The World of Nasrudin (2003)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

The World of Nasrudin

Nasrudin is the greatest of all Arab folk heroes, and is found across the Islamic World, from Morocco to Pakistan, and beyond.


He is said to have been the wisest fool who ever lived – that is if he ever did live at all. Stories of Nasrudin’s many incarnations are studied by Sufis for their hidden wisdom, and are universally enjoyed for their humour. Sometimes Nasrudin is an impoverished itinerant or stallholder, and at others, he is the mayor, judge, vizier, or even the King.


The World of Nasrudin is the fourth book in the corpus written by Idries Shah, and is the last to be published by the celebrated Afghan author.


Read the full text of  THE WORLD OF NASRUDIN

The Englishman’s Handbook (2000)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

The Englishman’s Handbook

The Englishman’s Handbook is the third book in Idries Shah’s best-selling trilogy on why the English are as strange as they are. He examines the ‘baffling phenomena of the British and Britishness’, presenting a manual of handy tips on how to muddle through while visiting English shores.

An illuminating and often hilarious read, the book is just as valuable to the British as it is to foreigners.

It contains all sorts of extraordinary information on how to confuse foreigners with sheer Englishness, if any do manage to break through the barriers.

Read the full text of  THE ENGLISHMAN'S HANDBOOK


Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.

Knowing How To Know (1998)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

Knowing How To Know

Contemporary esoteric systems almost always play on the desire of mankind to seek or acquire knowledge. All but universally neglected in such systems are the – often unrecognized – barriers which prevent knowledge and understanding. Before learning can take place, certain conditions and basic factors must be in place; in the individual or the group.

Building on the foundations laid in Learning How to Learn and The Commanding Self, Idries Shah in Knowing How to Know illuminates those factors. Like an ultra-violet light shone onto the petals of flowers, it reveals concealed patterns, normally invisible to our customary modes of thought.

Read the full text of Knowing How to Know for free online.

Reflections (playlist)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:

A selection of Shah's own observations, fables, comments, and aphorisms

Idries Shah, read by David Wade, ISHK Audiobooks, 1997

This unabridged recording of Reflections contains Shah's own observations, fables, comments, and aphorisms. They not only entertain and amuse but, in common with all genuine Sufi literature, have an instrumental value, enabling the reader to glimpse alternative modes of behavior, thought, and understanding. When it was first published in 1968, Reflections was acclaimed by the BBC's The Critics program as an OUTSTANDING BOOK OF THE YEAR. 

David Wade is a playwright and dramatiser, mainly for BBC Radio, for which he has also made documentaries and educational programs. He was a founding member of The London College of Storytellers. Running time: approx. 3 hours

The Commanding Self (1994)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

The Commanding Self

The Commanding Self, in Sufic terminology, is that mixture of the primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding.


This book was described by Shah as the key to understanding his entire corpus of work. While complete in itself as an anthology of hitherto unpublished work, it serves to illustrate and amplify Idries Shah’s preceding books on the Sufi Way.


In its introduction, he writes, ‘Thousands of books and monographs have been written on Sufism and the Sufis, almost all of them from the point of view of other ways of thinking.

'The result has been chaos in the literature, and confusion in the reader. Over the centuries, some of the world’s most eminent scholars have fallen into the trap of trying to examine, access or consider the Sufi phenomenon through a set of culture-bound preconceptions.’



Read the full text of  THE COMMANDING SELF

Sufi Thought and Action (1990)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

Sufi Thought and Action

Previously published only as separate essays, Sufi Thought and Action – assembled and introduced by Idries Shah – covers an extraordinary diversity of Sufi ideas and activities in many countries and cultures. Included in the volume are papers on Sufi Principles and Learning Methods; Ritual, Initiation and Secrets in Sufi Circles; and Key Concepts in Sufi Understanding.

 The volume stands as a clear and simple handbook to many facets of Sufi study and thought. Shah’s introduction begins, ‘The object of Sufi spiritual teaching can be expressed as: to help to refine the individual’s consciousness so that it may reach the Radiances of Truth, from which one is cut off by ordinary activities of the world’.

Read the full text of  SUFI THOUGHT AND ACTION.


Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.

The Natives are Restless (1988)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

The Natives are Restless

The Natives Are Restless chronicles some of the amazing, amusing, and thought-provoking adventures of the Afghan traveller and writer, Idries Shah, among members of what he calls the ‘English tribe’. It is an enthralling sequel to his bestselling Darkest England, the narrative illustrating his practised eye as an anthropologist. Shah observes how the English see themselves, and contrasts it with how the rest of the world views this eccentric island race. He also speculates on the likely continuing effect of Englishness on the future development of global society, offering unsuspecting parallels between English attitudes and Oriental wisdom.

Read the full text of THE NATIVES ARE RESTLESS.


Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.

Darkest England (1987)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

Darkest England

In his best-selling Darkest England, Idries Shah asserts that the English hail from a little-known place called ‘Hathaby’, but their roots go back much farther, perhaps to the distant Asian realm of Sakasina. Once a nomadic tribe of warriors, the English fled westward, bringing with them epic tales, traditions, and an Oriental way of thought.


Shah charts the genius of the English in adopting and adapting ‘almost anything spiritual, moral or material’ for their own use – a faculty that has transformed them from warrior nomads into successful diplomats, businessmen, thinkers and scientists.


Read the full text of DARKEST ENGLAND

Kara Kush (1986)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

Kara Kush

In December of 1979, Soviet tanks rolled across the borders of Afghanistan, beginning a period of barbaric aggression that triggered a turning point in modern history. Idries Shah´s brilliant novel chronicles the courageous 10-year resistance of the Afghan people, an epic story of triumph over tyranny that deserves to be immortalized.


Kara Kush is the definitive story of freedom fighters. It is a story of patriotism-in-action, mobilized and fueled not by a mass-media propaganda machine, or the charisma of a single individual, but by a thousands-of-years-old tradition of proud independence, deep love of one´s land, and fierce will to survive.


