Diane Cilento's, *My Nine Lives* and Sufism

By Rachael Kohn - ABC Radio National - Australia
Transcript from a recording of the program "The Spirit of Things"
Sunday 6pm, May 7 (repeated Monday 9pm and Friday 4am) 2006

She made it big in the movies in the 1950s and 60s, married 'James Bond', Sean Connery, but later turned her back on stardom to embark on a life of spiritual discovery. From Gurdjieff to Sufism, Diane's awakening has been profound.

Rachael Kohn: 'No Regrets' sang Edith Piaf, and for my guest today, it's probably a suitable anthem. Hello, I'm, Rachael Kohn. Welcome to The Spirit of Things on ABC Radio National. This is the second in our Epiphanies series, personal tales of courage, adventure and fulfillment.

My guest today is Diane Cilento, one of those rare people who's followed her heart, in love, in her profession, and in her spiritual life. If anyone's been on a journey, Diane has, leading her ever forward into new territory, even to Mecca, as a Sufi pilgrim.
She's an acclaimed actress in film and on stage, a writer and film maker, a spiritual seeker, and an owner and director of a theatre, and much more besides. She's had a couple of famous husbands: Sean Connery, the first James Bond, and Tony Shaffer, one of England's great playwrights. In all that, Diane's never lost her feisty personality which she had way back in boarding school in Queensland. All of which she's written about in her new autobiography, My Nine Lives.

I met her when she was down from Queensland to give a series of talks on Sufi Poetry and Sainthood for the Temenos Foundation at the Art Gallery of New South Wales in Sydney.

Diane Cilento, welcome to The Spirit of Things.

Diane Cilento: Thank you.

Rachael Kohn: Diane, you grew up in Brisbane, the daughter of two famous doctors, Lady Phyllis and Sir Raphael Cilento, and I think your father became the head of the World Health Organisation; were you expected to achieve great things?

Diane Cilento: Nooo! I'm in fact the only one except for a sister who didn't become a doctor. I have three brothers and a sister who was also married to a doctor, and in a way, it was expected that you would go into medicine and be part of the medical group that was our family. My mother and father, and all the rest of them.

Rachael Kohn: Goodness. So joining the theatre must have been a very rebellious thing to do.

Diane Cilento: Well I think they thought I was a bit stupid, actually. I mean, I didn't go to university, I think I'm the only member of my family that didn't. I did go to RADA and I did go to the American Academy of Dramatic Art, but that, I mean actually have you noticed that professional people don't take - I mean especially doctors - don't take other professions like acting seriously. They think it's sort of a bit of a joke.

Rachael Kohn: Do you think your family didn't take your profession seriously?

Diane Cilento: Well they didn't take it seriously until I started earning more money than they were! That's when they started taking me seriously. But I think even then it was a bit - no, I think that they began to think it was OK after that, now.

Rachael Kohn: Well you went on to have quite a significant career as an actress, playing some of the most memorable parts like Molly Seagram, the saucy wench in Tom Jones, that great film of the '60s. And not long after that your then husband, Sean Connery, I guess he was your second husband, became a superstar as James Bond. And that was in the mid-'60s. That must have been a terrific time for you, but also very challenging. What were the personal challenges of that kind of fame so early?

Diane Cilento: Well. I was more famous than him when we married, and then he got to be very, very famous, and we lived in a funny little house in the middle of Acton Common. And of course we had absolutely no protection, and nobody really knew about security and guards and people then, we never thought about it.

We had 17 robberies, and oh dear, it was very challenging, believe me, because see I think England at that time, I mean America had had Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra, but England suddenly got Bond and the Beatles, and they'd never really had any internationally ding-dong drag out celebrity type lifestyles. And it was a very, very swift learning process. And none of us knew that obviously it would cost so much money. And as Sean's Scottish, he didn't want to spend anything on guards coming around, and I didn't know anything about all that stuff. We were a bit Babes in the Wood about it.

Of course, after a while you get to not be, especially with the paparazzi who invade your space continuously.

Rachael Kohn: Did that spark some questions in you about what it is to be Diane Cilento?

Diane Cilento: Well it certainly sparked questions about the idea of being famous. Because when you're a working actor, what you're really entranced by is the skill of acting. And then suddenly, when you get into films, and I had a contract with Alexander Korda long ago before this, and he then died when I was in America, so I had been sort of passed on to the government; I was a civil servant.

