The Nomadic Alternative – Page 193

"We want War!" "We like Ike!""Mao Mao Mao Tse-tung!" "Ho Ho Ho Chi Minh!" The successful slogan demands an ikon as a visual focal point, and relies on deep exhalations of breath besides a jingoistic mind-dissolving rhythm. For breathlessness helps transport the shouter into an altered state of consciousness. The evacuated lung and wind pipe increase the concentration of carbon dioxide in the bloodstream, and this in turn reduces the significance of the normal signals from the outside world to the cerebral cortex.

This explains the importance Sufis attached to their spiritual discipline known as Remembrance, or Dhikr. The dervish was recommended to recite with the same intonation the formula "lā ilāhā illā 'llāh" - "There is no God but God" - a perfect succession of breathless vowels for the complete evacuation of the lung. The texts advise the initiate to draw out the final words of the incantation from the bottom of the stomach and at the same time sway like a pendulum, a motion uncannily reminiscent of rocking the baby to sleep.

"Introduce your mind into your nostrils. This is the Road that the breath takes to reach your heart." Thus begins a prayer of the Hesychast monks of Northern Greece, whose devotions received the impulse of Sufic techniques. The respiratory exercises of these anchorites were vehicles to escape the shackles of this world and provoke concentration on the essence of the Divine. "For the Kingdom of God is within us. The man who gazes on it and pursues it with pure prayer finds the outer world sick and contemptible." It was not surprising, in a time of Muslim and Bulgar attacks, that so pacifist an attitude provoked the anger of Byzantine authorities.