Idries Shah Quotes - Page 9

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.
Idries Shah
The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds
Idries Shah
The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.
Idries Shah
Two people can illustrate crudity to you.The first is the crude man, whom you see perceiving the diamond as a stone.The other is the refined man, who makes clear to you the crudity of the first one.
Idries Shah
Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.
Idries Shah
Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.
Idries Shah
There is a succession of experiences which together constitute the educational and developmental ripening of the learner, according to the Sufis. People who think that each gain is the goal itself will freeze at any such stage, and cannot learn through successive and superseding lessons.
Idries Shah
Show a man too many camels' bones, or show them to him too often, and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one. (Mirza Ahsan of Tabriz)
Idries Shah
They asked Abboud of Omdurman: 'Which is better, to be young or to be old?' He said: 'To be old is to have less time before you and more mistakes behind. I leave you to decide whether this is better than the reverse.
Idries Shah
It is no accident that Sufis find that they can connect most constructively with people who are well integrated into the world, as well as having higher aims, and that those who adopt a sensible attitude towards society and life as generally known can usually absorb Sufi teachings very well indeed
Idries Shah
The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.
Idries Shah
If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!
Idries Shah
If you seek small things to do, and do them well, great things will seek you, and demand to be performed.
Idries Shah
Study the assumptions behind your actions. Then study the assumptions behind your assumptions.
Idries Shah
Worry is a cloud which rains destruction.
Idries Shah
The institution of teachership is there for this reason, that the learner must learn how to learn.
Idries Shah
Better to be safe than to be sorry' is a remark of value only when these are the actual alternatives.
Idries Shah
Show a man too many camels' bones,or show them to him too often,and he will not be able to recognize a camel when he comes across a live one.
Idries Shah
It is axiomatic that the attempt to become a Sufi through a desire for personal power as normally understood will not succeed.
Idries Shah
The Way of the Sufis cannot be understood by means of the intellect or by ordinary book learning.
Idries Shah
Learning how to learn involves examining assumptions. Mulla Nasrudin tales very often fulfil this funcition.
Idries Shah
There is a saying that, according to what a person's mentality is, even an angel may seem to him to have a devil's face.
Idries Shah
When people believe that the form is more important than the Truth, they will not find truth, but will stay with form.
Idries Shah
Remember that greed includes greed for being not greedy.
Idries Shah
The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.
Idries Shah
Saadi’s dictum, in the Bostan: ‘The Path is not in the rosary, the prayer-mat and the robe
Idries Shah
You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.
Idries Shah
Patience is the food of understanding.
Idries Shah
People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.
Idries Shah
You call me an unbeliever. I shall therefore call you a True Believer since a lie is best met with one of similar magnitude.
Idries Shah
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.
Idries Shah
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaEmotionalist:A man or woman who thinks he has experienced the divine.
Idries Shah
When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.
Idries Shah
Words, they say, are the food of minds. But, like other foods, they can do little by themselves.
Idries Shah
A donkey eats a melon, it remains a donkey
Idries Shah
A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.
Idries Shah
Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.Poverty: The result of marriage.
Idries Shah
What is humanity? To feel pain at the sorrows of our neighbours, to feel humiliated at the humiliation of fellow-beings.
Idries Shah
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Idries Shah
Right time, right place, right people equals success.Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
Idries Shah
History is not usually what has happened. History is what some people have thought to be significant.
Idries Shah
Right time, right place, right people equals success.Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.
Idries Shah
The Sufi saying has it: "God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!
Idries Shah
The object of Sufi preparatory study, however, being to illustrate, expose and out-manoeuvre superficial ambition.
Idries Shah
Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.
Idries Shah
Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.
Idries Shah
Correct teaching brings out human excellence.
Idries Shah
Man thinks many things. He thinks he is One. He is usually several. Until he becomes One, he cannot have a fair idea of what he is at all.
Idries Shah
If you assume that it is there, you will generally not be far off the truth.
Idries Shah
Why did I do such-and-such a thing?' is all very well. But what about 'How otherwise could I have done it?'.
Idries Shah
Is your division of Understanding into Greater and Lesser common to all Sufis? Nothing which is put into words is common to all Sufis.
Idries Shah
The clothes may vary, but the person is the same.
Idries Shah
The teaching must, of course, work with the best part of the individual, must be directed to his or her real capacity.
Idries Shah
Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaFlattery:One of the most promising of businesses: always brisk.
Idries Shah
Knowledge gives nothing to a man until he gives everything to it.
Idries Shah
Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.
Idries Shah
Knowledge cannot be attained except through humility.
Idries Shah
People in this civilization are starving in the middle of plenty. This is a civilization that is going down, not because it hasn't got the knowledge that would save it, but because nobody will use the knowledge.
Idries Shah
Religion, for instance, cannot be accepted or rejected out of hand, until the student knows exactly what religion means.
Idries Shah
Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.
Idries Shah