Kara Kush was first published in 1986, at a time when most of the outside world dismissed the Afghan resistance as a rag-tag lot of rival guerilla factions in a futile holdout against an invincible military machine. With extraordinary insight into human nature and the course of human history, Kara Kush told the real story.


According to Shah, almost all of the people in the text of the novel actually exist or did.


The accounts of battles and raids, precise military details, and the stories of Soviet and red Afghan atrocities were all from primary sources eye witnesses, participants, defectors, victims, and prisoners.


This remarkable book, among all other sources, offers keys to understanding not only this important strategic region, but the very phase in world history in which we find ourselves today. Much more than a novel, even more than a tribute, Kara Kush stands as a model of human vision, leadership, cooperation, and capacity at a time when we need it most.


‘I collected this material from freedom fighters, some of them my own relatives, from refugees, and from men and women, fighting shoulder to shoulder, from all over Afghanistan.’

—Idries Shah



Read excerpts from KARA KUSH

Amina Shah: Tales from Around the World (playlist)

Selected stories from Amina Shah's audio collection, Tales from Around the World. 






"Amina Shah has travelled to the far corners of the world to collect traditional stories of all cultures, stories which are on the verge of disappearing due to the inrush of more 'modern' methods."-- from An Advanced Psychology Audio Series, Set. 5 Released c. 1984     


             

Psychologies East and West II (playlist)

Readings and Interviews:

DORIS LESSING
ARTHUR DEIKMAN 
PETER BRENT
ROBERT ORNSTEIN


Released c. 1984



                   

Psychologies East and West I (playlist)

Psychologies East and West: A Symposium







ROBERT ORNSTEIN
CHARLES TART
PETER BRENT
ARTHUR DEIKMAN
IDRIES SHAH


PSYCHOLOGIES: EAST AND WEST

There is a growing realization that contemporary Western approaches to the mind leave fallow the capacities for a more comprehensive perception of ourselves. That we have left undeveloped an holistic consciousness has influenced our conception of our capacities, our approach to health and disease and our understanding of the nature of education.

Many people have sensed this lack and have turned their interest to the esoteric traditions of the East, often without understanding the bases and the relevance of many of these traditions. Although the interest itself may be genuine, many of the specific doctrines and practices are suited only to the static societies of the East, or are suited to an earlier historical era, and are not relevant to the needs of contemporary people.

We will attempt to peel away some of the local coloration and obsolete or inappropriate doctrine from these traditions. We will present both appropriate historical and sociological information as well as contemporary examples of formulations of Eastern spiritual thought suited to current problems in psychology, education and medicine.

This symposium will bring together speakers who represent Eastern spiritual traditions and those who have traveled extensively in the East, with psychologists concerned with the integration of these ideas into the Western context.

 Live lectures from 1976; released c. 1984.
                       


                          

Overcoming Assumptions that Inhibit Spiritual Development (playlist)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:

A lecture by Idries Shah delivered before a live audience in 1976

This lecture, delivered in 1976, was previously entitled A Psychology of the East. Shah addresses the nature of assumptions, those that inhibit understanding and those that might be useful at certain stages of study but need to be set aside by the student at a later time in order to progress. This requires a flexibility of approach that is not customary in the West, one cultivated by study and exposure to Sufi ideas. It's a very humorous and lively lecture, full of stories and anecdotes. Among the other topics Shah addresses are the difference between emotionality and spirituality, the danger of looking for easy answers, and the way in which the paths of East and West are converging.

"So one must learn to be flexible, one must learn to question assumptions, one must learn to put up other assumptions than one's customary ones to study things...some of the things are, for example, our narrative materials which I have published... Now various points of view on these produce a certain kind of flexibility. Trying too hard doesn't work, trying to make out what they mean doesn't work because this material is instrumental not indoctrination." --From Overcoming Assumptions That Inhibit Spiritual Development © 1976, 1977 by The Estate of Idries Shah

Teaching-stories and narratives selected and read by members of The London College of Storytellers, from Shah´s best-selling work, Tales of the Dervishes. 

Originally released c. 1984.

Tales & Teachings (II)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:


TALES & TEACHINGS, read by members of the London College of Storytellers. Originally released c. 1984.


Sufi Studies Today by William Foster

Reading of William Foster's 1968 monograph "Sufi Studies Today".

This monograph is also collected in The World of the Sufi (1979) 

The Islanders by Idries Shah

Opening to Idries Shah's The Sufis (1964), read by Pat Williams.

                          

Tales & Teachings (I)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:

A Veiled Gazelle by Idries Shah, Read by the London College of Storytellers, ISHK Audiobooks, 1997. Originally released c. 1984.

This is an unabridged recording of Idries Shah's A Veiled Gazelle which is taken from a poem by the 12th-century mystic, Ibn Arabi. The 'gazelles' are perceptions and experiences latent in ordinary man that are 'veiled' by the action of the subjective or 'commanding' self, which, partly through indoctrination and partly through base aspirations, prevents higher vision and understanding. These tales and narratives, while commended for their beauty and entertainment value, are a remarkable working example of such instruments.

"Sufi poetry, literature, tales and activities are the instruments which, when employed with insight and prescription rather than automatically or obsessively, help in the relationship between Sufi and pupil, towards the removal of the veils. "--From the Introduction of A Veiled Gazelle © 1976 The Estate of Idries Shah

The Teaching Story and The Dermis Probe (playlist)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:

THE TEACHING-STORY
Observations on the Folklore of our 'Modern' Thought by Idries Shah, Read by David Wade. Originally released c. 1984.

