SOUL FOOD:The spiritual serenity of being a true whirling dervish

Most of us know them as a figure of speech, as in, “When she realized her child was no longer in the stroller, she tore through the crowd like a whirling dervish looking for him.”

But ask someone what a whirling dervish is and more often than not I bet you’ll get either silence or sketchy notions about someone or something moving with delirious speed.

Used this way as an idiom for mindless, frantic motion, the phrase belies what — or, better, who — the whirling dervishes truly are.

In Western Asia and the Middle East they are known as Mevlevi. They are followers of Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi, a renowned 13th-century Sufi poet, scholar and mystic, revered even in the West.

By some accounts, he is now the most popular poet in the United States. His works are said to have outsold Shakespeare in English-speaking countries for at least two decades.

This year is the eighth centennial of his birth in Balkh, in present-day Afghanistan. UNESCO, the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organization, has declared 2007 the International Year of Rumi.

His followers are celebrating it with programs and ceremonies worldwide. Some are staging readings of his works or screenings of the film “Rumi — Turning Ecstatic: A Voice of Peace from Within Islam,” which was the official selection of the Santa Cruz Film Festival last year.

Others are sponsoring performances by whirling dervishes. In April, the Whirling Dervishes of Rumi will give seven performances of their sacred ritual, sema, in the United States.

Global Cultural Connections, a nonprofit organization based in Irvine, whose members are for the most part of Turkish descent, has arranged to bring the Mevlevi here. Their performances are among many events sponsored by Global Cultural Connections with the hope of fostering understanding, love and respect among people, whatever their religion or culture.

Two years ago, when Global Cultural Connections first brought the Whirling Dervishes of Rumi here, a single performance at the 1,500-seat Royce Hall at UCLA sold out.

This year, the organization has scheduled two performances in Southern California, one at USC’s Bovard Auditorium on April 9 and the other at the Irvine Barclay Theatre on April 10.

The Mevlevi often perform in Istanbul. And they perform yearly to sold-out crowds in Konya, Turkey, where Rumi died on Dec. 17, 1273. There, a shrine houses his mausoleum, and a festival called Sheb-ul Arus (the Night of Union with the Divine) marks the event each year.

The Whirling Dervishes have appeared in Europe and in some parts of Asia. Their presence here, though, is still very rare.

In Turkey, most of them are — as was Rumi — university professors, teaching arts and the humanities. To travel means taking leave from their posts.

The word dervish, translated literally from Turkish, means doorway. In the sacred sense, it suggests an entrance leading from the material or earthly world into the spiritual or heavenly world. More commonly, the word is used simply to refer to the followers of a spiritual teacher such as Rumi.

In their sema, the Mevlevi whirl round and round — as did Rumi — as a means of spiritual ascent. Thus, they came by their Western name: whirling dervishes.

But their whirling is neither mindless nor frantic as common American use of the expression infers. Their whirling is instead mindful and serene.

According to Atilla Kahveci, Interfaith Dialogue Coordinator for Global Cultural Connections, “The whirling dervish, or semazen, intentionally and consciously participates in the shared revolution of other beings.” Every kind of being, from proton to planet.

All things, says Kahveci, revolve. But unlike the whirling dervishes, other things revolve involuntarily. While, contrary to some popular beliefs, the semazen’s goal is not, Kahveci says, “to lose consciousness or to fall into a state of ecstasy.”

As the semazen revolves in harmony with all of nature, the sema becomes a testimony, he says, “to the existence and the majesty of the Creator.” The sacred ceremony affirms, in the words of the Koran (64:1), that “Whatsoever is in the heavens and whatsoever is on the earth glorifies Allah. His is the dominion, and to Him belong all the praises and thanks, and He is Able to do all things.”

The sema reflects the Sufi aspiration to lose one’s ego in God’s will. Accompanied by traditional Sufi music, the seven-centuries-old ritual is steeped in symbolism.

At its start, the samazen stands erect with his arms crossed over his chest. Pillar-like, resembling the numeral one, he attests to the oneness of God.

He wears a sikke, a tall, cylindrical felt hat made from camel’s hair, which represents the ego’s tombstone. His khirqa, a black cloak worn over a white shirt and a voluminous white skirt is, when removed, a symbol of the semazen’s spiritual rebirth to the truth.

He withdraws from his earthly attachments and prepares to meet God. His tennure, his white skirt, acts as the ego’s death shroud.

Before he starts to turn, each semazen unfolds his right arm in a skyward gesture of prayer, in expectation of receiving God’s beneficence. He extends his left arm toward the earth in a gesture of bestowal.

The semazen becomes a conduit through which God’s blessings are poured onto all humanity. In this sense, everyone attending the sema becomes a participant.

Each semazen turns from right to left; it is said, he turns around the heart. He whirls, his white skirt billowing.

The sema consists of seven parts. It begins with the Nat-i-Serif, a eulogy to the Prophet Muhammad, followed by the awakening call of a kettledrum.

Then come four selams, four cycles of the dervishes whirling, with their sheikh — their leader — sitting at their center.

The first selam signifies the birth of truth through knowledge; the second expresses the rapture and splendor of creation; the third represents full submission to and communion with God; the fourth, when their sheikh joins their whirling, gathers them together.

A recitation from the Koran and a greeting of peace, accompanied by ecstatic music, brings the ceremony to a close.

“It unites the three fundamental components of human nature,” Kahveci said. The sema unites the mind, with knowledge and thought; the heart, with expressions of poetry and music; and the body, with the dervishes’ whirling.

It is the turning of the human soul toward God. It is a communal awakening, which is the very heart of the Sufi way.