Diseases of Learning
Barriers to Understanding (cont'd.)
7. Concentration upon far too few principles.
Almost everyone alive has been reared within a social system
which powerfully emphasises certain virtues and vices, and also
leaves many important attitudes unexamined.
It is usual, for instance, for people to teach that greed is a
bad thing; while blithely ignoring the demonstrable fact that
greed for supposedly good things (say greed for knowledge or
for sanctity) is still greed. And yet, of course, it is the greed
itself which damages the person, not what it is supposedly trying
to do.
The result of ignoring the fact that certain attitudes are harmful
is that these postures, such as greed, continue to take effect, to
influence the individual, to prevent his learning or progressing.
The teacher is able to observe the working of such subjective
attitudes, and to help to correct them. When he sees the
manifestation of harmful but unobserved subjectivities, he is able
to prescribe for them.
You can observe for yourself how strong is, for instance, the
vanity of people who are believed to be humble.
The eluding of one's own censorship or discipline by the
wayward characteristic is sometimes likened to the escape, from
one part of the mind to another, of a malefactor.
Hence the following joke has an illustrative use:
'In the Land of Fools, a miscreant was tracked down to
a theatre. The police immediately sealed all exits.
Unfortunately the man escaped through one of the
entrances.'
8. Difficulties of trying to learn by oneself.
People vary in their ability to put this kind of information
into practice. Some can do so at once, others cannot do so at
all. By far the largest number of people need a great deal of
teaching, and this has to be done by someone who can see where
the student actually is from time to time.
Highlighting the difficulty of the ordinary individual to
prescribe for his own learning is the joke of the man who knew
what he needed, but was unable to provide a solution which
would really work. The predicament is, of course, emphasised
by transposing the problem into a context where anyone can
observe its absurdity:
A man from the Land of Fools bought a washing-line to
send his mother for her birthday. He was unable to post
it to her, however, as he could find nobody who stocked
an envelope measuring one inch by thirty feet!
9. Self-appointed groups.
If self-teaching has its severe limitations, the establishment
of groups often leads to even more bizarre results. The reason
for this is that the leaders of these groups, although frequently
full of good intentions, lack the necessary expertise. Skill in
'running a group' is not a substitute for the perception of the
spiritual condition of the group and of all its members, constantly
monitored.
The Sufi teacher, like any other specialist, can see the
shortcomings of the supposed teacher, the individuals and the
group in a way that they cannot. His position is like that of
the man who knows what a screw is, observing how the
Foolslanders try to fix one into a plank.
They manage to work out what the screw is, and how
it holds something to a plank. They realise that it has to
be turned, and they devise their method.
The result is that one man holds the screw, while a dozen
others try to rotate the plank to get the screw into it. And,
of course, all these people get in one another's way.
This 'joke' also emphasises that, in schools of the kind which
the people of the Land of Fools are trying to imitate, not
everyone is employed all of the time. The analogy would be
that one man would get a screwdriver (missing from the Fools'
calculations) and would drive the screw home. Then everyone
would profit from the resulting table or whatever is being
made . . .
10. Inability to assess the needs of the learner.
Another anecdote in this series about social groups which lack
the equivalent of technical knowledge, is concerned with missed
opportunities.
One of the saddest things about self-appointed esoteric groups
is that there is a point at which the group and its members might
reach a certain understanding of what they are doing — and
that that point is almost always missed because there is no
awareness of what to do: and when and where.
People continue to try to perform rituals and exercises, or
to read literature, and so on, when they should be trying to
do or to be something else. This is often because they are in
fact pessimists: imagining, subconsciously, that they cannot reach
any higher, and should therefore play about with minor and
elementary stages of study. And these become games.
This situation is frequently seen, and it is dramatically obvious
to those who have been accustomed to working with people
who have been given the information that there is a flexible
and ever-changing context to higher studies.
It is well illustrated by the tale of the employer who said
to a workman who arrived back from a job very late:
'Do you realise,' he said, 'that it is 1800 hours?'
'It may well be,' said the other man, 'but my watch only
goes up to 12.'
11. Turning back.
There is no doubt that certain useful kinds of experience and
understanding can be acquired by being in a study group. The
value of the group will, however, disappear very soon after its
most elementary potential is exhausted. This is why people who
join groups gain the impression that there is something for them
there. There is. But what they do not realise, in general, is that
this potential is rapidly exhausted without continuing insight
by the direction of the group.
The consequence is that many former members of groups
either abandon them or try to form their own schools, seeking
the teaching which, in the nature of things, they cannot find
by such, a method.
The world is full of people who have turned back from higher
studies of the mind because they have not made enough
progress.
They imagine that they have gained enough or else that they
have gained nothing because there is nothing to gain.
Once more, the observer who has experience of such things
can see both the difficulty and the limitations in understanding
of these people, while they in general have no perception of
their situation at all.
They can be seen, from the objective viewpoint, to be in
the position of the man who decided to walk to his home,
25 kilometres from his work. When he had gone halfway,
he was tired: so he walked the whole way back.
12. Mixing various teachings.
At almost any stage, people try to mix the ideas and activities
of various teachings, according to what appears to suit them.
The consequence is never effective. You may produce something
attractive by this method, but never anything which works.
Remember the story of the man who dug a hole and then
decided that the earth which he had brought up was untidy:
so he burrowed into the ground again to make a hole to
dispose of the earth . . .
13. Transposition of relevances.
One of the worst results of mixing various teachings is when
the relevance of a teaching activity is transferred: producing
entertainment but removing the effect. When Jalaluddin Rumi's
'whirling' exercises, designed, according to his own words, to
stir up the feelings of certain thick-headed people of Asia Minor,
became 'holy movements', their real effect was lost.
A modern story which pinpoints this tendency is the one of
the man who bought a clock which gained, instead of one which
kept correct time.
'Why have a clock which shows an hour extra every halfhour?'
someone asked him.
'Don't you understand? It's doing 50% more in the same
time as yours!'
14. The fourteenth observation in this series really subsumes
the whole list. It is the need to abandon the assumption that
humour is out of place in serious matters. Such an assumption
is just as foolish as to decide that one should roar with laughter
all the time.
But, of course, people who believe either of these things are
not in need of entertainment, for they have it in their fantasies;
or education, as they are almost insusceptible to it. They do,
however, need normalising - by whoever has the capacity to
help them in that direction.
-- Idries Shah, Knowing How to Know, p. 276-285
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