It was over thirty years ago that I began to read books on Sufism by the late Idries Shah. I found them fascinating, if frustrating, because Shah always emphasised the likelihood of ending up in an imitation, not a real, Sufi group, if one did not approach Sufism with the correct attitude. How was this ‘correct’ attitude to be acquired, since Shah’s pointed descriptions of incoherent human behaviour always seemed to mirror my own? I wrote a couple of letters to Shah without getting a reply, and realised that my letters were probably so ‘incorrect’ that no response from him was possible. So I gave up the idea of joining a Sufi group. There were plenty around, but they were all probably imitations.

Then a few years ago, while visiting friends in southern Spain, I was lent a book of talks by Shah’s brother, Omar Ali-Shah. I had heard of him but had not considered approaching him. Anyway he lived in France, or so I had been told (incorrectly as it happened — he lived in Godalming). But a series of contacts made it possible to be invited to his London group, where I hoped that my decades of curiosity about what actually does go on behind the veil of mystery, so artfully constructed by Idries Shah, would be satisfied. I assumed that it was unlikely to be an imitation Sufi group, because of the close connection that must exist with Idries Shah’s operation. I did not at first know that there had been a split between the Shah brothers since 1971 and that they had ‘agreed to disagree on the projection of the Teaching’. For my purposes though, Omar Ali-Shah’s group would have to suffice, Idries Shah’s group having more or less ceased to function after his death.

One of Ali-Shah’s main group centres is at the Andalusian town of Arcos in southern Spain. Historically Andalusia has been a key area of Sufi activity, where Sufi ideas and influences penetrated Europe in the middle ages through the high culture of the Moors. The Arcos centre draws on the energy of this history, and all Ali-Shah’s people regard it as an important place to spend time at. On this recommendation I visited Arcos in August 1999 with my friend and intellectual sparring partner, Greg Smith, who shares my interest in the work and writings of Idries Shah.

My impression of the Arcos centre, named ‘la Zahara’, is predominantly my impression of the people I met, although the tekkia and gardens were certainly impressive in their own right. During our short stay I had a number of conversations with people from various parts of Europe and particularly  South America, where Ali-Shah concentrated most of his efforts. (Self-styled as one of the four ‘Qutbs’, or managing directors of the global Sufi work, his responsibility was the development of the Sufi tradition in the West.) The organisation of the centre seemed to be running smoothly without anyone in particular in charge. Things centred around a large patio with dining tables and a bar serving alcoholic drinks at all hours. Next to this was the kitchen where volunteer workers produced good quality food at mealtimes for fluctuating numbers of children and adults. Different people volunteered for different jobs every day. A cheerful middle-aged Argentinian who lives in Germany co-ordinated food supplies, cooking, registration of visitors and collection of fees. Despite this rather onerous job he was relaxed enough to sit and talk to me for long stretches in excellent English about computer music software and his experiences in the Sufi Tradition.

There were performances of music on the patio during evening meals. None of this was ‘Sufi music’. The two performances I heard, given by ‘friends’, as members of Ali-Shah’s movement refer to themselves, were quite different in style. One was of music by Beethoven, Bach and Mozart performed by musicians from the Florence Symphony Orchestra, and was of a top professional standard. The other was of Flamenco with a local singer and a Canadian guitarist, and although perhaps not so technically proficient as the Florentines, represented the rather introverted and morose Flamenco Hondo style with a good degree of authenticity. The 78-year old teacher sat during the evening meal at a table at the edge of the patio, where he would receive visitors and hold interviews if anyone felt like approaching him, though I saw hardly anyone do that. In appearance he is frail-looking and extremely thin; of medium height with a long, angular face, hooked nose and moustache. He appeared regularly at 8pm and left at 11pm accompanied by his wife and doctor. These two ladies would often come and chat with people, including Greg and myself. His wife, Anna, is a woman from northern Italy with jet-black hair, fine features, delicate manners and fluent English. His doctor is a somewhat less refined Spanish woman, cheerful and stout, with short orange hair and little English. Neither of them behaved like privileged individuals. Ali-Shah himself, however, was treated with deference. People rose when he arrived and when he left and kept their distance. He seemed friendly enough; but I think it is the fate of anyone in such a position to be treated with awe by their followers.

