(1968)
IN ORIENTAL STUDIES it is not unknown for respected foreign
specialists to make mistakes which could be corrected, and
literally so, by ignorant urchins in the countries whose cultures
they must, almost by definition, approach as outsiders. This fact
is unfortunate: because even when corrections are made, usually
because of the plaint of some other orientalist, there are always
people who read the original worker's text and not the correction,
and imbibe the incorrect fact or idea. Further, defects found in
academics' productions will invariably expose them to the
criticism that such an ignorant or careless worker's materials,
if they contain some errors, may contain many others. Their
effectiveness is undermined.
Regrettable as this inevitable, but perhaps not irreversible,
situation is, there 'are two others which seriously inhibit the
present interaction of the East and West. The first, familiar
by report if not at first hand to most people, is the 'fad' tendency,
whereby bodies of Eastern ideas have been taken up by
enthusiasts and made into a laughing-stock. An excellent example
is the guruism of the Hindus. A story current in America runs
that an Indian student, visiting the luxurious home of a certain
millionaire, was astonished to see his spiritual teacher squatting
in an approved 'meditation-posture' beside a swimming pool,
with his host mumbling extracts from a popular 'mystical' book
in front of him. The student waited until the millionaire had
withdrawn, and then went up to his master, asking him why he
was behaving in such a strange manner, and how he came to be
half-naked and with long, matted hair. 'Hush, you fool!' said
the holy man, 'if they think that I am really serious and not just a
semi-charlatan, they will immediately sever all connexion with me!'
But there is another problem, which connects with the one
just cited. It is that, with Westernisation accelerating in the
East, many of the ideas, practices and attitudes of mind which
are not even known to the West will disappear.
[New Research on Current Philosophical Systems] has
come about as a result of the intention to collect,
whenever possible, genuine accounts of little-known
techniques and theories, in order to preserve them, for those to
whom they may be of eventual use.
THE EXPERIENCES OF the writers...
total a period of no less than four hundred years. But
this may be of less importance than the achievement whereby
several of them at least have been able to indicate the existence
and application of teachings in the East which we find it hard
to follow because we are almost never exposed to certain types
of thinking.
There are today indications that a most ancient, traditional yet
almost forgotten, form of thinking is again finding its way into
a wider field.
Sheikh Ahmed Abdullah's paper emphasises not that one can
learn from a 'sage', but one of the definite manners in which it
is believed that such learning can take place. It shows that, faced
with the possessor of certain knowledge, the student—Eastern or
Western—must know how to approach the manner of communication
of that knowledge. Without this valuable coaching it
is certain that the attempt to transfer experiences by other than
crude factual methods would fail. There would also be a danger
that such knowledge itself would die out, or would remain only
with a very few people, perhaps for centuries.
Bai Gyn Aksu underlines the value of becoming aware of oneself,
a concept regarded as vital as a preparation for the reception
of higher knowledge in the East, but looked upon as a mere
triviality in the West. If he is right, this is a matter of the highest
importance.
Edouard Chaltelherault's paper may appear to strip away
many of our recently-acquired illusions, about literature. At the
same time it enables us to open our minds to the possibility at
least that Eastern writings are not always written, nor presented,
in forms or for purposes which we would immediately recognise.
It seems likely, however, that Eastern writings would have to find
an Eastern interpreter for this process of understanding to be
taken any further. The brain conditioned to a Western information-
exchange preoccupation would probably be unlikely to
be able to approach such material objectively.
of the most important in this collection. It is, generally speaking,
entirely strange to our set of thought to credit that
knowledge can be passed on from one mind to another by a sort
of osmosis. Some psychological barrier, perhaps an irrational
one, makes it hard to visualise experience passing through the
human community and behaving like a physical force, like
moisture through earth, shall we say. On the other hand, if we
cannot acquire the mental 'set' which truly makes it possible to
entertain this possibility, we are unable to style ourselves as
understanding how other people think.
It must be admitted that some at least of the difficulties which
we Westerners encounter in approaching these ways of looking
at things are due to the fact that such approaches have often in
the past been monopolised by bizarre and unreliable individuals
and groups. Sometimes we find them, too, in primitive societies.
But our general habit of deducing from this that such attitudes
are bizarre or primitive, surely betrays an egocentricity and lack
of objectivity which could be regarded as absurd. Bizarre individuals,
and primitive tribes, think and do many of the things
which we think and do. We do not, as a result, abandon or avoid
such thoughts and actions. This is one of the dilemmas of
Western Man—'double-think'.
The Reverend William Foster's discourse emphasises this
dilemma in several ways. He sees, as it seems, quite clearly,
that the behaviour of someone who may know something of
unfamiliar character may have to accord with his need to communicate
it: not with the expectation of the student. Behaviour
as a teaching technique is, possibly, a refinement which we in
the West, always very conscious of how we appear to others,
find impossible to adopt. Perhaps, in our own way, we are like
the Indian student who refused to perform a certain scientific
experiment at a Western university because he was of a high
caste and could not be expected to do anything with his own
hands. If it is a fact that the Eastern teacher, at least in some
systems, will sacrifice his repute, even, for the sake of the
effectiveness of his teaching, such a system may be even more
forthright and 'Western' in its directness than we could yet
attain.