The Sufis have been using carefully constructed stories for teaching purposes for thousands of years. Though on the surface these often appear to be little more than entertaining fairytales or folktales, they enshrine -- in their characters, plots, and imagery -- patterns and relationships that nurture a part of the mind not reachable in more conventional ways, thus increasing our understanding, flexibility, and breadth of vision. In this tape set, a reading from the writings of Idries Shah explains the nature of the teaching-story and how the reader might approach this amazing material. A selection of tales, anecdotes and narratives taken from The Dermis Probe follows. It... will give the listener the chance to experience the unique quality of this ancient, yet still vital and contemporary literature and to taste the manner in which this material can be taught. 

Learning from Stories (playlist)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:

A lecture by Idries Shah before a live audience in 1976, along with teaching-stories and narratives selected from Caravan of Dreams and jokes and tales from the Nasrudin Corpus. Selections read by The London College of Storytellers. Originally released in 1984 in the audio collection,  An Advanced Psychology. 

In this lecture Shah talks in detail and with many examples about the Sufi teaching-story and its instrumental function. He emphasizes the way in which one might approach this vast and comprehensive body of literature to benefit best from it. Shah's delivery is lively, witty, entertaining, and always instructive.


"The knowledge of the time-lag and the perception of it between the telling of a story, or the happening of an event: the realization of something and its integration into one's own mind, and its digestion into one's own psychology, has itself to be learnt. This is one thing which most people don't realize. They either laugh at a gag and dispose of it, or they understand what it means: they take its moral application and, as it were, abolish it. They do not take any interest in general in this question of the digestion of the impact." --From Learning From Stories © 1976, 1982 The Estate of Idries Shah

An Advanced Psychology of the East (playlist)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:

A lecture delivered by Idries Shah before a live audience in 1977, along with selections from The Way of the Sufi and The Magic Monastery read by members of The London College of Storytellers. Originally released in 1984 in the audio collection,  An Advanced Psychology. 

In this lecture Shah talks about the correct approach the student needs to take in order to learn, as well as the characteristics that aid the student in his study of Sufism and those which are detrimental to it. He also outlines the duties, qualities, and attributes of the Sufi teacher and describes the 'Five Subtleties,' or centers of spiritual perception, the student has to experience in his development.


"People read stories and they ransack books for Sufi exercises and psychological or spiritual techniques and, then, remarkably often to our way of thinking, they set about trying to employ these things. Well, of course, it does surprise us because if I were to find a textbook on surgery, I wouldn't try to take out my own appendix, just because I'd read it and there were diagrams." --From An Advanced Psychology of the East © 1977, 1982 by The Estate of Idries Shah

                                        

On the Nature of Sufi Knowledge (playlist)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:

A lecture by Idries Shah before a live audience in 1976, along with selections from Wisdom of the Idiots and Seeker After Truth read by members of The London College of Storytellers. Originally released in 1984 in the audio collection,  An Advanced Psychology. 

This recording of a live lecture by Idries Shah presents his ideas about the purpose of Sufism and the method and expression of its aim. He compares Sufi education with that obtained from a university or school. He emphasizes that the learner must have some stability of mind in order to approach Sufi studies correctly. His topics cover many subjects, including assumptions that prevent understanding; the difference between Sufis and idealists or 'good' people who base their conduct, beliefs, and actions on principles; sincerity versus emotionality; familiarity with the material; and developing the right attitude towards it.

"I want to clear away the brushwood, I want to give you indications of Sufism which will connect with your existing institutions, with your psychology, with your sociology, with your idea of spirituality, with your cultural institutions, with your literature." --From On the Nature of Sufi Knowledge © 1976, 1982 The Estate of Idries Shah

Seeker After Truth (1982)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

Seeker After Truth

A treasure house of teaching materials, assembled in the Sufi manner.


Seeker after Truth contains both traditional tales and stories gleaned from contemporary sources, and snippets of table talk, discussions and teachings, letters and lectures by Idries Shah.


Taken together, it constitutes a handbook of materials designed to provoke a different kind of thought.

Read the full text of  SEEKER AFTER TRUTH


Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.

Observations (1982)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:



Listen to a reading of the full text of OBSERVATIONS by Idries Shah

Letters and Lectures (1981)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:


Listen to a reading of the full text of LETTERS & LECTURES OF IDRIES SHAH:

Evenings with Idries Shah (1981)

From The Estate of Idries Shah:


Listen to a reading of the full text of EVENINGS WITH IDRIES SHAH:

The World of the Sufi (1979)

The World of the Sufi

INTRODUCTION BY Idries Shah

Look inside

Assembled by Idries Shah, The World of the Sufi is a comprehensive collection of learned essays and papers on the subject of Sufi thought. One of the book’s attractions is the way that it considers central questions and areas of study from different angles. Sufi literature, the use of humour, and Sufi communities in various cultural settings, are some of the many subjects discussed. In addition, experts in their fields comment on areas such as Sufism and Psychiatry, Indian Thought and the Sufis, and Therapy and the Sufi. Among the book's contributors are Idries Shah, Doris Lessing, Peter Brent and Dr. Arthur J. Deikman.

 

World Tales (1979)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

World Tales

How can it be that the same story is found in Scotland and also in Pre-Columbian America? What can account for the durability and persistence of tales? Was the tale of Aladdin and his wondrous lamp really taken from Wales (where it has been found) to the ancient East and, if so, when and by whom?


These questions and more are answered in Idries Shah’s remarkable volume World Tales, which is subtitled, ‘The extraordinary coincidence of stories told in all times, in all places’. In his introduction, Shah remarks, ‘Working for thirty-five years among the written and oral sources of our world heritage in tales, one feels a truly living element in them which is startlingly evident when one isolates the ‘basic’ stories; the ones which tend to have travelled farthest, to have featured in the largest number of classical collections, to have inspired great writers of the past and present’.

Read the full text of  WORLD TALES


Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.

Learning How to Learn (1978)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

Learning How to Learn

100 Conversations with Idries Shah
Condensed from over three million words, these conversations involve housewives and cabinet ministers, professors and assembly-line workers, on the subject of how traditional psychology can illuminate current human, social and spiritual problems.


