Shamsher Autobiography

Bryn Beorse (Björset) (Shamcher)

(Berkeley, CA. U.S.A. From Shamcher's autobiographical data. 27th July 1977.)

In October 1923 when I was 27 years old and had traveled all over India looking for a teacher of Yoga, which I had studied from when eight years old, Sirkar van Stolk telephoned to me in Oslo: Would I translate a lecture to be given at the Oslo University by the World's greatest mystic? "We know that you have traveled in India ..." A Theosophist friend insisted on going to the Grand Hotel together, where Inayat Khan was staying. I was irritated: this friend, too talkative, would ball up my serious interview about how to proceed with the translation – sentence by sentence or a script? Wondering how I would be able to get in my practical questions amid the heavy spiritual artillery fire I expected from my friend, I entered the room, a worried man. – Inayat Khan looked up at us with laughing eyes. "Shall we have silence?" The gentle, sincere, almost apologetic tone of his voice contrasted the startling sense of his words. With a graceful bow he asked us to sit down. We seated ourselves in opposite corners of a sofa and he sat down between us and closed his eyes. So did we... . I woke up, refreshed, when a bell rang. The interview was over, not a word was exchanged.
Next evening Inayat Khan gave his lecture and I translated it, after it had been given in full, without taking notes. People said I did not miss a word. I don't know how.
I told him I liked his Message but I was already a member of the Theosophical Society and the Order of the Star in the East, so of course I could not join him. "No, of course not." Four days later he came back from a trip. I said: "I think my membership in those other organizations was a preparation for something to come. I believe this may have come now. May I join you?" "With great pleasure." Then he gave me practices and initiated me in a railway compartment. The people around us seemed unaware of what was going on.
I had played with God as a lusty playmate from early childhood, so could never be quite as serious and awed as some other mureeds and once, in the middle of the first Summer School in Paris, I suggested to Inayat Khan that perhaps I was not really fit for this life. He reassured me smilingly that I was, and protected me against assaults by other mureeds, in very subtle ways. Murshida Green had asked us "What does Murshid mean to you?" "Well," said I, "a friend, an example." "Oh you don't understand at all. Murshid is so much more than all that." That same evening Murshid gave a talk but before he started he looked thoughtful, then said: "Before I start my talk I want to mention that sometimes a teacher's best friends become his worst enemies – by lifting him up onto a pedestal and making of him an inhuman monster instead of what he is and wants to be: Just a friend, an example ..." Nevertheless, I want to ask forgiveness for my lack of respect. I even once asked Inayat whether we could give up the "Sufi" name on the Message since people misunderstood it for some Muslim sect. He said: "It could happen. But for the time being the name seems right to me, and if we did not put a name on ourselves, others would put a name on us and it might be worse." More important is that Inayat pushed into my mind worlds of impulses that will take me eons to unravel and use.
When mureeds asked if Sufis should not be pacifists, Inayat replied: "If people of goodwill lay down their arms today, they will still fight: they will be forced to fight, and not in defense of their ideals any longer, but against them." In September 1926 I saw Inayat for the last time. I said: "I look forward to seeing you next summer." "From now on," he replied, "you will meet me in your intuition." Then, during the first days of February 1927 I had a strange urge to travel to Suresnes, a three-four day trip by boat and rail from Norway. When I arrived others had had the same urge. Early on fifth February came the answer to why we had come. Now the Message was with us.
Inayat Khan often said "Mureeds who have never met me, never seen me, will often be closer to me than you, who know me as a person". I am meeting such mureeds, closer to him, every day.