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Note :- Ralph as part of his studies at Kings College - London - UK, is researching into aspects of music and dance used in religious settings. The interview was agreed to after a discussion about the reasons for his study. There was no warning of any questions, for that reason the answers may appear unprepared. What follows is a tape recording transcript. It is important to realise that the answers are tailored to the understanding of a person who was not at that time practising those things which he was questioning.

PRELIMINARY QUESTIONS ASKED OF RALPH

A :- Let me first ask you about your personal position with regard to spiritual matters, what you believe and the reasons for this particular line of study. This is important because it will affect the way in which I answer your questions.
Ralph:- I started this course partly because I find it a fascinating subject itself.

A :- Music or religion?
Ralph:- Religion; I wanted to get away from (western) music, I was heavily involved in teaching children. My interest is twofold really, purely as it is something which is a fascinating subject across all religions.

A :- A broad subject not just Christianity?
Ralph:- Precisely not, just Christianity; and also for my personal search for some kind of religiosity in my life as well. I wasn't expecting to get some kind of bolt of lightening. It just struck me that I would like to know more about it if I was ever going to have anything personal to do with it myself. So I have approached it from that direction. I think I have learnt a great deal.

A :- So you believe there is something (divine behind all religions).
Ralph:- My personal belief is that I believe there is a transcendental order, something spiritual in our lives. I wouldn't go as far as calling it Christian or any other really. That's the whole point, the more I learn about these different things the more it seems to come together and yet keep father apart. A sort of unravelling, and before I get too ancient I might come to some conclusions, I haven't come to any yet.

A :- That's useful for me to know, because the sort of training that I've had in various things is that one has to be guarded about what is said. One of the fundamental principles of Sufism and Vedanta is that one doesn't disturb the mind of a person who doesn't believe or is not sure if they believe in God. They are in a certain state they are busy with their lives so they don't give it a thought, it is quite an important thing that one doesn't disturb that persons mind.

Ralph:- You don't believe in evangelising.
A :- Not like the Christian idea of 'go around and try to convert everybody', that is something quite different, Sufism is almost opposite to that, so is Vedanta, they don't believe in proselytising or converting they haven't got any kind of mandate for that. Therefore we keep ourselves to ourselves, but if anybody shows an interest and they are obviously keen on that subject then there is more of an open aspect, otherwise one tends to be very guarded about these things. There are so many bad opinions about sects or groups that one has to keep away from the public eye.

Ralph:- One thing I've learnt on this course is that the very word academic implies that it is not involved in any kind of judgmental aspect. That is the whole point. I've learnt more about how not to judge people, I've had to just purely make observations just gathering things for my own benefit.
A :- That is a very different aspect of it to be non-judgmental. An open mind is the best thing.

Ralph:- I entirely agree that's my philosophy really not to pass judgment on anyone. I object because there are a lot of people I know who say (about new religious groups) that they are all like that (tarred with the same brush). I say look at the facts they aren't, that is totally unfair. I object quite strongly to the journalistic approach.
A :- To have a pre-conceived notion and then try to fit everything people say into that pre-conceived notion gives a distorted answer. It leads to distortion. What you are really looking for is the true answer in a situation - the facts and the truth of that situation. -- That is good - we have a basis of where we are at. So now let us get on with the interview.

 

THE INTERVIEW

Ralph:- How long have you been involved with the Mevlevi order ?
A :- The Mevlevi, I've been involved in this since I was 32, so that is about 18 or 19 years. (since 1976)

Ralph:- What Is your role ?
A :- That has changed and evolved over the years but my contact with it was second, third hand at first. Like you hear about these things from second and third hand. But that has never been good enough for me I've always wanted to get first hand knowledge and experience direct from the horses mouth.

So I started to go to Turkey after about two or three years, I didn't go straight away when I was first involved in it. I felt that there could be room for misunderstandings of the thing by those who were practising these things here (in this country), and I felt I had to go and find out directly and my suspicions were confirmed in a way over a period of time.

