Forms of Study

Use, Misuse and Disuse of Forms of Study

Q&A with Idries Shah


Q: How can you explain the many forms in which people have
attempted to teach? Since people believe in these forms, believe
that they are true renditions of fact, they are enabled to reach
truth through them. But is it that some are true and some are
not, as the exponents of the organisations claim? If certain forms
through which studies are carried out are true, are all the others
false?


A: I must have answered this question - or, rather, the questions
in this cluster - several hundred times, both in speech and in
writing, including what I have written and quoted in books.


The fact that such questions continue to be asked constitutes a
quite remarkable demonstration of what questioners are like:
some at least will ask questions even though they have been
answered in accessible form dozens of times.


But this may mean that the questions need to be answered
again and again, until the answers penetrate.


The answers, once again, are:


1. Truth has no form;

2. The means through which people may perceive Truth have
forms;

3. All forms are limited. Some of the limitations are time, place,
culture, language;

4. Different forms are not necessarily antagonistic, for the
above reasons;

5. Forms have changed through the centuries in obedience to
the external world to which all forms belong;

6. When people believe that the form is more important than
the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form;

7. Forms are vehicles and instruments, and vehicles and instruments
cannot be called good or bad without context;

8. Forms outlive their usefulness, increase or diminish in usefulness;

9. These statements are abundanty to be found in the writings
of Sufi teachers. They were written down in order to be read and
remembered. They are seldom so energetically stated or so strongly
maintained elsewhere, which may account for the fact that they
have not been sufficiently heeded by people who have not given
Sufi materials the study they deserve.


The outward forms of things of the world, about which Sufis so
often speak, include the forms of teaching, which must be understood in their inward meaning, as well as exercising an instrumental function.


Nasir-i-Khusru has truly said:

Your diver [for treasure] has only given you salty clay
Because he has seen from you only envy.
Seek the meaning from the Outward like a man:
Don't be like an ass, content with noise.


THE CAT WITH A UNIVERSITY DEGREE


In February 1975, a fine ginger tom-cat named Orlando was
nominated in the Surrey University elections for President of the
Students' Union. That the cat was a bona fide student seems evident
by the fact that it has a BSc. No doubt it will go on to a
higher degree. This news story could very well, in traditional
times, have been originated by a Sufi, as a comment on study and
the times . . .




-- from Learning How To Learn (1978), Idries Shah, pgs. 145, 146