Travels & Residence with Dervishes

by Omar Michael Burke

In two long accounts, the author describes how he makes contact

with dervish organisations and individuals, visiting and residing in

a number of places, in Asia and Africa.

His first contact is Akhund Mirza, in Pakistan, who befriends him

and takes him on a visit to a dervish centre in Baluchistan, known as

Kunj-i-Zagh (Raven's Corner).

Definition of Sufism, the philosophy of the dervishes:

"a way of life said to have been handed down from the remotest

antiquity. Its training was designed to produce the perfected

man - or woman.' In order to achieve this, the Sufi had to go

through a long training. The difference between this teaching

and all other systems was that the Sufi training took place within

the world, and not out of it".

The dervish study centre was reached through a tunnel hewn from

the rock of a hillside. The inhabitants dressed in patchwork cloaks,

indications of their' initiation. Their salutation was 'Yaaa-Hu!'. The

Supreme Guide, head of the community, was called the Murshid ('guided').

The 'monastery' had a shifting population, used both as a retreat and

school. It was known as the Khanqa (lodge, a standard term for such

establishments).

Organisation:

All dervishes are believed to be linked by a force called by them

Baraka ('lightness, special force'). The hierarchy is invisible after the

grade of Guide. The High Mantle of Sufi supremacy belongs to a

descendant of Mohammed the prophet. The form in which the teaching

is presented is always changing.

Practises:

Meditation on a theme set by a teacher in accordance with his

assessment of the student's needs; deep contemplation to increase powers

and abilities; group exercises of which the well-known 'dancing' of the

dervishes is one. Practises include an exercise known as Quiff (Arabic:

'Stop!') using the word 'Hu!'. The litany, called the Zikr (literally,

'repetition') is another practise. There are also healing sessions.

The dervishes help the author to make a visit to Mecca in disguise,

which is reported in some detail in the original text.

The second report deals with a caravan trek and a visit to a dervish

assembly in Tunisia. Sufic doctrines learned by the author en route

include: that life is composed of knowledge (ilm) and action (ami),

the latter being rendered literally as 'work'.

The traveller arrives at Nefta Oasis, where he attends a Zawiya.

This is a dervish centre, the word used being an equivalent of the Persian

Khanqa. In Arabic it literally means 'corner'.

No stranger is received here unless properly sponsored. There is a

meeting, by invitation, with the Sheikh of the Sufi Order here, Sheikh

Arif of Nefta. Among those present are dervishes in hooded robes,

some in patchwork cloaks, one dressed in the red-pink and goldembroidered

robe of an emir (Arabic word, literally 'one who gives the

command') of the Nakshbandi Order. He is of a Central Asian cast

of feature.

A story, which formed part of the day's teaching, is related. The

author learns that through the Baraka (sometimes defined as 'spiritual

force') of the Order 'its members acquired a power known as yakina

(certitude) which was an inner certainty that this or that action was

for the real and ultimate good of mankind'.

Definition of Sufism by the Sheikh:

All religious teachers were Sufis.

Sufism was the source of religion. 'All religion is the butter after

it has been churned. You cannot taste the milk for the butter. We

drink the milk'.

Explanation of the Zikr (repetition):

"The dhikr, it was explained to me, is a dance; or, more properly,

a performance of a series of excercises in unison. The objective is to

produce a state of ritual ecstasy and to accelerate the contact of the

Sufi's mind with the world-mind of which he considers himself to be a

part . . . All dervishes, and not only the followers of Maulana Rumi

(as most Orientalists believe) perform a dance. And a dance is defined

by them as bodily movements linked to a thought and a sound or a

series of sounds. The movements develope the body, the thought

focuses the mind, and the sound fuses the two and orientates them

towards a consciousness of divine contact which is called hal, and means

'state or condition'."

Description of the Zikr at Nefta:

A double circle is formed in the centre of the hall. Dervishes

stand while the Sheikh intones the opening part of this and every similar

ceremony—the calling down of the blessing upon the congregation,

and from the congregation upon the Masters of the 'past, present and

future'. Outside the circle stands Sheikh, drummer and flute-player,

together with two 'callers', the men who call the ryhthm of the dance.

The drum begins to beat, the callers sing a high-pitched, flamenco-type

air. Slowly the concentric circles begin to revolve in opposite directions.

Then the Sheikh calls out Ya Haadi! (O Guide!) and the participants

start to repeat this word. They concentrate upon it, saying it at first

slowly, then faster and faster. Their movements match the repetitions.

Author's account of the rest of the Zikr:

"I noticed that the eyes of some of the dervishes took on a far-away

look, and they started to move jerkily, as if they were puppets. The

circles moved faster and faster, until I (moving in the outer circle) saw

only a whirl of robes, and lost count of time. Now and then, with

a grunt, or a sharp cry, one of the dervishes would drop out of the circle,

and would be led away by an assistant, to lie on the ground in what

seemed to be an hypnotic state. I began to be affected, and found

that although I was not dizzy, my mind was functioning in a very strange

and unfamilar way. The sensation is difficult to describe, and is probably

a complex one. • One feeling was that of a lightening: as if I had no

anxieties, no problems. Another was that I was a part of this moving

circle, and that my individuality was gone, was delightfully merged in

something larger.

