My Teacher, Sheik Nur al-Jerrahi 
Muhammad Icklas, Jerrahi Sufi Order of Lansing Mi.
11AM, Sunday December 4 , 2005
Lakeshore Interfaith Institute
6676 122nd Ave. Ganges Mi. 49408
Noon ;Interfaith Worship  led by Dena Blay-Stroba OCDS
1PM; veggie luncheon
2PM : The Zikr ,  or group chanting of the Mystical Names of Allah

Lex and Suzanne (and Ramakrishna)

He was a spiritual leader of the Muslim Masjida[-Farah in lower Manhattan, a founding member and on the board of directors of the Zen Community of New York,  The Naropa Institute, Tricycle Magazine, the SaradaRamakrishnaVivekananda Retreat Center, and was the silent benefactor of many others. Throughout his life, he organized gatherings where people could go beyond religious and spiritual separatism to celebrate, explore and debate in a spirit of dialogue. Countless people who passed through New York City in the seventies and early eighties, owe their first steps on the spiritual path to guidance they received and to connections they made from his weekly radio program on WBAI, “ln the Spirit.” Here, Lex interviewed many great spiritual teachers, as well as many seekers, in the beginning years of America's spiritual awakening.
 

At  Yale University  he majored in Philosophy, and showed early promise as a poet and flamenco guitarist. His first steps in religion came under the guidance of his college roommate's father, Vine Deloria, a Lakota Sioux Episcopal priest, who introduced him to a non-European Christianity with roots in the Native American heritage of vision-quest. As he explored philosophy, the realm of the spiritual began to open to him, and shortly before his graduation from Yale, he petitioned to include a class in comparative religions as a part of his philosophical training. From an elective reading-list for that class, he chose The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna.

In a talk he gave many years later at the Ramakrishna Mission of CuIture in Calcutta, Lex described the first encounter with the blissful, unconventional nineteenth century Indian saint, Ramakrishna Paramahamsa, whose worship of God as Mother and demonstration that all religions spring from the same source of nondual truth, were to strongly influence his life:

'I ordered the Gospel of Ramakrishna from the Ramakrishna-Vivekananda Center of New York, and I later come to know exactly where they kept these books– right near Mother's incense, that incense with the purple wrapper that has such a special fragrance. Therefore, when I received the Gospel in the mail, it exuded a wonderful fragrance. This was the first time I ever opened a book and smelled intense fragrance. It should have made me realize this was like no other book I had ever read before… I closed my eyes and put my face own on the open book. And after that I read a few lines. The first words I saw were. “God as Mother.” They leapt off the page. I had been raised in a liberal humanist background with a smattering of Christianity. In America, we have a general Christian/Jewish culture. These traditions have no reference to the Motherhood of God. I had never personally thought of calling God “Mother.” It never even once crossed my mind... Yet I did not feel any response of skepticism to Mother Kali. I felt it was perfectly natural, It was as if all my western barriers immediately fell away, and I accepted the idea of God as Mother. Then I closed the book.”
 

Lex earned his Ph.D. in Religion at Columbia University in 1976, with a specialization in Sanskrit. (During this time he also continued his musical studies learning classical Indian music under the master sarod player, Vasant Rai, who created an Indian tuning for Lex's flamenco guitar.) In, 1971, as if given the job of carrying on Sri Ramakrishna’s message of openness to all spiritual paths through twentieth century media, he, found himself hostiing “In the Spirit.” The radio program, which continued through 1984, not only introduced his listeners to some of the greatest representatives of world traditions who visited New York City including the Dali Lama, Mother Theresa and, Sheikh Muzaffer Effendi, as well as leading American figures such as Rabbi Shlomo Carlebach, Ram Dass, Catholic activist Daniel Berrigan, Western Zen Master Bernard Glassman, Hilda Charlton and Pir Vilayat Kharn but changed his own life as well. Some of his guests became his teachers, and his spiritual path expanded to embrace initiations into Islamic Sufism, Zen and Tantric Tibetan Buddhism.
Lex began his life as a published author in 1978 with Coming Home; The Experience of Enlightenment in Sacred Traditions,