British Lion was owned by the British government, so I was shoved into all these films, and suddenly the gilt goes off the gingerbread in the acting stakes, and you think, Oh God, not another one of these ghastly films. And you get put into - at least I did - at that time I didn't fit the mould, you see, never, of that sort of British type star, of Deborah Kerr 'arrive as a star', get your hair sort of done into these awful little globules and follow a formula which I wasn't good - I couldn't do it.

Rachael Kohn: Well I think you actually described yourself as a young woman, being impetuous and passionate and what else? Dramatic. Though I suppose that's predicable for an actress. Did that work for you, or against you, in what became a budding spiritual quest?

Diane Cilento: Well, first of all Sean didn't want me to work, because he had a very different idea of what wives do. They sit at home and they do other things than acting. So I thought that I'd be sitting at home and writing books. So I started writing and I did write two books actually. I wrote one called Hybrid, but the first one was called The Manipulator, and it was really because I'd been to the Mexican Film Festival with Tony Richardson. See, I was in the Royal Court and all that, too. And I'd seen the sort of manipulation that goes on in the film industry, and I suppose I began finally to actually begin to look at things in a more questing way.

Rachael Kohn: Well you got involved in the esoteric movement called the School of Philosophy that was begin by J.G. Bennett, and I think he was based in London, was he?

Diane Cilento: No, he was based in Gloucestershire. At first he was in London and in fact I knew him in London and used to go to meditational things at his place, which was in the next street from me in Kingston. But he started a great big school in Gloucestershire, which was in the same school that If - you know that film called If, where the boys from school revolted against their schoolmaster and threw him in Sherwater - it was called Sherborne - and the school was left empty, and then it was taken over by Bennett and called the School of Continuous Education, and that's where I lived for a year.

Rachael Kohn: Is that where your interest in Sufism first began?

Diane Cilento: Yes, it did, because Sufism really was the parent of I suppose you could say, Sufism was the parent of Gurdjieff, and the source from which he took a lot of his work, and although Bennett wasn't a complete Gurdjieffian, he did also go back, and I find myself going back to the source of where the knowledge came from.

And I found that it came from very much from a philosopher that lived in the 12th century called Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi, and I met the man who did translations, he was a Turkish gentleman, called Bulent Rauf, and then I was taken to the Whirling Dervishes to stay with them and do this film, and then I was taken to Turkey to help with the translations of Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi's work. So suddenly, I was taken into a different world, where the work went back to a very long time before.

Rachael Kohn: How did you find yourself making a film about the Whirling Dervishes? That couldn't have been easy in the first place to organise.

Diane Cilento: I know that this will sound very bizarre. First of all I had a dream that I saw this whirling white figure, and I wrote to Bulent, and I said, Look, I keep seeing this strange - and I thought he'd say, 'Go away and take a pill, or have a shower, or do something.' But he said, 'No, no, we'll go to the Turkish Embassy together, because I happen to know the Mevlevi, he was an archaeologist'.

Rachael Kohn: Who was that?

Diane Cilento: Rauf his name was. And he was also a great chef. We went to the Turkish Embassy and we did - I had just done a film for the BBC with the director, and that director was supposed to come with us and sign up, because at that time, they'd just done Midnight Express and no-one was allowed to go into Turkey to film, because they were terrified you were going to put a camera in a paper bag and get into their prisons and do some nasty stuff.

Anyway, this silly BBC director didn't come, so suddenly we all were there, and they wouldn't let him come because he hadn't signed on in the Embassy. So there was me who had to direct it. I would never have done it if I hadn't actually been to that school, because by that time, practically speaking, I'd tackle anything.

Rachael Kohn: I was going to say, Diane, you never recoil from a challenge, do you?

Diane Cilento: Well I couldn't. We were all there, nine people and a group of wonderful technicians and we were off down to stay with the Mevlevi and they were all ready to go, and the old Sheikh, Suleiman Dede, and Ahmed Becan and all these people were lined up. And I was sort of suddenly the director. What did happen though was it took me a long time to edit it. And that was very exciting. I loved that. But I mean, I promise you, the editing was together-together, and to do it right, I had to write the whole thing, then I had to get myself and Bulent to do the words. It won a few prizes and it is a lovely film, I think. And I suppose probably it's the only film which explains the ceremony of the Whirling Dervishes, the sema, in fact what's really happening.

I've often see a lot of films of people turning round and round, and it's very fascinating, but you don't know why they're doing it. That's what my film's about, why they're doing, what they're doing.

Rachael Kohn: Tell me about that, and why it affects you, why it's important to you.