Mir Sulaiman Khan has provided a welcome version of the
object and method of meditation. Welcome because in the West
we are accustomed to learning and hearing of meditation systems
which can easily be shown to be nothing more than the induction
of a familiar type of hypnoidal state in the subject. True, he
reports that he 'feels better', or 'feels joy', or that he now has a
meaning or purpose in his life. But all these conditions and feelings
have been induced by Western workers by means of suggestion.
Khan's first-hand experience indicates strongly that the
purpose of meditation is to communicate a certain contact from
the teacher to the pupil. He could have added that in the East
unlike the West, meditation teachers regularly expose the
charlatanry or ineffectiveness of the hypnotic 'meditationsystems'
which have no body to counter them in the West. The
Englishman or American who 'learns meditation' in his own
country still lacks the protection of the existence of experts who
can demonstrate the slightness of these imitation systems. It is
as if we had medical practice in England without the watchdog
role of the British Medical Association.
The 'divine current' theory outlined by Ustad Rustam Khan-
Urff is perhaps the contribution least likely to be received with
approbation in the West. Credulous people like to think in terms
of a divine suffusing force; many contemporary Christians believe
in the existence of a monopoly or near-monopoly of it. The
rest tend to look askance at something which is claimed to be
too subtle for immediate demonstration. Nevertheless, this is a
concept which, to shrug off without any investigation, could
produce the legitimate criticism of bias and lack of control over
one's vaunted search for knowledge.
Si Fans Larby, rightly drawing attention to the fact that
dervish
writings are carefully written and have to be studied
in a special manner, has here written a piece which would
probably annoy any tidy-minded intellectual. It is almost certainly
of importance, however, to hold one's mind open to the
possibility that certain specialists, with a wider and longer experience
of the written word than ours, may have discovered
methods of using it of which we remain ignorant.
The system of perceptive training known as
Kaifiat delineated
by Morag Murray is interesting because it helps to lay bare the
almost accidental nature of the present stock of information in
the West about the East. Enquiry has shown that the system of
Kaif is widely known in the Turkic, Arabian and Persian-culture
areas: constituting a huge body of people. Yet, so far as I am
aware, this entire method and its background are unknown in
Western literature.
Ali Sultan seems to get to the kernel of the teacher-pupil
relationship. He shows that what is generally considered to be
a normal interaction: slavish obedience and imitation, for
instance, is regarded in Central Asia as a deterioration. He also
reveals that action and inaction—cyclic behaviour—are part of
teaching. This latter concept is very important. Lamentably,
the ordinary thinker is attracted to continuity and detests discontinuity.
According to dervish teaching, however, learning can
take place only by means of alternating continuity and discontinuity.
If this claim is true, it surely means that no system
commonly known to us can yield results beyond a very
elementary stage.
N. Awab Zada's emphasis is upon the need for the student to
be able to go against customary modes of thought. In the East
it is believed that only a real teacher can preside over such a
process: because if, say, iconoclasih becomes habitual, it is not
'going against customary thinking' at all. It becomes a snare.
This series of papers seems to show, conclusively I would
say, that (1) In the East and the West there is a paucity of
real information about 'inner teachings'; (2) Such bodies as are
generally known to us are generally automatistic imitations,
lacking development value; (3) The genuine, unfamiliar lore of
many thousands of years of experience lingers in the East.
These papers seem to help explain why there are so many
'cults' and 'schools' each with its own formula. They represent
the survival of pieces of a comprehensive tradition, which cannot
be carried on except by projecting the ideas afresh in each
succeeding human community.
Selected Reading
Boss, DR MEDARD, A Psychiatrist Discovers India,
1965.
During travels, studies and discussions in India and Indonesia,
the Professor of Psychotherapy at Zurich University discovers
that Western psychological methods are not only known as
ancient Eastern teachings., but are regarded there as mere
preliminaries.
DARAUL, ARKON,
Secret Societies, 1961.
Sociological studies of Eastern and Western organisations
based upon the study of ideas. Dr Daraul traces many littleknown
relationships between Sufi and other mystical systems
and European secret groupings.
HUSSEIN, SIR AHMED,
The Philosphy of Fakirs, 1963.
The unity of the Sufi and Vedantist systems at a basic level
is described by one of India's most profound scholars, in a
series of lectures delivered before learned societies.
KING, PETER,
Afghanistan, 1966.
Valuable first-hand materials throughout illustrate, often
through personal contact with Afghans, the effects of
nationalistic, mystical, religious and other forms of ideology in
a remote Central Asian country.
MANN, DR JOHN,
Changing Human Behaviour, 1965.
Striking materials (e.g., on pp. 149-50) indicate that
Professor Mann is aware of the need for Western psychology
to examine Eastern systems which have hitherto been thought
impractical or purely speculative.
SHAH, IDRIES,
The Sufis, 1965.
With a wealth of documentation, historical and practical
materials the interrelation of Christian, Dervish, Hindu and
other systems is shown to be a most ancient and continuing
process.
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