More than a hundred tales and extracts from Sufi lore, ranging from the eighth century Hasan of Basra, to the modern Afghan poet Khalilullah Khalili, are woven into Shah’s narratives of how and why the Sufis learn, what they learn: and how spiritual understanding develops and deteriorates in all societies.

Read the full text of  LEARNING HOW TO LEARN 


Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.

The Hundred Tales of Wisdom (1978)

The Hundred Tales of Wisdom

AFLAKI’S MUNAQIB AND OTHER NARRATIVES

translated by Idries Shah

Look inside

Traditionally known as The Hundred Tales of Wisdom, this collection comprises excerpts from the life, teachings and miracles of the Sufi teacher Jalaluddin Rumi, together with certain important stories from his works. As well as being part of the bedrock of classical Persian literature, these tales, anecdotes and narratives are believed, by Sufis, to aid in the development of insights beyond ordinary perceptions. Here, they are translated and presented by Idries Shah. 

A Veiled Gazelle (1978)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

A Veiled Gazelle

A ‘Veiled Gazelle’, as the great mystic Ibn Arabi explains in his Interpreter of Desires, is a subtlety, an organ of higher perception.


Sufi experientialists refer to the activation of these centres of awareness as the awakening of real knowledge of Truth beyond form.


A Veiled Gazelle considers the symbolic and instrumental employment of its literature in Sufi studies. Seldom didactic, and never meant only as entertainment, such works are regarded as some of the world’s greatest and most important writing.

Read the full text of  A VEILED GAZELLE: SEEING HOW TO SEE.


Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.

A Perfumed Scorpion (1978)

From The Idries Shah Foundation:

A Perfumed Scorpion

The ‘perfuming of a scorpion’, referred to by the great Sufi teacher Bahaudin, symbolizes hypocrisy and self-deception: both in the individual and in institutions.


In A Perfumed Scorpion, Idries Shah directs attention to both the perfume and the scorpion – the overlay and the reality – in psychology, human behaviour and the learning process.


Crammed with illustrative anecdotes from contemporary life, the book is nevertheless rooted in the teaching patterns of Rumi, Hafiz, Jami, and many other great Oriental sages. It deals with the need for and the path to knowledge and information.


Read the full text of  A PERFUMED SCORPION: THE WAY TO THE WAY

Human Behavior

Interview with Idries Shah by Edwin Kiester, Jr., published as 
"Grand Sheikh of the Sufis" in Human Behavior, August 1977




Idries Shah, a worldly descendant of Mohammed, doesn't
mind being known as the leading peddler of Sufism in the
West. But please don’t call him a guru. Idries Shah and I
are sitting in the village pub near his country estate south of
London, elbows resting on the gleaming varnished table
top. After a morning of weightier subjects, we are engaged
in the middle-age man lunchtime talk – exchanging
military reminiscences (his of the Afghan army, mine of
the American) and discussing his forthcoming trip to
America. Now the waiter places before each of us a plate of
cold roast beef and a pint of bitter.



In the same idle-chatter vein, I ask the man who has almost
single-handedly reawakened Western interest in the ancient
tradition of Sufism whether Sufis follow a special diet.
Three hours of talking with Shah and a generous sample of
this writing should have taught me that Sufis concern
themselves with internal matters, not external ones, and
that a prime Sufi objective is to rid people of just the kind
of preconceived notions and limited thinking I had just
displayed. I should also know that ill-informed questions
make Shah’s beard bristle. 



“A Sufi lifestyle, is it?” he asks,
spacing the words out evenly for emphasis. “No, my friend,
not a bit of it. That's what people crave. That's what they
demand. Recently another man came to interview me, and
his first question was, 'What do Sufis eat? You’re
vegetarians, of course.’ ‘No,’ I said. ‘You amaze me!’ he
said. “I said to him, ‘Now if I can be of any use to you,
write that down and see what it means. What it means is
that you have been able to elicit from me a reaction which
helps you to describe yourself. ‘You amaze me.’ Why do I
amaze you? I amaze because you think that all
metaphysicians must be vegetarians. Does that tell you
anything about me? It tells you things about yourself! Now
when are you going to get out of that, and learn things
about yourself, and not think that you're learning things
about other people?” Shah leans forward, gesturing with
the knife and fork. “We are not totemists who eat brown
rice and consult the I Ching. That is not the Sufi at all, my
friend. We have other things to do than have a lifestyle. We
are getting on with our thing. And our thing does not
impose on us the sort of restrictions which other people use
as a substitute for getting on with their thing. You can
either do something, or you can pretend to be doing
something. 



“Western society seems to have exhausted all
its investigative potential. It is largely composed of cul-de-sacs.
One cul-de-sac is marked Lifestyle; one is marked
Vegetarianism, and so on. People want to know about the
Sufis in terms of what limitations they observe. ‘What do
you eat for breakfast?’ ‘How many pairs of socks do you
wear?’ “What is the relevance of such questions? Why
don’t they ask something about what I am doing? One of
our traditional functions has been to point out the
limitations other people have been putting on themselves,
not to impose limitations on other people. That's what the
gurus do. We seek to expand, increase vision, deepen
perception. You don’t live by decreasing these qualities.
“That’s why you don’t find any lifestyle with us, brother.
There’s no eating of brown rice, and no muttering of
Sanskrit mantras in our way.” With that, Shah turns back 
to the beef and the beer.



Over the past 15 years, Sayyed Idries Shah, 53, the grand
sheikh of the Sufis and a lineal descendant of the prophet
Mohammed, has had myriad opportunities to learn how
little the West knows about Sufism – and how much it
yearns to know. Since his book The Sufis was published in
1963, the lean, intense, Afghan-born prince has been
propelled into international celebrity, sought on lecture
platforms all over the world. Twenty more books have
followed the first, and all have been bought up eagerly;
Sufi “study circles” have proliferated (often without Shah’s
blessing) across the United States and Europe; courses in
Sufism are the “in” thing at colleges and universities; Sufi
theories of learning have influenced educational institutions
everywhere. 



