The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin
The appeal of Nasrudin is as universal and timeless as the
truths he illustrates. His stories are read by children, by scientists and
scholars, and by followers of philosophy. Idries Shah assembled this collection
of Nasrudin’s trials and tribulations from ancient manuscripts and oral
literature, from sources in North Africa and Turkey, the Middle East and Central
Asia. Many were known to the great Sufi masters, Rumi, Jami, and Attar the
chemist.
Read the full text of THE PLEASANTRIES OF THE INCREDIBLE MULLA NASRUDIN
Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks
will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.
The Way of the Sufi
The Way of the Sufi presents an unparalleled cross-section
of material from Sufi schools, teachings and classical writings, as a basic
course of Sufi study.
The author begins with the outward aspects of the teaching most likely to
puzzle the student coming fresh to the subject.
He considers various attitudes to Sufi ideas, and evidence of their
absorption into medieval Christianity, Hinduism, Jewish mysticism and modern
philosophical teachings.
The greater part of the book illuminates aspects of Sufi activity and
practice relevant to the contemporary world.
Read the full text of THE WAY OF THE SUFI
Caravan of Dreams
Caravan of Dreams distills the essence of Eastern thought
in a feast of stories, sayings, poems and allegories, collected by one of the
world’s leading experts in Oriental philosophy. Idries Shah builds up a complete
picture of a single consciousness, relating mythology to reality, illuminating
historical patterns, and presenting philosophical legends in this unique
anthology.
Its title is inspired from the couplet written by the Sufi mystic
Bahaudin:
‘Here we are, all of us: in a dream-caravan,
A caravan, but a dream –
a dream, but a caravan.
And we know which are the dreams.
Therein lies the
hope.’
Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks will soon
be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.
Tales of the Dervishes
Although enormously attractive as sheer entertainment,
Dervish tales were never presented merely on the level of a fable, legend or
folklore. They stand comparison in wit, construction and piquancy with the
finest stories of any culture, yet their true function as Sufi teaching stories
is so little-known in the modern world, that no technical or popular terms exist
to describe them. The material in Tales of the Dervishes is the result of a
thousand years of development, during which Dervish masters used these and other
teaching stories to instruct their disciples. The tales are held to convey
powers of increasing perception unknown to the ordinary man.
Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks
will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.
The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin
Mulla Nasrudin, the wise fool of Eastern folklore, holds a
special place in Sufi studies. The Sufis, who believe that deep intuition is the
only real guide to knowledge, use the humorous stories of Nasrudin’s adventures
almost like exercises.
They ask people to choose a few which especially appeal to them, and turn
them over in their mind, making them their own.
Sufi teaching masters say that in this way a breakthrough into a higher
wisdom can be effected. A single story can work on many levels, from great
humour to initiating profound thought.
Read the full text of THE EXPLOITS OF THE INCOMPARABLE MULLA NASRUDIN
Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks
will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.
The Sufis
‘Perhaps the best introduction to the body of Shah’s
work, the most comprehensively informative. And one is immediately forced to use
one’s mind in a new way.’
- The New York Times
When it first appeared in 1964, The Sufis was welcomed as the decisive work
on the subject: rich in scope, clearly explaining the traditions and philosophy
of the Sufis to a Western audience for the first time.
In the four decades since its release, the book has been translated into more
than a dozen languages, and has found a wide readership in both East and
West.
It is used as a text in scores of leading universities around the world, and
the material contained within it has been applied by psychologists and
physicists, by school teachers, lawyers, social workers, and by ordinary members
of the public.
Ted Hughes wrote of it: ‘An astonishing book. The Sufis must be the
biggest society of sensible men on earth’; and Nobel laureate Doris Lessing
said of it: ‘I had waited my entire life to read this book.’
Read the full text of the THE SUFIS.
Printed copies are available from The Octagon Press and ebooks
will soon be available for Kindle and other ebook readers.
News from The Idries Shah Foundation:
In collaboration with The Octagon Press and the Estate of Idries Shah, The Foundation will be making all the published works of Idries Shah available online as eBooks.
In addition, an archive devoted to Shah's work and life will be put online, including video and audio material.
A further project will continue to ensure that Idries Shah's corpus of work is published in both Oriental and Occidental languages.
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We are planning to put online material of interest to readers of Shah’s work.
Before his death in November 1996, Shah made it known that the large body of work he published during his lifetime formed a course within itself.
This work, he said, was to be regarded as his successor.
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Idries Shah devoted his life to collecting, selecting and translating key works of Eastern Sufi classical literature, adapting them to the needs of the West and disseminating them in the Occident.
Called by some ‘practical philosophy’, by others ‘templates in straight thinking’ – these works represent centuries of Sufi thought aimed at the development of human potential to its fullest extent.
They stress virtues such as commonsense, clear-thinking and humour to counter cant and religious dogma.
As such they may be viewed as an antidote to radicalism and fanaticism much needed in the world today.
The Idries Shah Foundation exists to make sure that these works remain available to the public – both in the East and in the West.
Visit http://www.idriesshahfoundation.org/
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"We have done all we can to embody as much of the teachership function as we can in the literature itself which we have published, largely we have been able to do this by excluding a lot of extraneous and external accretions ...
"We have been able to reconstitute the emphasis of the stories, so instead of their being instruments only to make you think how great the spiritual master is and how nothing you are, and how wonderful the possibilities of the situation are, we have retrieved the dynamic of the stories in order to show aside from those things what is possible ... what is called in some disciplines enlightenment, can be in the Sufi process, the result of the falling into place of a large number of small impacts and perceptions (from these stories and one's own experiences) producing insights when the individual is ready for them.
"We view Sufism not as an ideology that molds people to the right way of belief or action, but as an art or science that can exert a beneficial influence on individuals and societies, in accordance with the needs of those individuals and societies ... Sufi study and development gives one capacities one did not have before."
-- Idries Shah, 1976, from the lecture entitled 'Learning from Stories.'
