Transcriber’s Remarks

This work by Bryn Beorse, known to his Sufi friends as Shamcher, is remarkable. About half of it is a rather tedious, sometimes almost whining, account of his efforts to convince various important people of the merits of a plan to provide full employment for everyone who wants a job — hence the title, Every Willing Hand. One does not learn the exact details of the plan until the Appendix. Few people, I imagine, would bother to wade through the whole thing. But if you do, about half-way through you will be rewarded with an extraordinary gem of an essay about the esoteric meaning of various religious symbols. And then one about the nature of mystical communication. And further on, a beautiful treatment of the power of love to reveal the underlying unity of all creation. And on and on, a series of stunning essays from a life-long student of Yoga and Sufism, one of whose teachers was Hazrat Pir-O-Murshid Inayat Khan, the founder of the Sufi Order of the West. Click here to dive in.

Bryn Beorse was born in Oslo in the late 1890s. An early interest in Yoga led him to become active in the Order of the Star of the East, a Theosophical organization. When Hazrat Inayat Khan came to Europe before the first World War and lectured in Norway, Beorse found himself translating for him and almost immediately became his student. His teacher gave him the name Shamcher, meaning “tongue of fire.” He led an active and varied life, working in World War II as an intelligence agent behind the German lines, then as an engineer designing torpedoes. He was an early proponent of renewable energy in the form of Ocean Thermal Energy Conversion (OTEC), and spent his latter years leading a simple life on the beach at Malibu. Shamcher was beloved by the students of Hazrat Inayat Khan and his successor Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, many of whom regarded him as a spiritual elder brother. The essays in this book reveal a deep wisdom that comes from years of practice.

Every Willing Hand was published in 1979 in paperback by Hu Press, the publishing arm of the Sufi Order Khankah (communal house) in New York City. At the request of our spiritual guide we scanned one of the few remaining copies of the book and then cleaned up the scan by comparing it line by line with the book. Consequently, we got to read the book quite carefully. It has been a privilege and a joy.