Transformation

Excerpt from "The Emergence of Mankind from the Chrysalis"
by Leonard Lewin (1971)
Preface to The Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West:
An Anthology of New Writings By and About Idries Shah
Edited by Leonard Lewin
Keysign Press, Boulder, Colorado (1972)



The Institute for Research on the Dissemination
of Human Knowledge (IRDHK) is a non-profit corporation
founded for the purpose of advancing public
education and information in certain selected areas,
with the aim of stimulating a wholesome forward
movement in the development of both the individual
and the local society in which he operates, and of
which he forms an integral part.

The 'knowledge' referred to is contained both in
the products of current Western thought, particularly
in the fields of sociology and behaviorism; and also
in the so-called ancient wisdoms, often, but quite
erroneously, associated only with Eastern
philosophies. Since the central core of this wisdom
is experiential rather than informational, the ways
in which it can be transmitted and presented depend
essentially on a particular form of human contact
and involvement; though some aspects of it can be
written down and transmitted in literary forms.

This written material, now available, has been
revealed for the first time in the West only in the
last few years and stems from the pen of Idries
Shah, Director of Studies of the Institute for Cultural
Research, a learned society in England. The
material, much of it in the form of stories (superficially
resembling parables) is valuable reading, 
not only as entertainment, but primarily because,
encoded in narrative form, it embodies the essential
wisdoms which constitute a part of the priceless
cultural heritage of all mankind.

In the incredibly complicated and ever more rapidly
changing setting which is today's world, many
traditional values are now seriously under challenge,
while new ones vie for support.

To most observers it is far from clear what it is that
is taking place; what fresh patterns of human thought
and activity may be emerging from the matrix of
mankind's vast evolutionary past.

When the present upheaval which is beginning to
manifest in social and cultural unrest, both national
and international, has finally disclosed the true nature
of the world of tomorrow, we can all then participate
in that knowledge of the further evolution of
the human state. But meanwhile, in the present uncertainty
and confusion, many must be asking such
questions as, 'What really is happening?' or, 'What
does it all really mean?' or just, 'Where do we go
from here?'

To answer such questions when in the midst of it
all is not easy if only because, preoccupied in day-to-day
details, one cannot readily discern the wood
for the trees. The familiar can be a bridge to the
unfamiliar. Sometimes a well-chosen analogy can
be used to enable one to stand back, as it were, and
survey the scene from a greater distance. The appropriateness
of any such analogies can then be assessed
by the insights that they ultimately bring;
and this is indeed the only valid criterion to apply
since, after all, this is precisely what they were
introduced to accomplish.

Here, then, is one such:

Transformation. What does the caterpillar know
of the destiny of the butterfly? The caterpillar eats
and eats and eats, and grows and grows, molting its
skin a number of times, until, under the influence
mainly of internal factors (themselves the product
of external factors via evolutionary forces acting
over a long period of time), the caterpillar changes
its mode of living and turns into an apparently quiescent
chrysalis. Again under the influence of internal
and external factors, the contents of the
chrysalis are transformed and restructured until a
butterfly, long latent within, begins to take form.

Shortly before emergence its outline can be clearly
seen inside the pupal case. At last it breaks
through the protective casing (provided the latter
has not hardened to excess to form a prison's
walls) and the mature insect emerges to fulfill its
destiny.

A butterfly does not look at all like a caterpillar,
yet it is, in some sense, the inevitable eventual
form that it must take.

Mankind is now preparing to emerge from the
chrysalis. Not his physical form, but the quality
of his consciousness is about to undergo a transformation
to a new condition long latent within. The
protective casing which must be breached is a mental
prison-shell compounded of vanity, self-love,
self-deceit, greed, mental arrogance, prejudice,
selfishness, and years and years and years of conditioning.

In all cultures, and at all times, a few, a very
few, individuals have been able to free themselves,
and have helped others also to escape. Now this
opportunity is being made available to all who are
able to perceive its reality. The social turmoil of
our times can be seen as an external manifestation
of this process.

The analogy to the caterpillar's transformation
is a weak one because it is too superficial. The purpose
of the description was to help guide the imagination
in a realistic and constructive way. But the
mind is much more complex than this. Most of its
operation is beyond the reach of consciousness. An
analogy, to be fully effective, must relate also to
those deeper levels. This is the function of the so-called
Teaching Story, whose inner structure relates
simultaneously to the different levels of the
individual's mental organization.

Like a formula in, say, physics or chemistry, it
relates different variables in a way which quite
precisely corresponds to the way these things are related
in actuality. And, also like the formula, it
requires a correct practical setting to reveal the
full nature of the reality which, compactly encoded
in symbolic form, resides latent within the pattern
of its structure.

It should, perhaps, be emphasized that these
creations are highly ingenious and sophisticated
works of art, though their true character is never
perceived in its entirety at first glance. They have
to be 'lived' with, and 'worked' with, in order to reveal
their secrets: as is indeed the case with, for
example, the equations of physics -- who would have
suspected that so simple a relation as Einstein's
famous energy relation e = mc2 could underpin anything
so dramatic as, say, the tremendous release of
atomic energy with which we are now so familiar?
And so it is with the constructions called Teaching
Stories...


'What is done for you -- allow it to be done.
What you must do yourself -- make sure you do it.'*


* Idries Shah, The Way of the Sufi.