So I started to go to Turkey and meet the Mevlevi people there, and there are a few of them remaining and practising in their homes, because it had been banned. There were also pseudo Mevlevi's doing it for show and it was never meant to be for show. I found out lots of things. My role at the beginning was like that but gradually, because of the confidence that developed between me and the leader over there, I felt my position was different.

So eventually I couldn't continue with the people in this country who were adapting or adopting the thing to suit their own culture. It was distorting it too much, or it was not quite to the point, I didn't think. From what I got by long and close association with the Mevlevi in Turkey, and I was going three times a year and sometimes staying a month at a time; and I learned the music. I was very attracted by the music which is a very central point of it.

I got to know them and they were calling me their brother or (the Sheikh was calling me) his son, you know they were calling me one of them. I felt that I absorbed from them something which I had never experienced in my life. Something very deep, something that was obviously very established and very strong. So eventually my role became changed. Sufi people don't always say directly what they expect. They give an inference as to what they hope or expect you to do.

I began to realise that my Sheikh who was getting older, and he had had an illness, was expecting me to produce something. So we started a group in Sutton that's the reason why. We started something of our own and tried to get a few people interested to continue what we felt he was saying was the real true way, as he wanted it to be continued. He knew it would die out in his own country eventually but he was quite definite that it shouldn't die out altogether.

He wanted it to be continued in the proper traditional way and he spoke very specifically about certain things that you shouldn't do as well as what you should do. And I felt all these instructions he was giving me, gave me a responsibility. And my children were getting older and they were being given instructions by him as well and they were being taken into the family feeling over there. They were coming with me, they came many times and now they are in love with the feeling of the whole thing.

So it has become part of the family or the family has become part of it, you can't say which. And then we felt that, especially just before he died and he spoke very specifically, that he had given us a lifetimes job to do, to keep this thing preserved in the right way. It is a beautiful and pure thing which they had practised for hundreds of years. So my role has come to this point of being in this position.

Ralph:- You feel the responsibility of it all?
A :- I don't feel it's too heavy. I am happy to do it but if somebody else would take it from me I wouldn't be unhappy about that. But it would have to be someone that felt it in the same way as I do, I suppose.

Ralph:- How often do you come together to perform (the Sema)?
A :- Well we play music every day, my daughter and I. My son is no longer living with us but he comes every week. We perform the whirling ceremony every week definitely, we don't miss. Unless there are too many of us away for some reason. We practise the ceremony music three times a week.

Ralph:- So it's an integral part of your life?
A :- Oh yes, you have to. It is a wholehearted thing. It has that effect on you, anyway it's very infectious.

Ralph:- Can you explain something of where it all comes from the origin of the music and the dance? If you can call it music and dance.
A :- I've done my own researches, it is very ancient it goes back even before Mevlana's time, he had revived something which had fallen into disuse or was corrupted at the time, the Mevlevi's that I spoke to were descendants of him (Mevlana) they were his great great great great grandchildren as it were, their family tradition held lots of knowledge in it, and they said yes the whirling did exists in a different form before. The form was changed the style was changed in his time. It is ancient very ancient.

Ralph:- Are the terms 'music' and 'dance' appropriate, or do you think you could use other more religious terms?
A :- To use the term 'dance' could be misleading. It is more of a 'movement' but it looks like a dance. It depends on your interpretation of the word 'dance'. If you can see that a person may dance for joy or have joy in the dancing but not for pleasure. Normal dance gives people a sense of pleasure. They exert themselves in a rhythmic way in a group and they get pleasure from it whether it is ballroom dancing or folk dancing or whatever, its a pleasurable thing, but doesn't have a particular purpose.

This dance is a continuous whirling dance or whirling movement. The people trained in it have to fix their minds in a specific way and so you will not necessarily get pleasure, in fact it can be quite painful and exhausting because your arms get very painful because you are holding your arms up. When you first get the training it can be very dizzying effect it has on you, but you overcome that very soon. But because of what it is, it is aiming at a particular transcendence within, to get a brief experience of something.

