Orientation Points

from Knowing How to Know, by Idries Shah
 (published posthumously in 1998)

Summary of Orientation Points


In order for a study to be launched and its performance
maintained, it is necessary that facts which inhibit or prevent
the development of the study be thoroughly known. All over
the world, at all times, people have been carrying out studies
in philosophy, metaphysics, religion, without realising that the
materials which they study, the way in which they study them,
and the factors which influence individuals and groups must
be understood in a certain manner. Here are some brief remarks
on this subject:


1. People behave in certain ways due to their cultural,
national and psychological background. This behaviour
colours their whole being. Not knowing this, they
attribute naturally-arising reactions to the 'teaching.' See
Silent Language, Edward Hall.


2. People organise themselves into groups without realising
that group organisation can be fatal to learning. Certain
types of group exist only for the group, although the
members do not know it. Groups can actually become
'religious' even though no religion is being studied.
Study Human Groups, WJ.H. Sprott, for popularised
material on this.


3. Random or systematised study of certain ideas is next
to useless. It is one thing to have an open mind; it is
another to think that one can choose the materials which
one should study when one is not aware of the special
circumstances of study needed and the special personnel
of a group needed for special studies. See Shah: The Study
of Sufism in the West*.


4. Many 'teachings' and ideas come to their students
strongly influenced by local cultural modes of
expression. Unless this is known, and steps are taken
to combat this, the result tends to be indoctrination with
superficial and worse characteristics of the vehicle of the
teaching. See: Afghanistan, by Peter King.


5. People take 'ideas' which were intended to be
'prescribed' for specific situations and groups to enable
them to learn. These they imagine are 'laws' or perennial
truths. The result is a mechanical system which is next
to useless. See: The Teachers of Gurdjieff by Rafael Lefort.


6. People study a man and his work through doctrines and
personality conceptions which do not apply to that man
or that work. They get lost in this enterprise. See: Rumi
the Persian, Reza Arasteh.



*Part I: The Way of the Sufi by Idries Shah (Octagon Press Ltd., London).




--from Knowing How To Know, p. 119-120