Some of the stories I heard involved ‘naibs’ (deputies) who had ‘gone off the rails’. One woman told me how she and her husband had left their group in Munich because of the cultish conditions developing there under the influence of one of these naibs. Four years passed without any word from Ali-Shah, despite their letters to him, and they suffered a great deal. One day he called unexpectedly, said he was in town and invited them to meet him. When faced with the eventual bitter question, ‘Why did you let this situation happen and why did you not respond to us?’ he replied: ‘If I had intervened, I would simply have replaced the cult leader with myself without any change in the condition of the group. The thing had to come to the surface and run its course so that everyone could learn the necessary lesson.’ What remained from this and other painful experiences was an abiding trust in Ali-Shah’s skill in overseeing long-term developments. As for the deposed naib: ‘The higher you rise, the further you fall’. Also: ‘The more you develop, the stronger becomes your devil.’ Such stories are object lessons in the self-destructive consequences of the ego in certain conditions from which no-one can regard themselves as exempt. The friends who spoke to me of these matters seemed not at all concerned that I would be put off, but trusted that I would draw the appropriate conclusions. I regarded this as a compliment.

A superficially unrelated conversation about the the Nazi period in German history revealed a similar thread: that by attracting the opprobrium of the world, Nazism became the world’s scapegoat. Standard history does not reveal the degree to which political ideas similar to those of the Nazis were current in the very countries that fought them (Hitler could not have regenerated the German economy, for example, without heavy capitalisation from sympathetic American bankers). Though Germany was destroyed and its reputation permanently tarnished, the world has learned a lesson it can never forget. The subject reminded me of a saying I had heard in the same connection: ‘If a boil appears on your leg, do you blame your leg?’ Nazism was a focus for the evil of the whole world, not just of Germans.

A young Argentinian woman currently living in England told me of her fascination with the Green Man figure in European and middle Eastern folklore, who goes under the name variously of Elias, Merlin and Khidr. She said that she used to plague Ali-Shah with questions about this and other esoteric matters, and that his response was almost invariably to refuse to answer, at least not directly. One day she asked him why he did this. He said: ‘If you ask me a question about these things and I give you the answer, what will you do with it? It has to be something that is useful to you, something you can put into practice in your own life. When you are ready to understand something, the answer will be more easily forthcoming, partly because you will ask a question that can actually be answered.’

There was a discussion about the tensions that arise between men and women over their difference in sexual energy. I contributed the wise results of my own experience, as one does, but heard one rather striking thing: men have ten times as much testosterone in their bodies as women. It has been discovered experimentally that when you give testosterone to women they become horny. The reason they are less interested in sex for its own sake than men is because they have less testosterone. Being reminded of this simple fact has helped my understanding of the male-female dynamic more than all the profound theories I have ever read – or devised. It has also considerably mitigated the effect women have on me, even attractive south American women in skimpy bathing costumes.

Another conversation dealt with the theme of drugs and alcohol. There was plenty of drinking going on at La Zahara. Some of the friends indulged to an extent that might be considered acceptable in ordinary society but would certainly seem inappropriate for people seriously engaged on a path of spiritual development. Much of the exercise material practised by Ali-Shah’s community is Islamic, and Islam has an unequivocal position on alcohol: that of total prohibition. Ali-Shah condemned the use of narcotic drugs. But I was told that he was, or had been, a heavy drinker who might get through twelve or sixteen cans of Guinness in the course of delivering a single talk! How did this square with his position on drug use, since alcohol is a drug? More importantly, how could it possibly fit with his reputation as a Sufi master? How could his followers make allowances for him when his intake of alcohol set what anyone would see as a bad example? One of the friends shared my misgivings, but said: ‘Different people have different tolerances to alcohol. We are not supposed to imitate Agha (Ali-Shah) but to learn to regulate our own behaviour according to what is suitable for us. One person should not drink at all, whereas another can drink quite a lot. Alcohol is a natural chemical produced in the body, so the body has a means of getting rid of it. Opiates are another class of chemicals produced by the body which it can eliminate. But psychoactive drugs are foreign to the body so they stay in the body for a very long time. This is the danger of these drugs, because they have a long term bad effect on brain function. Agha has said that the inner being is not affected by many things, including anger, violent behaviour and so on. It is not affected by alcohol either. But it is affected by narcotics.’ I decided to put all this in the pending tray. I am already too self-indulgent with alcohol, and I don’t want any further encouragement. But I do see that nowadays a culture of repression only produces the result it tries to prevent, and that this is a waste of energy which Ali-Shah is not guilty of. If he introduced a ban on alcohol in an alcohol-consuming society, those who obeyed might feel self-righteous and those who disobeyed would certainly feel guilty. Both these reactions would be counterproductive. His other consumption habits were pretty eccentric too; he smoked constantly and ate virtually nothing. But this kind of behaviour forced people to exercise their own judgment. Clearly they could not copy him so they had to find their own level within the general guidelines which he set.