You see, scriptures talk about lots of things to do with religious experiences and people will imagine all sorts of things but they don't have those experiences; and it's in order to cut through the imagination, so that when you are talking about these things that you have had some glimpse of what it is. The whirling dance aims at ... it's not always successful it doesn't mean that just because you whirl you will get it, but there will be times when the group comes together in a certain magical feeling and you do transcend the feeling of being trapped in your body.

I can't explain it more than that; but you do have more of a conscious feeling of life around you. You can therefore understand the other subjects when they are being talked about in relation to actual experience. If I tried to describe the taste of an apple to you, and you had never eaten one you could imagine all sorts of things but if you have tasted one you would know what I was talking about.

So it's a movement which has got a purpose, a specific aim. So the whole ceremony, the music and dance builds up. It has a specific central aim a pointed feeling about it. It is sometimes successful in that sometimes not.

Ralph:- What about the term 'music', would you say that is a fair way of describing it? I know that in Islam they don't like to use music at all.
A :- Most Muslims wouldn't accept that it is a Muslim thing at all. The centre of most Sufi orders has music and singing and dancing. They use music. Music in the normal worldly sense means we will sit down and attempt to make some harmonic sounds with instruments. The Mevlevi music is not like that so you could find another word for it, I don't know.

It is the opposite of that, we sit down and empty ourselves without any real intention of doing anything. We hope that the music will play us. In other words the music exist it's eternal, and it is there. In some way it comes through us if we are good enough. We will have a go at it anyway. It's not like we are performers trying to do something. We are actually not trying to do something. We are trying to empty ourselves so the music will come more purely through us.

Ralph:- So you don't see yourselves as a the source of the music?
A :- No, you see yourself only as a transmitting intermediary instrument. To communicate something that is always there to the people around.

Ralph:- Could you clarify the definition of three significant words for me? Sema, Zikhr and Makam.
A :- a) SEMA
Sema is a collective word meaning the whole business or point of the ceremony like that. There are many semas. Different dervish orders do a sema. It usually involves a group of people together, some musicians some singing of hymns or something; in a particular form that their own leader has given them, which is a kind of formula to generate some kind of ecstatic state. It is the collective word used to describe all the activities surrounding the ceremony. You could say it is a dervish ritual.

b) ZIKHR
A rhythmic repetition. They use various words the sounds of which have quite deep meanings for them, there are so many of them. They get in a circle together and they repeat this. They start usually quite slow and very deep. There can be music in the background, maybe a flute or something to give them a feeling. It is not necessarily musical it is more of a chant. It is repeated over and over until the deeper meaning of it, or the feelings associated with it are reached.

They cut out all their thoughts of the world, their families and their jobs, they don't think about anything else. They are thinking about the meaning of that word and why they are together as a group. It can have a similar effect to a sema. We do that zikhr but not as long as other dervishes. Some just do zikhr all the time. We do short zikhr. We do one at the beginning which is musical and one at the end that is not.

Ralph:- Would thou say it has a meditative effect?
A :- It is meditative. In the Roman Catholic church they say "Hail Mary" and they repeat that over and over with a rosary, and there are other things in Christian meditation, I think it's to centre the mind. A similar purpose. Most religions have got something like that. Muslims repeat Allah or some other word, I am not an expert on all these things.

c) MAKAM - A lot of musicians and musicologists have got this wrong. They think it is a musical mode. But you can write a full page description of a makam, so it can't just be a musical scale, there is more to it than that. I wrote down at regular intervals when I was learning, my description of what I felt a makam meant. I wanted to see how it changed for me. Gradually it expanded and it got deeper. I kept all these descriptions.

I think that the original term makam means a 'path' but it is obviously also something to do with musical scales. One great musician said you could spend a lifetime studying one makam only. It's like if you knew a person and you started to study their genealogy you'd study all their family connections but you would still be focusing on that person.

A makam is a musical mode which is part of a family of modes and it has connections strong or weak to other modes. And it has a particular path; it has a particular set of intervals that are used and sometimes they are changed in a certain way. It is a very complex thing.