Eventually, as the movements continued, I had the sensation that

I must somehow tear myself away. And, oddly enough, as soon as the

thought occurred to me, I found it easy to leave the group. As I stepped

from the circle, I was taken by the elbow by the Sheikh, who looked

at me closely, smiling.

It was only when I started to talk to him that I realised that it was

impossible: the dervishes were producing such a penetrating buzz of

sound that it would have been impossible to hear anything else. I

looked at my watch. Two hours had passed in what seemed but a few

minutes.

I went out into the courtyard to assess my feelings. Something had

happened. In the first place, the moon seemed immensely bright,

and the little glowing lamps seemed surrounded by a whole spectrum of

colours. My mind was working by a system of associations of some

kind: because as soon as I thought of a thing, it was almost as though

one thought gave birth to another, until my mind lighted upon a logical

consequence. An example may make this clearer. The lamps reminded

me of a stained-glass window; and the window recalled an argument I had

had with a friend some months before, near a church. That, in turn,

focused my attention upon this friend, and then, like a flash, I saw him

in my mind shaking hands with a red-bearded man. Then the whole

thing faded. This sort of experience remained with me for about a

month, during which time I could reproduce it by thinking of the lamps.

When, later, I went to Paris and met this friend, I found that he

had gone into partnership with a red-bearded man. The experience

closely paralleled, therefore, one experienced a few years ago by Mr.

Wasson, the American authority on Mexican mushrooms. In his case

there was a prescient vision of his son in unfamiliar circumstances,

which turned out to be correct."

"The ritual continued, and the Sheikh took me into his private room,

where we sat on cushions and talked about the meaning of the dhikr.

'We are widely accused of magic', he said, "and, since magic has the

sanction of Islam inasmuch as the Prophet said that it exists, I do not

dispute it. But we are working in a different medium. Without the

'strange experience' we cannot become perfected. Take this analogy:

all experience in the world is, in fact, strange. When it becomes habit

or commonplace, one does not regard it as experience. But it is essential,

is it not, to the learning process ?'

'I realise that you are not trying to impress me,' I said to Sheikh

Arif, 'but I have a largely Western approach to such things as what we

have seen tonight. Would you allow me to test some of your dervishes

to establish whether they are in any sort of an hypnotic state familiar

to Westerners ?'

'Gladly', he said, 'though that would not invalidate anything, from

our point of view; because what you call hypnosis is merely the beginning

of something that remains invisible to you.'

We returned to the meeting-hall, to find that several of the Sufis

were still circling round. In order to be sure that I would be in a more

objective frame of mind, I decided that I should postpone the test until

another day. Most obligingly, the Sheikh told me to come when I

liked. Collecting Hamid from the kitchens, where he was sampling

the steaming pots of that night's rations, I went to my quarters to write

notes.

The following morning the Sheikh sent word that he would be pleased

to see us as soon as we liked. Hamid was not too sanguine about the

success of an examination of dervishes in a state of 'hal', but came

along to the assembly-room. Here we found the Sheikh eating a hearty

breakfast from a bowl of meat and gravy. • Pleading an indisposition,

I refused the food, just in case it might have some hallucinogenic

ingredient. Dervishes came in and out, shaking hands and saying

'Ishq'—Love, and then kissing their own hands. The Sheikh explained

to them what he wanted, and though some did not seem to approve, we

were left with eleven who might be termed the volunteers.

After a night's sleep, the Sheikh seemed completely won over to my

idea, and rather peremptorily called the musicians and started the dance.

I held my watch in my hand, timing the music and waiting for first to

pass into an ecstatic state. The first thing that I noticed was that the

proceedings did not seem to affect those who did not take part in the

dance. The music and rhythm seemed to be the same as on the previous

night. After six minutes the first dervish—a man of about forty—swayed

and was led from the group. As soon as he sat down he seemed to

lose consciousness. When prodded, he showed no sign of life, and he

breathed very shallowly. I opened his eyelid, but the eyeball was not

turned up. The pupils were not dilated or contracted, neither did

they react to light when I lit my cigarette-lighter.

Out of the eleven participants, nine were in a state of 'hal' after

two hours. Unlike normally hypnotised people, they did not respond

to words spoken to them; neither did they show the almost complete

immobility which is one of the characteristics of the hypnotised person.

Although anaesthesia of the nerves is normally produced only by suggestion

to that effect, they did not seem to feel pinpricks or tickling

applied without any suggestions. This did not seem to be a familiar form

of hypnosis. Ordinary hypnosis normally passes into sleep. But these

volunteers woke up direct into wakefulness without sleep supervening.

