Karmu (Edgar Warner) was born on August 13, 1910. His parents were healers who identified him as a healer at an early age. He told me that when he was a baby friends of his mother came to their home and would hold him in their lap. These family friends reported that they felt fewer aches and less tired. After such an early start as a healer, he held many jobs and as a young man he became a professional boxer for a short time. It is noteworthy that he scored an exhibition match with the great Tiger Flowers and went the whole 3 rounds. Theodore (Tiger) Flowers was the first black middleweight boxing champion and claimed that title in 1926 after defeating Harry Greb. Auto mechanic became Karmu’s professional trade, and he went on to his life’s mission as a self-proclaimed Minister of Health. He was a Healer and a Teacher in the Cambridge and Boston area of Massachusetts after closing his auto shop. He said, “I fix cars in the day and heal people at night.”
If you wanted a personal relationship with Karmu he was there for that and responded to your needs. He was a dynamic figure with a warm, friendly, generous nature and a way of being that could structure the healing and growth you needed. So far-ranging was his impact on people’s lives that the Internationally renowned Sufi Master, Murshid Samuel L. Lewis (Sufi Ahmed Murad Chisti), dubbed him the “Black Christ,” and extolled his virtues. I had problems with the term Black Christ since it suggested that Yeshua wasn’t Black, but Karmu was extremely casual about all that and accepted the title with grace. Sufi Sam (as he was commonly known) was a Zen Master and the senior Sufi teacher who founded The Holy Order of Man, the Dances of Universal Peace, and Sufi Ruhaniat International.
Karmu was more of a Buddha figure than a Christ figure. He focused on spirituality rather than religion. He taught me that all spiritual paths lead to divinity. I saw him as a Holy man who had no need to adopt one religion. Karmu was pretty much his own religion. He seemed to function like an alchemist who blended elements from everywhere. He said he took the pain of others into himself. He synthesized various healing and wisdom traditions and worked to heal “every illness known to man.” He took on the suffering of others with the intention of transforming the person. I view him as an excellent model for those on the path to becoming holistic natural healers.
