Idries Shah

Warning: when you pop, you can't stop Like a famous brand of crisps, these stories are addictive. Read one, the saying goes, and you'll be stuck reading seven. In fact, Mulla Nasrudin jokes function like memes - working their way into the fabric of society, subtly influencing thought. They have no calories, so indulge without guilt

A treasure house of teaching materials, assembled in the Sufi manner. Seeker after Truth contains both traditional tales and stories gleaned from contemporary sources, and snippets of table talk, discussions and teachings, letters and lectures by Idries Shah. Taken together, it constitutes a handbook of materials designed to provoke a different kind of thought.

A treasure house of teaching materials, assembled in the Sufi manner. Seeker after Truth contains both traditional tales and stories gleaned from contemporary sources, and snippets of table talk, discussions and teachings, letters and lectures by Idries Shah. Taken together, it constitutes a handbook of materials designed to provoke a different kind of thought.

"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 TimesWhen 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 five decades since its release, the book has been translated into dozens of 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."

Cuando apareciO por primera vez en 1964, Los Sufis fue acogido como la obra decisiva sobre la materia. Rico en su alcance, explica por primera vez a un pUblico occidental las tradiciones y la filosofIa de los Sufis de un modo claro y didActico. Durante las cinco dEcadas posteriores a su lanzamiento, el libro fue traducido a una docena de idiomas y ha encontrado una amplia variedad de lectores tanto en Oriente como Occidente. Es utilizado como libro de referencia en muchIsimas universidades de todo el mundo, y el material que contiene ha venido siendo aplicado por psicOlogos, cientIficos, maestros de escuela, abogados, trabajadores sociales e integrantes de la sociedad en general. Acaso la mejor introducciOn al corpus de Shah, y sin dudas la mAs exhaustivamente informativa. Al instante uno se ve forzado a usar la propia mente de un modo novedoso. - The New York Times

Special Illumination is a term used by the great poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi to stress the importance of humour in metaphysical experience. Of it, Idries Shah says, 'Rumi directly contradicts such numerous sour-faced religionists as, in all persuasions, find that humour disturbs the indoctrination which is all that they usually have to offer.'

Special Illumination is a term used by the great poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi to stress the importance of humor in metaphysical experience. Of it, Idries Shah says, "Rumi directly contradicts such numerous sour-faced religionists as, in all persuasions, find that humor disturbs the indoctrination which is all that they usually have to offer."

Special Illumination is a term used by the great poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi to stress the importance of humor in metaphysical experience. Of it, Idries Shah says, "Rumi directly contradicts such numerous sour-faced religionists as, in all persuasions, find that humor disturbs the indoctrination which is all that they usually have to offer."

How can it be that the same story is found in Scotland and also in Pre-Columbian America? What can account for the durability and persistence of tales? Was the tale of Aladdin and his wondrous lamp really taken from Wales (where it has been found) to the ancient East and, if so, when and by whom? These questions and more are answered in Idries Shah's remarkable volume World Tales, which is subtitled "The extraordinary coincidence of stories told in all times, in all places." In his introduction, Shah remarks, "Working for thirty-five years among the written and oral sources of our world heritage in tales, one feels a truly living element in them which is startlingly evident when one isolates the 'basic' stories; the ones which tend to have traveled farthest, to have featured in the largest number of classical collections, to have inspired great writers of the past and present."

Based on university lectures at the New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of California, San Francisco, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study deals with many of the problems of Sufic methods of study and those which militate against its effective progress in the modern world; notably the unrecognized assumptions which we make about ourselves and about learning and its process.

Based on university lectures at the New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of California, San Francisco, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study deals with many of the problems of Sufic methods of study and those which militate against its effective progress in the modern world; notably the unrecognized assumptions which we make about ourselves and about learning and its process.

Based on university lectures at the New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of California, San Francisco, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study deals with many of the problems of Sufic methods of study and those which militate against its effective progress in the modern world; notably the unrecognised assumptions which we make about ourselves and about learning and its process.