In 1980 I found a small book at a second-hand bookstore. It is a record of a Western person's travel through eastern Europe, the Middle east and India, while visiting Islamic living saints, fakirs, dervishes and other people with spiritual power. He also visited many tombs of similar people who have left this physical world, whose graves are still exuding strong spiritual energies.

I am not sure if the author was Dutch or English, as the booklet is written in English, but published by a Dutch bookshop. Both the text and the pictures were cheaply printed, so I assume that it was a very limited edition.

I didn't find any reference to the book on the internet. I find the text very important, because it gives a first hand account of the Islamic mystics, primarily from the point of view of the dervishes and Sufis. It is even more valuable because of the numerous spiritual experiences the author had in the presence of these mystics and while at various tombs.

I left the text as it appears in the book, with a few spelling corrections. The spelling of the Islamic names of the saints etc. is often different than the present day spelling. I have left it as it appears in the book.

The photographs that appear in the book are black and white, and I have put them at the bottom of this page.

I have added pictures (gathered from the internet) and placed them within the text, to illustrate the different mausoleums and tombs. You can click on most of them to see a larger version.

Ziarat

by M. A. Lichtenberg

A record of travels in Islamic countries, and experiences with babas, fakirs, malangs and qalandars.

Ziarat or Pilgrimage is a report of the author's non-ordinary experiences while living with 'without the law' dervishes in Afghanistan, India and Pakistan.
M. A. Lichtenberg has traveled extensively since the early sixties in Asia and Africa in search of spiritual techniques for the understanding of man. Having become dissatisfied with institutionalized spiritual groups he finally met a god-intoxicated baba who initiated him 'without words' . It was this living experience which made him understand that only very exceptional experiences can break man's mind patterns and transform his self.
Ziarat relates the strange practices and occult experiences of the unorthodox world of the god-intoxicated baba and the wandering dervish. Various passages illustrate what is meant by 'teaching without words' and explain why dervishes assert that control in dreams and in out-of-the-body experiences is important. A valuable document both for those interested in Sufism and in occult psychology.

Chapters:

Chapter 1

Chapter 2

Chapter 3

Chapter 4

Chapter 5

Chapter 6

Chapter 7

Chapter 8

Appendixes

the fakir and author

A qalandar, Pakistan