From The Idries Shah Foundation:
Thinkers of the East
Thinkers of the East is a collection of anecdotes and
‘parables in action’ illustrating the eminently practical and lucid approach of
Eastern Dervish teachers.Distilled from the teachings of more than one hundred sages in three continents, this material stresses the experimental rather than the theoretical – and it is that characteristic of Sufi study which provides its impact and vitality.
The emphasis of Thinkers of the East contrasts sharply with the Western concept of the East as a place of theory without practice, or thought without action.
The book’s author, Idries Shah, says ‘Without direct experience of such teaching, or at least a direct recording of it, I cannot see how Eastern thought can ever be understood’.
Read the full text of THINKERS OF THE EAST
A serious, yet entertaining, look at the impediments in
current thought which prevent certain forms of understanding between people. The
title story was made into an award-winning film with script by Idries Shah, and
chosen as an Outstanding Film of the Year.
Used for more than seven hundred years as a teaching story,
The Book of the Book is one of the most compelling and astonishing texts ever to
emerge from the Orient. Its central premise is the simple phrase: ‘When you
realize the difference between the container and the content, you will have
knowledge.’ When the book first appeared in English thirty-five years ago, its
printers questioned how it could be a book, as did reviewers, scholars, and
people who paid money to buy it. 
In Idries Shah’s Wisdom of the Idiots, the ‘idiots’ are
Sufis, called this because their wisdom penetrates to a depth which renders it
inaccessible to the merely intelligent or academically-knowledgeable. The
exercise-stories of the Sufis are tools prepared for a specific purpose.
Small in size, but with a powerful punch, Idries Shah’s
Reflections is a collection of fables, aphorisms, and statements that challenge
the conditioned mind. The book confronts the reader with unaccustomed
perspectives and ideas, in an attempt to set the mind free, to see how things
really are. As the book’s foreword states, ‘Do you imagine that fables exist
only to amuse or to instruct, and are based upon fiction? The best ones are
delineations of what happens in real life, in the community and in the
individual’s mental processes’.