Idries Shah
Idries Shah (Persian: ادریس شاه), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس هاشمي), was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition who wrote over three dozen critically acclaimed books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies.
Born in India, the descendant of a family of Afghan nobles, Shah grew up mainly in England. His early writings centred on magic and witchcraft. In 1960 he established a publishing house, Octagon Press, producing translations of Sufi classics as well as titles of his own. His most seminal work was The Sufis, which appeared in 1964 and was well received internationally. In 1965, Shah founded the Institute for Cultural Research, a London-based educational charity devoted to the study of human behaviour and culture. A similar organisation, the Institute for the Study of Human Knowledge (ISHK), exists in the United States, under the directorship of Stanford University psychology professor Robert Ornstein, whom Shah appointed as his deputy in the U.S.
In his writings, Shah presented Sufism as a universal form of wisdom that predated Islam. Emphasising that Sufism was not static but always adapted itself to the current time, place and people, he framed his teaching in Western psychological terms. Shah made extensive use of traditional teaching stories and parables, texts that contained multiple layers of meaning designed to trigger insight and self-reflection in the reader. He is perhaps best known for his collections of humorous Mulla Nasrudin stories.
Shah was at times criticised by orientalists who questioned his credentials and background. His role in the controversy surrounding a new translation of the Rubaiyat of Omar Khayyam, published by his friend Robert Graves and his older brother Omar Ali-Shah, came in for particular scrutiny. However, he also had many notable defenders, chief among them the novelist Doris Lessing. Shah came to be recognised as a spokesman for Sufism in the West and lectured as a visiting professor at a number of Western universities. His works have played a significant part in presenting Sufism as a secular, individualistic form of spiritual wisdom.
Idries Shah's books on Sufism achieved considerable critical acclaim. He was the subject of a BBC documentary ("One Pair of Eyes") in 1969, and two of his works (The Way of the Sufi and Reflections) were chosen as "Outstanding Book of the Year" by the BBC's "The Critics" programme. Among other honours, Shah won six first prizes at the UNESCO World Book Year in 1973, and the Islamic scholar James Kritzeck, commenting on Shah's Tales of the Dervishes, said that it was "beautifully translated".
The reception of Shah's movement was also marked by much controversy. Some orientalists were hostile, in part because Shah presented classical Sufi writings as tools for self-development to be used by contemporary people, rather than as objects of historical study. L. P. Elwell-Sutton from Edinburgh University, Shah's fiercest critic, described his books as "trivial", replete with errors of fact, slovenly and inaccurate translations and even misspellings of Oriental names and words – "a muddle of platitudes, irrelevancies and plain mumbo-jumbo", adding for good measure that Shah had "a remarkable opinion of his own importance". Expressing amusement and amazement at the "sycophantic manner" of Shah's interlocutors in a BBC radio interview, Elwell-Sutton concluded that some Western intellectuals were "so desperate to find answers to the questions that baffle them, that, confronted with wisdom from 'the mysterious East,' they abandon their critical faculties and submit to brainwashing of the crudest kind". To Elwell-Sutton, Shah's Sufism belonged to the realm of "Pseudo-Sufism", "centred not on God but on man."
Doris Lessing, one of Shah's greatest defenders,stated in a 1981 interview: "I found Sufism as taught by Idries Shah, which claim
“Dramatic. A well developed sense of the dramatic has values beyond what people usually imagine. One of these is to realise the limitations of a sense of the dramatic.”
“When prayer, rituals and ascetic life are just a means of self-indulgence, they are harmful rather than beneficial. This is quite obvious to people nowadays, when it is widely recognised that fixations are not the same as valuable and laudable observances. One should not pray if that prayer is vanity; rituals are wrong when they provide lower satisfactions, like emotional stimulus instead of enlightenment; he or she should not be an ascetic who is only enjoying it.”
“Scholars of the East and West have heroically consecrated their whole working lives to making available, by means of their own disciplines, Sufi literary and philosophical material to the world at large. In many cases they have faithfully recorded the Sufis' own reiteration that the Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.”
“Anybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.”
“Se puede dar o rehusar de una manera mucho más efectiva, elaborada, útil, por completo invisible para las personas que piensan que dar o rehusar es un hecho producto de evaluación externa. Si buscas algún indicio de favor o “promoción”, debes saber que no estás listo. El progreso llega a través de la capacidad de aprender, y es irresistible. Nadie puede interponerse entre tú y el conocimiento, si eres apto para éste.”
“One can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.”
“It is not important to have said a thing first, or best - or even most interestingly. What is important is to say it on the right occasion.”
“An egocentric pessimist is a person who thinks he hasn't changed, but that other people are behaving worse than before.”
“Learn to be as analytical about things of which you are credulous as you are of those which you criticise.”
“Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.”
“Exaggeration is a standard peculiarity of man. To deprecate is often a form of exaggeration which people do not notice, because it appears to be its opposite.”
“Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.”
“A generous person may not have wisdom: but, unlike others, he has the means to gain it.”
“To 'see both sides' of a problem is the surest way to prevent its complete solution. Because there are always more than two sides.”
“No duty is ignoble. What can be ignoble is the sight of people trying not to be ignoble.”
“The proverb says that 'The answer to a fool is silence'. Observation, however, indicates that almost any other answer will have the same effect in the long run.”
“You need not wonder whether you should have an unreliable person as a friend. An unreliable person is nobody's friend.”
“A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.”
“To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.”
“It is not only a matter of not caring who knows - it is also a matter of knowing who cares.”
“People think that they think things, and they also think that they know things. They could usefully give some attention to the question of whether they know what they think and know what they think they know.”
“If you want to make an ordinary man happy, or think that he is happy, give him money, power, flattery, gifts, honours. If you want to make a wise man happy - improve yourself!”
“A king who feared wasps once decreed that they were abolished. As it happened, they did him no harm. But he was eventually stung to death by scorpions.”
“People who speak or act in an ordinary fashion are most likely to be those who have been the recipients of higher experiences. But because they do not rage around, wild-eyed, people think that they are very ordinary folk and therefore not aware of anything unknown to the general run of man.”
“None should say : 'I can trust,' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.”
“People today are in danger of drowning in information; but, because they have been taught that information is useful, they are more willing to drown than they need be. If they could handle information, they would not have to drown at all.”
“To drown in treacle is just as unpleasant as to drown in mud.”
“History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.”
“One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.”
“The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.”
“The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.”
“If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?”
“But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.”
“The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.”
“Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.”
“Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.”
“You must empty out the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean.”
“Deep in the sea are riches beyond compare. But if you seek safety, it is on the shore.”
“A certain person may have, as you say, a wonderful presence; I do not know. What I do know is that he has a perfectly delightful absence.”
“The union of the mind and intuition which brings about illumination, and the development which the Sufis seek, is based upon love.”
“Please, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?”
“The laziness of adolescence is a rehearsal for the incapacity of old age.”
“The stupidest man I ever met had a favourite saying.It was:'What do you think I am, stupid, or something?”
“It is not always a question of the Emperor having no clothes on. Sometimes it is, 'Is that an Emperor at all?”
“Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.”
“What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.”
“You have not forgotten to remember;You have remembered to forget.But people can forget to forget. That is just as important as remembering to remember - and generally more practical.”
“People used to play with toys.Now the toys play with them.”
“When the human being says:'It is not true...'He may mean:'I don't know about it, so I think it is untrue.'Or:'I don't like it.”
“If you give what can be takes, you are not really giving.Take what you are given, not what you want to be given.Take what is given:Give what cannot be taken.”