What was more, there was no amnesia, and throughout they had been

aware of what had been said and done to them; although in at least

some cases (had this been normal hypnosis) partial amnesia could have

been expected at this depth of hypnosis.

The next part of my test was to attempt to induce normal hypnosis.

Only three out of the eleven passed into the lightest form of conventional

hypnosis, which was the proportion to be expected in a random human

sample of this size.. None showed any evidence that he was conditioned:

that is to say, that he was accustomed to passing into hypnosis of any

kind, let alone a deep-trance state.

All this added up to the strong possibility that the trance into

which these people threw themselves was not of a kind familiar to the

West. In all cases they reported transcendental experiences during the

trance: and two of them even purported to have read my thoughts. They

claimed that they knew, when in trance, what I was going to try next,

as a test.

None of this material, of course, is scientifically conclusive. What

could be of paramount importance might be that the drumming and

intonations contained a signal to which the subjects had been conditioned.

I resolved to make tape recordings of any future session, and replay

them at intervals with similar volunteers, to see whether a later part

of the proceedings would produce the trance more quickly when played

back. This, however, would have to wait until I was better equipped.

The rest of my stay at the zawiya was passed in taking notes of the

methods of teaching and the theories the Sufis passed on. In day-by-day

instruction, two sessions were held. One for younger initiates, who

were passing through a thousand-and-one days' novitiate. The other

meeting was that to which 'Seekers'-adepts-were admitted. The disciples

had to carry out memorising and meditative exercises, developing powers

of concentration and reflection. The others, it seemed, were keeping

up a sort of training of which thought and work, as well as exercises

like the dhikr, all formed a part.

After a few days, the air of mystery and strangeness which I had

felt was replaced by a sensation that, unfamiliar as these practices might

seem to the outsider, their practitioners did not regard them as super-

natural as we might use the term. As Sheikh Arif once said: "We are

doing something which is natural, which is the result of research and

practise into the future development of mankind; we are producing

a new man. And we do it for no material gain." This, then, is their

attitude.

When we returned to civilation, and Hamid and I took leave of one

another amid the streamlined motorcars and fashionable clothes of

Tunis, we knew that our deliberately anachronistic caravan trip to the

sands of the Sahara had been well worth while. We had, in a sense,

re-entered the Middle Ages; whatever the truth of the Sufi belief that

the dervishes were creating a new man. And I, for one, was determined

to penetrate again into that world-within-a-world which is the 'land'

of the Sufis."

"•Copyright © 1961, 1962 from Solo to Mecca and Tunisian Caravan.

The Sufi Oral Tradition of Table-Talks and Storytelling

Audio/visual presentations of Sufi materials are now available through the official channels of the Estate of Idries Shah and the Octagon Press:

The Story of Mushkil Gusha

Mushkil Gusha

from Caravan of Dreams By Idries Shah

Introduction to The Story of Mushkil Gusha

When a number of people come together, and if these people are harmonised in a certain way, excluding some who make for disharmony - we have what we call an event. This is by no means what is generally understood in contemporary cultures as an event. For them, something which takes place and which impresses people by means of subjective impacts - is called an event. This is what some term a 'lesser event', because it takes place in the lesser world, that of human relationships easily produced, synthesised, commemorated.

The real event, of which the lesser event is a useful similitude (not more and no less) is that which belongs to the higher realm.

We cannot accurately render a higher event in stilted terrestrial representations and retain accuracy. Something of surpassing importance in a higher realm could not entirely be put in terms of literature, science, or drama, without loss of essential value. But certain tales, providing that they contain elements from the high-event area which may seem absurd, unlikely, improbable or even defective, can (together with the presence of certain people) communicate to the necessary area of the mind the higher event.

Why should it be valuable to do so? Because familiarity with the 'higher event', however produced, enables the individual's mind to operate in the high realm.

The tale of Mushkil Gusha is an example. The very 'lack of completeness' in the events, the 'untidiness' of the theme, the absence of certain factors which we have come to expect in a story: these in this case are indications of the greater parallel.

THE STORY OF MUSHKIL GUSHA

Once upon a time, not a thousand miles from here, there lived a poor old wood-cutter, who was a widower, and his little daughter. He used to go every day into the mountains to cut firewood which he brought home and tied into bundles. Then he used to have breakfast and walk into the nearest town, where he would sell his wood and rest for a time before returning home.

One day, when he got home very late, the girl said to him: 'Father, I sometimes wish that we would have some nicer food, and more and different kinds of things to eat.'

'Very well, my child,' said the old man, 'tomorrow I shall get up much earlier than I usually do. I shall go further into the mountains where there is more wood, and I shall bring back a much larger quantity than usual. I will get home earlier and I will be able to bundle the wood sooner, and I will go into town and sell it so that we can have more money and I shall bring you back all kinds of nice things to eat.'

The next morning the wood-cutter rose before dawn and went into the mountains. He worked very hard cutting wood and trimming it and made it into a huge bundle which he carried on his back to his little house.