This permissiveness, if not downright encouragement, of alcohol consumption in a Sufi community which regards itself as traditional would seem to suggest that classical Sufi references to wine and intoxication need not be taken solely as allegory, despite protestations to this effect from the Shah brothers themselves. One of the friends told me about a meeting with Bektashi dervishes on a group trip to Turkey. He discovered to his surprise that Bektashis are obliged to drink raki (grape liquor flavoured with aniseed) amost constantly. I had thought that Gurdjieff’s famous overindulgence in alcohol was an aberration from Sufi practice, but I am now inclined to the opposite conclusion. Is Gurdjieff’s famous sexual profligacy also a Sufi custom? I could observe no overt carousing at la Zahara, and it appeared that, however self-indulgent aspects of their behaviour might be, there was at least no pressure to conform. Ali-Shah encouraged his followers to exercise balance, adequate humility, self-observation, self-restraint, harmonious interaction and the avoidance of unnecessary tension. This seems to me an attractive enough philosophy. Does it work, though, in terms of the observable results? It is difficult to assess such things because of the obvious impossibility of judging objectively an action that is supposed to come from a higher level than that of ordinary perception. Nevertheless one must allow oneself to trust one’s own judgment, otherwise one is susceptible to any plausible philosophy whose adherents are sufficiently convinced of it.

I attended the Thursday evening exercise in the tekkia. This was quite a contrast to the informal atmosphere in and around the bar and eating area. The walls of the tekkia were covered with complex Islamic tile patterns that had taken years to make by hand. In various niches were mysterious objects such as a framed Afghan saddlebag, panels of Islamic calligraphy and black rosaries. Participants donned robes reminiscent of Joseph’s coat of many colours, and bowed with their arms crossed over their chests as they entered. Everyone walked anticlockwise round the room as they found a place to sit in the dim light. The exercises of invocation, breathing, concentration and visualisation, accompanied by faint recordings of Turkish Sufi music, were conducted with a degree of ritualism which seemed to me antithetical to the general tenor of the movement. I realised, however, that I was only experiencing my own reaction without necessarily understanding the complete picture. The proof of the effectiveness of all this was in the people themselves. Their commitment to each other, to their teacher and to the teaching seemed to generate an energy which I could only sense but could not define. It had at any rate built the Zahara complex, and I could see that such people as I had met would not do such a thing if there was not a true need in them to do so. Some of them may have participated out of blind devotion or self-conditioning, wanting something from Sufism which they could not find in their own culture. This happens everywhere and I am sure that Ali-Shah’s groups are no exception. But there was not at La Zahara the atmosphere of dependence, fear or uncritical emotional attachment that would normally drive such behaviour. There was intelligence, honesty, self-deprecating humour and easy admission of ignorance, qualities which I have learned to associate with true self-determination.

A few questions remain that I did not have time to discuss. One: what effect does all this have on the world? Does it make the world a better place? I had noticed no charity projects or any requirements for money other than paying for one’s stay and food. Obviously the centre itself required a good deal of money to build and maintain, though I was told that most of this was contributed by wealthy individuals among Ali-Shah’s supporters. From my knowledge of Ali-Shah’s approach I think it would be safe to assume that he avoided anything which might be construed as emotional blackmail. His version of Sufism did not involve manipulation as far as I could see, and did not include requests for money. As regards the positive influencing of world events, the setting up of groups and the building of centres would seem by themselves to be the first step, since the aim of this is to produce people with understanding, who will inevitably go on to influence the world around them in a positive way. One of the most damaging things in life is people who feel they ought to do good but end up doing the opposite because they don’t really know what they are doing.

