On The Sufies by Idries Shah
Idries Shah (1924-1996)Feedback on Shah’s book, The Sufis (1964): Wow! For me this was like discovering a second Carlos Castaneda: I found the book mystical, easy-to-read and mind-expanding, and kudos to Shah for being the primary introducer of Sufi to America in the 1960s. What I most liked about the book: My first window to the sheer awesomeness of Sufi, particularly the stories of the trickster Mulla Nasrudin. I liked discovering the source for your blind men and the elephant metaphor, and maybe your usage of the word “initiatory,” which I haven’t seen elsewhere. I’m hoping to take a class in the whirling meditation in the next year or two, and I’ll keep an eye out for more Nasrudin stories.
Also like Castaneda, Shah’s real-life behavior sometimes seemed at odds with his writings. For instance:
* Shah claimed “senior descent from Muhammad” in the “male line of descent.” Actually none of Muhammad’s male children survived, so there is no male line of descent. All Muhammad’s descendants come from his daughter Fatima Zahra. It is not impossible that Shah is descended from Fatima (though there is some evidence to the contrary), in which case he is one of an estimated 1 million+ Sayyids.
* On page 14 of his book The Sufis, Shah provides the only citation for his controversial claim that “it is authoritatively on record” that Sufi predates Muhammad, Islam and the Qur’an: the Kitab el-Luma. Although Shah does not reveal the full title or author, almost certainly he is referring to the oldest and most definitive written work on Sufi, the Kitab al-luma‘ fi ’l-tasawwuf (The Book of Lights; The Quintessence of Sufism), written by Abu Nasr al-Sarraj al-Tusi (?-988 or 989 A.D.), which in fact traces Sufi exclusively to Muhammad, Islam and the Qur’an.
Bennett’s home reflected wealth and taste* Beginning in his mid-to-late-30s, Shah began claiming to be the Qutb (”hub” or “axis”), the secret leader of the worldwide Sufi movement, and that he had been trained in Sufi since early childhood by his father. However, in Shah’s earlier published autobiographical work Destination Mecca (1957) he wrote that his father wasn’t interested in Sufi, and Shah himself never even met a practicing Sufi until he was into his 30s. It wasn’t until Shah personally witnessed the financial success of Gurdjieff’s neo-Sufi group that he retroactively became a lifelong Sufi. Before then Shah wrote poorly-selling books about oriental magic and witchcraft, avowing the reality of, for instance, the ectoplasmic Mungo force and the magical powers of Himalayan leopard powder.
* Just as Castaneda’s authority rests on the alleged Don Juan, Gurdjieff’s authority rested on the alleged Sarmoung Brotherhood (widely thought to be Gurdjieff’s remix of Blavatsky’s trend-setting alleged Ascended Tibetan Masters). With Gurdjieff dead since 1949, the book Teachers of Gurdjieff came out in the mid-60s, written by Rafael Lefort (generally assumed to be Shah writing under one of his many pen-names, though no one can prove it). The author of the book claims to have met Gurdjieff’s Sarmoung Brotherhood, who now believe that Gurdjieff had failed and Idries Shah is their new chosen Messenger.
Bennett’s Djameechoonatra or Djamee* Less than a year after secretly self-anointing himself as the new chosen Messenger of the Sarmoung Brotherhood, Shah approached John G. Bennet. Bennet owned Coombe Springs, a seven-acre estate in Kingston upon Thames, Surrey, where he ran his Gurdjieffian Institute for the Comparative Study of History, Philosophy and the Sciences. The grounds included a Djameechoonatra or Djamee, a sort of temple to Gurdjieff (the term is from Beelzebub’s Tales, meaning “the place where one receives one’s second being food”). Shah presented Bennett with a document supporting his claim to represent the Guardians of the Tradition, aka the Sarmoung Brotherhood (Bennett had already been suitably impressed by Teachers of Gurdjieff, which he didn’t realize Shah had ghost-written). He said the Brotherhood wanted Bennett to prove his dedication by signing over the entire property to Shah, who would become their new teacher in the Gurdjieff tradition. Within a few days after Bennett handed him the property, Shah banned Bennett and his students from the grounds. He then sold Coombe Springs to a housing development (who immediately destroyed the Djamee), pocketed the cash and split.
* Shah generally dealt with the frequent problem of being caught in a fib by stating his First Rule of Esoteric Systems: “Misleading information is included in order to divert unsuitable people. This is a ‘filter’. It includes behavior on the part of the esotericists designed to annoy or otherwise deflect the unsuitable.”
Primary Source: Madam Blavatsky’s Baboon; A History of the Mystics, Mediums and Misfits Who Brought Spiritualism to America (1993), by Peter Washington
J.G. Bennett (1897-1974)
January 27th, 2008 at 11:13 pm
fantastic!
early this evening i was reminded of a line from Seneca… you see, it just does something to the reader to imagine that such a thing were true, but in this case it sort of is true, though it might sound (to the uncautious reader) ever more impressive than it actually is, in this day and age, when a man might listen to another man talking of what a great man Seneca was while doing the dishes.
so Seneca said something like: The weights of the world bore so little on Socrates that they did not even change his features.
which sounds wonderful, as if gives hope that there might be such a face, untwisted by experience. a face in the world, but not of it.
but was there ever such a face, or is it but the most dangerous romantic ideal? did Socrates so well bear the weights of the world exactly because he was fictional?
what then, for those of us who have fallen in love with an imaginary man?
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Hector reply on September 24th, 2011 4:32 pm:
A child cannot understand the accomplisments of an adult, nor an ignorant what a cultivated man can reach. Similarly, even the learned cannot fathom what those illuminated saints can contemplate. This was written by Idries Shah. It might be a quotation.
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February 1st, 2008 at 7:35 am
Some articles for further reading:
“DISKUS Vol 1 No 1 (1993) pp.45-83
A HISTORY OF WESTERN SUFISM
Andrew Rawlinson *(Rawlinson is author of a source book, originally titled ‘Western Masters in Eastern Traditions.’ Its current edition is published under the title ‘The Book of Enlightened Masters’
Department of Religious Studies, University of Lancaster, Lancaster LA1 4YG, England
http://web.uni-marburg.de/religionswissenschaft/journal/diskus/rawlinson.html
and an article by James Moore who himself practiced Gurdjieff work but had some interesting things to say in the following article:
“Neo-Sufism: The Case of Idries Shah”
http://www.jamesmoore.org.uk/7.htm
For a sober description of Islamic Sufism get and read Mark Sedgwick’s book, Sufism:The Essentials
http://www1.aucegypt.edu/faculty/sedgwick/sufcover.html
Sedgwick states that Islamic Sufism was practiced within the social context of Islamic faith and was never meant to be a cloak and dagger, drama ridden Dungeons and Dragon game. (My paraphrase). It was meant to support spiritual practice, not use secrecy and elitism to inflate someone’s personal egotism.
This suggestion by Sedgwick seems to be supported in a much earlier book by David Edwards, Heroes of the Age: Moral Fault Lines on the Afghan Frontier–available online
http://ark.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/ft458006bg/
In the biography, The Lives of an Afghan Saint, written by an anthropologist who interviewed Pashtun in Pakistani refugee camps
http://content.cdlib.org/view?docId=ft458006bg&chunk.id=ch4
Edwards states that a Sufi center, where everyone was socially equal and all deferred to the Pir or spiritual leader, in that particular social context (Pashtun tribal life), actually provided a relief from the heavy social pressures imposed by the Pasthun code of honor. In outside life, the Pastun men were constantly on guard in relation to each other, fretting about their own prestige, whether they’d been insulted, or threatened, or what to do. This hypervigilence and anxiety about maintaining place in the tribal pecking order was nerve-wracking. The one respite was to become involved with a Sufi center in which everyone’s outside rank ceased to matter because all deferred to the Pir (Sufi leader).
Edwards interviewed disciples and learned their reasons for keeping their discipleship secret–it was for reasons of humility, based on their Muslim faith and very different from the elitist, clubby secrecy Western esoteric cults enjoin:
Edwards wrote:
“Despite the fact that there is no shame attached to following a pir (Sufi leader), it is the practice in some areas for disciples to keep secret their involvement with pirs. The reason for keeping this attachment a secret is difficult to ascertain, but it seems at least in part to keep the moral worlds of honor and Islam separate and thereby avoid the kinds of contradictions that ensue when the two overlap.
‘An alternative explanation is offered by an informant from Paktia Province who explained the practice as follows:
“Most disciples do not want to reveal that they are followers of a pir. They think that [revealing this fact] would be a way of projecting yourself as a good person, which is [an attitude] that Allah wouldn’t like. Basically, one becomes a disciple to seek guidance on the right path to Allah. One doesn’t do it for any other reason, and it should be kept secret as much as possible.
“In thecase of our family, it happened so many times that one of our family membersbecame a disciple without our even knowing about it. Because of this attitudeon the part of the disciples, it is difficult to know how many have accepted the tariqat.”
