It’s nearly midnight on a cold, blustery Thursday, but none of the worshippers at Masjid al-Farah seem to be missing the warmth of their beds. They are in another zone of comfort – the warmth that a night of Sufi chanting brings.

Darkness veils the world outdoors. Gusts of wind whip the building. Yet inside the mosque – an unassuming three-story in Tribeca – the circle of Sufi believers attempt to work their way closer to God.

The room is long and narrow. Shadows from high ceilings drape the white-brick walls; lights are low. Red Turkish carpets run the length of the room, layer upon layer meeting at edges where they tend to wrinkle up and require flattening out.

For tonight, someone has arranged a circle of sheepskins at the center of the space. Thirty-some participants sit on top, cross-legged, their feet and bottoms absorbing the furry warmth of wool as an occasional draft works its chill through the air.

Sheikha Fariha al-Jerrahi takes the lead. “La ilaha Ilallah,” she begins, her toboggan-covered head nodding deeply and turning from the right shoulder to the left. Those around her repeat the mantra and soon the circle is a mass of nodding, chanting and swaying.

“La ilaha Ilallah” – or “there is no God but He” – is just the first phrase of praise the group will invoke tonight. Sufism, the mystical branch of Islam, encourages followers to seek unity with the divine through meditation and ecstatic experience. In the service called zhikr, or “remembrance,” participants focus on the 99 names Muslims ascribe to God, repeating the words over and over until they sometimes work themselves into religious frenzy.

Many Americans know the Sufis for their most famous order, the Mevlevi, whose spinning dance earned them the title “whirling dervishes” of Turkey. All Sufis are called “dervishes” – the word simply means “poor person” – but there will be no whirling in Tribeca tonight. Like monastic orders in Christianity, each Sufi order has different traditions, and the Nur Ashki Jerrahi order, the group that meets here, is doing “seated zhikr,” a service in which legs keep stationary but upper bodies twist and turn.

Maybe 10 minutes into the incantation – it’s hard to tell time, as the repetition makes minutes stand still – al-Jerrahi senses the need for change and transitions the group seamlessly to its next phrase, “ya Allah,” or “name of power.” Most of those present are white and middle-aged, and that group follows her. A heavyset Jordanian man, the same one who set out trays of dates and almonds for guests three hours before, takes off in a different direction, his Arabic song providing light counterpoint to the others’ heavy chant.

A woman two down from him in the circle adds a third strain of sound: forceful breath that moves in her nose and out her mouth, faster and faster as the group repeats the words more quickly. “Hu,” al-Jerrahi leads, “Hu. Hu.” In translation, “hu” is the breath Allah blew into Adam, the first man.

The swaying becomes more intense. Al-Jerrahi adopts a different pattern and worshippers now move their torsos not only side to side but in a larger orbit all the way around their seated base. The concept of time has lost all meaning. Upstairs, a pot of stew bubbles on a stovetop, but no one downstairs seems to have the upcoming communal meal on their minds.

“Sheikha, I’m thirsty,” one goateed young man had told al-Jerrahi before the service began. Not for water, he’d said, but for God.

“It’s good to be thirsty,” al-Jerrahi replied, touching her heart. Repeating the names of God, she explained, is the way to drink in the love and goodness penetrating the universe.

“All we have to do is accept the invitation,” she said. “May it be that we say ‘yes.’”