Theos-Talk Archives (March 2003 Message tt00061)

Hi all of you,

Sorry! The first part went of to early. This - one - should be more chronological right.

Here is another article by the Sufi - Idries Shah (d.1996).
The article has been put togehter from two parts. But it should be the article in its entirety.
It runs 13 pages.

Here is the first 2 pages in a series of 6 emails. Article was cut in 6 emails to be polite towards some readers emailboxes. >:-)

The article starts of with the author introducing Idries Shah. I have to with emphasis - add this and say - that I disagree with her last sentence in her Biography of Idries Shah (look at part 6 later), that Idries Shah should have had any earthly fear at all.

Part 1 - with about 2 pages:


Article originally published in Psychology Today, July 1975
Copyright Elizabeth Hall


The Sufi Tradition

"SOME GURUS ARE FRANKLY PHONIES, AND THEY DON'T TRY TO HIDE IT FROM ME. THEY 
THINK I AM ONE TOO"

EH: Idries Shah, you are the West's leading exponent of Sufism, that rich 
religious tradition growing out of the Middle East. Why, at a time when new 
cults are springing up, do you refuse to be a guru? You could easily become 
one.
IS: There are a lot of reasons. But if we are talking about the teacher who 
has disciples, it's because I feel no need for an admiring audience to tell 
me how wonderful I am or to do what I say. I believe that the guru needs his 
disciples. If he had a sufficient outlet for his desire to be a big shot or 
his feeling of holiness or his wish to have others dependent on him, he 
wouldn't be a guru.
I got all that out of my system very early and, consistent with Sufi 
tradition, I believe that those who don't want to teach are the ones who can 
and should. The West still has a vocation hang-up and has not yet discovered 
this. Here, the only recognized achiever is an obsessive. In the East we 
believe that a person who can't help doing a thing isn't necessarily the best 
one to do it. A compulsive cookie baker may bake very bad cookies.
EH: Are you saying that a person who feels that he must engage in a certain 
profession is doing it because of some emotional need?
IS: I think this is very often the case, and it doesn't necessarily produce 
the best professional. Show an ordinary person an obsessive and he will 
believe you have shown him a dedicated and wonderful person - provided he 
share his beliefs. If he doesn't, of course, he regards the one obsessed as 
evil. Sufism regards this as a facile and untrue posture. And if there is 
one consistency in the Sufi tradition, it is that man must be in the world 
but not of the world. There is no role for a priest-king or guru.
EH: Then you have a negative opinion of all gurus.
IS: Not of all. Their followers need the guru as much as the guru needs his 
followers. I just don't regard it as a religious operation. I take a guru 
to be a sort of psychotherapist. At the very best, he keeps people quiet and 
polarized around him and gives some sort of meaning to their lives.
EH: Librium might do the same thing.
IS: Yes, but that's no reason to be against it. Why shouldn't there be room 
for what we might call "neighborhood psychotherapy" - the community looking 
after its own? However, why it should be called a spiritual activity rather 
baffles me.
EH: One can't help getting the feeling that not all gurus are trying to 
serve their fellowman.
IS: Some are frankly phonies, and they don't try to hide it from me. They 
think that I am one, too, so when we meet they begin the most disturbing 
conversations. They want to know how I get money, how I control people, and 
so on.
EH: They want to swap secrets.
IS: That's going a little too far. But they feel safety in numbers. They 
actually feel there is something wrong with what they are doing, and they 
feel better if they talk to somebody else who is doing it. I always tell 
them that I think it would be much better if they gave up the guru role in 
their own minds and realize that they are providing a perfectly good social 
service.
EH: How do they take to that advice?
IS: Sometimes they laugh and sometimes they cry. The general impression is 
that one of us is wrong. Because I don't make the same kind of noises that 
they do, they seem to believe that either I am a lunatic or that I am 
starting some new kind of con. Perhaps I have found a new racket.
EH: I am surprised that these gurus tell you all their secrets as freely as 
they do.
IS: I must tell you that I have not renounced the Eastern technique of 
pretending to be interested in what another person is saying, even pretending 
to be on his side. Therefore, I am able to draw out gurus and get them to 
commit themselves to an extent that a Westerner, because of his conscience, 
could not do. The Westerner would not allow certain things to go 
unchallenged and would not trick, as it were, another person. So he doesn't 
find out the truth.
Look here, it's time that somebody took the lid off the guru racket. 
Since I have nothing to lose, it might as well be me. With many of these 
gurus it comes down to an "us and them" sort of thing between the East and 
the West. Gurus from India used to stop by on their way to California and 
their attitude was generally, let's take the Westerners to the cleaners; they 
colonized us, now we will get money out of them. I heard this sort of thing 
even from people who had impeccable spiritual reputations back home in India.
EH: It is an understandable human reaction to centuries of Western 
exploitation.
IS: It's understandable, but I deny that it's a spiritual activity. What I 
want to say is, "Brother, you are in the revenge business, and that's a 
different kind of business from me." There are always groups that are 
willing to negotiate with me and want to use my name. On one occasion a chap 
in a black shirt and white tie told me, "You take Britain, but don't touch 
the United States, because that's ours." I had a terrible vision of Al 
Capone. The difference was that the guru's disciples kissed his feet.

