Whirling to a Better World?

On the eve of his next UK whirling workshops at Tribe of Doris, Will Gethin meets Sheikh Ahmad Dede, a Sufi sheikh promoting whirling as a way to global peace

Inside a large tent, a man in a tall, spherical hat – body swathed in a lean white tunic and bell like skirt – whirls across the central space, spinning in radiant circles, skirt rising and flailing as he revolves with swift rotating steps.

As the mesmerising white vision shimmers across the tent, a Sufi sheikh resplendent in destar, dervish hat, black cloak and baggy Ali Baba trousers slowly circumambulates the tent’s perimeter expounding the workings of this meditative spinning dance to some 50 spellbound students.

‘When we whirl, we ask for help to receive divine love, to selflessly give it away, to create a better world,’ the sheikh declares, his voice pure and radiant; with wispy beard and glasses, he has the air of a quixotic professor.  ‘So imagine you’re being embraced in the arms of the beloved, or someone who loves you, it’s like the heart connection between a mother and her child. Open your heart to pure love, whirl like the child, be free!’ he implores.  ‘And when we chant, sing with all your heart – when a mother sings to her child, the words aren’t important, it’s the depth of passion and feeling expressed that touches it.’

Now singing impassioned, the sheikh tenderly touches the shoulders of each student in turn. ‘La illaha, illa llah’ (‘there is only one God’), he chants, the beautiful words pulling on our heart strings as some people start to cry.

Here in the Blackdown Hills of Devon at Tribe of Doris – the world’s most vibrant intercultural exchange of acoustic music, dance, song and ceremony – Sheikh Ahmad Dede, whirling representative of the eminent Naqshbandi order of Sufism, is giving one of his daily whirling workshops at the five day festival.   Tribe of Doris is an amazing cultural melting pot where people representing many different worldwide traditions come together to learn, commune and celebrate through music and dance.

Within minutes of meeting Sheikh Ahmad, I knew I had encountered one of life’s rare gems; an Indonesian living in Holland, he is a uniquely loving and charismatic personality who has dedicated himself to a fascinating cause: to revive and spread this ancient tradition of the Whirling Dervishes  as founded by celebrated 13th century Sufi master and poet Rumi, around the world.

Like many people in the West, I have long held a fascination for the enigmatic whirling dervishes of the faraway East – these exotic spinning icons from a mystical underground spiritual tradition seem forever cloaked in mystery.

Thanks to the recent explosion of Rumi’s popularity in the West (declared best-selling poet in the US in 2007), Sufism – the liberal branch of Islam which recognises all religious paths – is reaching an ever expanding audience and infiltrating Western popular culture.   Pop and film stars like Madonna, Demi Moore and Martin Sheen have read translations of Rumi’s poems praising Allah to music, Oliver Stone has a Rumi biopic film in the pipeline, and Donna Karan has used recitals of his poems to serenade her catwalk shows.

Mevlana Jalalu’ddin Rumi was born in Balkh (Afganistan) in 1207.  His family travelled to Konya in Turkey by caravan when he was a child, where he spent the rest of his life, becoming a theologian, university professor, mystic and poet, and ultimately a universal messenger of peace.

In 1244, his life changed dramatically when Shams Tabriz, a wandering dervish arrived in Konya.  Shams became his beloved friend and together they immersed themselves in music, poetry and the fervent pursuit of spiritual awakening, becoming inseparable.   ‘Lost in God-consciousness, they experienced the ecstasy of which the Sufis speak,’ wrote Shems Friedlander in his book Rumi and the Whirling Dervishes.  Friends and students of Rumi eventually became so jealous of Shams’s influence that they murdered him.

Fasting and in the depths of grief following Shams’s death, Rumi is said to have become ‘lost in the ecstasy of God consciousness’.  Then, according to legend, re-entering the world, he walked past the goldbeater’s shop and spontaneously began whirling to the resounding beats of the goldbeaters’ hammers.  ‘With each step he repeated the name of God,’ wrote Friedlander, ‘and now with the sound of the hammers beating the gold, all he heard was “Allah, Allah”.  And he began to whirl in ecstasy in the middle of the street…to the sound of “Allah” that came forth from his heart.’

Back in the tent, we prepare to take our first whirl.  Following Ahmad, we hold our right hands high in the air, flat palms raised skyward, left arms tilting at our sides, palms face down.  ‘You ask for love to come in through the right hand,’ Ahmad elucidates, ‘the left hand channelling the love back into the earth. Give all without discrimination. The more you give your love away, the more you receive – the dervish wants to be an opening to the ocean of love.’

