Between Hearing (samâ’) and Perceiving (wajd): neuropsychological considerations for the study of the healing potential of the Mevlevi Samâ’

Abstract

In the field of Dance Anthropology, the concept of 'ecstatic dance' has been used generically to refer to African, Afro-Brazilian, Middle Eastern and Shaman dances. Researchers as Jennings (1995), Baxman (1990), Gore (1995) and Camargo (1996) have begun to employ the concept more specifically, but very little is known about how these dances are induced. As a dance anthropologist, I turned to other fields of analysis – such as Neuropsychology and Ethnomusicology – in order to obtain hypotheses that could illuminate my understanding of the trance induction process (including its healing potential) in Mevlevi Samâ’. In Samâ’, the main repetitive and trance-inducing action seems to be the spinning dance itself, a Sufi method of dynamic meditation that aims to awaken the subtle organs of perception (lataif), opening the individual's consciousness to its greatest potential. According to ethnomusicologist Gilbert Rouget (1985), the relationship between samâ’ (hearing) and wajd (perceiving) is so close that the word samâ’ could mean 'trance state': “Know that samâ’ [...] brings to fruit a state in the heart that is called perception or trance (wajd)”. On the realities of ‘trance’ and ‘hearing’, Al-Ghazzali wrote: “wajd is the expression for what is found (yujadu) through hearing (samâ’)”.