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Gnosis State By Frenzied DancingGnosis State By Frenzied DancingA branch of Islam callled Sufism teaches the personal and mystical worship, and union with Allah or God. It was formulated in opposition to the formal, legalistic Islamic theology of the ninth century AD.
The Sufis, rejecting the excesses of the Caliphs, lived simple, communal, ascetic lives similar to the earlier Christian monks. Early Arab conquerors were impressed by the ways of the Christian mystics that they incorporated many of them into the Sufi tradition. Other elements of Sufi mysticism came from Buddhism, Hinduism, and Persian Zoroastrianism. Mystical love and oneness with God (tawhid) form the basic tenets of the Sufi faith.
One example is the dervishes' frenzied dancing that is accompanied by music and poetry. Poets were always the disseminators of Sufi thought, using secret metaphorical language to guard the sanctity of the mystic messages and protect hem from heretical examination. It can be noted that the word "troubadour," the medieval songmaster of love, comes from the Arabic root TRB, or "lutanist."
The worship services become and endless repetition of chanting, swaying, dancing, and rhythmic drum-beating. They resemble the Voodoo, or Vodoun, services. The worshippers enter a trance or state of ecstasy in which it is thought they have became one with the Beloved.
It is claimed that such ecstasy with God does not represent the ultimate reward for the Sufis. The constant pursuit of the love of God can lead to ecstasy, but it only serves a purpose if the Sufi can take that boundless joy and use it in the temporal world as an experience of love: to live "in the world, but not of it," free from ambition, greed, and intellectual pride, showing love in living and not just knowing it.
See also Spiritual healing - a duty of love in sufism ...
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