It was as recently as 1964 that Idries Shah's The Sufis appeared. It
was evident that with this new classic on the subject, there had
emerged the Exemplar who from time to time comes forward to
offer the Sufi Way in new forms that fit modern needs. For Sufism
is not the study of the past, or the worship of medieval saints; it is
always, has ever been, evolutionary in spirit and action. The great
Sufi classics of the Middle East, for instance, were once abrasively
original, with new insights and information that shocked the
hidebound.
Idries Shah has offered us many books, as many-faceted as
Sufism has to be, from the re-issue of these classics, to jokes from
the Nasrudin corpus, to printed university lectures, to traditional
stories retold in fresh and sharpened language. Learning How to
Learn, and others that Shah is writing now, in a modern format,
pioneer where we, in our time, face the biggest challenges: human
nature itself, how to understand our behaviour and our organisations and our cultures. Shah significantly calls anthropology and psychology the infant sciences; for he holds that we have hardly begun to use these tools.
It is now a commonplace that in the higher reaches of physics
the same language and concepts as in traditional mysticism are
used; but this common ground, this frontier, extends to include
the new original thinking in psychology, anthropology, the
religions, esotericism. Shah would like to aid this confluence.
Specifically, he is offering the Sufic viewpoint, and-more than
that-making available a stock of knowledge, of information. In
our lifetime we shall see-are already beginning to see-our
scientists, usually the younger ones, because of their greater
flexibility, approaching Shah with the question: What do you
have in your possession, as part of your tradition, that we modern
researchers may use, that we may have overlooked or perhaps
don't even suspect exists? I have seen this happen: a simple
question opening up a new field.
Is it not worth our while to consider how it can have come about
that what amounts to a treasure house of information, the results
of centuries of research and skilled practice, can have existed so
long without us being able to concede that it might be there? I am
not talking about "the secrets of the East," conceived of as
something between Shamanism and tea-table spiritualism-what
Shah dismissed as "spills, thrills and chills." There have always
been travellers to the mystic East. "Tell me, Master, what is the
Secret?" "Oh, you want a Secret, dear child, is that it? Well, stand
on your head for a week, and chant this mantra . . ." But those of
us who have tried to approach Sufism through what is offered to
us in the West seem nearly always to have gone through
something like that, and had to outgrow it: it is how we have been
conditioned to think. What we find in the East is not the
glamorous and the mystic but an approach to humanity, both as
individuals and as an organic unity, that goes far beyond our own
sciences, in conception and achievement-in sophistication.
How has this come about?
For one thing, perhaps the culture we inhabit is not the
advanced, open-minded culture we believe it is. Outsiders, who
have always been valuable in providing insights into societies,
although they are always resisted at first, judge us differently.
We are judged as being fettered, and in many ways. We easily
talk now of Western arrogance: we begin to know we are insular.
But it is a slow business, for we have to contend, in the case of the
Middle East and Central Asia, with the implanted results of
hundreds of years of suspicion of the dreaded Saracen. This has
had, still has, stultifying effects on our culture, from ignorance
and bigotry about Islam, to something like this: that the symbols
for the planets in astrology-- Mars, Venus, Mercury and the
rest-are no more than Arabic letters, easily recognisable as such
to those who know Arabic. Yet we ascribe to them amazing
origins. A tiny example, even an absurd one, of an enormous
unmapped area. But why is it not being researched?
We may go on murmuring about Western complacency, but it
is another thing actually to face it. Shah instances our belief that w
in the West pioneered certain psychological ideas. But the
"discoveries" of Freud and Jung are to be found in Al Ghazzali and
Ibn El Arabi, who died in the twelfth century, and in other great
thinkers of the time. (Jung acknowledged his debt to the East. Is it
not remarkable that his disciples are not curious about what else
there might be?) Al Ghazzali wrote extensively about condition-
ing: then, as now, Sufi teachers were concerned about freeing
people from social and religious indoctrinations. What happened
to all that expertise? It was used. It became the property of doctors
of the mind, of the soul, of the body; it has been built on,
developed ... But we, in the West, have been cut off from it-are
still cut off from it, and will be until we are prepared to think hard
about our own mental sets.
Another instance: we tell ourselves about our infinitely various
and rich language. But the fact is that English is impoverished; it
lacks words and concepts we need. Any writer who has tried to
describe certain processes and experiences has come up against it:
the absence of words. There are ways around it-analogy is
one-but the problem remains. A handful of pitiful and worn
terms-unconscious, soul, spirit, collective unconscious, super-
mind, ego, super-ego, id, paranormal, ESP, super-nature-and
suddenly, very soon, you've run into the sand. You cannot use
these words for fresh experiences, new ideas, because each is
loaded with unwanted associations. But other languages are not so
barren; their words are not so overloaded. No, this is not an essay
in disparagement of English, or in admiration of other tongues,
for the sake of it, but a plea for recognition: if there is a desperate
and urgent need for something, that need may be met. I hope so.
Meanwhile, it is hard going. I am not a linguist, to put it mildly,
but my tiniest acquaintance with Persian, for example, shows our
own dreadful deprivation. But that is the language of a culture
where certain kinds of spirituality were in active operation for
hundreds of years. (The appearance of a manic bigot like
Khomeini doesn't take that away.) Friends who study "primitive"
cultures and know the language of American Indians, or certain
African societies, say that these, too, are well supplied with
concepts that we lack. Our language is probably the best of tools
for technical processes, as long as technical processes are still
conceived of as being restricted to the mechanical, but when they
impinge on the frontiers of the mind ...