But to me it was a way which through music that you could connect with spiritual things because a makam to me is like an angel. In the end my description of a makam became a bit simpler. It was like a divine being which has manifested itself in our world in the form of music. In the end it came to that.

Ralph:- Could you explain how the music is constructed in the Ayin or sema? I know it begins with Koranic recitations.
A :- We don't make any recitation from the Koran. We were told that as we are not Muslims we don't have to do that. It starts with a free rhythm improvisation on the flute [ney]. The ney is considered to be the divine representation, it is an empty thing, completely hollow.. That is done first but that is in the mode of the piece that is to follow. So you introduce the feeling or mood of that particular makam.

When that has finished there is a set piece of music of fixed rhythm which is for procession. With the first drum beat the whirlers stand up. It is for the dervishes to process round the room. It has a nice steady beat to it. When that has finished there is another improvisation on the flute, a short one. The dervishes take their (outer) robes off and start to whirl. The makam returns with a fairly simple rhythm, seven or eight beats to the bar.

All the rhythms are repetitive, a bit zikhr like. The musical form fits the rhythm and is constrained within that rhythm. The composers will then move away from the makam to other associated makams. They may make radical changes and modulations and never come back, quite often they do come back to the base mode (of the Ayin), they modulate away and come back. They are keeping it fairly low key. The second selam is definitely a change in rhythm, it is always one rhythm that is nine beats to the bar and it's slow. At this point the whirlers stop, they bow and they wait for permission to whirl again.

This is to make an abrupt change in the mood because the whirlers have come from their worldly state to the first stage in the progression within themselves. That development is arrested. The second selam is short it arrests and holds steady the development so far of the whole progress of the musicians the whirlers the whole thing.

Then there is sometimes a short instrumental piece with no singing. The third selam begins with another rhythmic change. The third selam is the central part, the most important, because it builds itself up. It has three rhythms within it. It builds itself up to a crescendo type feeling with the meaning of the poetry and the tessitura or level of the music rises to a crescendo. So the climax of the whole thing is in the third selam.
As soon as it has passed that point it starts to come down.

Then an abrupt change again, the fourth selam, to hold steady that development. To keep the person in that state because they are going to have to be introduced to the world of living here and now. In the fourth selam there is some fast processing music. It is not as fast as it was in the third but it can still be quite energetic, the energy levels have lifted by that time.

Then there is finally another improvisation on the flute to gradually bring the thoughts and minds of the persons descending down. The flute begins high (pitch) and it comes down and down very slowly and finishes in a restful way.
You know then it has come to a complete conclusion and the dervishes bow and stay on the floor. They are then are supposed to retain a sense of what they may have experienced, and take that into the world with them, into their ordinary life with them. As best as they can, you can't say what is going to happen. Sometimes the next day you will completely forget it.

Ralph:- Is the aim to change the world around them?
A :- It is integral. It is to change a state of mind really, isn't it?

Ralph:- And through that change to change society, you say take that into the world with them?
A :- I think it does have that effect. If (there are) a lot of good people in the world, people with good thoughts and so on, (it) is going to benefit the world, then that would be a side effect. That will happen. You don't have to make that happen.
The view is, the presence of good people is enough. The example spreads like an infection. I think they know that that may happen but it is not a direct aim. The main aim is to improve the consciousness and the life of the individual person.

Ralph:- Can I ask you about the poetry? What is the link between the poetry and the music?
A :- The poetry is fixed for each particular piece of music. The music is put together by those people who were themselves whirlers or dervishes and they have got this inspiration. They feel so much for the poetry and for the purpose of the thing, they have become an instrument for a piece of music, it has come through them I think.

If you read descriptions of Mozart and the way he said he composed music he said it came out of the sky, he was only an intermediary. It came through him, it wasn't anything to do with him and a lot of the dervishes, if they were to explain, but they wouldn't, they would probably say the same. The music came through them, it is very inspired. The meanings in the poetry infect the music. Some of the meanings which are particularly strong cause very nice modulations in the music.