As the new age movement gained ground and became more popular, Lex’s own energies moved from opening the field for others to concentrating himself more on the authentic practices of specific ancient sacred traditions. Initiated into the 700 year-old Khalwati Jerrahi Sufi Order of Egypt and Istanbul by Sheikh Muzaffer Effendi, Lex made the Hajj, or traditional pilgrimage to Mecca and Medina, with his Sheikh in 1980. On the Sheikh's passing a few years later, Lex accepted formal responsibility, under the spiritual name Sheikh Nur al-Jerrahi, for major communities of Sufis in New York City and Mexico City, and small circles across the United States. Three books emerged from his Islamic experience: Heart of the Koran,   Recollecion de la Miel (Quest, 1988), (Gathering Honey, written in Spanish, published in Mexico City in 1989), and Atom from the Sun of Knowiedge (Pir Publications, 1993).

Lex and his wife Sheila were longtime students of Tibetan Buddhism, taking initiations from many great lamas. They were involved in the rebuilding of the oldest Buddhist monastery of India's Himalayan border region with Tibet and the establishment in the United States of an important Buddhist organization. They made pilgrimages to Bodhgaya and Sarnath in India with their teacher lama in 1981. From his Buddhist experience emerged Mother of the Buddhas: Meditation on the Prajnaparamita Sutra (Quest, 1993). In addition, in 1983 Lex and Sheila entered a formal, three-year period of study of the mystical theology of the Eastern Orthodox Church at St. Vladimir's Seminary in Crestwood, NY, and sacramentally joined its congregation, which they continued to attend until his passing. Lex made a pilgrimage to the monasteries on Mount Athos in Greece in 1983; the unfinished manuscript based on the journal he kept while he was there was to have been his next book project.

But it was always the Ramakrishna lineage, and its connection to the ancient tantric Bengali tradition of Divine Mother worship, that was the center from which his life unfolded. (It is notable that on the lunar Hindu calendar, the day he died was Jagadhatri Puja, the festival for the form of the Divine Mother worshiped in Sarada Devi's village in India.) Lex felt very strongly that Sri Ramakrishna's life and teachings in the nineteenth century prepared the way for the spiritual expansion we are experiencing in our time, as well as for the rise of the feminine spirit. Lex often said that the women's movement, in both its political and spiritual manifestations, is the most important movement on the planet today, and was enthusiastic in his support of the emerging leadership by women in the various religions. It could be said that all his work was involved in uncovering the core of feminine wisdom hidden at the heart of ancient sacred traditions.

To his own surprise, in 1990 Lex spontaneously began writing dramatic dialogues which took scenes from The Gospel of Sri Ramakrishna, incorporated material from other accounts of people who had firsthand encounters with the great master, and brought them into modern expression. The book became Great Swan: Meetings with Ramakrishna (Shambhala, 1992), which Lex said "Holds the key to unlock all my life experiences."

The final project Lex completed was publication of Living Buddha Zen, the fruit of years of koan study with his teacher and friend, Bernard Tetsugen Glassman Roshi. The book is an inspired translation and commentary on the Denkoroku, a classic Japanese text that follows Shakyamuni Buddha's transmission of light through fifty-two generations of Indian, Chinese and Japanese masters who form the Soto Zen lineage. Lex was to have gone to  to be initiated as a novice priest into the 82nd generation of that lineage, the second generation of its American branch, and was to have received dharma transmission in New York on December 8th. Although he never received the first initiation, the ceremony of dharma transmission was performed on December 8th at an interfaith memorial service held at the Cathedral of St. John the Divine. Tetsugen Roshi told the gathering of hundreds of Lex's friends, students and colleagues that because Lex no longer had physical form, the transmission was for all to receive.