When he got home, it was still very early. He put his load of wood down, and knocked on the door, saying, 'Daughter, Daughter, open the door, for I am hungry and thirsty and I need a meal before I go to market.'

But the door was locked. The wood-cutter was so tired that he lay down and was soon fast asleep beside his bundle. The little girl, having forgotten all about their conversation the night before, was fast asleep in bed. When he woke up a few hours later, the sun was high. The wood-cutter knocked at the door again and again and said, 'Daughter, Daughter, come quickly; I must have a little food and go to market to sell the wood; for it is already much later than my usual time of starting.'

But, having forgotten all about the conversation the night before, the little girl had meanwhile got up, tidied the house, and gone out for a walk. She had locked the door assuming in her forgetfulness that her father was still in the town.

So the wood-cutter thought to himself, 'It is now rather late to go into the town. I will therefore return to the mountains and cut another bundle of wood, which I will bring home, and tomorrow I will take a double load to market.'

All that day the old man toiled in the mountains cutting wood and shaping the branches. When he got home with the wood on his shoulders, it was evening.

He put down his burden behind the house, knocked on the door and said, 'Daughter, Daughter, open the door for I am tired and I have eaten nothing all the day. I have a double bundle of wood which I hope to take to market tomorrow. Tonight I must sleep well so that I will be strong.'

But there was no answer, for the little girl when she came home had felt very sleepy, and had made a meal for herself, and gone to bed. She had been rather worried at first that her father was not at home, but she decided that he must have arranged to stay in the town overnight.

Once again the wood-cutter, finding that he could not get into the house, tired, hungry and thirsty, lay down by his bundles of wood and fell fast asleep. He could not keep awake, although he was fearful for what might have happened to the little girl.

Now the wood-cutter, because he was so cold and hungry and tired, woke up very, very early the next morning: before it was even light.

He sat up, and looked around, but he could not see anything. And then a strange thing happened. The wood-cutter thought he heard a voice saying: 'Hurry, hurry! Leave your wood and come this way. If you need enough, and you want little enough, you shall have delicious food.'

The wood-cutter stood up and walked in the direction of the voice. And he walked and he walked; but he found nothing.

By now he was colder and hungrier and more tired than ever, and he was lost. He had been full of hope, but that did not seem to have helped him. Now he felt sad, and he wanted to cry. But he realized that crying would not help him either, so he lay down and fell asleep.

Quite soon he woke up again. It was too cold, and he was too hungry, to sleep. So he decided to tell himself, as if in a story, everything that had happened to him since his little daughter had first said that she wanted a different kind of food.

As soon as he had finished his story, he thought he heard another voice, saying, somewhere above him, out of the dawn, 'Old man, what are you doing sitting there?'

'I am telling myself my own story,' said the wood-cutter.

'And what is that?' said the voice.

The old man repeated his tale. 'Very well,' said the voice. And then the voice told the old wood-cutter to close his eyes and to mount as it were, a step. 'But I do not see any step,' said the old man. 'Never mind, but do as I say,' said the voice.

The old man did as he was told. As soon as he had closed his eyes he found that he was standing up and as he raised his right foot he felt that there was something like a step under it. He started to ascend what seemed to be a staircase. Suddenly the whole flight of steps started to move, very fast, and the voice said, 'Do not open your eyes until I tell you to do so.'

In a very short time, the voice told the old man to open his eyes. When he did he found that he was in a place which looked rather like a desert, with the sun beating down on him. He was surrounded by masses and masses of pebbles; pebbles of all colours: red, green, blue and white. But he seemed to be alone. He looked all around him, and could not see anyone, but the voice started to speak again.

'Take up as many of these stones as you can,' said the voice, 'Then close your eyes, and walk down the steps once more.'

The wood-cutter did as he was told, and he found himself, when he opened his eyes again at the voice's bidding, standing before the door of his own house.

He knocked at the door and his little daughter answered it. She asked him where he had been, and he told her, although she could hardly understand what he was saying, it all sounded so confusing.

They went into the house, and the little girl and her father shared the last food which they had, which was a handful of dried dates. When they had finished, the old man thought that he heard the voice speaking to him again, a voice just like the other one which had told him to climb the stairs.

The voice said, 'Although you may not know it yet, you have been saved by Mushkil Gusha. Remember that Mushkil Gusha is always here. Make sure that every Thursday night you eat some dates and give some to any needy person, and tell the story of Mushkil Gusha. Or give a gift in the name of Mushkil Gusha to someone who will help the needy. Make sure that the story of Mushkil Gusha is never, never forgotten. If you do this, and if this is done by those to whom you tell the story, the people who are in real need will always find their way.'

The wood-cutter put all the stones which he had brought back from the desert in a corner of his little house. They looked very much like ordinary stones, and he did not know what to do with them.

The next day he took his two enormous bundles of wood to the market, and sold them easily for a high price. When he got home he took his daughter all sort of delicious kinds of food, which she had never tasted before. And when they had eaten it, the old wood-cutter said, 'Now I am going to tell you the whole story of Mushkil Gusha. Mushkil Gusha is the remover of all difficulties. Our difficulties have been removed through Mushkil Gusha and we must always remember it.'

