lars of Islam to be essential, and practice them piously. However, under the leadership of the shaikh they go far beyond this, aiming to break the conditioned patterns of behaviour which inhibit the desired spiritual awakening.39 The mystical quest is pursued through a number of mental and physical exercises. These include whirling dances intended above all to plunge the dancer into a state of concentration upon Allah.40 Martin Lings states that the body stands for the Axis of the Universe which is none other than the Tree of Life. The dance is thus a rite of centralization, a foretaste of the lost Centre...41 A Morrocan Sufi order reduces the dance to a rigorous rhythmic up and down movement of the body, combined with a rhythmic rise and fall of the breast as the lungs are filled and emptied.42 As a result the Sufi may see visions, hear the voices of angels and prophets, and gain from them guidance... it is a condition of joy and longing, and when the condition seizes the seeker he falls into ecstasy.43 Breathing exercises are also combined with meditation in order to induce altered states of consciousness.44 Central to all of these practices are ritual invocations of the Divine Name, also known as dhikr, which can be done either silently or in a chant.45 Here similarities with Hindu mantras are unmistakable. One author declares, the Sufi doctrine of the dhikr coincides with that taught by the nineteenth-century Hindu saint Rama-krishna, who succinctly summed it up in the phrase: God and His Name are one.46 The Rifaiyya, a major Sufi order which spawned numerous sub-groups and associated branches, was named after Ahmad b. Ali al-Rifai (d. 1182). The practices of this order reveal the extremes to which some Sufi rituals went as the Rifai dervishes became famous for their extreme practices like eating live snakes and performing various feats with fire.47 This preoccupation with snakes and fire is clearly paralleled in the practices and r...