Edwards does not say so, but my layman’s hunch is that if transferred to a Western democratic society, this same master disciple relationship which was apparently therapeutic for Pashtun disciples living in their traditional culture might , if transferred to a Western society, lead to regression on the part of Western followers and perhaps trigger a tyrannical response in the leader—because what was a liberating alternative in the harsh, competitive hyper macho Pashtun scene would warp into something quite different if applied to Westerners in a participatory democracy who bring a different set of questions and different pattern of inner distress to the spiritual search.
It appears from James Moore’s article that Idries Shah did not live for any extended period of time as a Pastun or in the Pastun homelands where he would have had to live daily life according to the demanding Pastun code of honor. Shah was ethnically Pastun on his father’s side, but was born in British India, educated and socialized within a British cultural context, lived and worked in the UK with a brief stint in South America–worlds away from the context studied and described by Edwards.
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February 3rd, 2008 at 2:33 am
thanks for another great comment, AK… and for the links.
one thing: it is possible for sufi, or perhaps better put, pseudo-sufi, orders to exist in the West with the aspect of secrecy and humility intact. the principle, at least, has survived the translation.
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February 3rd, 2008 at 5:08 am
AK, the remarks regarding the Pashtun context of some Sufi orders reminded me of similar comparisons with Japanese Zen, which has been characterised as being adapted for the honour code of the samurai which dominated the society. Zen seems to have served a similar role in providing a kind of release valve and levelling of the social playing field.
I’d like to suggest you’ve touched on something that is more generally applicable and to extend this to suggest that any functional tradition of teaching will provide methods of praxis that allow us to live within our, to borrow from jones, “survival necessary” social orders whilst expressing and, if necessary, regaining our inner freedom of conscience.
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February 5th, 2008 at 2:29 pm
Arthur Koestler visited Japan in the late 1950s and wrote a book reflecting on this, entitled ‘The Lotus and the Robot.’ (The first half of the book described his visit to India)
Koestler made observations concerning Japanese society at the time. He suggested that the koan stories, with their descriptions of spontaneous, whimsical behavior of Zen teachers and students, perhaps functioned as a a therapeutic balance to the interpersonal tensions and concern for etiquette in Japanese society.
When this ‘if it feels good do it’ was adopted by American Beatniks and hippies as proof that ethics and consideration for the welfare of others is irrelevant for Zen practitioners, this led to some very serious misunderstandings.
As for India, Koestler was taken aback by the ambient noise,even in the temples, and lack of privacy. He said he found it easier to get peace and quiet in New York City than in India. In India, privacy could be obtained only by leaving family life and all conventional social ties and becoming a renunciate in a cave.
In his book, The Light at the Center, Agehananda Bharati, who was born in Vienna, became a sanyassi (his biography, The Ochre Robe is fascinating), gave an anthropological description of mysticism and the role of spiritual seekers in India. He noted that householders who became serious practitioners of yoga were, by social convention, automatically given privacy and deferred to by members of the household.
So to, paraphrase and perhaps stretch Koestler’s and Bharati’s observations a bit, in India, becoming a renunciate or a serious householder-yogi permitted people to withdraw from the pressure of society and family ties, gain privacy, and have given much needed respite to introverts–at least for those who were male.
Bharati noted that it was more difficult for women to become yogis unless they were widows.
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February 5th, 2008 at 2:42 pm
Stephen wrote:
“I’d like to suggest you’ve touched on something that is more generally applicable and to extend this to suggest that any functional tradition of teaching will provide methods of praxis that allow us to live within our, to borrow from jones, “survival necessary” social orders whilst expressing and, if necessary, regaining our inner freedom of conscience.”
I think this is very much worth examining.
My ethnic background is Irish Catholic/Russian Jewish.
From my Catholic background, I knew early on that there were ways to remain unmarried and yet have an honorable in useful place in society.
I read an interview by Stanley Kornow, of an activist priest who did wonders finding funds and shelter for the poor in Paris, during a brutal and lethal freeze in Wintertime. (Karnow, Paris in the Fifties).
This priest had been born into a wealthy family. He told the journalist, ‘In my soul I felt I was unfit for the bougeois life.’ It is interesting to me that he did not seem to speak with any hatred or resentment of his family–he seemed to convey that he felt that he was like a gear out of synch with the mechanics of his family background. Following this inner message, Pierre became a member of a religious order, and later was a participant in the Resistance, and after a stint in politics, became an advocate for the poor–and a highly effective organizer.
But…in Jewish culture there is no place for someone to say, while still young, ‘I felt in my soul that I was not fit to marry and have a family.’ There’s tremendous pressure to ‘couple up’ and marry.
I was talking with a woman who had moved from New York and who told me how she had to fight to keep her mother off her back, because her mother was bugging her about why she had trouble finding a man. My informant said she had to tell her mother that our town didnt have a huge
Jewish community as New York does, and as she put it, ‘Its not that I’m not looking, its that I have to work harder at it. Mom just doenst understand.’
That is heavy pressure…even for someone who does want to marry.
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February 5th, 2008 at 3:02 pm
there might be, then, a therapeutic role for cults within culture. this reminds me of ‘the garden’ community created by the epicureans, as a retreat from the unhealthy pressures of their culture;
and also of my experience with the Cascadia Forest Defenders, who were with their founding documents trying to formulate an enclave within the dominant culture. the problem was that the doctrine they’d come to in opposition was even more authoritarian than the culture they were trying to oppose.
Lenin confronted the same problem, though he embraced it, declaring avoidance of the necessity of the Dictatorship of the Proles as infantile. this is a perspective, seems to me, close or analogous to the perspective which regards an absolute guru as a necessity. in short, the only way to unseat a tyrant is via a benevolent tyranny.
we’ve all got to come together to confront the tyrant in tehran.
anyone know what that’s from? i came across it today on pff!
there’s the paradox for you: pulling in all different directions and moving with the times.
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Hector reply on July 23rd, 2010 6:16 am:
‘pulling in all different directions’ means each looking after their own personal security and benefits abd ‘moving with the times’ means going along with the prevailing opinion to get along and have a comfortable ride – that is exactly what members of parlaments and congress – politicians – do, so cowardly, instead of really exercising their prerogatives to think and act for the good of all
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February 5th, 2008 at 3:54 pm
It’s from a Terry Pratchett novel, “The Truth”. Vetinari is full of such gems and Pratchett plays most merrily with the benevolent tyrant meme through him.
There’s a few quotes from His Lordship here:
http://www.ealasaid.com/fan/vetinari/vetinariq.html
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February 5th, 2008 at 10:43 pm
thanks, Stephen! i figured you’d know.
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June 15th, 2008 at 7:49 am
Those interested are invited to read the various biographies of British poet Robert Graves and survey the descriptions from various viewpoints about his entanglement with Idries Shah. In particular the second volume of the two volume biography of Graves written by Graves’ nephew Perceval gives very detailed information of the development and denoument of the relationship between Graves and both Idries and Omar Shah—for via his blood tie, Perceval had access to his uncles papers and correspondance.
Note: there is also nothing unique about being a Sayyid (descendant of the Prophet Mohammed, peace be to him).
For V.S. Naipaul, in his book Beyond Belief, interviewed a man living in Pakistan in the early 1990s. The man told Naipaul this:
‘Salman, speaking of this neurosis (in which countries converted by the Arabs to Islam feel obligated to deny and even denigrate the existence and vitality of their pre-Islamic history, customs, culture, substituting an imposed Arabic/Islamic identity) said,
“Islam does not show on my face. We have nearly all, subcontinental Muslims, invented Arab ancestors for ourselves.
“Most of us are sayeds, descendents of Muhammed, through his daughter Fatima, and cousin and son-in-law Ali.
“There are others, like my family–who have invented a man named Salim-al-Rai. And yet others who have invented a man called Qutub Shah. Everyone has got an ancestor who came from Arabia or Central Asia.’ (Naipaul, Beyond Belief, p 307.)
For descriptions of the Sayyid clans and Sufism as practiced in the 1850s in Sindh, in what is now Pakistan, read Francis R Burton’s book, based on first hand observations, Sindh and the Races That Inhabit the Valley of the Indus.
Shah could easily have obtained and read Burton’s book. It and other works published in English and European langages, give pretty detailed descriptions of the initiations and spiritual practices of Sufis in that region, and the many persons able to claim Sayyid descent. Burton also describes how Pirs (spiritual leaders of Sufi communities) wielded vast political influence, often enjoyed great wealth, and could, if they chose do anything and have ready excuses made for them by eager devotees. Burton himself learned to travel as a Sufi and this enabled him a wide latitude of behavior–and enabled him to visit Medina and Mecca in disguise–his account makes fascinating reading.
In his detailed chapter on Sufism/Tasawwuf as practiced in Sindh, Burton listed the rites of initiation and the forms of practice prescribed to aspirants…and does not mention the Nasruddin tales, though in other chapters he tells us much about the epic poetry and love stories popular in Sindh and this in a region that included Pathans, as well as ethnic Sindhis, Baluchis and Punjabis, Sunni and Shia Muslims, Hindus and Sikhs. In the chapter on Sufism, Burton told many stories of local saints and a cycle of prophecies but doesnt mention Nasruddin. Nor, despite Burtons avid interest in magic and the many things he learned by living among the people undercover in the guise of a Persian merchant, does Burton say anything about the enneagram. Though….he tells us much about alchemy and even mentions how to tell the future using the shoulder bone of a freshly sacrificed sheep.