Ralph:- Does the music follow even programmatically, the progress of the poetry?
A :- They are intimately connected, the music and the poetry. There is no doubt about that.

Ralph:- Is there symbolic significance behind the instruments?
A :- Definitely. The ney is the only musical instrument, the only one which carries the melody which we are told to use. In the last (19th) century a lot of Western influence came into the various dervish groups, and they started playing Western instruments in it. My sheikh said that it was not acceptable. For the people who stuck to the true path that was not acceptable to expand it and turn it into an orchestral thing. It was meant to be a simple ritual music.

The main and original instruments are the flute, the drums and the cymbals. There is a stringed instrument called the rebab or rebek, which is also possible to use it has the sound of the human voice. The ney also should sound like the human voice. The rebab should never drown out the sound of the ney, it should always be less than the ney, because the first verses of Mevlana's Mathnavi extol the virtues of the ney.

Ralph:- So what is special about the ney, can you explain that or not?
A :- They say that the human being is represented by the ney. There are seven holes cut into the ney (i.e. nine) and there are seven (nine) orifices in the human body, through which influences pass in and out of the human body. In that way it represents the human body. Also the ney begins it's life in a reed bed. All the sections within a reed are separate from each other, there is a membrane that passes between them.
In order to make it into a ney these membranes are removed. So it becomes a complete empty pipe.

This process also can happen to a human being. All the separate parts of your thinking, your psychology and the intervening membranes are removed. In other words you become a more unified person. Also the fact that the ney has not got anything in it. It is empty.

That emptiness is one of the most important Sufi things. To be ego less, to have less desires. What did Jesus say "Sell all that you have and follow Me". It is the same idea. It means all this idea of 'me and mine'; possessions, selfishness and so on, anger etc. All these things are removed and when they're removed you're empty. Now the ney plays music because it is empty. If it ever had anything in it, it wouldn't play. In the same way the symbolism is that. It is quite nice I think.

Ralph:- Can you expand on the significance of the glimpse which you get in the dance?
A :- It has to be experienced I would say really, to understand what it means. In a way, every time you take part in it you have to overcome certain things in yourself. (to explain something which can be related to by the questioner) Like a gyroscope for instance, because it is whirling round two things one inside the other, you can't easily change the direction of it. If you've ever spun a bicycle wheel (to use an analogy from the physical world) and held it by the axle, free from the bicycle, if it is really spinning fast and you try to change the direction of it you can't do it.

It is as if there is a mystical force holding that bicycle wheel from being turned, because it is spinning in a certain direction you can't easily change the direction. It is Newton's laws of motion actually. In a strange way that is what happens with the whirling, the fact that you are continuously going around in a certain way. What looks from the outside to be a bit chaotic, maybe the experience is one of steadiness. Making the character of a person with greater equanimity.

You are not moved or affected by the ups and downs of life. That is not to say you wouldn't do what you had to do practically but inwardly you would not be effected. You gain a steadiness. My understanding of all the religious things is you can't progress down a religious path unless you've got this steadiness, faith they call it in the Christian terminology. From that basis of steadiness you can go forward to understand other things. Something which helps this steadiness, yogis use meditation and things to find the same steadiness.

The steadiness itself is a platform for further progress, into things which most people would never ever believe they existed or understand descriptions of them, because their unsteadiness means they are too concerned with the events of their life. I think that is one of the fairly obvious benefits, there are many others, but that is one of the things you could relate to. (since you have not whirled).

Ralph:- The aspect of Sufism relating to inward and outward, is the sema a way of turning in on yourself?
A :- Its more a way of finding - Jesus used this term "rock", building on rock instead of sand, why did he say sand? If you think of your own experience as a child certain things that happen to you, you view them in a certain way (at that time) later when you get older you view them differently. The thing itself is the same, your view is different.

