Diary 1963 - Murshid Sam's Living Stream

Diaries 1963September 17, 1963My dear Vocha:I have just run into the most mysterious as of problems. I wrote once and then cancelled theletter as according to Sufi teachings one should keep the secret of one’s friend. And even after I receiveda scathing letter from Paul Reps hesitated, but the mystery deepens.I never asked about the dissolution of his second marriage. But Christine Sigeliev gave me tounderstand there was a long career of doubtful relations with women. On New Year’s even I foundmyself in the middle of an audience who claimed they were the friends and associates of Reps-sanfor years. But when I mentioned names he equivocated or oven denied having known them.He went to Chico for a conference and when he came back he did not want to see anybodyelse. He refused to visit the Zendo or any Japanese, despite the fact that he told me he had been verypopular in Japan; nor did he take any introduction from me which would have been mutually valuable.On a previous occasion he left a very valuable manuscript with me with instructions to get itpublished. I don’t know anything about the subject and about publishers. Now he has repeated thesame, knowing I am overworked and in neither case was any money left. So I become the depositoryof unsolicited manuscripts and I will not take the time even to send them to the original authors.This is an imposition, especially on an overworked man.On top of that he has insisted he will never go to LA again. Now between Zen and Sufism thereis let us says a Sixth Sense or sight and my surmise, or intuition is that there are one more or morewomen in L.A. that have legal claims against him. But the situation is even more complex here inthat he has avoided even his publisher in this city and. I can’t make head or tail.In addition to writing me the scathing letter he told me he is going into hiding, What for? Nowon top of that I am getting letters for him.” “Why?I am interested in the criticisms he leveled because they have come from other sources thatI am conceited, opinionated and self-centered. He found out—and it is true, that I broke up somemeetings supposed to be on Buddhism when the discussions ran off into the fields of whether Mrs.Paledino was or was not a successful medium, etc. I was asked in Japan to do the Fu-do function.But I notice that neither Reps-san nor any critic will look at the actual written credentials I have fromJapanese Masters. I never asked for these written credentials nor from the Sufis but I have them andany “claim” is supported by manuscripts and letters.Reps was particularly critical because of my use of Arabic words. He gave me his Sufi libraryand when I copied and used the very words that were in the books he gave me, he troubled me. Hedid not trounce the author whose terms copied, but me for being incomprehensible.