Burton was given a Murids diploma after practicing under the guidance of a Sufi master, so if information about the enneagram had been at all available, we could have trusted Burton to talk about it. But he does not.
EW Lane in his 1836 book, Manners and Customs of the Modern Egyptians, also gives highly detailed information about games, customs and yes, magical tricks and superstitions practiced by conjurers in Egypt at that time. Lane’s book with its lovely engravings (a boon for anyone interested in clothing and interior design) is, like Burton’s books, easy to obtain and might well have been accessible to Shah during his years when he worked at a privately owned museum of magic in Great Britain in the years before he went public as a Sufi.
1. Some quotes from Richard F. Burton concerning the number of Sayyid families in Sindh, which shows that the title in and of itself though it conferred dignity, was by no means rare–or proof of exalted spiritual attainment.
“The two great families of Sayyids, viz. Hasani and Hosayni, are both numerous in Sindh. Individuals belonging to the latter class have the title of Pir, as in Pir Bhawan Shah. The Hosayni race is termed Sayyid, as in Sayyid Jendal Shah. As usual in our province, these two large bodies are subdivided into clans, called after their place of residence, as Bokhari, Mathari, Shirazi, Lakhiri, Sakrulai, &c. ….
‘In Sindh, a Sayyid seldon will allow his daughter to marry a Moslem who is not of the same lineage. Formerly no man, however rich or respectable would have dared address a maiden of the sacred stock…the consequence was that many of the women were left unmarried and old maids are not common in the East. The custom is now disappearing.
‘Another peculiarity in Sindh is that if either of the parents be a Sayyid, all the children must be called Sayyids…
(RF Burton, Sindh and the Races that Inhabit the Valley of the Indus, pp. 232, Chapter 9, originally published in 1851, republished in 1998.)
So, over time, the number of persons calling themselves Sayyid would increase. The title would be one of dignity but by no means proof of unique status nor would being a Sayyid, be in and of itself, proof of supreme spiritual attainment.
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June 16th, 2008 at 12:22 am
thanks for that AK. i’m sure it’ll be of interest to those people who continue to access this post. it’s one of the most popular landing spots for new visitors to this site.as for the commonness of the Sayyid name: i believe Shah traced his lineage back to the Sassanid dynasty of ancient Persia, which may or may not be true. personally, i don’t put any weight on the claim either way… being American and not predisposed to reverence for genetic lineage.given that there are many lineages of sufism, why should we consider it reasonable to take Burton’s account as defining the limits of sufic thought?Burton doesn’t mention Nasruddin, therefore we should conclude that Nasruddin only became a figure of sufic contemplation with Shah? it just doesn’t strike me as reasonable to suppose that a single observer could fully detail a culture of any real complexity.besides, on what grounds do we decide who and who is not a real sufi, or more generally, a genuinely spiritual person? Shah’s supposed lineage, for example, is within the context of Western culture (from my perspective) a curiosity, but not even potentially proof of any personal attainment. Shah may have been in some significant ways a fraud, the enneagram may be a 20th Century invention, Nasruddin may have never been included in the canon of any sufi school, but what, really, matters any of that? certainly there is abundant cause to be skeptical of all claims of spiritual attainment, but we are ultimately on our own to (as the song says) sort through the stories we’ve been told. and does the authorship of any of those stories determine their value to us?is not the argument from authority already understood as a logical fallacy?the matter is not who said what, but what is said, who hears it, where and when.which isn’t to say that i don’t very much appreciate the information you’ve provided. what i mean to counter is either the implication or the easy inference that we have some standard of Authority we might apply to sort out real teachings from frauds, particularly because the utility of any bit of information is in part a function of the circumstances of the hearer and the hearing.which is not to say that i disbelieve in objective value altogether. off to bed… thanks for taking the time to post.
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June 16th, 2008 at 12:24 am
frack… the formatting of that last comment was entirely lost. i’ll sort it out tomorrow…
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June 24th, 2008 at 3:14 pm
Some conclusions about this can be made from one of Bennett’s own Books, the Masters of Wisdom. The Book contains a multiple revision of a lecture that dealt with the Origins of G. Teachings. I’ve I’m not mistaken ( As I try to recall from my memory, since a gave the Book away to a friend ) JGB had worked on this Book until the End of his Life.During the last Years of his Life JGB would revisit Turkey again for a last time and actually verify, that at least one of G was still alive.Without going into the Identity thing ( Which I can’t recall anyway ), one can conclude that the Inner Circle, or driving Force behind those Sufi Masters where Men of considerable Simplicity, one of them earning his money from manufacturing wooden spoons.I recall, that JGB describes a Master in this Book, who instead of Sleeping on the Ground rather was leaning against a Tree for an Hour to rest.( I’ve red similar accounts about St John Maximus, the great late 20th Ascetic Saint, who didn’t even have a bed in his small room, he either bended down in Prayer on his knees, or took a small nap in his armchair )Now, judging from these witness accounts, I’d rather say, that Idries Shah, although a great man could not be among those, that he claimed. He also was a member of the Club of Rome and various think tanks that just don’t fit the Bill.I’m sort of convinced, just as G. demonstrated during the later period of his Life, that these Masters of Wisdom, that JGB describes would not use their occult Powers for any Purpose, as it is a disgrace and a trap from some sort of point of view.( Great Post BTW, stumbled upon this accidentally )
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June 24th, 2008 at 11:35 pm
thanks for the comment.
very curious to check out your site more.
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June 25th, 2008 at 11:05 am
I’m working on some new stuff. Dangerous Legislation, secret Government Programs, etc, I hope I can get this done now. Linking back to your Site ( thanks for this great article )regards
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June 25th, 2008 at 2:13 pm
you’re entirely welcome, though it’s the work of a contributor here.
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August 16th, 2009 at 3:26 am
Only just found your site. Someone suggested a search for “Idries Shah” “Androids in Love”. Have been studying Shah since 1986 and I’m still not really sure if I’ve even taken the first step in the right direction. and yet I do appear to be gradually changing over the years. Could be that the books (and the work that goes along with them) actually *do* bring about change in one.
Thanks and take care. Looking forward to reading more. Eric T.
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Neuromancer reply on September 6th, 2009 3:56 pm:
May be you are in the Obivatel way as Gurdjieff says…
I myself had been involved in Shah work and if it is some form of scam I can’t really tell.
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Ernesto reply on October 28th, 2009 2:17 pm:
I read all Shah’s books, voraciously, for many years, and volunteered at ISHK, his book store in Cambridge. The people I met while working there seemed like they had serious psychological problems. I also donated two thousand dollars to ISHK, anonymously. I wrote them three times over the course of several years, after having read all the books many several times each, to ask what I could do next, etc. Each time they sent me another list of the same books. The third time, they said the group had disbanded, but buy the books again anyway. When I say “they” I mean the PO box in Los Altos, so I’m assuming that means Robert Ornstein, who incidentally co-wrote a book with eugenicist Paul Ehrlich. I’ve actually been to Ornstein’s house and don’t appear to have reached enlightenment by being in his presence. I’ve acquired no abilities in ESP, telepathy, channeling, out-of-body experience, remote viewing, telekinesis, predicting the future or even lucid dreaming. Speaking of which, when I was at Ornstein’s he was selling Stephen LaBerge’s book on lucid dreaming. I’ve read that and practiced the exercises in it nightly for close to twenty years and have had three lucid dreams that I can recall, and they were hardly interesting, let alone enlightening. If I’ve gained any wisdom at all from this experience, it’s avoid these people and this vile scam.
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ernesto reply on March 26th, 2010 10:44 am:
Really? Cool. Maybe I’ll tell you about it after I’m dead.
You really can’t tell if Shahstein is a scam? Here’s a simple test: Do you have ESP? Don’t post a reply, just tell me your answer telepathically.
On the other hand, the stories are insightful. Many are about how “scholars” dissect irrelevancies with no interest in the truth whatsoever. Graves isn’t in the same league as Sassoon, don’t you know!
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August 20th, 2009 at 1:27 am
welcome! sadly, the author of this well-traveled, and somewhat reknowned, post is no longer a contributor here… and the commenters have likewise gone off. i hope you find something useful anyway, inbetween the assorted wranglings…
regards,
-the proprieter
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September 6th, 2009 at 3:58 pm
It seems I forgot to check the notify box
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December 2nd, 2009 at 4:54 pm
Ah, Shah… unless one is interested in joining a personality cult, what does anything said for or against Shah really matter. The material surely stands or falls on its own merits … especially now that Shah has passed beyond our praise or censure.
[wink to jones]
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December 9th, 2009 at 10:28 am
A few comments from an associate of Idries Shah:
“senior descent from Muhammad”
The above mistaken assertion was actually made by Robert Graves. You will find it in Grave’s introduction to the first edition of ‘The Sufis’. The introduction was commissioned by the book’s publisher and was not seen by Shah prior to publication.