Depending on the circumstances of your life the same thing can be viewed so many different ways. Because the basis upon which you view things is always changing there is no stability. This gives people a lack of stability in their lives. The 'outer' is always apparently confusing and difficult to understand for people because they are inwardly unstable.

Building on the sand, if they had dug deeper the rock was there, Jesus didn't explain that because it was obvious to anybody, sand came from rock anyway, so if you get rid of the instability by taking it away you would find that underneath peoples stability is there. If you therefore find that, as a basis for seeing the world on the outside, you will find that you are not confused with changing and conflicting views of the outside. It means you get more constancy in your view.

Ralph:- And the music and dance is a way of reinforcing that?
A :- Yes. The inner and outer is a quite an important concept. I'd like you to understand the 'inner' and the 'outer' in that way. The 'outer' is what it is. If you find something better on the 'inner' you can relate to the 'outer' in a more constant way.

Ralph:- Is the music and dance a way of guiding people down the mystical path?
A :- When you talk of a mystical path then I would say that nothing leads you to that at all. I can only quote, there was a story about St. Francis of Assisi. He became a saint, there is no doubt about it, he found Absolute Reality in his life. He was a beautiful man, a wonderful man. In the early part of his life he was seeking and he found this old man who was blind from crying. He asked him about Ultimate Reality, about the mystical path. "If there is a path or route, show me the way." the old man said, "There is no path there is only the abyss and you must jump across it. All paths are nothing; they are all on the earth."

Ralph:- Cannot then rituals of music and dance give you a taste or glimpse of the mystical path?
A :- Tastes are possible but only I would say through the 'grace of God'. In other words if you were in a correct condition, if it was beneficial to you at the time, the grace of God gives you a taste. You can't get it by anything that you do, you may do all the right things but if God didn't give you that grace or that insight at the time you won't get it. So it's not dependent on humans. This is where the human being is finished, it's over to Him.

So the dance, the music, the mediation, any of these things are preparation only. Then (with that understanding) there is no path, you depend upon something else. That is a lot to do with who you have connections as well. If you have had connections with a saint a holy person (realise soul) that can help a lot with that abyss, the gap between (the worldly life and the spiritual life). It is something for which words fail in the end. Yes, words do fail there.

Ralph:- Does the music and dance ritual (Ayin) bring a sense of belonging to individuals? Does it bring people together? You mentioned for instance the sense of responsibility for continuing the tradition.
A :- Ah yes, right. That certainly is an effect that a lot of these things have on people. An ordinary thing like belonging to the boy scouts would make you feel like that. It's the experience of sharing things; there is that aspect to it. But these are sometimes temporary feelings, the temporary feeling of belonging to a club or group. That can happen with ordinary worldly things.

There is something more special than that in a way. There is one element in all humans and creatures that is the same in all. When you have stripped away all the differences of character, personality and so on. When I say stripped away I don't mean you have done away with them and say they are useless, because they are not. Character and personality are very important and necessary things to have. What you've done is, you've seen that they are only the covers of something underneath.

You know that you have characters in a Punch and Judy show that pop up and down. They have the same hand inside moving them all, and yet they look so different on the outside. And they are all going through a play; those puppets are performing a thing which has to be done. And our lives are like that, as Shakespeare said "All the world is a stage and we are all ---" he said the same thing. He was a great man he was a mystic character. If you read what he says, he says a lot of truth.

So you find that hand, or that oneness. You find that which is not the same as sharing activities like the boy scouts. It is something that when it is between yourself and other people, those people become, without words but they do become very special to you. You don't find it with others so easily. When you are together with those people you find that thing, which leads to this sort of happiness state, it's not happiness because it has not got an opposite.

We think happiness and sadness. My teacher in India he says, "There is in the world good and bad, happiness and sadness, opposite sides. Duality everywhere". But he says "When you come to joy, it is joy (on one side) and the other side is joy. It's all joy." It's because you find that and you experience it and you know its real, and you can't be talked out of it by anybody else, because you know that they (maybe) haven't experienced it (yet).