Diane Cilento: Well it's important to anybody who's watching it because in fact they are taking part in it. It's called the sema and it's actually a meditational practice that, it's sort of like the transmission of blessings through - they raise their right hand and it comes through that place, then it goes through their heart and out their left hand, and it's actually a wonderful symbolic passing of the energies from one world to another, and I think really that's what happens.

It has the most extraordinary effect upon those people watching it, they are taken into it, it's wonderfully - it's with the music, and the music of the flute, and the music of the blind man, who sings the incantation, and the thing called the walk where they acknowledge the godhead of each one. It's a very, very complicated but beautiful ceremony from beginning to end.

I had one of the guys turn. I found a nightclub which had a square as a dance floor, and I put him in the middle of it as the circle within the square, and I put the camera right above his head and shot down on him. But he couldn't do it unless the whole of the incantation, this flute, and the whole thing was done, then he could do it. Without that, he couldn't actually turn properly. Odd that, wasn't it?

Rachael Kohn: Well there are no women dervishes are there?

Diane Cilento: Oh yes. Of course. But they don't turn like that, but there are really a lot of women dervishes, yes, and they've got a lot of Vroom. They're very powerful women, promise you.

At one time there was a woman dervish there who was extraordinary, her name was Madame Ayashler and she had a big turban on a big stick, and I was shooting in the tomb of Mevlâna Jalâluddîn Rumi and someone because we were supposed to be sort of non-Muslims, pulled out all the plugs and the light. And so suddenly the lights went tchiu! like that, and she knew, she'd been watching, and she went over and she tongue-lashed them with a big stick and they were all terrified. Up went the lights again in a flash!

Rachael Kohn: Diane, one of the great names associated with Konya in Turkey, is the Sufi poet Jalâluddîn Rumi who fled there with his family when he was a boy. And you've actually lectured on his poetry for the Temenos Institute. Would you read a bit of his poetry for us?

Diane Cilento: Well one of the names that Jalâluddîn Rumi had was the Master, Mevlana. And he was incredibly enamoured of poetry, calligraphy and especially that music of the ney, which is that reed flute that you hear that's so haunting. And his students were encouraged to go down to the river and pick their own reed and fashion it for themselves, for their own mouth and their own hands. And he wrote this poem about that.

Listen to the reed forlorn
Crying since it was torn
from its rushy bed
a song of love and pain.

The secret of my song, though near,
none can see and none can hear.
Oh, for a friend to know the sign
And mingle all his tears with mine.

'Tis the flame of love that fired me,
'Tis the wine of love inspired me.
Would you learn how lovers bleed?
Then listen, listen to the reed.

Rachael Kohn: Diane, Sufi poets are known for mixing up passion and love and divinity in this beautiful way. Is that what is so powerful for you, that mixture?

Diane Cilento: Oh yes. I mean the love affair's very powerful, but also the humour and the individuation, that the extraordinary advanced tastiness of most Sufi poets. Each one is different, and each one has their own sort of as though you know them, because they're so funny, some of them are very funny.

Rachael Kohn: Well you read that poem from memory. Do you read them as a kind of spiritual practice?

Diane Cilento: I don't know. I just do like them. I don't think you can segregate spiritual practices from anything, that's just it, it's just your life, and once you come across these poems, I mean I like lots of other poems, too. For my picture I used T.S. Eliot and different people, although strangely enough, T.S. Eliot was a pupil of J.G. Bennett's, did you know that?

Rachael Kohn: No.

Diane Cilento: Well, he was.

Rachael Kohn: Amazing.

Diane Cilento: And they were both Catholics. [T.S.Eliot was an Anglo-Catholic.] But you can be in the Sufi way and be any - although it is based in Islam. But I mean, it doesn't really matter what basically the religion is, it's all the same thing. It's all oneness. And I don't think you can divorce or segregate or pigeonhole life in that way much. It is just life, and poetry's part of that.

Rachael Kohn: Diane, you were married to the celebrated English playwright and screen writer, Tony Shaffer for many years. Did he share your spiritual interests?

Diane Cilento: Yes, he did, but he was more fascinated by the personalities. He loved Bulent Rauf for instance, he thought he was wonderful. He loved J.G. Bennett as well. Bulent had been married to King Farouk's sister. He was an extraordinary man, and he loved smoked salmon and that very black chocolate when it's dipped in grapefruit peel. And things like that. He was a wonderful sensualist. And Tony loved all that sort of thing too.

