The Marhabban Experience

by H Muhammad

It’s a common thing for most of us to have memorable childhood experiences of listening to and sharing ghost stories. But to some people , they still find these kind of ‘un explainable’ phenomena intriging that they enjoy reading mystical or superstitious stuff and still believe in them at their mature age. That explains why the periodical digest like ‘Mastika’ is one of the best selling digest in the country. Probably this is also due to the environmental and cultural background influence in the process of growing up, and according to some this kind of mystical phenomena do happen in the religion, but in the form of ‘mystical experience’.

But how do ‘mystical experience’ and religion relate to each other? The answer is faith. Un-explainable phenomena in religion are always related to faith and God that in a sense they are proofs or signs of truth. This is true in all religion and not only Islam.

A Johorean who is a lecturer in the United States disclosed to me about his ‘Marhabban’ experience. To him it is a beautiful and overwhelming religious experience of one being free and close to one inner self. He told me that one has to follow certain discipline of singing the mantra in order to reach that mystical state. And the whole singing the Marhabban is about praising Muhammad (PBUH). But honestly, to me his mystical experience was just another form of religious mystical experience. This is how I explained to him about his mystical experience of Marhabban.

Religious mystical experiences such as his that can be achieved in Marhabban do also occur in other religions like Christianity, Judaism, Hinduism, Buddhism, Jain, etc. Nevertheless, religious mystical experiences may in certain respect have different characteristics. The practices/rituals vary depending on the cultural background of the religion itself and the traditions of the region, etc. However, no matter how different they are, it would be no surprise that some of the believers of the belief systems would come with very similar claim that they’re able to lead one to attain a mystical overwhelming experience. The reasoning and explanations of such experience are also dependent on the religion and cultural background of the observer (one who was practicing). Nevertheless, all of them vouch to attaining the beautiful and overwhelming mystical experiences of such.

The approach to attaining this state of mystical consciousness even though may vary between religions but in the case of marhabban, one could make a claim that there are similarities with Judeo-Christianity ritual practiced by the Franciscan nuns called ‘centering prayer’ as far as the approach is concerned – concentrative approach on ‘mantra’ where the focus is mainly on the words (song/chanting). At one point during the exercise the observers claim to attain a higher stage of consciousness – an overwhelming beautiful mystical experience.

An important point one should be aware of is that mystical experiences in all religions produce similar physiological results. Physiologically speaking, during the state of mystical consciousness there will be an amazing increase in the frequency and intensity of the alpha brain wave. Such practices/rituals actually activates or simulates the attention area in the frontal brain. And at the same time it shows a decrease in activity of parietal lobe of the brain, which in turn lead to a lack of spatial awareness. This will gradually diminish the sensory intellectual consciousness and in the end is replaced by an entirely new kind of consciousness – the mystical consciousness. In essence all ‘mystical experience’ of all religions/beliefs yield the same physiological result.

Is this mystical experience a religious phenomenon?

No matter how any one (observer) explained his/her experience to be, it is actually a natural process of the mind to evolve to a higher stage of consciousness. As a matter of fact, there is nothing miraculous or supernatural about it. It has nothing to do with one’s belief in God or one's faith in religion. In fact one doesn’t need to believe in God to attain such ‘experience’. And I’m sure that in the case of Marhabban experience, it has nothing to do with praising Muhammad or even the need to understand what one were saying to achieve such 'mystical experience'. The mystical experience can be attained by anybody regardless of his or her religious background, belief, culture or traditions. All they need to do is chant, full focus in whatever they’re chanting, and keep on chanting. This requires faithful practice, and practice makes perfect.

As mentioned , the variety of explanations with regard to one’s mystical experience are purely based on one’s religious belief or cultural background.

And in the Marhabban case, his (the Johorean lecturer whom I met) explanation was based on ‘his truth’ on that matter – the truth that was gradually formed since his early religious exposure. He had swallowed the whole capsule of truth prescribed by the religious teachers. This ‘prescription of truth’ facilitated him to explain the ‘marhaban’ experience in alignment with his truth. And that’s all to it.

Since then this lecturer never talk about his mystical experience nor any matters regarding religoun with me. But he’d asked me whether I’m a Muslim. 'What has Marhabban got to do with one being a Muslim?' And that was what I told him.




Copyright © H. Muhammad