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1. The Fragrance of Nothingness

Andrew Harvey in his book, Perfume of the Desert describe a sufi story from memory. It goes like this: A group of wild young Bedouins were riding in the desert with their chief, who was a religious man as well as a great leader. They came in the course of their wanderings to a vast ruined palace.

The young men rode through the deserted rooms, breaking off bits of the plaster and bricks to smell what had gone into their making. One cried out, "In this clay are mixed the oils of rose and orange-blossom." Another exclaimed, "In this dirt I smell Jasmine! How beautiful!"

The chief stood apart and said nothing. Towards the end when the young men finished smelling various fragrance in the clay of the ruined place, turned to the chief and ask, "And what is your favorite perfume?"

He smiled and leaned as far as he could out of one of the palace windows into the empty desert wind. He reached out his hands and cupped them. Then he held out his cupped hands to the young men and said, "Smell this! The best perfume of all is the perfume of the desert, for it smells of nothing."

2. The Perfume of Gnosis and Recognition

Much later when Andrew Harvey asked a old sufi friend of his, to comment on the meaning of the story, its shared beautifully as followed: "For me, whenever I think of the Sufis and of Sufism, I think of the desert. I think of the desert's wilderness, its gorgeous and terrible loneliness, its silence, its purity. I think of how in the desert you feel at one annihilated yet totally alive and present in all things around you and above you, as if you had become at once the sands stretching from horizon to horizon and the...

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