“it is authoritatively on record”
I have never read ‘Kitab al-luma’ and have no idea as to what it might, or might not, authoratively state. However, Genesis, chapters 37-50 (for example) convinces me that sufism antedates historical Islam.
‘Shah himself never even met a practicing Sufi until he was into his 30s.’
Presumably, he had met his father– who was in fact a practicising Sufi (see section on Sufism here:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Ikbal_Ali_Shah
‘generally assumed to be Shah writing under one of his many pen-names, though no one can prove it’
My own assumption is that the book was written by Omar Ali Shah. I might be wrong, though.
‘prove his dedication by signing over the entire property to Shah, who would become their new teacher in the Gurdjieff tradition.’
A significantly different version of events is recorded by Bennett’s own son: http://www.bennettbooks.org/AboutJGB.html
‘But by the mid-’60s, although the work at Coombe Springs had gathered new momentum, Bennett was ready to make yet another change. He and his groups had become involved with Idries Shah (who is now very well known as an exponent of Sufism but who was then just establishing himself in England), and once again Bennett offered his help. Along with the Institute for Comparative Study, he proposed giving the whole property of Coombe Springs over to Shah. It seemed a ridiculous notion, for the land was becoming very valuable, but, nevertheless, in the spring of 1966 the gift was made. But after Bennett and some of the Coombe Springs residents had moved into a house in the neighboring town of Kingston-upon-Thames, Shah, subsequently and in short order, sold Coombe Springs for a housing development!
Many thought Bennett had made another big mistake. But, in truth, Shah had performed a real service — quite the opposite of the way it appeared — by helping Bennett to become completely free of a place to which he had devoted twenty years of his life. Without that sacrifice, it is doubtful whether Bennett would have been able to embark on the last and perhaps most significant project of his life: the inauguration of an experimental Fourth Way school for the passing on of techniques for spiritual transformation.’
“Misleading information is included in order to divert unsuitable people. This is a ‘filter’
I do not doubt that Idries Shah sometimes told lies. However, the statement above is the truth.
Regards
Jim Buck
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December 22nd, 2009 at 3:41 pm
i continue to be gratified by the comments this post receives. thanks, all.
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January 10th, 2010 at 3:26 am
This article has all the savour of a toxic industrial waste pond. The turgid and poisonous academic quibbles show that the author is pursuing some ridiculous personal vendetta.
The work done in the 60s was not meant for academics nor for the stultified Gurdjieffites. It was meant to provide new input, new thought into an area that had ossified.
I strongly suggest that you go and do some proper research before writing this inferior material. And don’t waste everyone’s time quoting from Moore.
Androids indeed.
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January 12th, 2010 at 5:12 am
wow, what an absurdly vicious reply.
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January 14th, 2010 at 3:21 pm
Yes, this reply comes with the same flavour of Idries’s chauvinistic pretentions to be beyond everything else.
But.
The same could apply when trying to apply functional sociologic insights to sufism, zen, or other spiritual teachings, perhaps we must content with a syntactic analysis of sufi literature; or a bit less, like thinking it from the free market advocaces perspective, for example.
I prefer personal comments, as it is proposed as a personal activity.
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January 22nd, 2010 at 9:57 pm
Interesting comments. Reading through them is like paging through a
schizophrenic’s mind, you know, affirmation, denial, and so forth.
All real spiritual pursuit contains both mythos and logos. In many
ways they are mutually exclusive. This is the Mystery that can only
be experienced, not discussed rationally. Gurdjieff was a fascinating
fellow who lived an extraordinary life. Shah, a sweet, gentle and genuinely funny
man, also lived an exceptional life. What strange model do we carry in our minds
that asks more out of life for ourselves?
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January 27th, 2010 at 10:45 pm
i think there’s a reasonable expectation that those who offer themselves as exemplars actually have an example worth following. of course the problem comes in that what is ‘worth following’ is in significant part a function of the capacities of the follower. this is the last line of rationalization for those defending the transgressive acts of those in power and has been exploited enough that we all might be wary of it. true, nonetheless.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr wrote: “Metaphysical intuition can occur anywhere – for the ’spirit bloweth where it listeth’- but the effective realization of metaphysical truth and its application to human life can only be achieved within a revealed tradition which gives efficacy to certain symbols and rites upon which metaphysics must rel for its realization.”
It is this idea – that there exists a metaphysics that might, within a genuine tradition, exalt human life – that is the nub of the controversy between adherents and critics. There are those who criticize inferior traditional forms (intra-traditional warfare) and those who criticize the very idea of metaphysics. In short, the very possibility of human exaltation is the source of the conflict.
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January 28th, 2010 at 8:15 am
What is important is our presence and the quality of our attention. The personality of the messengers is secondary; gossip.
And yet – We can look at the fruits. Of Gurdjieff and Bennett, many sincere seekers and folks who work on themselves. For Shah – hard to tell. His ‘line’ died when he did, or went underground.
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January 29th, 2010 at 7:28 pm
Surely the private life of any philosopher is only important relative to their claims. So for instance Frank Lloyd Wright was an abusive cult leader by any standards – during the Great Depression, unable to find any work at all, he misrepresented himself as extremely successful and enrolled hundreds of wealthy boys into his “architecture school” – which cost half again what Harvard charged at the time, but consisted of no books, no classes, no architecture – only acting as butler, dishwasher, waiter, cook, and free manual labor to the Wright family. He and his wife dictated their “students” lives to the point of mandatory instructions on whom they could/could not sleep with. Wright beat people physically, including his own daughter, if they questioned the absolute dictatorial control he believed his genius granted him. (See the Ken Burns documentary on Wright or the book ‘Fellowship: The Untold Story of Frank Lloyd Wright and the Taliesin Fellowship’.) However, Wright’s intensely abusive personal life in no way diminished his contribution to architecture.
By contrast consider Ayn Rand. Her core philosophy was about an absolute refusal to compromise, especially with the demands of men she considered geniuses. Her book ‘The Fountainhead’ was based on Frank Lloyd Wright, but when the studio approached him for permission to use his designs in the film, the price he asked was so prohibitive that Rand privately agreed to use designs she believed to be vastly inferior, giving the would-be profound film an untintended camp quality. Because this decision from Rand’s private life is directly relevant to the absolutist claims of her philosophy, she took great pains to hide it from her followers.
As Gurdjieff and Shah each claimed they had some kind of inside information on enlightenment, surely the way they treated their family & followers is directly relevant in judging the value of their claims?
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jones reply on February 10th, 2010 1:34 am:
i don’t think so… at least not necessarily. behavior is relevant to judging the state of the person, though not an infallible guide given the subjectivity of the observer. behavior, however, isn’t necessarily relevant to judging a philosophical system, which might have merit even if the person expounding it isn’t an example of this merit.
for example, we consider the sentiments that Jefferson expresses in the Declaration of Independence as having merit, though Jefferson, a slaveholder, violated the sentiments most egregiously by our standards and the standards of many in his day. should we discount the idea that all people are created equal because Jefferson didn’t live up to this principle?
likewise, should we jettison all of the founding principles of America because America as a country has failed to embody those principles? certainly that failure provides reason to doubt the authenticity of the actor, but not necessarily the validity of the principles claimed.
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Anonmous reply on February 10th, 2010 4:46 pm:
In the abstract, of course it’s possible for someone to espouse a useful philosophy they don’t actually follow. In practice, Gurdjieff based his authority on his claim to be the sole representative of a thousand-year-old brotherhood of mystics who controlled the fabric of reality, and he convinced enough earnest-but-gullible seekers of this to become rich. In his autobiography he gives several examples of how he intentionally lied to people and convinced them to believe in something magical, so he could take their money toward the greater good of his personal spiritual quest. Likewise, Shah leveraged his claim to be the Qtub to convince people to give him millions of dollars in assets, while elsewhere admitting he had no compunctions about lying to people about spiritual matters. In both cases their private behavior is directly relevant to weighing their philosophical claims – wouldn’t you agree?
My position is that a claimant’s personal life should be *taken into consideration* when weighing their claims, as relevant. Both your counter-examples (Jefferson and America) seem to argue against an absolutist straw man of jettisoning an entire philosophy due to minor or irrelevant disagreements – was my point insufficiently clear, or…? Please clarify; I think we may be in argugreement.
When you say Jefferson, in owning slaves, “violated the ….standards of many in his day…,” can you provide a URL with more information on that? My understanding has always been that the idea that slavery might be morally wrong was almost unheard of among white Americans in his day.
r.e. Shah – I don’t see what the big deal is. Mulla Nasrudin and the other stories in his book are traditional folktales, and all Shah did was translate them into English for the first time. It’s only because Shah withheld the names of the Arabic books he translated from that he “mistakenly” gave Westerners the impression that he was in some way responsible for their creation. Would you agree or disagree?