Shah himself has won a host of literary prizes
and recently was the subject of a festschrift, a collection of
published commentaries by 24 renowned scholars
discussing his work – an honor usually reserved for a
professor emeritus of 70 who has been tending his
scholarly vineyard for 50 years. One small sample of
Shah’s impact can be seen in his recent appearance at a
U.S. seminar sponsored by the Institute for the Study of
Human Knowledge. Twelve hundred persons turned out to
hear him, at $65 a pop. Ironically, the “product” Shah is
“peddling” – to use his term – is anything but new. The
Sufis are often called “Muslim mystics,” but their roots go
much deeper than Islam. In that cradle of the world’s great
religions, the Middle East, Sufi influence has been traced
back to the second century B.C. and is said to have crossfertilized
Hinduism, Christianity and Judaism along with
the followers of Mohammed. In the golden days of the
caliphs, from A.D. 800 to 1800, many of the world’s great
writers and thinkers were Sufis. They included Omar
Khayyam and Jala ed-Din Rumi, considered one of the
titans of the world literature; long before Einstein and
Darwin, Sufis theorized that time and space were identical
and that humans had ascended from lower animals. One of
the West’s own great minds was a Sufi. The Franciscan
Roger Bacon, considered the originator of modern
scientific thought, studied with the Sufis in Saracen Spain.
It was for learning their “black arts” that he ran afoul of
ecclesiastical authority. Explaining Sufism to a word oriented,
linear-thinking Westerner is difficult even for an
articulate and insightful man such as Shah. “He who tastes
not, knows not,” he says, quoting Jala ed-Din Rumi.




Although there are said to be five million Sufis, mostly
affiliated with established sects, Shah says that Sufism is
“not a religion but a body of knowledge”; the sects
represent a “deterioration” or “cultural elaboration of the
original internal teaching.” Sufism has no rituals, no holy
city and no ecclesiastical hierarchy. Although Shah carries
the title grand sheikh, all Sufis are considered equal. Poet
Robert Graves, a Shah admirer, compares him to a
“fugleman,” which Graves defines as an old army term for
the soldier who stood before a company on the parade
ground and served as the exemplar in arms drill. Sufis do
not even call themselves Sufis, which is a nickname akin to
Quakers. They use the terms We friends or Our people.



Genuine Sufism is inward, concerning itself with “true
reality – what exists beyond what is observed.” Like
peeling an onion, Sufism tries to strip away the outer layers
of limited thinking, misconception and social conditioning
to disclose the kernel that lies beneath – that unity of
existence that Shah calls “the essence of all religion.”
Sufism’s goal is to reorganize human mentation so that it is
more sensitive to things that are there anyway – “We say in
Sufism that exclusion is just as important as inclusion,”
Shah says. You can gain Sufi truths from other people and
by intuition, insight, folk wisdom and experience. Long
before the work on brain hemispheres of Dr. Robert E.
Ornstein, the Sufis knew that part of the brain learned
through words arranged in sequence and the other part by
hunches and seeing the whole situation at once. Of course,
over the past two decades, literally dozens of mystical,
quasi-mystical and semi-mystical Eastern sects have
invaded the West. If you really want to see Shah’s beard
bristle, suggest that Sufism is part of the yoga-and-transcendental-
meditation craze.



“That gray area of mumbo jumbo and gurus and mantras,”
he says, bitingly. “It has little connection with any tradition
except the circus. In Eastern countries like India that is
fairly well understood. Only the ‘new boys’ profess to see
anything significant in the phenomenon. But here the
carnival has taken over. We have a grotesque of the true
Indian guru.” He also has a few disparaging words for Zen.
“No Sufi would ever think it important to think of a phrase
like, “What is the sound of one hand clapping?’ He would
regard it as training for automatism. You could obsess
people with one hand.” The Sufi has nothing in common,
either, with groups that seek to withdraw from the world.
“Be in the world, but not of it,” is the Sufi watchword.



When I first met Shah, he struck me as anything but the
stereotype of the Eastern holy man. He greeted me in a red
turtleneck sweater, glen-plaid slacks, magenta socks and
calfskin sandals. He speaks Oxford-accented English with a
rich vocabulary and a range of expression that is stunning
in its scope; he is the only man I ever heard use the world
phantasmagoria in casual conversation. As his books show,
he is a gifted storyteller; but in person, his tales are even
more compelling, because he acts out all the parts and
mimics all the voices. Once, telling of an encounter with a
Nubian student from the Sudan during a lecture, he leaped
to his feet, put his hand on top of his head to represent a
Nubian topknot and dropped his voice a full octave to
impersonate the man’s basso.



He also leads the life of a country squire. The Shah home,
Langton House at Langton Green, a tiny hamlet nestled
into the Kentish countryside south-east of Tunbridge Wells,
once belonged to Lord Baden-Powell, founder of the Boy
Scout movement. A rambling, whitewashed, greenshuttered
mansion, it is surrounded by 50 acres of gardens
and pastureland and by the village green. Inside, like Shah
himself, it is a subtle blend of East and West. Oriental
carpets, hammered brass trays and a children’s peacock
swing designed by Shah’s wife contrast with a massive
desk Shah picked up in a junk shop and an IBM electric
typewriter.