For nearly a week after that the old man carried on as usual. He went into the mountains, brought back wood, had a meal, took the wood to market and sold it. He always found a buyer without difficulty.

Now the next Thursday came, and, as it is the way of men, the wood-cutter forgot to repeat the tale of Mushkil Gusha.

Late that evening, in the house of the wood-cutter's neighbours, the fire had gone out.The neighbours had nothing with which to re-light the fire, and they went to the house of the wood-cutter. They said, 'Neighbour, neighbour, please give us a light from those wonderful lamps of yours which we see shining through the window.'

'What lamps?' said the wood-cutter.

'Come outside,' said the neighbours, 'and see what we mean.'

So the wood-cutter went outside and then he saw, sure enough, all kinds of brilliant lights shining through the window from the inside.

He went back to the house, and saw that the light was streaming from the pile of pebbles which he had put in the corner. But the rays of light were cold, and it was not possible to use them to light a fire. So he went out to the neighbours and said, 'Neighbours, I am sorry, but I have no fire.' And he banged the door in their faces. They were annoyed and confused, and went back to their house, muttering. They leave our story here.

The wood-cutter and his daughter quickly covered up the brilliant lights with every piece of cloth they could find, for fear that anyone would see what a treasure they had. The next morning, when they uncovered the stones, they discovered that they were precious, luminous gems.

They took the jewels, one by one, to neighbouring towns, where they sold them for a huge price. Now the wood-cutter decided to build for himself and for his daughter a wonderful palace. They chose a site just opposite the castle of the king of their country. In a very short time a marvellous building had come into being.

Now that particular king had a beautiful daughter, and one day when she got up in the morning, she saw a sort of fairy-tale castle just opposite her father's and she was amazed. She asked her servants, 'Who has built this castle? What right have these people to do such a thing so near to our home?'

The servants went away and made enquiries and they came back and told the story, as far as they could collect it, to the princess.

The princess called for the little daughter of the wood-cutter, for she was angry with her, but when the two girls met and talked they soon became fast friends. They started to meet every day and went to swim and play in the stream which had been made for the princess by her father. A few days after they first met, the princess took off a beautiful and valuable necklace and hung it up on a tree just beside the stream. She forgot to take it down when she came out of the water, and when she got home she thought it must have been lost.

The princess thought a little and then decided that the daughter of the wood-cutter had stolen her necklace. So she told her father, and he had the wood-cutter arrested; he confiscated the castle and declared forfeit everything that the wood-cutter had. The old man was thrown into prison, and the daughter was put into an orphanage.

As it was the custom in that country, after a period of time the wood-cutter was taken from the dungeon and put in the public square, chained to a post, with a sign around his neck. On the sign was written 'This is what happens to those who steal from Kings.'

At first people gathered around him, and jeered and threw things at him. He was most unhappy.

But quite soon, as is the way of men, everyone became used to the sight of the old man sitting there by his post, and took very little notice of him. Sometimes people threw him scraps of food, sometimes they did not.

One day he overheard somebody saying that it was Thursday afternoon. Suddenly, the thought came into his mind that it would soon be the evening of Mushkil Gusha, the remover of all difficulties, and that he had forgotten to commemorate him for so many days. No sooner had this thought come into his head, than a charitable man, passing by, threw him a tiny coin. The wood-cutter called out: 'Generous friend, you have given me money, which is of no use to me. If, however, your kindness could extend to buying one or two dates and coming and sitting and eating them with me, I would be eternally grateful to you.'

The other man went and bought a few dates. And they sat and ate them together. When they had finished, the wood-cutter told the other man the story of Mushkil Gusha. 'I think you must be mad,' said the generous man. But he was a kindly person who himself had many difficulties. When he arrived home after this incident, he found that all his problems had disappeared. And that made him start to think a great deal about Mushkil Gusha. But he leaves our story here.

The very next morning the princess went back to her bathing-place. As she was about to go into the water, she saw what looked like her necklace down at the bottom of the stream. As she was going to dive in to try to get it back, she happened to sneeze. Her head went up, and she saw that what she had thought was the necklace was only its reflection in the water. It was hanging on the bough of the tree where she had left it such a long time before. Taking the necklace down, the princess ran excitedly to her father and told him what had happened. The King gave orders for the wood-cutter to be released and given a public apology. The little girl was brought back from the orphanage, and everyone lived happily ever after.

These are some of the incidents in the story of Mushkil Gusha. It is a very long tale and it is never ended. It has many forms. Some of them are even not called the story of Mushkil Gusha at all, so people do not recognise it. But it is because of Mushkil Gusha that his story, in whatever form, is remembered by somebody, somewhere in the world, day and night, wherever there are people. As his story had always been recited, so it will always continue to be told.

Will you repeat the story of Mushkil Gusha on Thursday nights, and help the work of Mushkil Gusha?