As soul-stirring live folk music starts up, we begin to whirl, gradually picking up pace.  ‘Look to the love of a mother for her baby and whirl with this connection, held in your mother’s arms,’ Ahmad urges.  And trying to focus on receiving and giving love, I envisage myself a cosseted babe as Ahmad starts to sing, ‘La illaha, illa llah’.

Since Rumi’s death in 1273, his Mevlevi order of Sufis, popularly known as the Whirling Dervishes,  have made whirling their spiritual practice.  The Mevlevi Order dominated the spiritual life of Turkey and many other parts of the Ottoman world up to the beginning of the 20^th century, before being forced underground in Turkey in 1925 when the country became a secular state and the government decided to align Turkey’s politics and culture with the West, outlawing Sufism.  Since then, whirling has only been permitted under the official guise of ‘Tourist Folk Dance’ as widely seen in many Turkish towns.  But authentic whirling dervishes using whirling as a spiritual practice had to hide away for fear of being caught, as travel writer Piers Moore Ede discovered, travelling to Turkey in search of such bona fide dervishes for his latest book, All Kinds of Magic: A Quest for Meaning in a Material World.

Finding only ‘tourist folk dancers’ in Istanbul, Piers did uncover an underground group of genuine whirlers in Konya, and reported that since the election of a secretly Sufi prime minister in 1980, Sufism has slowly begun to re-emerge in Turkey – all be it that for all the thousands of Sufi tekkes (lodges) prior to 1925, today there are a mere handful left, operating discreetly.  ‘Sufis in modern Turkey might be found in a suit and tie and incognito,’ Piers wrote.

UNESCO’s invitation to the Mevlevis to perform as dervishes in Paris in 1964 signified the beginning of a widespread Western interest in whirling and Rumi, and since then an annual sema, whirling dance, has been held in Konya to honour the night of Rumi’s passing.

That the popularity of Rumi, an Islamic poet, should proliferate in the West post 9-11 is particularly intriguing and his appeal to westerners would appear to lie in his all embracing approach to other religions, as with Sufism itself.

For Sheikh Ahmad Dede, the real Muslim is a Sufi, he told me.  ‘There are many crazy people around the world doing terrible things, killing each other in the name of Allah, but these are not Sufis or Muslims, they are terrorists.  The Sufi’s aim – which is the essence of the Bible, the Koran and all the prophets – is to bring divine love and guide humanity to see that we are all one.’

Sheikh Ahmad Dede was born in Balk,(Friesland) Holland in 1960.  He lived an ordinary life, un-hindered by religion until the age of 22.  Like any normal 21 year old, he went to discos and succumbed to life’s habitual material trappings.  ‘But I was conflicted,’ he recalls, ‘I felt guilty for not honouring my Muslim roots and practising Islam.’

For a while he ran away from his inner urge for a more spiritual existence, before finally starting to spend more time alone reading books about Islam, including the Koran.  ‘My heart was so touched by what I was reading,’ he remembers, ‘I said, “Wow – Allah almighty is love”.  And I felt ashamed for the way I had lived my life – for Allah had given me all life’s miracles like breath, eyes to see, and so many wonderful things. I started to cry and I said, “Oh my Lord, I am sorry I have ignored the light you gave me, help me to open to this beautiful light.”  And as I read the Koran’s holy words something shifted inside.  I saw light,’ he chuckles, with a beaming smile.  ‘I saw light and it completely changed my life.’

Soon after, reading a book on Sufism, Ahmad was deeply moved by the dervish ideal of giving and receiving love, and praying, he vowed to give his life in service to God.  Later, reading some Sufi poems, he was filled with powerful feelings of love.  ‘It was like something was being put in my heart,’ he remembers, ‘I felt called to become a Sufi.’

Ahmad began an ardent search for a Sufi master, and finally, aged 28, he had a premonition dream of being embraced by a Sufi sage, and sure enough, a few days later, the very man appeared to him in the flesh. ‘He came to Holland unexpectedly and our family had the honour of hosting him, he stayed three days at our house.’  The man was none other than Moulana Sheikh Nazim – Grandmaster of Sufism and Grandsheikh of the Naqshbandi Tariqa, the only Sufi order claiming to trace its spiritual lineage directly back to Muhammad.

‘When I met him I had some questions,’ recalls Ahmad, ‘and suddenly a light came behind him which answered all those questions, and I was in awe – as with that first divine opening experience, I was bathed in lights and it transformed my life.’