When asked how long he had kept a foot in both Eastern
and Western worlds, he said, “All my life.'' Although a
resident of Britain for many years and a British subject, he
was born in the East and groomed from boyhood for his
eventual role of building bridges between cultures. The
eldest son of the late Sirdar Ikbal Ali Shah, one of the
legendary figures of contemporary Middle Eastern history,
he was born near Simla in the Himalayas and was raised in
Afghanistan, India and Saudi Arabia, “thus being exposed
to three of the five main cultural traditions of the Middle
East.” (The other two are Persian and Turkish.) He never
attended school in the formal sense. “I was educated by the
old oriental tradition that if I needed to learn something,
someone was procured to teach it to me,” he recalls.
However, his father insisted that he learn firsthand about
the world. The young prince worked a year as a laborer on
a farm and served a hitch in the Afghan army. As
descendants of Mohammed through the prophet’s eldest
son, the family carries considerable prestige through the
Middle East. Their influence transcends national
boundaries and mere sectarian lines. Shah’s father served
as an unofficial adviser to several Middle Eastern countries,
and often carried out diplomatic missions between East and
West.



Often the young Shah accompanied him, gaining access to
the highest ruling and spiritual levels in his part of the
world. The experience stood him in good stead. Today, one
of the little-known and little-discussed aspects of his life is
to serve as adviser to several African and Asian
governments. 



As Shah was growing up, he also adhered to
the Sufi stricture that every Sufi must earn his own way.
“We have a sense of priorities,” Shah says “To belong to
the human community is essential.
We say, ‘If you cannot earn your livelihood, go out and
learn how and then become a Sufi.’” Shah’s education had
given him a thorough grounding in literature, history and
economics but no profession; he chose to enter the world of
business and finance. He established three successful
electronics firms, a carpet factory and a publishing house
and still serves as chairperson of each. This record also
gave him entrée to London financial and social circles.
“Many of my sober business acquaintances would never
believe I am to be bracketed with what they consider the
guru phenomenon,” he says, laughing. “They know me too
well to believe that.”



As Shah poured a cup of tea from a glittering heirloom tea
service, I asked him how the campaign to familiarize the
West with Sufi principles was faring. He lit one of his
favorite small cigars before responding. “The people of the
West are starving in the midst of plenty,” he began. “They
have made all these discoveries about human behavior but
they have not related them to their own behavior. And until
they integrate this knowledge, I don’t know if we can help
them.



"It may be 300 years before they have properly absorbed
this knowledge.



“People can learn from one another which attitudes aren’t
scientific, which attitudes don’t work. It’s just a question of
absorption. It’s no use just reading about behavior in a
paperback and then throwing it away and reaching for the
next paperback, or reading to answer questions in an
examination, or to torture your friends with a few
gimmicks, like ‘You have an Oedipus complex’ or ‘that’s a
defense mechanism.’ The potential is there,” he continued.



“There’s an old Sufi story that’s relevant to that. An old
traditional Sufi used to dress his disciples in patchwork
cloaks and have them carry a beggar’s bowl and repeat
certain formulae in order to concentrate their minds. He
recommended that they eat mulberries off a certain tree.


“One day somebody said to him, ‘Suppose you went to a
country where they didn’t have patchwork, and you
couldn’t dress your disciples in cloaks. Suppose the seed
coconut from which beggars’ bowls are traditionally made
was not available.
Suppose mulberries were considered unlucky and suppose
these repetitions which you require were considered
socially undesirable. What would you do under those
circumstances?’ And he said, ‘Ah, well, if I were under
those circumstances, I would have to get myself a totally
different kind of disciple.'”



“The challenge now is embodied in the Sufi tradition that
you must teach people in the way that they can learn. The
West has the requirements to learn, but non-traditional
approaches – that is, non-oriental approaches – must be
made. “You have to come to certain conclusions in order to
do anything at all. For example, say that you – or the
community at large, or Western society – concludes that
contemporary physics shows that it is unlikely or
impossible that one will be able to exceed a certain velocity
of travel in space, so that our galaxy is closed to us. And as
we want to go farther there must be some other way
discovered in order to slip through the imprisonment of
these dimensions of time and space. 



“You, or your society,
would have arrived at that conclusion through your
investigations into the physical sciences. An Oriental might
have arrived at an identical conclusion by some other route.
But you two would be in precisely the same posture if you
decided to start your further investigation by some
metaphysical method or non-material method. You’d have
arrived at the same jumpoff point by different routes, but
you would be able to address the same sort of problem.



“That’s what I’m interested in doing in the West,” he
concluded. “Or rather, in the modern Western culture that
now covers so much of the world that people of my
generation in the Middle East are in fact often
indistinguishable from Europeans.”



According to Shah, he had dabbled in writing ever since his
youth and, in fact, had produced a widely acclaimed book,
Destination Mecca, in 1957; but the idea of a book on the
Sufis did not take flower until he was past 40. Graves was
one of those who encouraged him to “write for the natural
Sufis everywhere,” but, Shah says modestly, “I did not yet
feel I had the proper literary skills.” In addition, several
other developments were necessary before the West was
ready for a book on Eastern mysticism. The East had to live
down the Rudyard Kipling view of mystics as freaky
savages who slept on nails and charmed cobras; and the
West had to accept that human beings were conditioned
into limited ways of thinking that obscured their humanity
within, rather than creatures of free will. Shah places the
Korean War as a landmark. Discovering that American
fliers could be “conditioned in reverse” by their captors,
American social scientists were forced to acknowledge and
to study the whole conditioning process. This development,
Shah believes, not only explains B.F.Skinner but the
revival of Pavlov. “If I had discussed how man has been
conditioned away from his origins before 1950,” Shah says,
“I would simply have been put into the same box with
Pavlov.” 



A more recent impetus was given Sufism by
Ornstein’s work into the bilateral specialization of the
brain. For the first time, science supported the Sufi view
that learning could be achieved both sequentially and
holistically. “After Ornstein’s work, we were able to
introduce what we were saying in a framework not
available before, because there was no scientific word for
it,” Shah says. “Previously we had to say that our way was
not scientific, but artistic – and those words were much too
loaded. Now we can talk about the left brain and the right
brain and it is respectable, in the sense that people will
listen to it.



