Samual Lewis ( October 18th 1896 to January 2nd 1971) was an American mystic and dance teacher who founded the Dances of Universal Peace movement. He was also known under his Sufi name of Murshid and to the popular press as Sufi Sam.
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Life
His father Jacob was a Vice President of the Levi Strauss jean manufacturing company. His mother was Harriett Rosenthal, the daughter of Lenore Rothschild of the international banking family.
To his parents' dismay he showed a keen interest in religion and spirituality from an early age and later rejected their attempts at as business career for him.
He studied mathematics at Columbia University in 1916.
In 1919 he entered a Sufi community in Fairfax, California where he met and was influenced by the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan an Indian Sufi teacher and musician . A year later he began Zen study with Sogaku Shaku, a disciple of the Rinzai Zen Buddhist Abbot Shaku Soyen. The twin spiritual influences of Sufism and Zen were to remain central throughout his life
He remained in the Faifax Sufi community through the early 1920s and achieved deepening mystical experiences. In 1926 he collaborated in the opening of the first official Zendo teaching Zen Buddhism in America in San Francisco.
He continued to study Sufism and Zen and added yoga to his studies. He developed an interest in horticulture and promoted seed exchanges across the world.
In 1956 he began travelling the world visiting Japan , India and Egypt , seeking the company of other mystics and teachers.
In 1967 whilst recovering from a heart attack in hospital he heard the Voice of God speaks to him and say, "I make you spiritual leader of the hippies."
For the remainder of his life he travelled around California developing and teaching the Dances of Universal Peace which draw on all the spiritual traditions he had encountered. The movement he created continues today.