And there is another, Himalayan block, which we scarcely
consider. It is that for 2,000 years the West has been under a most
terrible tyranny, the Christian religion. (I am aware that at this
point readers are sighing, thinking vaguely, "How very
nineteenth century.") But it was, historically speaking, an
extremely short time ago. I have met people wh o came into
conflict with the churches, when all they wanted was to opt out of
certainties and dogma into agnosticism. Wives and husbands left
them, they lost jobs, were socially ostracised, were cast off from
families-and went to the colonies. There I met them, as a child.
Now the churches have a benevolent, harmless aspect, half social
agency, half genial bully; they cajole people into thinking that they
really have to be born again, or belong to something or other. But
for 2,000 years we were kept in a mental straitjacket, and even the
most limited rebellion was horribly punished. Luther's was
limited. He said, I insist on the right to talk with God directly,
without the mediation of the church. He did not say, For many
thousands of years there have been people in this world who have
had the techniques, the information, to enable those with
sufficient preparation to make use of these tools, to achieve states
of mind, or of spirit,that thelchurches know'nothing about. (Butiat
this point I have to make it clear that Sufism respects all religions,
saying that the Truth is at the core of each. It is the tyrant,
benevolent or wicked, who has to be exposed.) What I would like
to know is this: how is it that, understanding that our culture has
had two millennia of a certain kind of indoctrination, we, our
scientists, are not researching the effects on our mental processes?
For these effects are there: once you begin thinking on these lines,
they are very evident. It is as if the ban, the ukase, the no of the
churches into thinking about, for instance, what Jesus and his
associates were really thinking (for the Sufis claim Jesus as one of
the real Teachers of mankind, whose message has been obliterated
by institutions) had been absorbed into the very stuff of our minds,
making it impossible for us to look in certain directions.
And this no can operate in the minds of scientists as strongly as
in anyone's.
What I am sketchily, inadequately, outlining here is a whole
series of blocks and impediments that amount to a mental prison.
Well, the Sufis say we live in such a prison, and it is their concern
to give us the equipment to free ourselves. We are all conditioned, as we now claim so easily and trippingly; but perhaps being able to
say that is not enough to enable us to see how.
If we want to approach the Sufis, their ways of looking at life, at some point it is necessary to swallow the unpalatable fact that they think of us as backward, barbarian, ill-equipped, ill-informed,
and primitive, with closed minds in areas where it is vital to our
futures that we open them.
Meanwhile Shah most patiently answers the questions he has
been asked, waiting and hoping for questions that are more
educated, more sophisticated, based on better information and
self-understanding.
He gets thousands of letters from everywhere, for he is not a
Western more than an Eastern figure, and people from Afghanistan to California ask about the Sufi Way. From these questions and answers he has compiled this book, which is so full of useful viewpoints and information that I cannot do more than draw attention to ideas that may be found profitable starting points.
Attention. Shah devotes a full section to it, so important does he
consider it, and so indifferent are we to it. In our society we are not
taught about attention as a need, as fundamental as food; and we
go blundering about, seeking ways to assuage the craving, instead
of learning how to provide ourselves with what we need, sensibly
and calmly. We feed the hunger blindly, telling ourselves we are
seeking God or Love or Service; and we are not taught to
recognise the drive in others, and how we are used and
manipulated by them. Once the mechanism is brought to our
attention and we begin to study it, it is as if a veil had been stripped
off ordinary life, and we become freer in our actions, our choices.
Knowledge. "God," as a commodity. Conditioned to the
commercial, to having, wanting, trading, buying, selling, we
treat everything in this way, including what Shah has to offer. But
"higher knowledge" is not a commodity, to be bought and sold.
The uses of literature. Here Shah is revolutionary. The Sufis
know and use dozens of techniques, while we believe there is one.
Our teaching in schools and colleges is based on simplistic ideas
that take no account of the variations from hour to hour of the
human mind. We Westerners demand a standardised product,
says Shah: it is what we prize. But the standardised and mass-
produced is not what interests him or his associates, who teach
individuals, in individual ways.
The human group- its dynamics. Psychologists are indeed
studying this subject, so vital to our society, and to all our
associations. Shah has a good deal to contribute: the human group
is what the Sufis work with, and their sophistication goes beyond
anything we approach.
Emotionalism. Shah does not hesitate to make the claim,
infuriating to religionists everywhere, that nearly all we claim as
"religion," as "higher feelings," as "mystical experience," is no
more than emotionalism. We are taught that there are emotions
and intellect, but not that there is something else possible, beyond
both and not to be confused with either.
Exposing delusions.
Using religions, cults, sects, "God," to satisfy power drives, the
need for togetherness, to provide substitutes for the family, sex.
How to recognise false teachers and self-appointed Sufis.
They proliferate, and delude unfortunate people who could be
saved from them by the use of a little logical thought and some
common sense.
Many words and concepts have fallen out of real use. Reading
this book, we are forced to recognise that in our scientifically-
oriented, materialistic culture, words like humility, pride, greed,
love, idolatry, charity, tend to be disposed of into areas labellad
"religion" or "ethics." Shah rescues them, strips them of
sentiment and vague emotion, and re-introduces them-as tools.
Abjure the why and seek the how, as one Sufi, the explorer
Richard Burton, put it. Well, this book is about how we, indi-
vidually and collectively, may learn to look at ourselves and our
institutions differently. And if what we are being taught is unex-
pected and sometimes disconcerting, then that is in the great
tradition too.
DORIS LESSING
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