In two long accounts, the author describes how he makes contact
with dervish organisations and individuals, visiting and residing in
a number of places, in Asia and Africa.
His first contact is Akhund Mirza, in Pakistan, who befriends him
and takes him on a visit to a dervish centre in Baluchistan, known as
Kunj-i-Zagh (Raven's Corner).
Definition of Sufism, the philosophy of the dervishes:
"a way of life said to have been handed down from the remotest
antiquity. Its training was designed to produce the perfected
man - or woman.' In order to achieve this, the Sufi had to go
through a long training. The difference between this teaching
and all other systems was that the Sufi training took place within
the world, and not out of it".
The dervish study centre was reached through a tunnel hewn from
the rock of a hillside. The inhabitants dressed in patchwork cloaks,
indications of their' initiation. Their salutation was 'Yaaa-Hu!'. The
Supreme Guide, head of the community, was called the Murshid ('guided').
The 'monastery' had a shifting population, used both as a retreat and
school. It was known as the Khanqa (lodge, a standard term for such
establishments).
Organisation:
All dervishes are believed to be linked by a force called by them
Baraka ('lightness, special force'). The hierarchy is invisible after the
grade of Guide. The High Mantle of Sufi supremacy belongs to a
descendant of Mohammed the prophet. The form in which the teaching
is presented is always changing.
Practises:
Meditation on a theme set by a teacher in accordance with his
assessment of the student's needs; deep contemplation to increase powers
and abilities; group exercises of which the well-known 'dancing' of the
dervishes is one. Practises include an exercise known as Quiff (Arabic:
'Stop!') using the word 'Hu!'. The litany, called the Zikr (literally,
'repetition') is another practise. There are also healing sessions.
The dervishes help the author to make a visit to Mecca in disguise,
which is reported in some detail in the original text.
The second report deals with a caravan trek and a visit to a dervish
assembly in Tunisia. Sufic doctrines learned by the author en route
include: that life is composed of knowledge (ilm) and action (ami),
the latter being rendered literally as 'work'.
The traveller arrives at Nefta Oasis, where he attends a Zawiya.
This is a dervish centre, the word used being an equivalent of the Persian
Khanqa. In Arabic it literally means 'corner'.
No stranger is received here unless properly sponsored. There is a
meeting, by invitation, with the Sheikh of the Sufi Order here, Sheikh
Arif of Nefta. Among those present are dervishes in hooded robes,
some in patchwork cloaks, one dressed in the red-pink and goldembroidered
robe of an emir (Arabic word, literally 'one who gives the
command') of the Nakshbandi Order. He is of a Central Asian cast
of feature.
A story, which formed part of the day's teaching, is related. The
author learns that through the Baraka (sometimes defined as 'spiritual
force') of the Order 'its members acquired a power known as yakina
(certitude) which was an inner certainty that this or that action was
for the real and ultimate good of mankind'.
Definition of Sufism by the Sheikh:
All religious teachers were Sufis.
Sufism was the source of religion. 'All religion is the butter after
it has been churned. You cannot taste the milk for the butter. We
drink the milk'.
Explanation of the Zikr (repetition):
"The dhikr, it was explained to me, is a dance; or, more properly,
a performance of a series of excercises in unison. The objective is to
produce a state of ritual ecstasy and to accelerate the contact of the
Sufi's mind with the world-mind of which he considers himself to be a
part . . . All dervishes, and not only the followers of Maulana Rumi
(as most Orientalists believe) perform a dance. And a dance is defined
by them as bodily movements linked to a thought and a sound or a
series of sounds. The movements develope the body, the thought
focuses the mind, and the sound fuses the two and orientates them
towards a consciousness of divine contact which is called hal, and means
'state or condition'."
Description of the Zikr at Nefta:
A double circle is formed in the centre of the hall. Dervishes
stand while the Sheikh intones the opening part of this and every similar
ceremony—the calling down of the blessing upon the congregation,
and from the congregation upon the Masters of the 'past, present and
future'. Outside the circle stands Sheikh, drummer and flute-player,
together with two 'callers', the men who call the ryhthm of the dance.
