like I was gonna die and he said, "This doesn't apply to you, don't be afraid." It's almost as if in mid-step he said that, and then went right back into that place that he was and walked right into that room, man, and destroyed the universe. There was Moineddin and Fatima, Hassan and Jayanara, and Drew and I don't know who else was in there.

INTERVIEWER: in the prayer room?

SAUL: No, this wasn't in the prayer room, he came from the prayer room and he went into the dining room where they were showing this movie and kibitzing and laughing and it was around 9 or 10 o'clock at night and he was furious because he'd been trying to get his practices done and there was too much noise in the house.

So, he just exploded, this was not a house of play, this was a house of work, they should know that, this was not the kind of space for that kind of material or energy to go through, and that when people don't have the facility of saying their prayers and practices privately in the house, then the whole house is not good, it will not stand. He said it very loudly and to everyone there and then he called them all into the prayer room, all the disciples and everyone else was asked to leave, if you weren't a disciple, leave, if you don't live in the house, leave, I want the members of the house to come into there and talk to me. And here were all of our teachers, because Moineddin was our teacher and everybody was all an old disciple walking in, they all looked like little kids, not that they'd been spanked or chastised but that they had dropped their egos and they were just absolutely open and receptive, o.k., I did wrong, what would you like me to do, and it was one of those tastes that I have of the mastery that first he had, and the receptivity that they were able to open to. Hassan remembers that day, too.

A couple of short things. Considering that this is for posterity, and if Murshid really doesn't want it to be told then I'm sure he'll erase it. A number of times I asked Murshid why he was teaching Sufism. He was a Buddhist, and a Hindu and all these things, and he said, "I'm teaching Sufism because the Buddhists are all splintered and shot up and the Hindus can't get their act together and it doesn't matter if you're a Hindu and you meet another Hindu, your first question is, "Who's your teacher, my teacher is better, and I'm on this one, and you're on that one, and I've got my head shaved this way, and I say this mantra and I go to that temple and you don't and therefore…." and he said "Listen, Sufis aren't like that, that's why I teach Sufism, because Sufis do it Toward the One, and they do it with unity."

Murshid had a whole number of shots that went down with the Buddhists. Now, Murshid was very close with Kennett Roshi at Mt. Shasta and Gene Wagner and Joe Miller and I guess what you call the Sangha that was developed around two groups. Nyogen Senzaki, who was Murshid's Zen master and the Master Seo, who was also Murshid's Zen master, and the latter Buddhists groups, like the people at Tassajara and the Zen Center he never had much truck with and he had a certain amount of relationship with Tolun, but there was a lot of heartbreak there. Tolun actually came into the Rainbow Bridge and told me that Murshid was not a Zen master and had only had minimal realization, if that, because he wasn't Chinese, and only a Chinese Shin Buddhist could be enlightened and anybody else just isn't, and that's the secret of the universe.

Murshid used to say, "Damn them all to hell, they meet the Buddha on the road kill 'em, and they're damned for that eternally. You don't kill the Buddha, you kill the pride, the ego, he said he wanted a Buddha. He says they start all their things by saying "I": instead of saying, "I bear witness to the Buddha, the Dharma and the Sangha and I surrender and make obeisance to them, and I honor them, and I put them above myself. Instead of saying that they say, “I believe this and I say that and this scripture says this.

Anyway, there are a couple of groups that don't do that, that he worked with, and one of them wound up at Mt. Shasta and he sent me to them before they went to Mt. Shasta, it was Kennett Roshi, they were very dear friends, and his name is included in the list of preceptors that they read for the blessing of the congregation, everyday, Murshid is considered a Buddhist master of their lineage. It turns out that Murshid and Kennett Roshi went to the same monastery at different times, which made them dharma cousins, I guess, and they graduated from that monastery, but not with the same teachers, different teachers, but they still graduated, so he's included in their lineage and when he died they did a whole day service for him on Mt. Shasta, and people in India knew about it, that day. Neem Karoli Baba's people did a service for him in India, that's Ram Dass' guru, Maharaji, because one of our people came back and said that they were doing a service for the passing of Sam Lewis in India and they had heard about it and somebody had come and told them. The word had gotten out literally all over the world. Very far out.

