Q & A with Idries Shah from Learning How To Learn (1978)
Q: Do you want us to go to the East, or to join Sufi groups?
A : I have said and written so much about Sufism and the
Sufis that some people imagine that I am trying to influence them
to join a cult or a religious grouping.
It is, in fact, not possible for me to mount such a campaign, as
I will now explain to you.
Hearing and reading what I have had to say about the Sufis has
caused hordes of the religious-minded to flow towards the often
grotesque versions of Sufism in the East. It has also, with equal
force, caused masses of the curious and greedy to flock around
the guru-ist cults of the West.
This leaves those who are uninformed, those who want to learn
more of what Sufism is, and those who are unconcerned.
This operation has been highly successful, but this part of it
has had no higher function for the majority than any other instru-
ment which sorts things - or people - out.
THE AIM AND THE DESTINATION
A mere journey to the East generally has the effect of the jingle:
`Two men looked out from prison bars/One saw mud, the other
stars.' What is the wayfarer like, quite apart from the road or the
destination? Sheikh Saadi reminds us: `I fear that you will not
reach Mecca, O Traveller, for you are on the road to Turkestan!'
Take heart from the fact that this tendency to wander about
looking for knowledge, and to set off for distant destinations (sup-
posedly for knowledge but in reality just to get moving) is a very
human tendency. There are plenty of examples of it and of its
consequences, in my Tales of the Dervishes, and how this charac-
teristic cropped up again and again in the lives of the classical
Sufis and their disciples.
So we have to assess who it is that is proposing to go to `The
East', when this person wants to go, with whom - if anyone - and
to where.
More people go to the East and find nothing than ever realise
any heart's desire, because they do not know how to structure
their enterprise.
CAN YOU WAIT 150 YEARS?
Have you heard how Mulla Nasrudin heard that some parrots
live to 150 years -and bought a young one to check whether this
would turn out to be true?
`Joining Sufi groups' is unlikely to be useful to people who
find groups that they have the option to `join', without being ad-
mitted after assessment as to whether they could usefully join.
One would have to know about the `Sufi group' before giving
an answer which implied that people are likely to encounter real
Sufi groups among the derivative `orders' or `schools' or `teachers'
which have set themselves up publicly ...
VARIETY OF STATEMENTS
Whether studying in groups or travelling to the East, or whether
otherwise engaged, I note that not many people seem to heed a
wide enough variety of Sufi statements.
One such which would repay deeper study before searching is
the advice of the illuminate Mumshad Dinwari [recorded in Tadhkirat
al-Awliyya by Faridudin Attar]:
You learn, he says, by association with a realised teacher. But
you can gain nothing from such a person if you bring a sense of
personal pride.
The widespread compulsion to do things for which one is 'not
fitted, and also to assume that one's choice of action is appropriate,
is seen everywhere, in all epochs.
In the contemporary world there is an excellent opportunity to see
this working in the human behaviour reported in the daily and
weekly Press. Take this almost random example. It shows be-
haviour which underlies such things as unthinking group-joining
or journeys to the East. Are they the product of spiritual aspira-
tions or of sheer non-thinking elevated into a virtue?
A cat-burglar, who climbed girders and houses to steal, and
who carried out at least forty-one thefts, was caught and brought
to court. Of course he was caught, in spite of his great skill:
because he happened to have no legs, having had them amputated
years before.*
*Daily Telegraph (London) 9 September 1977, p, 19, col. 3.
from Learning How To Learn (1978) by Idries Shah, pgs. 50-52.
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