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jones reply on February 10th, 2010 6:35 pm:
1. it depends on what you mean by their philosophical claims. i know next to nothing about G, so i’ll stick to Shah. i’ve three or four of his books, and i’m not aware of any claims that hinge on him being an exemplar. The Way of the Sufi, for example, is entirely a collection of quotes, aside from the introduction. i think the case for the relevance of behavior to philosophy is much clearer for me to appreciate with Castaneda, who for many years at least amounted to the only example generally known of someone living the philosophy he presented. Shah may have claimed to be the Qutb, but he didn’t invent the idea. so, there’s a distinct difference between the philosophy he presents and his own behavior.
2. i don’t see how jefferson owning slaves, or America in general violating its founding principles, amount to ‘minor or irrelevant disagreements.’ slavery is a direct, fundamental, contradiction of the principle of universal equality.
as to historical sources, search google for a few minutes. Hamilton, for one, was an abolitionist. indeed, the Constitution was only agreed to by delegates from the southern states after the demand by Quaker abolitionists that slavery be outlawed was blocked.
3. not sure what you’re asking me to agree or disagree to. yes, Shah translated and presented Nasruddin stories. i was not aware that anyone ever mistook him as their author.
January 31st, 2010 at 11:14 pm
Underground, overground, wandering free:
http://www.i-c-r.org.uk/
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February 10th, 2010 at 8:05 pm
1. My understanding is that Shah’s income derived primarily from students who believed his supernatural claims – like J.G. Bennett above, who surrendered a million-dollar property to Shah because of Shah’s claim to be the newly-appointed worldwide representative of Gurdjieff’s imaginary yet reality-controlling Sarmoung Brotherhood. Shah even provided Bennett with “evidence” in the form of a formal document from the Brotherhood.
Here’s an article on Shah that disputes some of Jim Buck’s statements from above (includes the information that Shah’s father was known for his “Munchhausen’s syndrome” [compulsive lying], and a repeat of the information from above that according to Shah’s own 1957 autobiography, despite the occasional dabblings of his father, Shah didn’t meet “his first practicing Sufis [until] around the age of 30″. Also, Shah’s old boss Dr. Gerald Gardner is mentioned – that’s the guy who invented Wicca):
http://www.gurdjieff-legacy.org/40articles/neosufism.htm
More on Shah horribly damaging the reputation of his friend/student Robert Graves (the guy who repeated in print Shah’s claim to be the Qtub) with lies & plagiarism:
http://www.gurdjieff-con.net/2009/12/13/idries-shah-and-robert-graves-from-garrards-a-book-of-verse/
1b. Can you expand on “Castaneda, who for many years at least amounted to the only example generally known of someone living the philosophy he presented….”? My understanding was that, for instance, he told his male students that it was mandatory to be celibate to conserve the magical energy necessary to be a warrior, and that he himself was celibate, but in reality he was having sex with most of his female students.
2. My point is your counter-examples both argue against an absolutist all-or-nothing stance, so I wanted to clarify the delta between the position you’re arguing against (absolute all-or-nothing) and the position I’m actually expressing (taking into account – along with all other factors – when relevant). Clear?
2b. “Jefferson was an outspoken abolitionist, but he owned many slaves over his lifetime….” Okay, you’re 100% right on that one. Huh.
3. So if Shah is of interest solely as another folktale translator, and the value of his books is actually the original stories he retells (not his translations), why the focus on him here? (Are you aware this page is one of the top Google hits on the subject?)
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February 10th, 2010 at 8:23 pm
3. i am aware of that fact, though i didn’t write this post. it was written by a former contributor who has slipped back into the aether. my interest in Shah has never been him personally (in fact his tone in writing has at times seriously turned me off) but in the corpus of material he made available.
2. i agree with taking relevant info into account, though it’d be pretty impossible to oppose that position. but, i maintain that the life of a philosopher is [oops] *not* necessarily relevant to their claims, for reasons already stated. even a direct contradiction between the life of a philosopher and the teaching of that philosopher doesn’t necessarily invalidate the teaching – though it may very well invalidate the teacher at some level. even that’s a bit of a slippery slope, because people can gain positive benefits from imperfect teachers.
1b. i don’t imagine i know much more about Castaneda than you do. i know he advocated both in person and implicitly through his books many practices, and that this in itself is pretty dicey. a particular method, like celibacy, can be of use in the proper circumstance, but of harm in another circumstance. all of these methods are forms of medicine, and the unskillful practice of medicine violates the fundamental purpose of the art. of course an unscrupulous physician is particularly dangerous.
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February 10th, 2010 at 8:58 pm
3. I hear you – I had misunderstood you as the original document author.
2. I agree that “a direct contradiction between the life of a philosopher and the teaching of that philosopher doesn’t necessarily invalidate the teaching,” with the caveat that, particularly in the supernatural claims of Gurdjieff, Shah, and Casteneda, observing an overall pattern of deceit suggests a helpful and generally accurate indicator as to the veracity of those claims which are impossible to test.
1. I hear you.
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February 11th, 2010 at 7:36 pm
2. agreed.
sorry for your comments not appearing immediately. not sure why…
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February 21st, 2010 at 12:07 pm
Moore invariably declines invitations to debate, ‘too busy’ he says. However, he does find time to tinker with the article as its inexactitudes are exposed. For instance, he accuses Idries Shah of conflating Mevlevi and Bektashi dervishes—the implication being that the Bektashi do not dance. The Bektashi are in fact reknowned for their Kirklar Semahi:
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6731nThTqCM
As for the slanders against Iqbal Ali Shah’s veracity…well, frankly, anyone who takes the British Foreign office as an authoritative source ought, at least read a few John Le Carre books (better still, watch an hour or two of the Iraq war inquiry on BBC 24).
The notion that Idries Shah (as opposed to Omar Ali Shah) damaged Robert Graves reputation is highly questionable. Read a few biographies of Graves; it should then become clear to you that, as far as the English establishment was concerned, Graves was always an outsider. He was “half German, half Irish”– a particularly unfortunate stigmatisation during the second decade of the 20th century. His war memoir ‘Goodbye To All That’ is now regarded as a classic, but was regarded, by many of his comrades-in-arms, as a catalogue of betrayal.
Personally, I admire Grave’s poetry; but he was not in the same league as Sassoon and Owen (both of whom Graves despised for their homosexuality). He might have aspired to be Poet Laureate, but I suspect that he would have been at best a contender. For many years he had made his home in Majorca; and there were persistent rumours that his hospitality to luminaries of the counterculture was a cover for intelligence gathering; whatever the truth of that allegation, he was viewed with suspicion by many on both sides of the UK political divide. Tories saw him as: a bounder; queer, maybe. Reds saw him as an effete, toff. Whatever tiny dip in royalties he may have suffered, as a result of his partnership with Omar Ali Shah, was more than offset by the enormous revival in his fortunes which followed the BBC’s serialisation of ‘I Cladius’. It is for the latter, and also his war poetry, that Graves is now remembered—except of course by hypocrites like Moore, whose crocodile tears, for a damaged reputation, is accompanied by an eagerness to stir the teacup whenever a chance to attack Idries Shah presents itself.
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July 8th, 2010 at 8:45 am
Re Sufism predating Islam I think it is useful to define what Sufism actually IS or is not. Clearly this is not possible as such and in a way a purpose of the path itself which everyone must define for oneself.
If however one takes the statements of the Classical Masters then certain possibilities do become apparent. Hujwiri for example said “Today Tasawwuf is a name without a reality whereas in previous times it was a reality without a name.”
Hujwiri also conflated Sufism with the Malamati or ‘Path of Blame’ group. In fact he explicitly stated at one point in “Revelation of the Veiled” that the Sufis WERE the Malamatis….general studies today seem to view the Malamatis as a grouping within Sufism or a derivative sect.
If one takes this as the case then one could certainly argue that Sufism predated Islam as the Cynics & Diogenes as well as eastern Orthodox mystics such as Isaac of Nineveh followed practices identical to those of the Malamatiyya and the latter probably represent a direct continuation.
Taking this further it may even be instructional to look at Shah and Gurdjieff in the light of the ‘Path of Blame’ doctrine. One could argue that this is an excuse to explain away certain aspects of their behaviour but they did not create the Malamati ideal..it existed for thousands of years prior to them in the tradition they were concerned with.
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Hector reply on July 20th, 2010 11:21 am:
If you cannot know what the purpose of the path itself is…
listen, man, go and read works of such well-known classic Sufis like Ibn El Arabi, El-Ghazzali, Jalaluddin Rumi, Hafiz and so on and you will find out exactly what it is all about – no need to ‘define for yourself’. If you like a presentation by a Sufi who wrote for a Western audience using the very terms of reference Westerners use, read René Guénon, like “Initiation and Spiritual Realization’ – all these I recommend, mind you, only because you clearly have not yet extracted a clear conception of Sufism’s purpose from your reading of Shah’s work. Sufism is not about any kind of vaguely felt sensations that anyone should ‘define for oneself’ what their purpose is – if any.