 “It also helps us to explain by analogies derived
from Ornstein’s work what happens to human thinking
systems once rooted in human beings and the human
community and how our way differs from – and resembles
– other ways of thinking. It can be put down almost
diagrammatically, and it does help a person looking into it
to understand: whatever is this man talking about? Where
does he place himself or what he is saying in the pattern of
human thought?” 



When Shah began to write, he reached
back into his childhood and brought forth literally hundreds
of simple folk tales he had learned from servants, from
village storytellers, from Persian literature and “just out of
the air.”



(In fact, they are so commonplace that one Turkish
publisher refused to publish one of Shah’s collections,
declaring, “It is unbelievable to me that anyone could make
a book of nothing more than he could collect from the lips
of peasants while touring the villages of Anatolia.”)



Some witty, some epigrammatic, some pointed, the now
famous tales are interspersed in Shah’s books with his own
reflections and gathered into anthologies of their own.
Many of them concern Mulla (Master) Nasrudin, a kind of
Middle Eastern Everyman who is sometimes court jester,
sometimes cracker-barrel philosopher, sometimes village
sage and sometimes buffoon. He combines native
shrewdness and insight in a way that helps him see to the
heart of a situation that his more analytical “betters”
cannot. He also illustrates, in exaggerated form, the kind of
fallacious thinking that hobbles the more sophisticated.
When asked to tell some of his favorite Nasrudin stories
and to explain their role in Sufism, he offered several:



“Nasrudin was throwing handfuls of bread all round his
house.
‘What are you doing?’ someone asked.
“’Keeping the tigers away.’ “’But there are no tigers
around here.'
“’Exactly. Effective, isn’t it?’”



Another tale recalls the time Nasrudin went into the shop of
a man who sold all kind of miscellaneous things.
“Have you leather?” Nasrudin asked.
“Yes.”
“And nails?”
“Yes.”
“And dye?”
“Yes.”
“Then why don’t you make yourself a pair of boots?''



**********

Once Nasrudin was called upon to preach a sermon.
From the pulpit, he asked the congregation: “Do you
know what I am going to preach about?”
”No,” they replied.
“In that case,” he said, “it would take too long to
explain.” And he went home.
Next day he ascended the pulpit and asked the same
question.
“Yes,” the people said this time, determined to put him on
the spot.
“In that case,” said Nasrudin, “there is no need for me to
say more.” And he went home.
Yet again the following day he put the same question. “Do
you know what I am going to preach about?
But now the congregation was ready to corner him:
“Some of us do and some of us don’t,” they answered.
“In that case,” said Nasrudin, “let those who know tell
those who don’t.”



Although each of these tales has a punchline, Shah
explained, it also contains a teaching moral and can be
examined on many levels for illumination of human
behavior.



Nasrudin’s sermon, for example, depicts the Sufi belief that
there can be no teaching to those completely ignorant, none
to those who profess to know all the answers, and that the
best teaching method is when one who has learned by
experience teaches another. Shah considers the tales an
ideal way to communicate with the West. “One way we use
them is as a sort of test,” he said.



“For instance, we often use the old Sufi tale of the sands. A
little river has to cross a desert, you see, and it runs into the
sand. It finds it’s becoming a marsh. So the wind says to it,
‘Come with me and I will carry you over the desert.’ But
the little river says, ‘No, no, I can’t! I’ll lose my identity! I
refuse to be turned into water vapor!’ So the wind says,
‘Well, all right. But look at you. You’re becoming a marsh.
You have to decide whether you wish to become a marsh or
become water vapor.’


"So after a great deal of consideration the river finally yields
up to he wind, which carries it into the high mountains and
drops it in the form of rain, whereafter it continues as a
river.


“Now when you tell this tale, some people – crude,
barbaric types – see it as a sort of commercial. The guru is
asking his disciples to surrender themselves to him and he
will carry them safely over the marsh, which is death or
some other condition in which they are going to stagnate or
putrefy. Other people react in a quite different way. They
say, ‘Oh, isn’t that a beautiful story! And they talk about
nature and the transposition of substances and ecology and
so on. 


“People who don’t react in either of these ways can
then use the story for further training of their hemispheres,
as it were. They don’t have the hang-up that they think 
you are trying to convince them of something, or that they desperately 
want to be convinced. “What makes it very
difficult in dealing with these stories is that people want to know, ‘Is it 
a test or is it a teaching?’ and ‘How am I supposed to react
to it?’ ‘At what point does it become perceptible to me
what it really means?’ Which is rather like saying, ‘Is a 
house for eating in or sleeping in or blowing up?’ 
It’s all those things. But the so-called linear mind always wants you to 
‘get to the point.’ A great deal of Sufism involves learning 
not in the sequence the Western mind expects to learn it. 
That is not acceptable to the sequential thinker who is 
incapable of thinking in any other way.” 



The value of these tales is often misunderstood, Shah said.
Like Christ’s parables, they are designed to enable the listener to 
hold in his mind a kind of structure to which he can relate philosophical or other considerations.



“That’s why there are two men and a dancing bear, or two
mysterious dervishes,” Shah says. Because the stories are
often funny, they are regarded as slight or insignificant by
scholars – “It is not my discovery alone that academics do
not encourage humor in what they take to be serious areas.”
In fact, they are the very core of Sufi teaching.



“The Sufi people,” Shah explains, “have been held in very
great esteem while armed with these stories and using them
all the time for nearly a thousand years. They have built
them into some of the great classics of the least. They are
universally revered as classics. Some of these people have
been people of great gravity, great mystical attainments and
great discoverers of scientific things – the very flower of
various civilizations. It hardly seems likely when you
approach it rationally that such people would have gone to
such lengths to prepare and maintain these stories, even
building them into major facets of their thought, if they
were a sideline, something old men in their dotage
mumbled to each other. The stories are an integral part of
Sufi teaching. If the Sufis are to be respected – as they
enormously are – then surely one of their major teaching
instruments must be given some consideration in the light
of their status and achievements.”