*******

A hand and a foot do not clap together.
- Proverb

from The Institute for Study of Human Knowledge 

Study Themes

excerpt from Idries Shah's Learning How To Learn


1. All approaches to a study or an individual may start with a
desire for attention. However they start, they must never end up
in this manner.

2. Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the
assumptions behind your assumptions.

3. 'Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But
what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?'

4. You have come a long way, and you do not know it. You
have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.

5. In respect to some, you may have advanced. In relation to
others, you have not progressed at all. Neither observation is
more important than the other.

6. If your desire for 'good' is based on greed, it is not good, but
greed.

7. Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be
causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach
is correct.

8. The man who knows must discharge a function. The one
who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do
so.

9. Do not try to be humble: learn humility.

10. Assume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and
you will not be far wrong.

11. To copy a virtue in another is more copying than it is virtue.
Try to learn what that virtue is based upon.

12. No practice exists in isolation.

13. If you seek a teacher, try to become a real student. If you
want to be a student, try to find a real teacher.

14. The more often you do a thing, the more likely you are to 
do it again. There is no certainty that you will gain anything
else from repetition than a likelihood of further repetition.

15. At first, you are not worthy of the robes and implements of
the Sufi. Later you do not need them. Finally, you may need them
for the sake of others.

16. If you cannot laugh frequently and genuinely, you have no
soul.

17. When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are
lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief is really for.

18. When a dervish shows interest in your material welfare, you
may be pleased. But it is frequently because you are not yet ready
for anything else.

19. When someone asks for you to help in doing something, do
you imagine that it is because he cannot do it unaided? Perhaps
he is a Sufi who wants to help you by connecting you with his
task.

20. If you are lazy, count yourself lucky if someone points this
out, giving you a chance to improve. Laziness is always your
fault. It is the sign that a man has persevered in uselessness for
too long.

These points are in fact exercises in outwitting the false self,
which thrives on smaller satisfactions. The Sufi aims at Fana
(passing away-of the False Self) and Baqa (remaining - of the
Real). Behind the supposed "I", which is impermanent, lies the
real one, which is characterised by the awareness of truth, of
reality.

And listen to the words of Junaid of Baghdad, when he said:
'A good-natured sensualist is better than a bad-tempered so-called
Sufi.'


From Idries Shah's Learning How To Learn, p.90-92

The Teaching Story

The Teaching Story: Observations on the Folklore
of Our “Modern” Thought
by Idries Shah (1968)


There is no nation, no community, without its stories. Children
are brought up on fairy tales; cults and religions depend upon them
for moral instruction; they are used for entertainment and for
training. They are usually catalogued as myths, as humorous tales,
as semi-historical fact, and so on, in accordance with what people
believe to be their origin and function.


But what a story can be used for is often what it was originally
intended to be used for. The fables of all nations provide a really
remarkable example of this, because, if you can understand them at
a technical level, they provide the most striking evidence of the
persistence of a consistent teaching, preserved sometimes through
mere repetition, yet handed down and prized simply because they
give a stimulus to the imagination or entertainment for the people
at large.


There are very few people nowadays who are able to make the
necessary use of stories. Those who know about the higher level of
being represented by stories can learn something from them, but
very little. Those who can experience this level can teach the use of stories. But first of all we must allow the working hypothesis that
there may be such a level operative in stories. We must approach
them from the point of view that they may on that level be
documents of technical value: an ancient yet still irreplaceable
method of arranging and transmitting a knowledge which can not
be put in any other way.


In this sense such stories (because all stories are not technical
literature), such stories may be regarded as part of a curriculum,
and as valid a representation of fact as, for instance, any
mathematical formula or scientific textbook.


Like any scientific textbook or mathematical formula,
however, stories depend for their higher power upon someone to
understand them at the higher level, someone who can establish
their validity in a course of study, people who are prepared to study
and use them, and so on.


At this point we can see quite easily that our conditioning
(which trains us to use stories for amusement purposes) is generally in itself sufficient to prevent us from making any serious study of stories as a vehicle for higher teaching. This tendency, the human tendency to regard anything as of use to man on a lower level than it could operate, runs through much of our studies, and has to be marked well.


Yet traditions about stories do in fact linger here and there.
People say that certain stories, if repeated, will provide some sort
of “good luck”; or that tales have meanings which have been
forgotten, and the like. But what would be called in contemporary
speech the “security aspect” of stories is almost complete in the
case of the genre which we call “teaching-stories” because of
another factor.


This factor is the operation of the law that a story, like a
scientific industrial formula, say, can have its developmental or
teaching effect only upon a person correctly prepared for its
understanding. This is why we must use stories in a manner which
will enable us to harvest their value for us in a given situation.


There is another problem which has to be appreciated when
dealing with stories. Unlike scientific formulae, they have a whole
series of developmental effects. In accordance with the degree of
preparation of an individual and a group, so will the successive
“layers” of the story become apparent. Outside of a proper school
where the method and content of stories is understood, there is
almost no chance of an arbitrary study of stories yielding much.