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July 15th, 2010 at 5:25 pm
As a life-long reader of Idries Shah’s work I find all comments posted here truly fascinating and I want to be a witness of this discussion, to enlighten myself and, if possible, to reach into the deep recesses of Shah’s personal soul and real intentions – as well as his knowledge. Oh! Is that impossible? Well I happen to think that real intentions can actually be known. Shah was perhaps not that evil as he appears to some – but on the other hand…
Did he himself know enough about his own British social elite milieu?
Because any man´s intentions will either be marred or enhanced by the degree of real knowledge he possesses. For instance, some serious authors have been unwittingly exploited by manipulators who used their work for obscure political purposes. Did Shah truly know who were the people who have exploited the work done by the Club of Rome? Did he really know what their true intent was? Do the people who promote cap and trade, ‘green’ tech, the use of grain to produce fuels and so on really know whom they are working for? Do they know what the expressed intent of the World Wildlife Foundation about the world’s (human) population really is? Do they know what the people who created those policies and this Foundation really are after?
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jones reply on July 15th, 2010 5:59 pm:
the essence of any sophisticated conspiracy is the employment of a great many ignorant of the ultimate aim. the conspiratorial genius is, in this sense, the ape of God.
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Hector reply on January 27th, 2011 6:55 am:
This is a brilliant comment. The expression ‘the ape of God’ has also been commented by René Guénon in his book ‘The Reign of Quantity and the Signs of Times’ in connection with certain modern developments that are very revealing.
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Ernesto reply on July 18th, 2010 1:27 pm:
Hector, I’ve also wondered how Shah or his followers would rationalize his membership in the Club of Rome. He was either unaware or supported their stated policies:
“In searching for a new enemy to unite us, we came up with the idea that pollution, the threat of global warming, water shortages, famine and the like would fit the bill…. But in designating them as the enemy, we fall into the trap of mistaking symptoms for causes. All these dangers are caused by human intervention and it is only through changed attitudes and behavior that they can be overcome. The real enemy, then, is humanity itself.” –Club of Rome, The First Global Revolution, 1991
Therefore, Shah was either oblivious to this agenda, hence “unenlightened,” or considered humanity his enemy, i.e., was a sociopath. Of course, one need not be prescient to anticipate the reply that there is a third alternative: that we mortals simply cannot understand his actions, and as always, I encourage any of his “students” to explain them to me, telepathically.
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jones reply on July 20th, 2010 1:13 am:
to paraphrase the words of Liu I-ming, as translated by Thomas Cleary: the human mentality is both the chief villain and the chief virtue. less abstractly, it seems to me perfectly obvious that consumptive humanity, such as it is, *is* the enemy, even of itself.
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ernesto reply on July 20th, 2010 8:57 pm:
I’m intimately acquainted with the work of Thomas Cleary’s brother, and I think he would have to agree that there’s an infinite distance between presuming to play God and having the knowledge to actually effectuate a positive change for humanity. In any case, I also believe that it’s “perfectly obvious” that Adam Smith and his intellectual progeny have soundly refuted Liu I-ming (whoever that is) by simply contrasting the development of the West with the lack thereof in the East in the modern era.
jones reply on July 21st, 2010 7:47 pm:
the idea of Adam Smith and co refuting Liu I-ming is, i’m guessing, much more sensible in the absence of any idea whatsoever of Liu I-ming’s work. even a small familiarity renders the comparison bizarre.
as to Thomas Cleary’s brother’s presumptive point about the infinite distance between the desire and the ability to reform humanity, i agree. still, i see nothing damning in recognizing that industrial humanity is a global crisis.
ernesto reply on January 18th, 2011 6:34 pm:
Pedant, any reference whatsoever to Liu I-ming is “bizarre.”
Do you have ESP? I’m guessing that you don’t. But if you do, teach us.
jones reply on April 11th, 2011 4:22 pm:
If I did, perhaps i’d have a clue how that relates -in your mind, at least- to anything in this thread.
jones reply on September 24th, 2011 3:42 pm:
revisiting this thread after months, i am amazed that anyone would assert that an author they, by their own admission, know nothing about has been “soundly refuted.” it boggles my mind. i’ve only one notion of what the thought process might be: Liu I-ming was Chinese and is therefore refuted. is there any other possible reading?
that’s the only one i can imagine and it is utterly stupid, to put it mildly. in fact, it’s so stupid i can’t quite believe that i’ve read it correctly… and yet i can’t make any other sense of the assertion.
Hector reply on April 12th, 2011 12:59 pm:
About having ESP and communicating telepathically, I understand that you are being derisive, yet those things are everyday occurrences. But we supress our inklings instead of being more attentive to what comes from inside us. We also have to reconcile ourselves with the fact that these forms of communications do not come to order, as it were. They cannot really be faked and only arise, if at all, as a response to a real situation. Rumi said: ‘Because of necessity, man acquires organs. So, necessitous one,increase your need.’
Which of course, has got nothing to do with your point about Shah’s Club of Rome membership being a contradictory fact – on which I think you are absolutely right.
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Hector reply on September 24th, 2011 4:42 pm:
About “the development of the West in contrast to the lack thereof in the East in the modern era”, two points could be made:
1. When asked about “Western civilization” Mohandas Ghandi replied “It would be a good idea” – and you only have to watch the news to agree;
2. I visited my daughter in China last year, the Expo Shanghai was on, every country in the world had a space to advertise itself (70 million visitors) and we also visited Beijing, Xian, Guilin and Yang Shao (this a small town down a river) and I could observe that there is NO such “lack” of “development”. As a matter of fact, China is by far in a much better shape right now than most of Europe and the United States. And do Japan and South Corea not form part of the East? To say nothing of India or Qatar or…
jones reply on September 25th, 2011 2:42 am:
it could be answered that way, though i think that that gives it a bit more credit than it is due.
July 20th, 2010 at 6:27 am
‘consumptive humanity’? it sounds like the ancient Indian diagnosis that we are in the Kali Yuga, the fourth and last phase of humanity’s cycle of descent ande decadence (see Sheikh Abdul Yahia, a k a René Guénon for details). I think that two – perhaps mutually contradictory – propositions are basically true about mankind and should be the foundations of any attempt to rational thinking about ‘big’ (i. e. social) matters, namely: 1. that mankind’s adequate use of resources is – unlike animals and vegetals which have fixed modes of existence – managed through technologies, which in turn are applications of universal principles, which are discovered through man’s mental powers – so much for the ‘limits to growth’ of the propaganda (for that is what it is) of the Club of Rome and 2. that the only purpose of man is not merely to ‘grow and multiply’ (Genesis) in numbers through constant technological advances in productivity but to know himself and know his Lord, i. e. ascend spiritually to higher states of being, to which end various Traditions have been communicated to him at various times: Hinduism, Daoism, Buddhism, Christianity, Islam and so on with their corresponding esoteric, inner traditions for spiritual ascent -although of course, our common modern mentality acknowledges neither 1 or 2 and thus lives in the realm of immediate sense perception, the procurement of their daily bread and various forms of hedonism to compensate for the void thus created within Western culture.
Did Shah know about 2? Obviously yes. Was he naive about point 1? Most probably yes, and it would be his only excuse.
Assuming one can alow him the benefit of the doubt, as they say.
Of course, this restates the case of this omniscience: he did not possess it. Because, if he did, then he was an accomplice of those who have always consciously sought to maintain Prometeus chained and man away from the use of the properties of fire (technology) for purposes of crude material exploitation. In this endeavour, cults have been engineered to divert minds from actually making use of their natural prerogatives.
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jones reply on July 21st, 2010 7:53 pm:
so, in your view does Lao Tzu advocate the unleashing of Prometheus? in my reading, he does just the opposite. which reminds me of this bit from Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s “Man and Nature”:
“Nature must be seen as an affirmation and aid in the spiritual life and even a means of grace rather than the obscure and opaque reality it has come to be considered. It must once again become a means of recollection of Paradise and the state of felicity which man naturally seeks.
The re-discovery of virgin nature does not mean a flight of individualistic and Promethean man toward nature. While in the state of rebellion against Heaven man carries with him his own limitations even when he turns to nature.”
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Hector reply on July 22nd, 2010 11:11 am:
The Prometheus myth (I have a lazy tendency to jump the dictionnary when I write, even knowing I had forgotten the ‘h’, sorry) may be interpreted in many ways. Hossein Nasr’s way of using it is not mine for I was not talking about a rebellion against Heaven, you see, but a rebellion against the financial circles that loot the existing physical resources of the world and would not gladly tolerate investments in enhanced productivity nor intellectual development in the underdeveloped OR the so called ‘industrial’ countries – look at the accelerated downfall of the US and European countries and you will see what I mean.
But I also recognize that ‘the flight to nature’ (enhancing the productive capacity of society) may contradict the spiritual quest. I wrote in my posting above that ‘two – perhaps mutually contradictory – propositions are basically true about mankind.’
In this respect, I share the view of René Guénon – whom I have now referred three times in my postings here – because he was very clear about Western culture being an aberration in being the only one that has deprived mankind of a Tradition – in the spiritual sense of the world – and become a purely material civilization. So much so, that the word ‘material’ as is employed since Descartes first used it as the opposite to the mental world, does not have equivalents in the major and oldest languages of the world but had to be translated, as from the preceding century, with new verbal constructions. So, you see this culture of ours going sour because it has lost its Heart (what used to be Christianity) towards the 13th century, which is when the Middle Ages really ended.