I guess I should say something about his death. I'll let everybody else know I talk about some of these other things. I was asleep and I got a phone call, I guess it was around two or three in the morning, it was Wall Ali, and he said, "Murshid just fell down the stairs and he's hurt, you'd better come down quickly." I said, "How bad is it?" He said, "I think he's in shock," and I said okay. I threw on some clothes and ran out of the house and I ran down the hill, I just really didn't trust myself to drive. I ran in and I looked at him and he was sitting up in bed and they had wiped a lot of the blood off of him. There were a lot of people in the house, there were about four or five people that had slept over. He was in his bedroom, and I looked at him and I remember saying, "You really hurt yourself this time, Murshid, but you're gonna be all right," and there wasn't any response. His eyes were glassy and I gave him a superficial check-over and I remember calling a doctor named Alan Datner that had been on the set, he had never been initiated, but he had been coming around for awhile, and I told him what had happened and said I wanted to know where to take him and I didn't have any time to dawdle and to tell me what to do immediately and he didn't know. He kept going, uh, uh. He was really shocked by what I had said. I had awakened him because it was probably 3 o'clock or so by then, and I said, "I'm gonna count to 10 and if you can't give me an answer, I'm gonna hang up." He still uhhed and uhhed, so I hung up.

I thought, I don't know if he's had a heart attack or not, I don't know what's happened to him, except that he fell down the stairs in the middle of the night and the stairs had no relationship at all to his bedroom or anything else, and God knows what he was doing. He might have had a heart attack, and if so, I should get him to a hospital immediately. So I called up the closest hospital, which was General. I said I had a possible cardiac arrest, a man in his seventies and we were gonna bring him in there, and they were ready for us when we got there and they immediately put him through a series of tests, his heart was all right but he was still in shock.

Anyway, that began the hospital experience, which lasted for what seemed like forever. He finally threatened to blow up the hospital unless we got him out of there and he kept screaming to be moved to Chinese hospital and no doctor would take the responsibility of releasing him and I finally called a Chinese doctor and I explained to him what was happening. I literally called him at random and said, "This man is our grandfather, and our godfather and our teacher. He's a master of Sufism, he's a master of Shin Buddhism, he has two doctorates from universities in Asia, and we do not want him to be treated like a vegetable or an animal or a mineral. If he has to die, let him die like a human being, but we want him to live, and we don't think he'll live where he is, and he's asking in his few moments of lucidity to be moved to a Chinese hospital." And the man said, "I hear you, and I will take it upon myself to get him into a Chinese hospital," but he said, "remember, though, this could mean my license" and I said, "It could mean his life! You don't talk about your license, It could mean his life, they're killing him here, they're not taking care of him, they're not brushing him, they're not feeding him, they're barbaric and we can't get him out and if we don't get him out we'll probably blow up the fucking hospital to do it. We're all really prepared to do this." He said, "All right, I'll do it."

So, we took him to a Chinese hospital and he died there. He woke up once in the middle of his coma and we had a talk and he was upset that Danny Lomax had come in from Tucson and left Tucson but he was pleased to see him. He asked how everything was, everything was fine, he asked me how many people had come in to see him, and then he started crying, he started remembering all of these people that had come through. He was so pleased that his friends that thought so much of him (he didn't call them his disciples, he called them his friends) but they had all come by. Because, I guess it was maybe five or six years before that, maybe seven years, he had been in the hospital with a heart attack or food poisoning or whatever it was, (there were a number of different stories) and people came to see him, but nothing like this. I guess he felt pretty alone there. And he remembered the people coming through all the time and he started naming them. He asked me about certain ones. And I said, "Listen, Murshid, you really put us through quite a trip, get yourself together so we can get out of here." He said, “you think this is something, Saul, wait until you see what I have in store for you." So I'm still there. (Unclear on tape.)