The drum begins to beat, the callers sing a high-pitched, flamenco-type
air. Slowly the concentric circles begin to revolve in opposite directions.
Then the Sheikh calls out Ya Haadi! (O Guide!) and the participants
start to repeat this word. They concentrate upon it, saying it at first
slowly, then faster and faster. Their movements match the repetitions.
Author's account of the rest of the Zikr:
"I noticed that the eyes of some of the dervishes took on a far-away
look, and they started to move jerkily, as if they were puppets. The
circles moved faster and faster, until I (moving in the outer circle) saw
only a whirl of robes, and lost count of time. Now and then, with
a grunt, or a sharp cry, one of the dervishes would drop out of the circle,
and would be led away by an assistant, to lie on the ground in what
seemed to be an hypnotic state. I began to be affected, and found
that although I was not dizzy, my mind was functioning in a very strange
and unfamilar way. The sensation is difficult to describe, and is probably
a complex one. • One feeling was that of a lightening: as if I had no
anxieties, no problems. Another was that I was a part of this moving
circle, and that my individuality was gone, was delightfully merged in
something larger.
Eventually, as the movements continued, I had the sensation that
I must somehow tear myself away. And, oddly enough, as soon as the
thought occurred to me, I found it easy to leave the group. As I stepped
from the circle, I was taken by the elbow by the Sheikh, who looked
at me closely, smiling.
It was only when I started to talk to him that I realised that it was
impossible: the dervishes were producing such a penetrating buzz of
sound that it would have been impossible to hear anything else. I
looked at my watch. Two hours had passed in what seemed but a few
minutes.
I went out into the courtyard to assess my feelings. Something had
happened. In the first place, the moon seemed immensely bright,
and the little glowing lamps seemed surrounded by a whole spectrum of
colours. My mind was working by a system of associations of some
kind: because as soon as I thought of a thing, it was almost as though
one thought gave birth to another, until my mind lighted upon a logical
consequence. An example may make this clearer. The lamps reminded
me of a stained-glass window; and the window recalled an argument I had
had with a friend some months before, near a church. That, in turn,
focused my attention upon this friend, and then, like a flash, I saw him
in my mind shaking hands with a red-bearded man. Then the whole
thing faded. This sort of experience remained with me for about a
month, during which time I could reproduce it by thinking of the lamps.
When, later, I went to Paris and met this friend, I found that he
had gone into partnership with a red-bearded man. The experience
closely paralleled, therefore, one experienced a few years ago by Mr.
Wasson, the American authority on Mexican mushrooms. In his case
there was a prescient vision of his son in unfamiliar circumstances,
which turned out to be correct."
"The ritual continued, and the Sheikh took me into his private room,
where we sat on cushions and talked about the meaning of the dhikr.
'We are widely accused of magic', he said, "and, since magic has the
sanction of Islam inasmuch as the Prophet said that it exists, I do not
dispute it. But we are working in a different medium. Without the
'strange experience' we cannot become perfected. Take this analogy:
all experience in the world is, in fact, strange. When it becomes habit
or commonplace, one does not regard it as experience. But it is essential,
is it not, to the learning process ?'
'I realise that you are not trying to impress me,' I said to Sheikh
Arif, 'but I have a largely Western approach to such things as what we
have seen tonight. Would you allow me to test some of your dervishes
to establish whether they are in any sort of an hypnotic state familiar
to Westerners ?'
'Gladly', he said, 'though that would not invalidate anything, from
our point of view; because what you call hypnosis is merely the beginning
of something that remains invisible to you.'
We returned to the meeting-hall, to find that several of the Sufis
were still circling round. In order to be sure that I would be in a more
objective frame of mind, I decided that I should postpone the test until
another day. Most obligingly, the Sheikh told me to come when I
liked. Collecting Hamid from the kitchens, where he was sampling
the steaming pots of that night's rations, I went to my quarters to write
notes.