Sadly enough, other cultures, which should preserve their own Traiditions, have become infected by ours. I have mentioned that this development has been predicted. Among several such predictions (or forecasts, all depends on how you look at them) I mentioned the division in four eras or Yugas made in Hinduism, the last of which is called the Dark Age or Kali Yuga, in which we are now.
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jones reply on July 22nd, 2010 2:50 pm:
want to point out that you are using ‘the flight to nature’ in a way entirely different from what Nasr means by the phrase… and it seems to me that Nasr’s use is more in accord with what i’d call the traditional view, as expressed by Lao Tzu.
in this view, the promethean ability to ‘enhance the productive capacity of society’ is perilous and amounts to what Nasr refers to (in traditional language) as a rebellion against Heaven. in other words: enhancing the productive capacity in a way that goes against the Tao does not last long. short term enhancement, long term failure.
July 20th, 2010 at 11:40 am
In the context of much of the discussion presented in this blogg – which, as has been said above is one of Google’s top hits on the subject – it ought to be said that the Sayed Idries Shah, his brother Agha Omar Ali Shah and even Castañeda were not by any means the only exponents of teachings of spiritual development in the West – perhaps only the only ones that were visible for an important segment of the population in Western countries. But even in the West there never was any lack of such exponents besides the Shah brothers and Castañeda. But not all people know how to broaden their perspective and learn more until they know enough to be able to look back into their first discovery and put it into its proper place. Sometimes you need help from outside yourself to do so. But even such help has been available all the time. The problem usually is, that most people do not realize that they need an education in this field before they can benefit from what they have found, the little thing which is the only thing they know about – which is thus so precious to them.
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jones reply on July 20th, 2010 12:02 pm:
thanks for the context. that this page is one of Google’s top hits on the subject is, to my mind, funny. sadly the author of this particular post long ago vanished into the aether.
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Hector reply on July 21st, 2010 2:59 pm:
but his legacy lives on!
perhaps he is secretly peeping into these comments now and then and chuckling to himself. Anyway, he left behind very interesting commentaries or pehaps this is just an Interner version of the tale ‘The Food of Paradise’ and we are revelling with the left-overs of the bath of the princess?
Whatever you may think of Idries Shah, he certainly left behind a wealth of material which is worth pondering about and making use of. I´ve got a picrture of his tombstone in London’s cemetery and on it is this quotation (which I know is from Rumi):
‘Do not look at my outward shape
but take what is in my hand’.
May he rest in peace!
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jones reply on July 21st, 2010 7:54 pm:
*her* legacy… and yes, i agree, worth pondering. thanks for the epitaph.
July 22nd, 2010 at 11:25 am
By the way, Adam Smith could hardly be said to have any ‘intellectual progenie’ since he lacked a real intellect himself to begin with. He was only creating a false argument – his famous ‘invisible hand’ of ‘the markets’ that Wall Street and the City of London (progenie, indeed) so admire – until they run into bankruptcy and governments of the world must pool together – with very visible hands – what money they have collected from tax payers to bail them out of their fraudulent Ponzi-schemes with ficticious assets drawn onto the real, physical assets of the world – which they so gladly destroy with their bubbles.
The country of Liu I-ming was similarly destroyed with opium at the point of the guns and canons of Adams Smith’s co-subjects of Her Majesty and Her Most Glorious East India Company – not to talk about the atrocities they did in India (have you heard of the carnages in Amritsar?) or in Africa (do you know about Cecil Rhodes?) or America or Oceania or.. you name it. Those people do not even qualify as human beings least of all as intellectuals of any sort.
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July 22nd, 2010 at 1:23 pm
A correction, and then a recommendation. You mention:
“Shah claimed “senior descent from Muhammad” in the “male line of descent.””
etc.
In this point a correction needs to be made.
Descendants of Ali Ibn Abi Talib, the 4th Sunni Caliph and first Sh’ia Imam are Sayyids. There are other lineages of “asraf” whose connection with various family members of the Prophet bestows nobility, but the line of Sayyids Shah claims descent from would be from childrne of Ali.
Ali was the husband of Fatima, daughter of the Prophet (peace and blessings upon him and his progeny)
Ali was an adopted son of the Prophet, so descent from him is considered to be a Sayyid.
Ali’s two sons, Hassan and Hussain, were the sons of both Fatima and Ali.
Also what Shah likely meant is that his father’s line were Sayyids, not his mothers. His mother was a Scottish convert to Islam to logically the only lineage from the Prophet Shah could have had was from his father, hence his meaning was true in this instance.
Shah was an interesting and intelligent writer. But there is very much the trickester in him. Like Casteneda, but smarter. There are books by Shah that are much, much, better than “The Sufis”
Someone who really wants to understand the sufis and their relation to Islam and culture in the middle east is best reading much different works.
Someone interested in the sort of “waking up” that Shah was trying to hint at would have to be very careful and weigh fully what he or she reads.
Shah I suspect was trying to communicate very profound things, to an audience of Westerners, conditioned and tragically dumbed down in certain ways so as to prevent the reception of certain types of information, due to centuries of indoctrination prejudice and simple in-access to certain languages and information.
You may find “Book of Strangers” by Ian Dallas to also be of interest. It is a modern story and allegory of Sufi initiation by a Scottish Shaykh of the Darqawi brotherhood. He is more straightforward about certain matter than Shah was, in my opinion.
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Hector reply on July 23rd, 2010 7:47 am:
Many thanks for clarifying an issue that has confounded people over a number of years, namely the assertion by Shah that he was a descendant of Prophet Mohammed on the male side.
May I also suggest Sheikh Abd-ul Wahid Yahya as one who also was much more straightforward than Shah about many important aspects of Sufism?
He wrote books under his French name: René Guénon.
I find his Perspectives on Initiation (Aperçus sur l’initiation, 1946) particularly enlightening on what a spiritual teacher is for and what a path of spiritual development truly is, that also clears away a lot of common misunderstandings.
Man and His Becoming according to the Vedânta (L’homme et son devenir selon le Vêdânta, 1925) is a very thorough description of the spiritual development possible to man even if presented by means of the terminology of the ancient Indian Vedas. The content of this book is a fundamental piece of information for anyone interested in the field.
I must also mention here (even if striving to make this list extremely short) The Reign of Quantity & the Signs of the Times (Le règne de la quantité et les signes des temps, 1945) which is a thorough diagnosis of Western culture and civilization from the standpoint of one who understands what a Tradition is. Never mind the year it was given to publication: it looks as fresh today as it was then.
The reactions to his work have been explosive. Admirers speak in superlatives. Critics are ferociously mean. See for yourself.
But know that Hindus (Ananda Coomaraswamy and others) as well as Muslims (Hossein Nasr, authorities of Al-Azhar University, Centres of High Islamic Studies in Egypt, Saudi Arabia and other places) and Daoists – and others, have puclicly acknowledged him as one of the very few people of Western extraction that truly understood those Traditions and did a good job at presenting them to a Western audience. In this context, Guenon’s first published work – his doctoral thesis, rejected by the Sorbonne University in 1921 but now considered the best ever written introduction to Eastern traditions there is – should be also added to my short list: Introduction to the Study of the Hindu Doctrines (Introduction générale à l’étude des doctrines hindoues, 1921). If you read it, you will find such a devastating criticism of the scholarly methods employed in the West (by the Orientalists and others) – tantamount to a mortal attack on the very people who would judge his doctoral thesis – that you need not wonder why they rejected it. But even if the title refers only to the doctrines of Hinduism, the first half of the book refers to all spiritual traditions in general, as well as to the only culture that lacks (now) a Tradition of its own: ours.
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Ibn Abdul Shafi reply on August 31st, 2010 7:06 am:
Brilliant recommendation, I have read Guenon as well and there are many secrets mentioned in his work that, when one puts things together, can ignite a fire in the mind.
His historical works are as valuable as his esoteric ones, chiefly his history on Theosophy and the Spiritualist Movements, in which he isolates an interesting hidden current behind some social and political happenings.
Regards
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Hector reply on August 31st, 2010 9:08 am:
Thank you for adding Guenon’s historical research books on Theosophy and Spiitualism to the list. In those texts (which can be downloaded from the Internet for free, just google them) Guénon not only provides documentation and first hand witness testimonies but also takes on the doctrinal basis of those two special specimens of the Occultist field.
What seems evident in your appraisal of Guenon’s work is that you recognize the high calibre of his mind and the truly elevated level of his writing. That is also found in Idries Shah’s work, even if the emphasis is on other aspects of Sufism. Their critics never achieve to that level of quality.