{ SEE WHAT I MEAN? Nasrudin was throwing handfuls of crumbs around his 
house. "What are you doing?" someone asked him. "Keeping the tigers away." 
"But there are no tigers in these parts." "That's right. Effective, isn't 
it?"}

EH: Gurus keep proliferating in the United States, always with massive 
followings. A 15-year-old Perfect Master can fill the Astrodome.
IS: Getting the masses is the easy part. A guru can attract a crowd of a 
million in India, but few in a crowd take him seriously. You see, India has 
had gurus for thousands of years, so they are generally sophisticated about 
them; they take in the attitude with their mothers' milk. This culture just 
hasn't been inoculated against the guru. Let's turn it around. If I were 
fresh off a plane from India and told you that I was going to Detroit to 
become a wonderful automobile millionaire, you would smile at me. You know 
perfectly well the obstacles, the taxes, the ulcers that I face. Well, the 
Indian is in the same position with the automobile industry as the American 
with the guru. I'm not impressed by naive American reactions to gurus; if 
you can show me a guru who can pull off that racket in the East, then I will 
be surprised.
EH: Before we go any farther, we'd better get down to basics and ask the 
obovious question. What is Sufism?
IS: The most obvious question of all is for us the most difficult question. 
But I'll try to answer. Sufism is experience of life through a method of 
dealing with life and human relations. This method is based on an 
understanding of man, which places at one's disposal the means to organize 
one's relationships and one's learning systems. So instead of saying that 
Sufism is a body of thought in which you believe certain things and don't 
believe other things, we say that the Sufi experience has to be provoked in a 
person. Once provoked, it becomes his own property, rather as a person 
masters an art. 
EH: So ideally, for four million readers, you would have four million 
different explanations.
IS: In fact, it wouldn't work out like that. We progress by means of NASHR, 
an Arabic word than means scatter technique. For example, I've published 
quite a number of miscellaneous books, articles, tapes and so on, which 
scatter many forms of this Sufi material. These 2,000 different stories 
cover many different tendencies in many people, and they are able to attach 
themselves to some aspect of it.
EH: I noticed as I read that the same point would be made over and over 
again in a different way in a different story. In all my reading, I think 
the story that made the most profound impression on me was "The Water of 
Paradise." Afterward, I found the same point in other stories, but had I not 
read "The Water of Paradise" first, I might not have picked it up. 
IS: That is the way the process tends to work. Suppose we get a group of 20 
people past the stage where they no longer expect us to give them miracles 
and stimulation and attention. We sit them down in a room and give them 20 
or 30 stories, asking them to tell us what they see in the stories, what they 
like, and what the don't like. The stories first operate as a sorting out 
process. They sort out both the very clever people who need psychotherapy 
and who have come only to put you down, and the people who have come to 
worship.

{ IF A POT CAN MULTIPLY One day Nasrudin lent his cooking pots to a 
neighbor, who was giving a feast. The neighbor returned them, together with 
one extra one - a very tiny pot. "What is this?" asked Nasrudin. "According 
to law, I have given you the offspring of your property which was born when 
the pots were in my care," said the joker. Shortly afterwards Nasrudin 
borrowed his neighbor's pots, but did not return them. The man came round to 
get them back. "Alas!" said Nasrudin, "they are dead. We have established, 
have we not, that pots are mortal?"}



Part 2 of 6 follows shortly.

from
Sufilight with peace and love...






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