Anyway, then I ran out to get Wali Ali. Murshid dictated a letter to his Pir-o-Murshid, Sufi Barkat Ali in Pakistan and I can remember being there with Danny Lomax and I was standing there with the pen and the tablet of paper to write down the letter and he said I'm his secretary, let me write it down! I said, sure. I gave him the thing to write it down but I kept the pad of paper because it was mine. Anyway, I brought Wali All and Murshid looked at him and he said, "Did you pay the rent?" No, Murshid. He said, "Why not?" Wall All said, because everything's under your name, all the money's under your name, and he said, "Pay the rent! And Wall Ali said, "But Murshid," and he said, "Pay the rent!" Every time Wali All would put in an objection to it, Murshid would get a little more angry and a little more strong and a little more loud and Wali Ali finally said “All right,” and Murshid said, "Now!" 'Cause that was Wali Ali's orders to hold down the….

So, Wali Ali was given his orders, I was told to await something, and Sheik Abd-ar-Rahman was told he was extravagant, but it was nice to see him. Those were the only ones of us that actually spoke to him and to everybody else he was as coherent and lucid as we are right now. He had just literally come right out of the coma and then he went back into it again. And he never really came out again.

There were a couple of other interesting parts to that story. I guess one is that I gave him a piece of amber that we had been using in the healing service that he wore around his neck and when Joe Miller came in there he pulled it off his neck and gave it to Joe. He said, "I want you to have this" and Joe said, "No, Sam, that's one of your kids, it's obvious that somebody put it around your neck." And Murshid said, "No, really, it's for you." So Joe took it and said, "All right," because Sam was really strong about it. He wrapped it up in tissue paper, and said, "I wonder who it's for," and gave it to me, figuring it was mine. And it was.

There were three people in the same little side room he was in. One of them was a vegetable, one of them had lost the use of his arms and legs (this was the neurological ward) and one of them was going to lose the use of his legs and all three made miraculous recoveries. Miraculous. And, when Murshid finally went in there, I guess, when he went in there and he was on his table and kept screaming, "Take me to a Chinese hospital, take me to Chinese hospital," and we kept saying, "We can't get you out now but we will," he'd start hitting me, open-handed but really hard, he's a strong man, and every time he'd hit me I'd say, "Thank you" and after about the fifth or sixth time he opened up his eyes and looked at me and I realized that it had been a blessing, His way. I thank you for it.

So, and then of course after he died, there were all these people, even when he was in the hospital, who were teachers in this area who came by and tried to take us over, because he wasn’t there anymore and they started telling us things like, "When Sam was around he told me that if there was any problem, that I should take over, that I was the successor." And a couple of them were really strong about it, really strong, and we weren't having any of it, because it wasn't true. Moineddin was Sam's successor, and Moineddin was just out of the hospital himself, he was very ill. Anyway, I should mark that there were two people who did not say that. One was Kennett Roshi, who never made any intonation that she was his successor, and the other was Joe Miller, who came up and was always there (Gene Wagner didn't either, a lot of the guys really didn't), but people who really had followings, and were really in the process of teaching, quite a few of them came in and tried to take us over, but Joe Miller, I remember most in particular. He came in and said, "I don't want anybody to take you guys over, Sam wouldn't want it that way, if he'd wanted it that way, he would have told you, so keep your own shot together; any help I can give you, ask, you don't want it, don't ask, I won't volunteer, I'm right here, all the time, constantly, I'm your friend, and your brother and don't worry about asking me, call me twenty-four hours a day, I'm always on call." I remember him coming to a couple of meetings (he really is a powerful man) and people would ask, "Wow, who are you, where do you teach?" And he would say, "It doesn't matter who I am, I don't teach, and you're here, and this is a good place to be. Stay with the Sufis. They got it.” That impressed me.  And he's still that way. Not looking for plaudits and kudos. Impressive. So, I would also say that Murshid had a lot of really, really good friends, that came around when he was in the hospital. People like Gene Wagner and Joe Miller, and Teddy Reich. Teddy was really broken up, really broken up; because they go back to I guess the 1920's or 1930's together. And so it went. We were pretty broken up.

I think that's all I'm gonna say.