Basira, the Sufi Way of Teaching

From time to time, people ask me about the Sufi way of teaching—its instruction accomplished without words and with closed eyes. Instead of observing and interpreting outer behavior, teaching and guidance emerge from going within, connecting to oneself and to fellow practitioners. The Sufis call this basira—inner seeing. The deeper the teacher goes, the deeper the students can follow, and the depth of the students, in turn, determines how far the teacher may dive.

A trust develops in a practicing group. Deepening always feels like an individual journey, yet it also contributes to the collective depth, which in turn energizes and accelerates individual growth. We each receive the collective power.

Basira is seeing inside others from within one’s Self—a dissolving of the small, constructed ego, allowing the presence of fellow practitioners to emerge. A Buddhist friend likens this to what they call the mind the room.

A metaphor: each person sits on their mat, side by side, with closed eyes and attention directed inward—alone, yet in one another’s company. Each is an individual well reaching down into the same aquifer. As our presence sinks beneath the common floor, we descend together, deeper and deeper, until we reach the underground sea of pure, rock-filtered water. This is not telepathy, which connotes thought; rather, it is a sensing of sheerly contained consciousness. I think of luminescent jellyfish, ctenophores, fragile, translucent globes separated from their surrounding ocean by only the finest veil of cells. When humans move into their depths, their separating edges, too, become diaphanous.

For 30 years, I experienced basira as a collective spatial phenomenon—it happened in a room. Then one morning, during a Zoom session, as a warm wave of Sufi energy sluiced over me, I discovered something I had not yet understood.

I perched on a chair near my computer, leading thirty-four DanceMeditators through elaborate hand dances. The movements were mudra-like, detailed—fingertips meeting thumb tips, ornately configured hands swirling to the rhythms and melodies of Sushaala Rahman’s Ghost Gamelan. After a while, I gave a cue for everyone to close their eyes and continue on their own. I, too, closed my eyes. As each person sank into their depths, the collective energy swelled and surged around and through me—a tidal wave full of the feel of them. Yet I was alone in a room.

Physically alone, yet at that same moment, thirty-four other people—each alone in distant homes, hundreds, maybe thousands, of miles away—were moving to the same music, attention inwardly focused. A wave—no, a flood—washed across the Earth, rolling through walls, needing neither window nor door, drenching us in our rooms. No floor. No geology. We were lifted into the current—just brine and oxygen.

When the music ceased, as we lay on our respective floors, my heart, my inner arms, my palms glittered and buzzed in the dark.

Basira had connected us.

Basira. I hesitate over the word—so often words convey information, but not knowledge. Yet here is how I first received it, as a talisman from my teacher.

In my early Sufi training, I stood with my teacher at the edge of the Workroom after the evening session. More than a hundred students sprawled on their blankets, laughing, talking, stretching, waiting for dinner. At that time, the Work was miraculous to me, though I had absolutely no idea how the miracles were wrought.

I asked my teacher how the Work worked. He smiled into the people-filled space, not looking at me, and murmured, “Basira.” He whispered its meaning, along with other things I can no longer remember. At first, I may have thought he was weaving an exotic mystique, a bit of hocus-pocus—in a good way—because the word bypassed my intellect and lodged in my heart, shimmering, unfolding at its own pace.

Sufi words come robed in poetry, and poetry unravels the grasping mind. I wondered, “Was my teacher’s word real or fantastical? Was it a secret or a fairy tale?” My mind spun, but what remained stable and clear—clearer than most of my previous life experiences—was a ping in my heart center. His murmuring occupied a strange frequency, the way dogs hear what humans cannot, and this woke a sleeping internality. It has taken years to understand that these perceptions and connections, though invisible, are real—just as microbes and black holes, though unseen, are real.

The gift was given ahead of my comprehension, and the knowledge it contained unfolded through effort and persistence.

As a child, when I first sensed my mystical orientation to existence, I found it difficult to trust. These experiences—vivid night dreams, heart openings, otherworldly cross-sensing, visitations, stretches of entrancing, timeless, creative presentness—came unbidden. Because I couldn’t summon them at will, I feared they were hallucinatory one-offs. They almost never appeared in the same form, but they continued, again and again, delivering much the same message. Over time, I began to trust. I began to understand that these experiences were essential to me. Eventually, I found a teacher and cultivated access to this Otherness. Some don’t need a teacher, but for me, it helped—to be guided, to be with a community of seekers.

Sometimes I question living so much in my interiority. I don’t mind being alone with things precious to me, but I grow spiritually lonely if my real and visionary experiences are never echoed or shared. I need human confirmation—not only from the words of the dead, but from the living. And yet, even after so many years, when solitary practice is all I have, doubt can creep in. I can feel like a helpless, yearning child again, worried that my ineffable experiences are mere psychological whimsy. And if they were—what would be wrong with that, as long as I functioned well with others? I disregard those who impose dangerous dreams on others without reality checks; my inner dimension produces little exterior action and harms no one. I rest easy with that. But as a friend pointed out, perhaps I am prey to loneliness when I am not connected to my depths—depths that are often difficult to reach alone. That is true.

Loneliness is not just separation from people; it is also the severance from innate communion.

Mystics may seek where others do not, but they are not necessarily hermits. There is always this quandary—the ineffable clashing with the desire for conversation. How does one speak of what lies beyond the intellect? It seems paradoxical to desire the company of other seekers to explore my most interior realms, but they lighten my efforts and deepen my depths. Together, we catapult inward, sharing an unfathomable intimacy inside the timeless Moment. It is not mere parallel experience but communion that banishes loneliness.

To have one’s depths nourished by the depths of others transcends the inevitable and often petty tensions of personality. It is not exactly sociable, but it is enduring and sustaining. This is why basira is such a fundamental capacity to know and cultivate, and why that warm flood engulfing me, expanding my understanding of this communion, was such a welcome affirmation.

Cecilia emailed me just after class:

“Dancing with you today, opening the arms and chest—the front and back of the heart—I experienced something exceptional. Energy flowed out of my heart, swirling into the room, through my arms, hands. It was light, effortless. Little puffs and clouds of energy moved outward. I’ve practiced Lotus Qi Gong for years. I have stood on the Lotus, arms stretched for an hour, carried by the Qi. I have moved with my Sufi teacher, felt the Qi flow. But never like this. Never this soft, this cloud-like. This was my energy. My creativity. My creative energy. It was humbling to experience myself in this way. I am falling in love.”