Ralph:- Do you think the word 'ecstatic' is a fair word to use when describing the state of the dancers and musicians?
A :- No. I think it can be misleading. The word ecstatic (nowadays) relates to a chemical feeling in the body. Sometimes people get a flood of adrenaline a flood of some chemistry or something and they feel a chemical high, which they think is something happening to them. But it is only chemistry flowing around the senses, the nervous system, the brain and so on. But it goes. As soon as the chemistry is gone it goes. That is a possible interpretation of the word ecstatic that would be very misleading.

(in the past) I think the term ecstatic has been used by people at a time when it had a deeper significance to it. People who travelled to Turkey and wrote about things that they had seen and shared in feeling of it. But it's not a physio-chemical biological thing. It is as if there is something behind the mind which is very bright. Like you may have a cloudy, stormy day but you know the sun is out there bright and shining as it ever was. You don't forget that.

That brightness never goes. Even in the middle of the night the sun is there shining away, just because you are round the other side of the planet (it doesn't stop). That thing which never goes, never dies, is not a temporary thing. Ecstasy in this modem world is something that comes and goes. But this kind of state is something you discover that it was always there and always will be. Even if you know you might not always be aware of it, because of your (forgetfulness).

Ralph:- Would you use the term 'spiritual' to describe your experience?
A :- What does it mean? we have to define the term, don't we? The word spiritual can mean so many different things. (for example) Somebody in a fortune tellers tent, it is all these ideas of predicting the future and so on. Spiritual healing you hear about. But to a person who has studied the things that I have studied and who has had the close contact with people who don't think theories, they don't think text book ideas. They know. They could write all the text books themselves if they wanted to.

They are people who have really experienced. To that kind of person spirit is the thing (from) that everything has become. Things have become what they are because of spirit. For example (analogy from the physical world) so many things happen from electricity; you get whirling movements, you get heat, you get light, you get magnetism. You get so many things but the thing it comes from is one thing. Even in this world they don't fully understand it, even though they can generate it.

There is one thing which is the cause of all the things that exist, although those things are very different in their appearances. That is spirit. And therefore everything is spirit, there is no difference between spirit and the world, to some people. Although you know your sense organs are programmed and geared to contact the physical world. And they will mislead you to think there is variation and variety.

We have these words 'insight' , in + sight and 'intuition' in our own language and it means there is something within you, inside you that knows otherwise. Here is an example: (analogy from the physical world) you see the sun going from East to West but you know that it doesn't go from East to West because if you're educated you know that the sun stays where it is and the earth turns, but, you can't deny your senses. All your logic will look at it and will say the sun is rising and setting. But because of something you've come to understand through education you know the sun doesn't move from East to West, it never moves from East to West.

That is a knowledge you have that is contrary to experience. That's the example I mean. This knowledge of spirit is like that. You know it because of what you have studied and because of what you have experienced. Your actual experience of the world you know is contrary to the truth of the situation.

Ralph:- So you see spirit as an underlying continuous transcendence which passes through everything.
A :- Yes everything is spirit, but the senses don't show that.

Ralph:- Would it be right to say that the Mevlevi Ayin is a way of opening a window on that?
A :- Yes it does. You know the story of Alice in Wonderland? It is brilliant, he was a priest you know (the author). What had she to do to get through the little window to the garden? She had to become small. That is the thing. That is the humility that is the egolessness. She did something in order to become less ego and personality and so on. That doesn't mean you have to give it up. I've still got character and personality and ego.

I will still say some thing in a certain way whilst others will say it another way, it doesn't mean you give all that up. You use it instead of it using you, that's the difference. Most peoples characters and personalities are manipulating them and using them, they are trapped in the prison of it. When you turn it on its head, you see it as a very valuable tool your character and personality become something which is a (useful tool) your not frightened of it. You can use it. But you are small, and by being small you get through that little window to the magic garden. That is a beautiful description in Alice in wonderland.