Hector reply on January 27th, 2011 7:10 am:
After reading your comment again recently I have pondered over what you wrote about the trickster in Shah and seeing his work as a way to circumvent the conditioning of certain circles, which had prevented them from being able to assimilate vital information about a spiritual Tradition. A rather trivial example of trickstery is possibly his ‘annotation’ on the Tarot in his book ‘The Sufis’. I did mention this to an Internet forum of dedicated specialists in the field of the history of the Tarot (and the playing cards) and they mocked it, saying that Shah tried to appropriate anything he could to the Sufis in that book – discounting his assertion on the Sufi origin of the Tarot as more or less a blatant lie. Shah did not provide any information that could back up his assertion and even wrote that as the ‘original’ device was still in use in Sufi circles he could not say much more about this subject. Because of that I had nothing to say and had to accept their rebuke silently. Shah surely went overboard on this matter? He assumed that his assertion would be taken seriously and would perhaps be deemed worth of research on the sole basis of his own (self-presumed) authority…
On the other hand, he certainly brought a better understanding of what Sufism is and what an ‘awakening’ may be like to people in the West, as well as feeding them a lot of practical knwoledge on psychology collected by Western researchers who, because they usually publish in specialized magazines, are never read by more than a very few. A good example among many is his chapter On Attention in his book Learning How To Learn.
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July 23rd, 2010 at 6:32 am
‘ in other words: enhancing the productive capacity in a way that goes against the Tao does not last long. short term enhancement, long term failure ‘
I fully agree. And that is what happens when short-term thinking prompted by the need to increase the yields for the sake of an ever increasing rate of interest dominates the economy. Look at BP cutting corners and creating history’s so far biggest environmental disaster in the waters of the Caribbean Sea. Survivors of the disgraced oil-plattform were not allowed to reach the coast before they had signed papers freeing BP from responsibilities and cutting them short of any possibilities of future legal claims against the company…
It is not the financiers – nor, particularly, Adam Smith – who really created and drove the technological development of the West but a system of credit issued by sovereign states and carefully directed to building up the infrastructure of the country. But that is history now…
A flight to Heaven needs not be impeded by people trying to be free from poverty and material backwardness, which are perfectly legitimate needs. But people deprived from their right to higher purposes by the ‘wise’ of our culture know nothing but to behave as cattle and are an easy prey for the predators. They in turn know no better either for greed defeats itself in the end.
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September 1st, 2011 at 4:36 am
Augy Hayter [''Thirty Years On'' in Omar Ali-Shah's ''Sufism For Today'', vi]says says that the Gurdjieffian Reginald Hoare read an article in ”Blackwood’s” magazine in the early sixties that described a Sufi exercise that was apparently the same excercise [or similar?] known only to the ”top ten” of Gurdjieff’s pupils. Mr.Hoare enquired through the magazine as to who the author of the article was. I t turned out to be one Mr. Idries Shah. If this is true [and the exercise doen't just bear a superficial similarity to Gurdjieff's] it suggests that 1. Gurdjieff was in contact with Sufi teachings [thought obviously G. was a flawed individual] and; 2. that Shah had at least a knowledge of Sufi exercises [although I guess that doesn't mean he was sent by the Naqshbandi to teach the west, much less a ''Qutb''.]. I find what I.Shah said interseting food for thought, but I wouldn’t want to take what he said as Gospel.
As for the character of a Teacher, I think it’s essential. Jesus said ”Judge a tree by the fruit it produces” and that ”people don’t pick grapes from thorn bushes” [I'm paraphrasing a bit.] That’s why when I read of Gurdjieff’s almost attempted rape of one of his female student’s I thought, How can I guy claim to be a great spiritual teacher whose techniques transform people if he can’t even keep his hands to himself! Apparently the ”attack” had much to do with Ouspensky’s disillusionment with G. I’m not all that knowledgible about Gurdjieff, his ideas about psychology are interesting and he gave great quotes, but he himself seems to have been very flawed.
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Hector reply on September 15th, 2011 4:48 pm:
I did not know that Gurdjeff had attempted to rape a student. It’s like the former head of the IMF Dominique Strauss-Khan, or some Catholic priests… Idries Shah wrote a book on Gurdjeff, The Teachers of Gurdjeff, under the pseudonym of Rafael Lefort. In it, Gurdjeff is portrayed as a former Sufi student who fled his masters with pieces and portions of knowledge, with which he created his own system. A former pupil of Idries’s brother Omar Ali Shah, an Italian guy (I can’t remember his name now) left him to create his own “school”. He has been accused of financial exploitation of his students. It seems that many a Jesus has his Judas… Nonetheless, I think that a human being may make some progress and then he may step out of his path and fall… but he may also recover from that. What I think should be underlined of your argument is that you think that a teacher should be above all human frailty. But the very definition of a teacher, according to Idries Shah himself, is that he should have what the student needs. Period. He does not need to be a saint to teach you – up to the level where you yourself become a saint. But even then: in Shah’s book The Sufis, there is a chapter with an extensive dialogue in which a Sufi master in India explians to a Western student that “if you stumble on a rock on the ground and that teaches you something, then that rock is your guru.”
Also Idries Shah wrote womewhere that some people learn education from watching the uneducated, and some poeple could not do worse than that… You must start somewhere.
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Hector reply on September 15th, 2011 5:01 pm:
I also ought to say, that Idries Shah, in that same book written under the name of Lefort, explains that by going to the West, Gurdjeff helped to introduce and disseminate some preliminary Sufi ideas on which later Sufi teachers (like Shah himself) could capitalize. The whole Sufi effort, he says there and elsewhere (as in The People of the Secret and also in Journeys With a Sufi Master) is planned to be carried by successive generations on a time span large than an individual human life. Also, what seems to be working against the best efforts of good and well intentioned individuals may also be seen as creating a necessary friction and eliciting the kind of reaction that shakes people and make them, in the long run, more aware and responsible. This in itself is the best protection that you can actually give anyone – this is what all parents try to do with their children. In fact, it is perhaps the best weapon you can give them to protect themselves, for you cannot keep them under a crystal bell, like a piece of cheese, for ever… Things apparently oppsite to each other may actually be working togeteher.
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October 2nd, 2011 at 11:47 am
Why do people continue to insist that Idries Shah authored: ‘Teachers of Gurdjieff ? Where’s the evidence?
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Bob reply on October 22nd, 2012 3:42 pm:
Hi Jim,
I often wondered about that over the years. The only reasonable answer I could come up with was this. The quality of Lefort’s writing was so high and the calibre of the person such that I felt sure such an author would have published other works over the years. The book appeared to me to be the product of a practiced hand but yet, no antecents could be found.
Exactly the same reasoning was applied to Omar M. Burke’s book. Again, an apparently experienced author whom one would have expected to produce other works.
This then is the ‘evidence’ such as it is.
Do you have an particular reason for not believing Shah was the author of the Lefort work? May I ask why it would matter to you? Would you be disappointed if Shah is the author? I know I was just a little disappointed since it suggested, obliquely, as in other books, that Shah was a central figure. I always reasoned that away in terms of this being a posture necessary for western readers to get them to pay attention in the first instance. They too are suckers for pedigree as it were and, if that is what it takes to get them to sit up. then so be it etc etc.
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Jim Buck reply on February 6th, 2013 12:39 am:
Hello Bob, I have taken upon myself the task of countering the ‘Shah school productions” meme which was manufactured by James Moore. Your reasoning about antecedent writings is a useful approach, but not enough for me to reject the null hypothesis. Moreover, I know for certain that Idries Shah did not write one of the books, referred to in Hector’s post; People of the Secret was authored by Edward Campbell. I know that because Campbell told me so, when we met in 1983. Edward Campbell was for many years the literary editor of a London newspaper. He was then a practised writer; but, as far as I know, he had no literary oeuvre. It matters to me that these memes get transmitted, unwittingly, because they have an insidious effect on historiography.
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Jim Buck reply on February 6th, 2013 12:53 am:
Campbell did write one other book, and also published a monograph:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Edward_Campbell_(journalist)
June 26th, 2012 at 10:25 pm
A lot is made of the claim to be in the senior male line of descent from Muhammad. Well, if there were no male descendants of the Prophet, blessings on him, he wouldn’t have any descendants at all. Maybe the oldest grandson was meant. Gee whiz. Having a male ancestor is all it takes to be ostracized.
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February 6th, 2013 at 5:22 am
Jim, Bob. I regret having repeated claims that I cannot back up myself with any evidence that I know. To my knowledge, both Teachers of Gurdjeff and Among the Dervishes have been written by Idries Shah with pseudonyms (Rafel Lefort / Omar Burke); possibly also Journeys with a Sufi Master (by H.. M. Dervish). This information has been given to me by people who are mostly well informed and had been around Shah in one capacity or another. That is to say, I was relying on hearsay from well intentioned people.
On the other hand, the article on Shah in Wikipedia seems preposterous. It contains slander and is in my opinion far away from being an accurate and well balanced presentation. It would be good if you could redress that.
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April 7th, 2013 at 8:10 am
Hector, would you be good enough to specify which bits of the Wikipedia entry on Idries Shah are slanderous?
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Hector reply on April 7th, 2013 10:09 am:
Jim, I had not read the article in a long time. It seems ok to me now. It’s strange that another website contains exactly the same text and I wonder which of these came up first ? http://www.bahaistudies.net/asma/shah_brothers.pdf
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