Eastern Techniques (I)

The ' Tincture Technique*

RICHARD DROBUTT

THE SHEIKHS OF the Suhrawardi Order of Sufis, as well as

sundry Christian clerics of the Armenian and Coptic Churches,

follow this technique. Briefly it is based on the belief that something

taught to a sample group out of a whole community will

improve the community as a whole, the teaching spreading telepathically

from the 'treated' group to the rest. In Istanbul

Mehmet Shevki, preceptor of the Nurbakhsi School, emphasised

that this doctrine was the basis of the Ottoman practice of

collecting slaves, trainees and recruits from all parts of their

Empire, and even beyond it. This is said to be a very ancient

belief; according to the Romanian priest Epifaniu, this process

(called by him 'dilution') is an essential part of the human

learning-process, and has also been observed in animals. He

continued that it was reputedly discovered and applied many

thousands of years ago in Babylon. All believers in this technique

agreed that it is reduced in efficiency by the mental activity of

the attempt to pass on all teaching by speech or writing. I have

not read or heard of this doctrine before.

RICHARD DROBUTT has specialised in the study

of Balkan, Caucasian and Turkish mystical methods.

He is a member of the Nurbakhshi Order of Sufis, and

wrote I Spy for the Empire.