The Source of the Source of the Source of Your Own Self

By Orla Swift, "The old whirl" - The News & Observer - Raleigh, NC, USA
Friday, June 20, 2008

Amid modern moves, dancer practices dervish tradition

American Dance Festival is known for its modern dance. But Khadija Marcia Radin abandoned her modern ambitions decades ago, when she got her first glimpse of the centuries-old tradition of the Mevlevi whirling dervish.

Since then, she has traveled the world to learn more about Dervishes and Sufism, which are mystical orders of Islam.

She'll perform a whirling dance titled "Rapture" at American Dance Festival next week. Shows are at 8 p.m. Tuesday [today, June 24th] and 2 and 8 p.m. Wednesday [June 25th] at Duke University's Reynolds Theater.

"Rapture" is set to a poem by the 13th century poet Rumi, whose followers founded the Order of Whirling Dervishes. She shares the bill with France's Compagnie Maguy Marin and Turkey's Aydin Teker and Dancers.

Radin talked about whirling and Sufism in a recent telephone interview.

Getting to the heart of it:
"Everything turns around an axis, right? There's no turning without turning around an axis. So when you start studying whirling, you have a pretty big axis, maybe the size of your whole body and your hands, which are stretched out on the sides. As you refine and refine and refine your turn, that axis gets finer and finer, until the thickness of that axis is the thickness of a hair.

And when you get into center of a hair, then everything you've taken yourself to be is turning around you. And to get into that center requires an enormous amount of concentration, focus and attention.

"So now you're with your mind, pointing to what Rumi would call the source of the source of the source of your own self. And that has theoretically no physical residence, because the finer you get into the center of the center of the center of the hair, everything you've taken yourself to be is turning around you and you are pointing to this place that has no physical residence. And that's the path of true absorption and what the Sufis call Fanaa -- annihilation of the self."

First glimpse:
"The first time I saw it was in 1971, and it was an instantaneous 'My life as I know it is over.' That's how strong it was. ... I was living in an ashram, so I was a serious seeker to begin with.

Then what fascinated me was all the Sufi philosophy and mystical practices that went along with the turning, not just the turning itself.

There was just richness beyond what I had imagined. The more I got into it, the more opened up for me."

On the entwining of whirling and Sufism:
"In the countries where it originates, it would never be separate. Though actually that's not true now in Turkey, because [former president of the Republic of Turkey Mustafa Kemal] Ataturk banned the Sufi practices in 1925 but allowed turning as a folk dance. So people can learn it without the spiritual practices.

But in fact anyone who is really learning it is learning it from a teacher who will teach other things also. It can't be isolated."

On early mysticism:
"I was never a religious person but I was always, I would say, a mystic. The reason I say always is because when I was 4 we moved from a certain house. So what I'm about to tell you had to take place before I moved. I would sit in a quiet place, a very quiet, alone place. And I was keenly aware of the fact that anytime I had a thought, it was preceded by a spark of an idea that then played itself out very quickly in the thought.

"To a 4 year-old, you can't explain that in any kind of sophisticated way. So I played a little game called 'Catch the little man who put the thought in my mind.' ... So here I was going at 4 back to the origin of my own thought, which to a mystic is an important part of mysticism."

On dizziness:
"When I first tried it, I got very dizzy and I thought, 'How can people do this?'" It's a process of tuning inward and finding a stabilizing point within instead of without. ... You completely abandon the idea of holding on to anything outwardly and do it 100 percent inwardly".