Moulana Sheikh Nazim

Initiated by Sheikh Nazim into the Naqshbandi Tarika, Ahmad swore allegiance to this path, a path which did not allow whirling.  Becoming a representative of the Naqshabandi way, he travelled around Europe organising Sufi events and camps.  Meanwhile, reading about Rumi and whirling he also fell in love with this Mevlevi path of Sufism and he would feel a force urging him to whirl during his meditations. ‘And I was forcing myself, “No, sit down, you must keep your manners, you must keep the way of your master,” ’ Ahmad recalls.

And then in 1995, following the tragic death of his brother Jelani, Ahmad was praying, grief-stricken, in a Sufi mosque when he was suddenly gripped by a strange power. ‘A love force – phoom – was whirling around me, I was swept to my feet and I was whirling,’ he recalls.  ‘A divine force was whirling me and I could not stop it, it happened by itself.’

While his fellow Naqshabandi brethren criticised his whirling, Sheikh Nazim was quietly sympathetic, and finally, three years later in 1998, he gave Ahmad permission to whirl.  ‘He told me, “Everything is now open to you, East and West, you may do your work,”‘ Ahmad remembers.  ‘And that’s when it all began…’

Back in the tent – as we turn faster and faster, joining Ahmad in one fervent chant of ‘La illaha, illa llah’ – repeated over and over, faster and faster, the chant rising in vigour and volume – the tent and my fellow whirlers start to blur in the spinning rush. I feel moved by Ahmad’s touching words, elated and charged by the blissful music, by this singing, spinning, entrancing communion.  Whirling with eager abandon and chanting my heart out, I feel giddy, even a little high, and remind myself this is surely not the point…or is it?  And I remember I am meant to be channelling love…

The point of whirling, Ahmad explained later as we chatted in his yurt, ‘Is to come into unity, to experience annihilation so that only God’s beauty can appear through the human being.  We may be on earth,’ he said, ‘but we are a channel for Heaven through the heart, bringing an ocean of calm and inner peace.

‘Whirling is the key,’ he continued – ‘the point of access at which everything else must be left behind. Even the name of any belief will be left behind – Muslim, Buddhist, Christian – because in essence there is no “you” or “me”, only the unity that is all “him”. ’

So if we all whirled, there would be no religious separation?  I asked.

‘Yes, I believe a time will come when all mankind will whirl, and at this time there will only be peace on earth – no more fighting, no weapons, total unification of all races.  Tribe of Doris will be all the world.’

Hailed by some as a modern-day Rumi – Sheikh Ahmad travels the world teaching whirling and sharing its powerful message of love at the behest of his master, Sheikh Nazim.  Should anyone wonder whether Ahmad has a grounded side, back in Holland, he works as a roofer, running his own business. ‘I have to make some money to pay my bills!’ he says.

Widely acclaimed in the UK, where he has hosted countless whirling workshops, Sheikh Ahmad has been featured on BBC TV’s Heaven & Earth and Channel 4′s Spiritual Shopper.  Many who have  attended his workshops report coming away deeply moved, some even transformed by the experience.

‘Whirling with Sheikh Ahmad has really helped me let go and feel more open,’ says Rebecca Tantony, a performance poet from Bristol who has whirled with Ahmad several times. ‘When you collectively do something so powerful, you feel you can move mountains.’

And according to musician and healer Chris Baker, who has orchestrated the music at Ahmad’s whirling events for many years, whirling can be a powerful tool for healing. ‘Whirling can be a passive means of improving one’s health and putting a conscious intention behind it can also impact change in a health issue,’ Chris says.  ‘I’ve been told of many cases of health improvements and transformations, including those from acute and chronic conditions.  And regular whirling cleans the aura and the chakras, getting the energy flowing in the body which enhances wellbeing.’

I attended Sheikh Ahmad’s Tribe of Doris whirling workshop every day for five days and have whirled with him in Glastonbury and Cheltenham since.  Witnessing whirling dervishes in action was awe-inspiring and the practice of whirling itself, alongside a chanting communion of fellow whirlers, was an uplifting, heart opening and deeply enriching experience – one I wholeheartedly recommend.

Further information

Sheikh Ahmad returns to give whirling workshops at Tribe of Doris from 9^th-14^th August. For further information/bookings, visit www.tribeofdoris.co.uk or call 0845 458 0190.

For further information about Sheikh Ahmad’s forthcoming UK events contact Chris Baker: chriz.baker@hotmail.co.uk; 07988442130.

Photos by: Helen Jane Cooke and Will Gethin

Tags: events, oneness, spirituality

Category: Articles, Conscious Frontiers, Consciousness