Saleem El-Ashi was born in Jerusalem on June 1, 1909. His parents moved to Lebanon when he was an infant. Saleem's father died when he was 11 years old. His mother had to work hard to raise him and his sisters. Except for a few months spent in the American Mission orphanage in Lebanon, he never went to school or attended college, but he exhibited a love of literature and the visual arts. He began to write prose while he was in his teens. In the 1920's Saleem El-Ashi moved back to Palestine and lived in Bethlehem. He became famous in Palestine for the "supernatural powers" he had exhibited since childhood. Most people interpreted his supernatural powers as witchcraft and sorcery. His reputation grew. As the name Israel was assigned spiritually to Jacob, so was the name Dahesh assigned to Saleem. The exact translation of Dahesh is "astounding." By publishing some of his early works, he managed to acquire enough money to pursue his other goals in life.

Dahesh traveled throughout the Middle East and Europe and received a certificate from the Société Psychique Internationale on May 6, 1930, and a doctorate in psychic research from the Sage Institute in Paris on May 22, 1930, for his ability to transgress the laws of nature. About 150 experts in the field of supernatural studies witnessed the 20-year-old man, at his request, be placed in a casket, which was sealed and then submerged at the bottom of the Seine River for seven days under tight surveillance. After the seven-day period was over, the casket was pulled out and the seal inspected. The experts confirmed that the seal was intact. When the seal was broken and the casket opened, the miracle man had a smile on his face and was in perfect health.

In the 1930's Dr. Dahesh took up residence in Beirut. On March 23, 1942, he declared the beginning of a spiritual movement named Daheshism. He called for the unity of religions and the return to righteous human behavior. His supernatural powers gave him credibility as a Prophet. Can you imagine how many people would have believed in Jesus Christ had he not exhibited supernatural powers? At that time only a handful of people believed in Dr. Dahesh as a Prophet. These included Marie Hadad-the sister-in-law of the then Lebanese President, Bechara El-Khoury-and her immediate family. Religious leaders in Lebanon and Bechara El-Khoury opposed Dr. Dahesh and, with the help of Bechara's wife, Laure El-Khoury, tried to force Marie Hadad and her family to abandon their belief in Daheshism. When she and her family refused, the President ordered her imprisonment on several occasions. At one point she remained in jail for one year. He also had her committed to a mental institution, where the physicians found her to be completely sane and had to release her.

When political tactics failed, Bechara El-Khoury and his brother-in-law, Michel Cheeha, employed thugs to assassinate Dr. Dahesh, but all attempts failed. On August 28, 1944, Dr. Dahesh was ambushed, beaten, jailed without cause for 13 days, deprived of his Lebanese citizenship (in direct violation of the Lebanese constitution), and expelled from Lebanon. When he was caught in the Iranian region of Azerbaidjan in 1947, he had no papers to prove his identity, and because a bloody revolution was taking place, he was mistaken for a spy. As a result he was blindfolded and executed by a firing squad in Azerbaidjan on July 1, 1947. The execution was photographed and documented.

However, it was not Dr. Dahesh the human who was executed. It was a look-alike spiritual entity that took his place. The same thing happened at the time of the Crucifixion. People saw Jesus Christ on the cross, but the Koran says " they killed him not, Nor crucified him, but so it was made to appear to them ." (Sura iv:Nisaa 157) In other words, a look-alike was crucified. Because the look-alike is a spiritual entity, it doesn't obey the laws of nature. Jesus Christ's look-alike was resurrected, and so was the look-alike of Dr. Dahesh. In Daheshism, the spiritual entity is referred to as a spiritual personality. Dr. Dahesh had six spiritual personalities, and some people were able to see them all at the same time. As Bechara El-Khoury celebrated, Dr. Dahesh, the human, was back in Lebanon, preparing a large-scale media attack on his oppressors.