He did quite a lot of work with everyone, and he came when we did the translating bits, and when we went - there is a place in Scotland that is run, it's called Beshara, which is 'In this way', it's a school. And he came there and did a retreat and he was nearly always though more fascinated by the theatricality of it than the personalities, than in fact the idea of meditational practice. I don't think he had the gift of meditation. He used to think, not meditate.

Rachael Kohn: Did you ever want to convey or transmit your spiritual interests to your children?

Diane Cilento: I know that that's not possible. You can talk about it. One of my children lives in a Sufi group but the other, my son, doesn't. And I would never think of trying to proselytise anything to my children. That son actually lived at Sherborne, when I was at that school. And I think, I mean Mr Bennett used to say about children that they learn through their skin, so I don't think I would ever try and lead my children anywhere, they'll go where they'll go.

Rachael Kohn: Diane, you went on a pilgrimage recently to Mecca. Why did you want to do it?

Diane Cilento: I was invited, and I wasn't actually going to go at first, and then I knew I had to. And I really was very pleased that I did. It was quite an experience.

Rachael Kohn: Who went with you?

Diane Cilento: I went with my daughter, and the group of people that she lives with, who are an extraordinary group of people who live in Sydney, and theirs is a, I suppose you'd call it a tekya, a school of Sufism. But they're Islamic, they've got a Sheikh who is Egyptian, very nice and extraordinary man, who was strangely enough in the United Nations as well. And he invited all of us, and of course you can't go as a single woman, unless you've got a male person to look after you. My son-in-law did that, but I didn't take any notice of it much, I just went around anyway. I mean I'm certainly not nubile still, so it didn't really matter.

Rachael Kohn: What were you wearing?

Diane Cilento: I was wearing my hijab, which took me a while to get used to, especially as the temperature was 45, and I did lose a few pairs of sandals, because they were made of leather, I mean anything like that, leave outside it's all gone afterwards. So I learnt not to do that.

Rachael Kohn: How long was it?

Diane Cilento: I was there for three weeks. It was very extraordinarily momentous. You forget, it's like a dream. You forget about time, you don't know what day it is, or what time it is, because they do the circumambulation in the middle of the night, because it's too hot to do it.

Rachael Kohn: So that's the Kaaba, the great black stone.

Diane Cilento: The Kaaba is covered with beautifully embossed damask, it smells, if you put your nose against it it smells of attar of roses. People are trying to kiss this black stone. I didn't go near there, it was a bit like a sort of football scrum, but I did the whole circumambulation and went to see the feet of Abraham and I thought it was an extraordinary experience. It takes quite a while, and I did it more than once, I did it quite often.

Rachael Kohn: You've lectured on the Sufi saint, Shamseddin Mohammad Hafiz, who was also a poet. He was sort of quirky, and even ostracised by the Muslim clergy. Can you read from one of his poems?

Diane Cilento: Certainly.

Spill the oil lamp, set the boring place on fire!

If you've ever made wanton love with God,

Then you have ignited that brilliant light inside,

That every person needs.

So spill the oil! Set the boring place on fire!

Rachael Kohn: You know, when I read that, it made me think of perhaps how you might have felt as a school student in the boarding school, when you fled. Does that poem have a certain resonance or connection to your anarchic spirit?

Diane Cilento: Oh God yes. Anybody has got my tick if they have a bit of that sort of anarchy in them. I like - I think those sort of things are born in you, and I always have to have something that spills over, let's say. It's not that I try and create chaos or anything, it's just that life has to be sort of on the bubble, I think.

Rachael Kohn: Well there's something about love being at the centre of Sufism, which always contains an element of yearning for me.

Diane Cilento: Well of course. That's what it's all about. What people really want is to be embraced, it doesn't matter whether they want to go and - whatever they want to do, even if they're out to make a million bucks in a card game, it's still about being embraced. It's being approved of and loved. And that's what it is, it's the whole of life is this incredible love affair, which the last poem in that, that Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi poem, which is written as God speaking to those who will come after, or are here now, or have been, to say Why don't you see me? Why can't you hear me? I've only created you with perceptions so that I can be the object of your perception.

That's what I feel Sufism has. Instead of all that sort of knocking that goes on and dogma, it sort of says, Oh, don't worry about all that stuff, it's just a love affair. And that's what I think is, you know, that's it.

Rachael Kohn: Diane, it's been a joy talking to you, thank you so much for being on The Spirit of Things.

Diane Cilento: Thank you, it's been very lovely to talk to you too, Rachael.

Rachael Kohn: Diane Cilento has written about her life in a new book, just out, called My Nine Lives.

Title: My Nine Lives
Author : Diane Cilento
Publisher: Viking, 2006