The role of the teacher in Sufism is also often
misinterpreted. “There is no Sufism without a teacher,”
Shah has written. But the teaching role is quite different
from that of the gurus in other sects whose antics Shah
dismisses as filled with “chanting, ritual and
phantasmagoria.” “A teacher is someone who is able to
connect instructionally with you,” Shah says. “He need not
be physically present. You don’t even have to know him.
He doesn’t have to have a white beard and sandals. In a
sense, a teacher need not even be a person. 


“I was once walking with a group of people including 
a spiritual teacher, and someone asked him, 
‘What is a guru?’ And he pointed to a stone in the road 
and said, ‘Look, if I fall over that stone and I learn from
that event to look where I’m going that stone is my guru.’
The teaching role should be an instrument, not an 
opportunity for theater, not a source of self-gratification.



A Sufi teacher does what he can to produce what he has to.
He teaches what he can in a way students can learn it. “We
see teaching as a system of interaction. In the ordinary
course of events, people persist in certain courses to
achieve something. Sometimes they learn by experience
that they can’t do it. They find they can’t climb the wall, so
they have to adjust. Should I get a ladder? Is it worth
climbing? Are there other ways to get over it? By the
interplay of themselves and the wall and their knowledge
and experience, they learn. 



“A lot of people in esoteric circles, that is, philosophical
and psychological circles, ignore this fact. They tend to
look for a sort of Eureka! system, a golden key. They 
look at our stories, for example, for what mysterious 
depths and teachings are in them, or for what golden 
key they might be able to worry out of them, in spite 
of the fact that the stories themselves often illustrate 
the interplay between the people and their experience 
and the teacher or the circumstances, which is
very similar to the person trying to climb the wall.



“There’s an old Sufi story about a young man who set off
to receive illumination from an old teacher who lived in a
remote cave on the top of a mountain. He was an old man
with a long white beard dressed in a white shroud, a sort of
hermit. When the young man, after great privation and
enormous difficulties, reached that cave and almost
collapsed in front of him, he said, ‘I have come all this
way, and had all this trouble, and I want you to teach me
illumination.’ But the old man said, ‘Certainly not.’ The
young fellow begged and begged, but the old man simply
said, ‘No, I can’t teach you that.’ Finally, the old man said,
‘Go.’ 


“So the young man went back down the mountain
track. Almost at the bottom, he looked back and saw a
white figure and he realized that the old man was
beckoning to him! So he made his way back up, thinking,
‘Ah, he’s going to teach me, after all,’ and so he went up
and up until he arrived back outside the cave. The old man
was sitting there and he pointed his finger at the young
man, and said, ‘And another thing. Don’t you ever come
back, bothering me like that again!’



“Now that’s a joke, a sort of shaggy-dog story, but the
teaching moral is that the young man was treating the old
man like an employee. He had gone all that way, but he
was acting like the old man was a machine – you put
something in, and got something out.
He said, 'Teach me to be illuminated.’ He did not say, ‘I
want to learn whatever you have to teach me.’ Teaching,
you see, is a matter of interchange between a willing
learner and a willing teacher. 



“There is another story which illustrates how 
one must learn by indirect methods. There
was a merchant in Persia who was to travel to India. Before
he left, he said to his pet parrot, ‘I am going to India and I
may see some of your relatives there. Is there any message
which you wish me to convey to them?’ The parrot thought
and then he said, 'Tell them that I am well, but that I live in
a cage in a house.’ 


“When the merchant returned, the parrot said, 
‘Did you see my relatives?’ And the merchant replied,
‘I did, but I am afraid they are not well. When I gave one of
them your message, he collapsed and fell to the ground.’
When the merchant said this, the parrot also collapsed and
fell to the floor of the cage.
Whereupon the merchant in great alarm picked up the bird
and carried him to the window to get air. The parrot
immediately recovered, flew out the window and escaped.



“You see, it is a model of indirect learning. The message
that was communicated to the parrot was, ‘Collapse and
pretend to be dead, and you can escape.’



"There are other messages within it. I was told this story
recently by a person who was studying with a professed
Sufi teacher. He asked me the meaning of the story. I
usually dislike to discuss such meanings preferring that
each person discover them for himself. In that case, it
seemed to me that meaning was clear, ‘Your teacher may
have to do something to you to release you from bondage
to him.’”



 As in yoga, the Sufis believe there are internal
“centers of perception” that can be utilized to help heighten
the powers of the mind. There are five such “purity spots”
that do not have a physical location in the sense of
acupuncture points but that can be visualized for the
purpose of transcending normal receptivity. Through a
series of concentration exercises, a Sufi may be able to fix
his attention on these spots as a means of enabling the mind
to move to a higher plane. “But these cannot be attempted
by anybody,” Shah says. “This is the method of which
there is 1 percent operation, and 99 percent preparation. It
is one of the most advanced of all techniques. It could take
you 30 years to get to the point where you could do it and it
might be over in 30 minutes. 



“It’s like the simple dervish dance. It’s an incredibly 
sophisticated instrument which can only happen at 
certain times and under certain circumstances. To 
try to make it theater, as it is sometimes done, is itself 
diagnostic of the inability of the person to
understand its role. It disables him completely from what is
happening.”



For Shah, the task of bringing the Sufi message to the West
remains formidable. All too many presumably intelligent
persons remain defensive about their thought processes,
unwilling to re-examine themselves to see if a situation
might be viewed in a different way. “All we really ask is
that they detach themselves from their sophisticated
analytical minds to just a second,” Shah says. “We’re not
going to cripple them, we’re not going to harm them, we
just ask them to let go. After all, if you’re listening to
music, you’re not constantly tearing it apart in your mind.
It’s a protected situation. The same with our materials. If
you don’t try to be too clever and think about what they
might mean, instead of what they must mean, you can gain
something from them. It’s not necessary to be perfectly
secure in order to learn. In fact, the ‘secure’ people seemed
to be the most nervous.”