During this entire period, no one in Lebanon stood up for Dr. Dahesh's rights. Dr. Dahesh was baffled by this fact and in some of his writings mentions that in the nineteenth century, Émile Zola risked his life and career when he stood up and defended Alfred Dreyfus, the Jewish French military officer accused of treason, but that in Dahesh's own case, no one dared stand up to his accusers. The news media in Lebanon closed their eyes and ears and allowed this to happen, thus conspiring with the Lebanese government. Dr. Dahesh wrote and distributed leaflets, pamphlets, and books known as the "Black Books." These publications attacked the character of the Lebanese President, his government, the clergy, and the media. Through these daring publications, Dr. Dahesh presented the true facts of his case to the public, where he exposed the nature of the Lebanese president and his scandals. The contents of the Black Books contributed to the general public uprising against the regime of the Lebanese President on September 18, 1952.

Dr. Dahesh regained his Lebanese citizenship during the presidency of Camille Chamoun. He resided in Lebanon until 1976, where he advocated Daheshism, wrote, taught, and traveled. He wrote more than 100 books-all in Arabic-that covered a wide range of literature. Some of his books are written in verse, some in poetry, while others are novels and short stories. All of his books are currently being translated into many languages. After 1976, Dr. Dahesh traveled throughout the world studying and writing about people, their culture, and spirituality.

Dr. Dahesh's writings cover a variety of topics, but the main theme is consistent throughout: Man has deviated from righteous behavior and followed a materialistic life. That life is a mirage that will soon fade, and then the truth will appear as clearly as can be. Many of his writings are very sad, and in many of his pieces, he serenades death and wishes for the moment of rendezvous. He has had enough of this life, its misery, lawlessness, pretension, and pain, and the behavior of human beings and their lack of faith in God.

I had the pleasure of knowing Dr. Dahesh for many years, beginning in my childhood. I talked, dined, and traveled with him. On the surface, he appeared to be as ordinary as any other human being. He had a sense of humor and a compassionate personality. He was a modest and simple man. His diet consisted mostly of fruits, vegetables (especially onions), and cheese. He loved and collected art and books from all over the globe. Deep down, he was sophisticated, shrewd, ethical, righteous, and wise. He was unable to perform a single miracle unless it was time for it to happen and there was a reason for it. It was the same with Jesus Christ: "And when they wanted wine, the mother of Jesus saith unto him, They have no wine. Jesus saith unto her, Woman, what have I to do with thee? mine hour is not yet come." (John 2:3&shyp;4) Of the many supernatural acts I witnessed with my own eyes, I will describe only four:

When I was 16 years old, I had a friend called Joseph. Joseph and I were very close, and many were the times we talked about Dr. Dahesh, his message, and his powers. One day, I asked him if he would be willing to go with me to visit Dr. Dahesh, and he agreed. I called Dr. Dahesh and asked him if I could bring my friend with me, and he agreed. So it was that Joseph and I went to see Dr. Dahesh. He greeted us, sat about six feet away from us, and asked Joseph to take an ordinary sheet of paper. Then he asked Joseph to tear the paper into four pieces of equal size. Dr. Dahesh asked my friend to write on each piece the name of a Prophet, and then he asked my friend to fold each one many times and mix them so that it was impossible to know which was which. Then he asked him to select one of the four pieces, put that piece in the palm of his hand, and close his hand tightly. At that point Dr. Dahesh began to write in the air with his finger while describing what he was writing. At one point he purposely made a mistake and said that he would put an X over the word and write the correct word. When he was done, he asked Joseph to open his hand and then unfold the piece of paper. When he did, it had the name of one of the Prophets, as well as every single word that Dr. Dahesh had written in the air, including the X over the word that had been crossed out. Joseph unfolded the other three pieces to make sure that there was no duplication of names, and there was none.

When I was 21, while I was a guest of Dr. Dahesh in Beirut, we were sitting and chatting with a group of people, and there was a deck of playing cards on the table. Dr. Dahesh asked me to shuffle the cards thoroughly, select one card, look at it, and not show it to him. Then he rolled up his right shirtsleeve, took the card that was in my hand (a jack), and without looking rubbed it a few times on his arm. All of a sudden, the word queen was imprinted in ink on his arm. He returned the card to me, I looked at it again, and it was still a jack. I said to myself, "Something is not right here! How could the Supernatural Power make such an error?" I was also surprised that the other people who were sitting with us and witnessed this did not say something to that effect. After a few minutes, Dr. Dahesh walked toward one of the other rooms and asked me to follow him. I did, still holding the jack in my hand. He asked me what I thought had happened, and when I was just about to tell him about the error, I looked at the card in my hand. It was a queen! Either it had been a queen all along, and everyone in the room except me had seen the card as a queen, or the card was transformed instantaneously while I was holding it in my hand. Either way it would have been a supernatural act.

