Thinkers of the East

THINKERS OF

THE EAST

Books by Idries Shah

Sufi Studies and Middle Eastern Literature

The Sufis

Caravan of Dreams

The Way of the Sufi

Tales of the Dervishes: Teaching-stories Over a

Thousand Years

Sufi Thought and Action

Traditional Psychology,

Teaching Encounters and Narratives

Thinkers of the East: Studies in Experientialism

Wisdom of the Idiots

The Dermis Probe

Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality

in the Sufi Way

Knowing How to Know

The Magic Monastery: Analogical and Action Philosophy

Seeker After Truth

Observations

Evenings with Idries Shah

The Commanding Self

University Lectures

A Perfumed Scorpion (Institute for the Study of

Human Knowledge and California University)

Special Problems in the Study of Sufi Ideas

(Sussex University)

The Elephant in the Dark: Christianity,

Islam and the Sufis (Geneva University)

Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study: Beginning to Begin

(The New School for Social Research)

Letters and Lectures of Idries Shah

Current and Traditional Ideas

Reflections

The Book of the Book

A Veiled Gazelle: Seeing How to See

Special Illumination: The Sufi Use of Humor

The Mulla Nasrudin Corpus

The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin

The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin

The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin

The World of Nasrudin

Travel and Exploration

Destination Mecca

Studies in Minority Beliefs

The Secret Lore of Magic

Oriental Magic

Selected Folktales and Their Background

World Tales

A Novel

Kara Kush

Sociological Works

Darkest England

The Natives Are Restless

The Englishman’s Handbook

Translated by Idries Shah

The Hundred Tales of Wisdom (Aflaki’s Munaqib)

THINKERS OF

THE EAST

Studies in Experientialism

Idries Shah

The rights that others have over you – remember them.

The rights that you have over others – forget them.

Sayedna Ali

Copyright © The Estate of Idries Shah

The right of the Estate of Idries Shah to be identified

as the owner of this work has been asserted by them in accordance

with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988.

All rights reserved

Copyright throughout the world

ePUB ISBN 978-1-78479-065-3.

Mobi ISBN 978-1-78479-064-6.

First Published 1971

Published in this edition 2016

No part of this publication may be reproduced or transmitted in any form or by any means, electronic, mechanical or photographic, by recording or any information storage or retrieval system or method now known or to be invented or adapted, without prior permission obtained in writing from the publisher, ISF Publishing, except by a reviewer quoting brief passages in a review written for inclusion in a journal, magazine, newspaper, blog or broadcast.

Requests for permission to reprint, reproduce etc., to:

The Permissions Department

ISF Publishing

The Idries Shah Foundation

P. O. Box 71911

London NW2 9QA

United Kingdom

permissions@isf-publishing.org

In association with The Idries Shah Foundation

Contents

Preface

Subjects Dealt With in Thinkers of the East

A Death is Indicated

Ordinary

Bravery

A Disciple of Haidar

The Most Great Name

The Book of Wisdom

Kadudar and the Pilgrimage

Dismissal

Words of Israil of Bokhara

Lands of the Gurus

Nili

How Man Is Sustained

Jan Fishan and the Seeker

Objectors

Exclusion

The Philosopher’s Stone

Barbari and the Imitator

Iskandar of Balkh

Ali, Son of the Father of the Seeker

Rabia el-Adawiya

Abboud of Omdurman

Ajami

Conversion

Raised and Cast Down

Perplexity

Admonition to Disciples

Hasan of Basra

What to Do

The Test

The Hundred Books

Vehicle

The Formula

The Lives and Doings of the Masters

Change

Appetite

Oil, Water, Cotton

Sayed Sabir Ali-Shah

In Mecca

Halqavi

The Journeys of Kazwini

Inconsistencies

A Report by Kirmani

The Land of Truth

Language

Almost an Apple

Etiquette

Reactions

Motivation

Three Interpretations

Farmyard

Streaky Sand

To Seek to Learn to Seek

The Necessity for the Teaching

Observing One’s Own Opinions

Great Worth

Analogy

Lucky People

Value for Money

The Man Who Gave More – and Less

When Even Kings Are Weak…

Conversion

Astrology

I’ll Make You Remember

The Next Generation

If He Looks Good, He is Good

Ruling and Ruled

Hariri the Good Man

Camlet

Respect

The Legend of the Three Men

Mystery

Merchant of Secrets

Distant Projection

Imam Baqir

Ajnabi

Rahimi

Reading

Haji Bektash Wali

The Book of Nonsense

Shakir Amali

How and What to Understand

Displacement

Dividing Camels

Revolting

Laws

Example

The Miracle

Every Luxury

Unsuitable

Sayed Sultan

Three Men of Turkistan

Feeling

The Precious Jewel

The Price of a Symbol

The Water-Wheel

Rauf Mazari

Meaning of a Legend

Ardabili

Inward and Outward Knowledge

The Secret Teacher

A Morning’s Marketing

Moss

Bahaudin and the Scholar

Visiting and Obtaining

Bahaudin

Bahaudin Naqshband

Storing and Transmitting

How it Feels to Be a Teacher

Founding of a School

Opulence

Wisdom

Luxury and Simplicity

The Caravan

Giant Apples

Effort

The New Initiate

Unanswerable

Literalism

Hilmi

The High Knowledge

Charikari

Hazrat Bahaudin Shah

Difficult

Presents

Nahas

Chances

Siyahposh

The Embassy from China

The Question

Transition

Seeing

The Deputation from Syria

Literature

Environment

Andaki

Buyer and Seller

Learning by Signs

The Pardoned Murderer

Halabi

The Abode of Truth

Rights and Duties

Alisher Nawai

The Design

Ghazali

The Rules of the Schools

Bahaudin Naqshband Discipleship and Development

Counsels of Bahaudin

The Legend of Nasrudin

The Sufi Quest

Preface

UNTIL, AS IT were, yesterday, it would have been impossible to publish this book, in spite of the fact that the materials which it contains have been an organic part of Eastern practical-philosophy study for countless centuries. The reason is that the highly articulate of both the East and West have generally been in the grip of the belief that only a certain kind of organized thought can be used for learning. The fact is, however, that all the precedents, all the books, all the traditions which have produced the great thinkers of the past in the Orient show almost no trace of what is today believed to be organization.

If you were to ask a traditional Eastern sage for his system, he would look at you as a modern physician would if you asked for his panacea for all ills. He might invite you to apply to a seller of nostrums on a fairground. He would certainly diagnose you as a primitive who had still to learn the first lesson about knowledge.

Any inspection of the specialist literature on Eastern thinkers and their schools will show the ludicrous situation that the materials available have been more and more closely examined, more and more carefully arranged, in an increasingly mechanical form – not unaccompanied by puzzled mutterings – and the products have become less and less. This fact has been succinctly put by those who remark that scholars desire to study mystics, but mystics never need to study scholars.

Fortunately, in places and in circles which have escaped the modishness of a demand for oversimplification or rigid system (where it has been realized that the essential need is to seek, preserve and transmit knowledge), the manner of prescribing studies for individuals and groupings in accordance with teaching requirements alone has been continuously maintained. With the current dying out of the least useful type of arid-minded pedants, who have succeeded only in giving scholasticism its undeservedly bad odor, the pendulum is swinging back.

This book contains, arranged in a manner commanded by the tradition and not by superficialist obsessional arranging, the materials belonging to the Sufi teaching, selected in accordance with the needs of the time. It might be termed applied specific experientialism.

The very widespread welcome of earlier volumes of similar material, from both academic and other circles, indicates that there is a taste for it, and perhaps a use.

IDRIES SHAH

Subjects Dealt With in Thinkers of the East

SYSTEMS OF STUDY; the Sufi Secret; problem-solving by nonlinear thinking; methods of choosing disciples; special groupings for inner study; use and abuse of literature; different realms of thought; reasons for dismissing students; the role of higher teaching; various types of teachers; the Teacher of the Age; clearing false assumptions; paradoxical behavior; wonders and miracles; special training; riches and poverty; acquiring objectivity; how people learn through parallel training; testing would-be seekers; books and ceremonials; special invocatory formulae; the way to study the lives of former sages; reasons for so many different outward forms of teaching; distinguishing imitators from real instructors; comparisons between various dimensions of knowledge; observing basic motivations; teaching by demonstration; determining the common denominator in study; illustrations of the inward state; knowledge distinguished from opinion; self-observation; why analogies are employed; parable of the work of the people called The Designers; indirect learning system; means employed to convey equivalent thought; examples of illustrative acting; effects of attending mystical ceremonies; being useful in reality, not in appearance; reasons for selling knowledge; how disciples learn from specially constructed procedures; the effects of emotion and intellect on studies; astrological investigations; implanted suggestions; how higher thinkers affect events; instructional interchanges in mystical schools; making effective use of negative characteristics; the inner significance of outward service; alteration of expectancy; the creating of an air of mystery; the publication of nonsensical literature; materials projected in accordance with the possibilities of the occasion; illustrating false impressions; anger; keeping methods and aims in alignment; courting criticism and reactions to it; worldly success and its value; methods and advantages in social activity; doctrine of premature payment for effort; allegory of the human task; symbolism and effect in financial matters; legends of the spread of the Teaching; the reality of which man is an allegory; the degree of capacity to perceive secret teachings; learning by words and by signs; supersession of outward systems of teaching; the storing and transmitting of subtle communications; correcting incapacitating attitudes; disguised operations; the need to digest materials at a certain rate; allegory of the techniques of teachership; real and imagined desire.

A Death is Indicated

THERE WAS ONCE a dervish who had sixty disciples. He had taught them as well as he could, and the time had come to undergo a new experience.

He called the disciples together and said:

"We must now go on a long journey. Something, I am not sure what, will happen on the way. Those of you who have absorbed enough to enter this stage will be able to accompany me.

But first you must all memorize this phrase, ‘I must die instead of the dervish.’ Be prepared to shout this out at any time, whenever I raise both my arms.

Some of the disciples started muttering among themselves, now highly suspicious of the dervish’s motives. No fewer