Function of Books

by Idries Shah (1978)


I have before me a packet of dehydrated onions.


Let these dried onions stand for something which has been
written down. They are neither the original experience (the onion)
nor are they nothing at all. They possess a virtuality.


Add hot water, and this is absorbed by your dried material.
After a few minutes, we have something which we know to have
been dried onions, but which is not now the same. What we now
have is 'reconstituted onion'.


We do not have whole onions, it is true. Neither do we have
fresh onions. But we have something which will enable us to
recognise fresh onions when we see and taste them. This is an
advance upon dried onions.


The original experience was fresh onions. The water was the
addition made by the right circumstances of study. The result is
edible, and this is a suitable substitute for fresh onions. It contains
some nutrition, too.


Those who say: 'You cannot make anything out of dried
onions' - the equivalent of 'You cannot get anything from a book'
-are wrong. Those who say: 'I will wait (or search) until I find
fresh onions' are wrong. They are wrong because they do not
realise that they would not recognise 'fresh onions' if they saw
them. This has to be said, though reluctantly, because such statements
are usually taken as challenging, when they are more often
intended only to be descriptive.


Let us therefore postulate the statement: 'You can get something
from a book. That something may be so important as to
lead you to the recognition of the real thing. It is therefore in
many cases all-important.'



INGREDIENTS


But why should people imagine that there is nothing in a book
of the same order as 'fresh' experience? Simply because they do
not know that specific circumstances (such as water added to the
onion shreds) are needed before they can get anything. It is the
Sufic purpose to help towards the provision of the water as well as
the dried onion, so that in due time fresh onions may be presented.



HUMILITY


One of the real reasons for the attempted inculcation of a really
'humble' attitude towards life and learning in traditional teaching
techniques is to try to enable people to adopt a point of view
which will allow them to 'approach onions through whatever
condition of onion is available'.


Of course, such teachings in inept hands rapidly turn into
moralistic ones. Instead of saying the above, people cast around
for a logical prop to teach patience and humility. They soon find
it: 'Humility is good for society. It makes people good, pure,
etc' This, however, is the social level, not the metaphysical one.
If you are 'humble', it may help you in ordinary life. If you are
not, you will get nowhere in higher things.


If people cannot adopt a 'humble' attitude towards something
which they are being invited to study, they are not able to study it
at all. Therefore there is no such issue as is frequently supposed,
where people ask: 'Why should I obey something which I do not
know?' The question is invalid because whoever is at that stage
cannot obey or disobey: he can only remain a fairly querulous
enquirer. He is not master of the option, so there is neither any
validity in the question nor any need for an answer, other than a
description of his state. The hope lies in the possibility that he may
recognise his condition through a description of it, and adjust his
attitude accordingly.


People, however, more often than not adopt secondary indications
as primary, and Sufi teachers have to take into account this
tendency. Sometimes they provide deliberately contrived shocks
to display the limited nature of the would-be student's thinking,
to help him (or her) to gain a deeper understanding of themselves
and hence to liberate a wider perspective enabling them to learn.
Such a shock is contained in the tale told by Bayazid Bistami.




IDOLATRY


A man, he recounted, met him on the road and asked where he
was going. Bayazid told him that as he had two hundred dinars,
he was going on the Pilgrimage to Mecca.


The man said: 'Circumambulate me seven times, and let that
be your Pilgrimage, for I have dependents.'


So, continued Bayazid, he did what the man asked, and returned
to his own house.


More often than not, such an adjustment, because it involves
admitting that previous thinking-patterns are inadequate, is not
sufficiently welcome to him. He seeks something which will bolster
the desire to feel that he is significant.


He very easily finds such a creed, individual or institution:
because almost all of the current ones specialise - whether they
know it or not - in judicious flattery. Even if flattery is alternated
with disapproval, it remains flattery.


This is one reason why it is so important to understand one's
personal motivation.


An important aspect of this theme of the value of intermediary
materials as catalytic elements is to note that there is a form of
learning by direct and provoked perception. This is distinct from
learning through rote methods or by selective study where that
study is planned by the student or by someone else who does not
have a full perception of the student's needs.



APPEARANCE AND FUNCTION


We speak here of function, not appearance. There is an interesting
parallel in an event which I remember from a time when some
literalists were questioning Sidi Abu-Yusuf on Sufi teachers. His
answer both shows their mentality and how it fails to accord with
reality:


The questions covered the claims made by or on behalf of Sufi
exponents to be Supreme Chief of the Sufis.


Abu-Yusuf said: 'This is a metaphor only and does not imply
any rivalry. It does not encompass, either, any idea of hierarchy
in formal organisation. Furthermore, it does not mean that each
claims (or has claimed for him) to be Chief of All the Sufis. It
only means that, for those who are following their instructions,
Sufi teachers must be regarded as the chief and only source of
wisdom. This role is no greater than that of any teacher whose
pupils must maintain their concentration and learning ability by
not dividing their attention to other subjects, such as - in this case
-a hierarchy of teachers. The real chiefs of the Sufis exist and
operate in a generally non-perceived realm and are never known
in their higher functions; though these personages may present
themselves as mere Sufi masters from time to time - as they may
assume any other guise - to carry on their functions.'



--from 'You Can't Teach by Correspondence' in Learning How To Learn, p. 67-70