But we have to go back to an even earlier stage in order to
ground ourselves, prepare ourselves, for the value of the story. This is the stage at which we can familiarise ourselves with the story and regard it as a consistent and productive parallel or allegory of certain states of mind. Its symbols are the characters in the story. The way in which they move conveys to the mind the way in which the human mind can work. In grasping this in terms of men and women, animals and places, movement and manipulation of a tale, we can put ourselves into a relationship with the higher faculties possible to the mind, by working on a lower level, the level of visualisation.


Let us examine a story or two from the foregoing points of
view. First, take a story of the Elephant in the Dark. A number
of blind people, or sighted people in a dark house, grope 
and find an elephant. Each touches only a part; each gives
to his friends outside a different account of what he has
experienced. Some think that it was a fan (the ears of the animal);
another takes the legs for pillars; a third the tail for a rope, and so
on.


 This has actually been published as a children's book. It appears in the books of Rumi and Sanai. We have made it the subject of a commercial film, The Dermis Probe. This story, on the lowest possible level, makes fun of the scientists and academics who try to explain things through the evidence which they can evaluate, and none other. In another direction, on the same level, it is humorous in as much as it makes us laugh at the stupidity of people who work on such little evidence. As a philosophical teaching it says that man is blind and is trying to assess something too great for assessment by means of inadequate tools. In the religious field it says that God is everywhere and everything, and man gives different names to what seem to him to be separate things, but which are in fact only parts of some greater whole which he cannot perceive because “he is blind” or “there is no light.”



The interpretations are far and high as anyone can go. Because
of this, people address themselves to this story in one or more of
these interpretations. They then accept or reject them. Now they
can feel happy; they have arrived at an opinion about the matter.
According to their conditioning they produce the answer. Now look
at their answers. Some will say that this is a fascinating and
touching allegory of the presence of God. Others will say that it is
showing people how stupid mankind can be. Some say it is antischolastic.


Others that it is just a tale copied by Rumi from Sanai -
and so on. Because none of these people can taste an inner content, none will even begin to imagine that one exists. As I say these words the ordinary mind will easily be able to dispose of them by thinking that this is just someone who has provided a sophisticated explanation for something which cannot be checked.



But we are not here to justify ourselves. We are here to open
the door of the mind to the possibility that stories might be
technical documents. We are here to say that there is a method of
making use of these documents. Especially we are here to say that
the most ancient and most important knowledge available to man is
in part contained in these documents. And that this form, however
primitive or old-fashioned it may seem, is in fact almost the only
form in which certain teachings can be captured, preserved and
transmitted. And, too, that these stories are conscious works of art,
devised by people who knew exactly what they were doing, for the
use of other people who knew exactly what could be done with
them.


It may take a conventional thinker some time to understand
that if he is looking for truth and a hidden teaching, it may be
concealed in a form which would be the last, perhaps, which he
would consider to be applicable to his search.


But, in order to possess himself of this knowledge, he must
take it from where it really is, not from where he imagines it might
be.


There is plenty of evidence of the working of this method, that
of the story deliberately concocted and passed down, in all cultures.
We do not have to confine ourselves to Eastern fables. But it is in
stories of Eastern origin that we find the most complete and least
deteriorated forms of the tradition. We therefore start with them.
They lead us, naturally, to the significant documents in the Western
and other branches of the tradition.


In approaching the study of stories, then, we have to make sure
that we reclaim the information that stories contain, shall we say, a
message. In this sense we are like people whose technology has
fallen into disuse, rediscovering the devices used by our ancestors
as we become fitted for it. Then we have to realise that we have to
familiarise ourselves with certain stories, so that we can hold them
in our minds, like memorizing a formula. In this use, the teaching
story resembles the mnemonic or formula which we trot out to help
us calculate something: like saying: “one kilo equals 2.2 pounds in
weight”; or even “thirty days hath September.”


Now we have to realise that, since we are dealing with a form
of knowledge which is specific in as much as ii is planned to act in
a certain way under certain conditions, those conditions must be
present if we are to be able to use the story coherently. By
coherently I mean here, if the story is to be the guide whereby we
work through the various stages of consciousness open to us.


This means that we must not only get to know certain tales; we
must study them, or even just familiarise ourselves with them, in a
certain order. This idea tends to find opposition among literate
people who are accustomed to doing their own reading, having
been led to believe that the more you read the more likely you are
to know more. But this quantitative approach is absurd when you
are dealing with specific material. If you went to the British
Museum library and decided to read everything in it in order to
educate yourself, you would not get very far. It is only the ignorant,
even in the formal sense, who cannot understand the need for
particular kinds of specialisation. This is well exemplified by the
club porter who once said to me, in all seriousness “You are a
college man, Sir, please explain football pool permutations to me.”
It is in order to get some possibility of right study that I
continually say things like “Let us get down out of the trees and
start to build.”