The following morning the Sheikh sent word that he would be pleased
to see us as soon as we liked. Hamid was not too sanguine about the
success of an examination of dervishes in a state of 'hal', but came
along to the assembly-room. Here we found the Sheikh eating a hearty
breakfast from a bowl of meat and gravy. • Pleading an indisposition,
I refused the food, just in case it might have some hallucinogenic
ingredient. Dervishes came in and out, shaking hands and saying
'Ishq'—Love, and then kissing their own hands. The Sheikh explained
to them what he wanted, and though some did not seem to approve, we
were left with eleven who might be termed the volunteers.
After a night's sleep, the Sheikh seemed completely won over to my
idea, and rather peremptorily called the musicians and started the dance.
I held my watch in my hand, timing the music and waiting for first to
pass into an ecstatic state. The first thing that I noticed was that the
proceedings did not seem to affect those who did not take part in the
dance. The music and rhythm seemed to be the same as on the previous
night. After six minutes the first dervish—a man of about forty—swayed
and was led from the group. As soon as he sat down he seemed to
lose consciousness. When prodded, he showed no sign of life, and he
breathed very shallowly. I opened his eyelid, but the eyeball was not
turned up. The pupils were not dilated or contracted, neither did
they react to light when I lit my cigarette-lighter.
Out of the eleven participants, nine were in a state of 'hal' after
two hours. Unlike normally hypnotised people, they did not respond
to words spoken to them; neither did they show the almost complete
immobility which is one of the characteristics of the hypnotised person.
Although anaesthesia of the nerves is normally produced only by suggestion
to that effect, they did not seem to feel pinpricks or tickling
applied without any suggestions. This did not seem to be a familiar form
of hypnosis. Ordinary hypnosis normally passes into sleep. But these
volunteers woke up direct into wakefulness without sleep supervening.
What was more, there was no amnesia, and throughout they had been
aware of what had been said and done to them; although in at least
some cases (had this been normal hypnosis) partial amnesia could have
been expected at this depth of hypnosis.
The next part of my test was to attempt to induce normal hypnosis.
Only three out of the eleven passed into the lightest form of conventional
hypnosis, which was the proportion to be expected in a random human
sample of this size.. None showed any evidence that he was conditioned:
that is to say, that he was accustomed to passing into hypnosis of any
kind, let alone a deep-trance state.
All this added up to the strong possibility that the trance into
which these people threw themselves was not of a kind familiar to the
West. In all cases they reported transcendental experiences during the
trance: and two of them even purported to have read my thoughts. They
claimed that they knew, when in trance, what I was going to try next,
as a test.
None of this material, of course, is scientifically conclusive. What
could be of paramount importance might be that the drumming and
intonations contained a signal to which the subjects had been conditioned.
I resolved to make tape recordings of any future session, and replay
them at intervals with similar volunteers, to see whether a later part
of the proceedings would produce the trance more quickly when played
back. This, however, would have to wait until I was better equipped.
The rest of my stay at the zawiya was passed in taking notes of the
methods of teaching and the theories the Sufis passed on. In day-by-day
instruction, two sessions were held. One for younger initiates, who
were passing through a thousand-and-one days' novitiate. The other
meeting was that to which 'Seekers'-adepts-were admitted. The disciples
had to carry out memorising and meditative exercises, developing powers
of concentration and reflection. The others, it seemed, were keeping
up a sort of training of which thought and work, as well as exercises
like the dhikr, all formed a part.
After a few days, the air of mystery and strangeness which I had
felt was replaced by a sensation that, unfamiliar as these practices might
seem to the outsider, their practitioners did not regard them as super-
natural as we might use the term. As Sheikh Arif once said: "We are
doing something which is natural, which is the result of research and
practise into the future development of mankind; we are producing
a new man. And we do it for no material gain." This, then, is their
attitude.
When we returned to civilation, and Hamid and I took leave of one
another amid the streamlined motorcars and fashionable clothes of
Tunis, we knew that our deliberately anachronistic caravan trip to the
sands of the Sahara had been well worth while. We had, in a sense,
re-entered the Middle Ages; whatever the truth of the Sufi belief that
the dervishes were creating a new man. And I, for one, was determined
to penetrate again into that world-within-a-world which is the 'land'
of the Sufis."
"•Copyright © 1961, 1962 from Solo to Mecca and Tunisian Caravan. 
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