During the same period, Dr. Dahesh had a number of books being printed. He had taken delivery of one of them a few days earlier. I was alone in the hallway, and he came to me with a copy in his hand and told me he would like me to have it. I gladly accepted, but I insisted on paying for it, since printing is not free. He said, "Very well, as you please." I gave him the money in U.S. currency, and as soon as he took the money, he put it in his palm, closed it, and asked me, "Where is it?" I replied, "It is in your hand." He opened his hand and nothing was there. He then asked me, "What do you think happened here?" I replied that a spiritual fluid must have been placed on it to make it invisible. He said, "Follow me." We went to one of the rooms, in which he had a chest, and he asked me to open the top drawer. I tried to open it, but it was locked. He drew the Daheshist symbol (a five-pole star) on it, and asked me to try again. I did, and this time it opened. I looked inside the drawer, and among many other objects, there was the money I had given him for the book. A piece of paper that had the words "from Mounir" written on it was placed over the money. My answer had been incorrect, for the money had not become invisible but instead had dematerialized and then rematerialized in a different location.

During the early 1980's, Dr. Dahesh came to visit us in Virginia. He stayed at my sister's apartment. When his visit came to an end, he asked me to stop by and pick him up early in the morning and drive him to New York. He was holding a piece of candy in his hand, and as we were walking from the bedroom to the living room, he stopped in the hallway and smashed the piece of candy against the wall. When he released his hand I expected the smashed piece of candy to fall to the floor, and it did-I heard the piece of candy drop, but nothing was there. Then I realized that the candy had penetrated the drywall without damaging it and fallen through on the other side.

So who is Dr. Dahesh? If you had had a chance to ask him this question, he would probably have replied, "Who do you think I am?" When Jesus was asked by the high priest whether he was the Messiah or not, Jesus answered, " Thou hast said: ." (Matthew 26:64) The followers of Dr. Dahesh have no doubt about who he is, but since he had supernatural powers and performed many of the same miracles that Jesus performed, other people have gone so far as to accuse him of being Satan, the Anti-Christ, a magician and sorcerer, and other vile things. This is not surprising, because people accused Jesus Christ of the same things: "And the scribes which came down from Jerusalem said, He hath Be-el-ze-bub, and by the prince of the devils casteth he out devils. And he called them unto him, and said unto them in parables, How can Satan cast out Satan? And if a kingdom be divided against itself, that kingdom cannot stand. And if a house be divided against itself, that house cannot stand. And if Satan rise up against himself, and be divided, he cannot stand but hath an end."
(Mark 3:22&shyp;26)

Moslems remain firm in their belief that Mohammed was the last of Prophets: "Muhammad is not the father of any of your men, but (he is) the Apostle of God, and the Seal of the Prophets ." (Sura xxxiii:Ahzab 40). So Moslems do not see Dr. Dahesh as a Prophet. The followers of Dr. Dahesh believe firmly that no Prophet in the same class as Mohammed, Jesus Christ, and Moses is likely to come, that the era of the great Prophets is long gone; however, a number of Prophets of a different class-advocates of peace and religious reconstruction, such as Gandhi-have come. Which category does Dr. Dahesh fall under?

Jews are still waiting for the Messiah to come. They rejected Jesus Christ as the Messiah because he did not fit in with their expectations of the Messiah. They expected the Messiah to come and rule over them as a king, to rid them of Roman rule, and return the glory of the Jews as King David had. Jesus Christ did not fit this picture. He was the son of a carpenter, and as simple and humble as could be. Similarly, Christians are waiting for the second coming of Jesus Christ. When he comes it will be Judgment Day. They expect him to make a spectacular appearance and gather up all the believers. Moslems are also expecting the second coming of Jesus Christ: "And (Jesus) shall be a sign (for the coming of) the Hour (of judgment)." (Sura xliii:Zukhruf 61) According to the followers of Dr. Dahesh, Jews have missed Jesus Christ for the second time, and Christians and Moslems have also failed to recognize him. By now you may have guessed that Dr. Dahesh's life is regarded as the second coming of Jesus Christ.