So far, however, we have not been saying much more than this:


1. A special, effective and surpassingly important teaching is
contained in certain materials. In this case the materials are stories.

2. We must accept the possibility before we can begin to
approach the study of this knowledge.

3. Having accepted, even as a working hypothesis, the
foregoing contentions, we have to set about the study in an efficient manner. In the case of the tales, the efficient manner means to approach the right stories, in the right manner, under the right conditions.


Failure to adhere to these principles will make it impossible for
us to function on the high level needed. If, for example, we settle
for merely knowing a lot of stories, we may become mere
raconteurs or consumers. If we settle for the moral or social
teaching of the story, we simply duplicate the activities of people
working in that domain. If we compare stories to try to see where
the higher level is, we will not find it, because we do not know
unless guided which are the ones to compare with each other, under what conditions, what to look for, whether we can perceive the secret content, in what order to approach the matter.


So the story remains a tool as much as anything else. Only the
expert can use the tool, or produce anything worthwhile with it.
Having heard and accepted the above assertions, people always
feel impatience. They want to get on with the job. But, not knowing
that “everything takes a minimum time,” or at any rate not applying
this fact, they destroy the possibility of progress in a real sense.


Having established in a certain order the above facts, we have
to follow through with a curriculum of study which will enable us
to profit by the existence of this wonderful range of material. If you
start to study what you take to be teaching-stories indiscriminately,
you are more than likely to get only a small result, even with the
facts already set out. Why is this?


Not only because you do not know the conditions under which
the study must take place, but because the conditions themselves
contain requirements of self-collection which seem to have no
relationship to the necessities for familiarising oneself with a
literary form.


We must, therefore, work on the mind to enable it to make use
of the story, as well as presenting it with the story. This “work” on
the mind is correctly possible only in the living situation, when
certain people are grouped together in a certain manner, and
develop a certain form of rapport. This, and no other, is the purpose
of having meetings at which people are physically present.


If read hurriedly, or with one or other of the customary biases
which are common among intellectuals but not other kinds of
thinkers, the foregoing two paragraphs will be supposed to contain
exclusivistic claims which are not in fact there.


This is itself one of the interesting - and encouraging -
symptoms of the present phase of human intellectual folklore. If a
tendency can readily be seen manifesting itself, whether in physics,
scholasticism or metaphysics, one may be approaching its solution.


What is this tendency?


The tendency is to demand a justification of what are taken to
be certain claims in the language in which the demand is made. My
stressing, for instance, that meetings at which people are present
who have been grouped in a certain manner, may easily (and
incorrectly) be supposed to state that the kind of learning to which I
am referring can take place in no other manner. The intention of the
paragraph, however, was simply to refer to one concrete manner in
which what I have called “a living situation” can come about. A
meeting of a number of people in a room is the only form of such a
situation familiar to any extent to an average reader of such
materials as this.


I have used the word “folklore” to refer to a state of mind of
modern man closely similar to that of less developed communities.
But there is a great difference between the two folklores. In what
we regard as ingenuous folklore, the individual may believe that
certain objects have magical or special characteristics, and he is
more or less aware of what these are claimed to be.


In modern man's folklore, he believes that certain contentions
must be absurd, and holds on to other assumptions, without being
aware that he is doing so. He is motivated, in fact, by almost
completely hidden prejudices.


To illustrate the working of such preconceptions, it is often
necessary to provide a “shock” stimulus.


Such a stimulus occurs both in the present series of contentions
about the teaching-story (because, and only because, certain
information about it is lost to the community being addressed) and
exists equally strongly within the frameworks of such stories
themselves, when one can view them in a structural manner.


This train of thought itself produces an illustration of the
relative fragmentation of contemporary minds. Here it is:
Although it is a matter of the everyday experience of almost
everyone on this planet, irrespective of his stage of culture or his
community, that anyone thing may have a multiplicity of uses,
functions and meanings, man does not apply this experience to
cases which - for some occult reason - he regards as insusceptible
to such attention. In other words, a person may admit that an
orange has colour, aroma, food value, shape, texture and so on; and he will readily concede that an orange may be many different things according to what function is desired, observed or being fulfilled. But if you venture to suggest that, say, a story has an equal range of possible functions, his folkloric evaluating mechanism will make him say: “No, a story is for entertainment,” or else something almost as Byzantine: “Yes, of course. Now, are you talking about the psychological, social, anthropological or philosophical uses?”

Nobody has told him that there are, or might be, categories of
effective function of a story in ranges which he has not yet
experienced, perhaps not yet heard of, perhaps even cannot
perceive or even coherently discuss, until a certain basic
information process has taken place in his mind.
And to this kind of statement the answer is pat and hard to
combat. It is: “You are trying to be clever.” This, you may recall is
only the “yaa-boo” reaction of the schoolchild who has come up
against something which it cannot, at least at that moment,
rationalise away or fully understand.

For more on the contemporary study of Teaching-Stories, see: The Idries Shah Foundation.