Another question concerns the role of the teacher. In Sufism the teacher is regarded as indispensible, but there is always the danger of producing dependence in his followers. However, my experience of Ali-Shah’s community is that this dependence was kept at a pretty low level. Ali-Shah reserved the right to run the show: ‘This is a democratic organisation; you do the exercises and I do the worrying.’ That must relieve people of the inefficient, egotistical feelings of responsibility which I have come across in others in the past and observed in myself as well: ‘If I don’t take over no-one else will do it properly.’ If one trusts that there is someone reliable in charge one can have a relaxed confidence in the process and one’s ability to contribute to it and gain from it. Where there is a sense that no-one is in charge, or everyone equally, or the too-vague authority of God, I have seen silly and chaotic things happen and unnecessary wastes of energy and money. While it is true that in any organisation these things can happen, the position of the teacher enables him to exercise authority when obedience is required. Ali-Shah was, moreover, seen as a loving, humorous and intelligent father-figure with an impeccable pedigree in the line of the Masters. His philosophy of minimising tension and self-criticism and maximising flexibility and self-trust seems, from my experience of his followers, to counteract any tendency towards fixated dependence.

A further question concerns sacred rituals, objects and places. I have been led to view such things as essentially unspiritual: the point being that if one places trust in anything other than God, a barrier is produced between oneself and God; one is susceptible to the influence contained in that thing. This attitude ignores the possibility that physical matter may be able to ‘store and transmit’ energy of a higher nature than the simply physical, as the Sufis claim. We have plenty of evidence for this kind of belief in Western tradition: holy relics, icons, stone circles, turf mazes, horseshoes and other talismans, a sprig of heather from a gypsy. Ritual, when prescribed by a master for his disciples, is claimed by Sufis to be a means for transmission of a finer energy. Rituals, objects and places have multiple functions. First of all they can make energy available for developmental purposes. (One can perhaps sense this in certain places of power.) Secondly, they provide an emotional associative pull, so that the ordinary feelings have something to connect with. Thirdly, they provide a structure around which one can build one’s daily life and a means of co-ordinating group activity. The negative possibilities here are that these things can become ends in themselves, believed in for their own sake. Or a source of pride, or vanity, or possessiveness. Or a sort of psychospiritual clutter. One is aiming, after all, for clarity and freedom from attachment. The point that has struck me from my Arcos experience is that although these dangers exist, we cannot avoid the fact that we are beings with brains and feelings and a complex psychology, and an efficient developmental path must take account of and use this structure of energies of which we are composed. In the absence of such materials as the Sufis use, people will inevitably create their own, because they must have some kind of structure.

Ali-Shah’s followers do not speak of any other Sufi groups than their own as representing ‘the Tradition’, though this is not to say that other groups are not thought valid in this context. I suppose that in the broad sense any truly developmental influence is likely to come from a higher source whose operation one could perhaps refer to as ‘the Tradition’; something that is and has always been a constant presence in human affairs. But it seems rather imprecise to define a very specific set of beliefs and activities in terms of such a generalised concept. I find it hard to think of this particular movement as anything other than Omar Ali-Shah’s style of Sufism, because I know that there are many teachers with different styles within the Naqshbandi order alone. Ali-Shah seems to be saying that his presentation is that which defines the aim of ‘the Tradition’ as a whole, i.e. the development of higher consciousness in man. One element of this claim is that the Tradition connects with a body of knowledge active in all ages of the past, far beyond Islam. I have recognised for myself that many ancient Egyptian statues have the same posture as Naqshbandi dervishes, seated straight-backed with their hands on their knees, or standing with their arms crossed over their breasts, or dressed in the striped robe of the Naqshbandi dervish. The Naqshbandis describe themselves as belonging to the line of the Khwajagan or Masters. It is this idea of a direct line of descent from the the distant past that I find one of the most fascinating things about the Tradition.

On the long drive back through stunning mountain scenery down to the coast, Greg and I had plenty of opportunity to talk about our impressions of La Zahara. That fact that we didn’t say much about it is interesting in itself; there wasn’t much to say. Greg said he felt a warmth and friendliness from the people there, though I think he found the weather a bit too hot; as a thoroughbred Englishman he’s happier with grey skies and drizzle. For me, overall impressions are a bit difficult. I enjoyed the heat – I’m an African born if not bred – so would go back just to bask in that, if nothing else. If there is one thing that sums up the indefinable something for me it is that twinkle in the eye. Most people there seemed to have it. But our visit had a dramatic effect on Greg. Before going he was a confirmed life-long anti-hugger. Wild horses would not make him hug another man, and he suspected those in the Tradition who did of affectation. He would also quote Idries Shah about the dangers of too much socialising. But after only three days at La Zahara he was returning hugs without compunction, and back in England, as we parted company, it was he who hugged me.

Punnetts Town, East Sussex, 1999