Ralph:- Would you say transformed by the ritual?
A :- I would say my life has become completely turned on its head, it has been transformed. I am a happy joyful person, I never get moods, never sad. And I love everybody, I don't have any friends or enemies or whatever, all people are equal to me. I would never have thought as a young man that I could have become like that. I was very much here and there and opposite (to this equanimity).

Ralph:- Would you say you are transformed in the ritual itself?
A :- I think that happens to some extent. The person who gets accepted to be trained for the ritual will have gone far enough already to be ready for that kind of experience which would come. That's where I say preparation is important, a person has to be of a certain sympathy towards the thing.

You wouldn't take someone off the street and teach them to whirl it would devastate their lives. It would be not helpful to them. You wouldn't want to do that. The purpose is not to do that, to upset peoples lives. It is to bring about a different thing, and that person has really got to want it. First some contact with it and them they have to want it more and more.

Two of my children learned to whirl they really wanted to. The youngest is now twenty she has not yet learned to whirl. Maybe she will one day. They have never been coerced into doing it. No one said you must do it. It has to be that the person feels in themselves that they want to. The other two did want to there was no doubt about it. We weren't sure whether they should. We went to Istanbul and we asked the Sheikh, "What do you think". He said "yes, if they want to they must, I did when I was young". He said "As long as they are over seven or eight years of age then they are thinking for themselves."

Ralph:- So are you the only ones in England that are doing this?
A :- No, there are others, another group I know who are very secretive, they are the ones who I learned with at first. One of the differences is that they do not use live music. We always use an element of live music and sometimes completely live music. The Sheikh in Istanbul insisted on live music. It is so important to have that live element.

Ralph:- Is it because it changes it every time you do it?
A :- Yes its different always different, never are two times the same. Also the music infects the whirling the whirling inspires the musicians. The musicians become better at the music because of the feeling they are getting, this is not necessarily technically better, it is becoming better intermediaries to convey the music the feeling of the music through you. It all helps itself, if you only have a tape recording you can't inspire a tape recorder whatever you do, it will just blab out the same thing. So I understood what he (the sheikh) meant, and we are trying to do what he wished.

Ralph:- Why do you feel it is so important to keep this tradition authentic?
A :- Its not so much just the physical things that you do. There are some things which physically we haven't done because they are not appropriate, and I know my Sheikh would not bother about that. It is certain (causal) things, if you ever did chemistry and you want to get a certain compound at the end, and you have to add this and add that in a certain order. Maybe it is a long lengthy process, you have to distil this, separate this etc. so many things and the process over a period of time has been sorted out and found to be more or less the only way you will get that compound.

If you change one element somewhere you might get a different compound but you wont get the one you are going for. You might be lucky if you can switch the process back in the middle. Once someone has set up a process you would tend to stick to that wouldn't you? That process if it was in the scientific sense. As long as the main elements the main thing is right, you can't be guaranteed, that we know every time we go to the sema.

We don't go with any expectations. We just do what we have been told in principle is the same thing, with the same thoughts in our minds, what has been done for centuries which can't be changed. Minor details maybe, but in principle the formula which they had derived which will reach that goal. At first you do it because of faith in that, later you do it because of experience. Firstly you stick to the traditional method because you don't know anything else, and if you tried something else you might fail, also because of your feeling of allegiance to those who taught you.

After a while the reason (for doing it traditionally) changes, the reason why you stick to the main elements of the process is because you know it leads to the goal, and you wouldn't want to do anything which meant that the goal was missing(or rather missed). If you want to get to Oxford Circus you can get a No. 12 bus from somewhere, it will take you there, and there are so many buses that will take you to that point, that's why I say there are so many religions.

But it is the point they come to that matters, not the route. But if you are part way on the journey and you think "I will get this other bus." and it goes off at a tangent, then you don't get what you are aiming for. It is the aim that is important not the vehicle that carries you there. That's the main thing I would say about that. (keeping to the traditional way). The vehicle isn't so important, the destination is important. The vehicle is only important if it is going your way. So don't switch vehicles unless your sure the one your switching to is going the same way.

END OF INTERVIEW
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