Idries Shah Quotes

The false student is the one whose eyes are fixed upon heaven because his feet are planted in mud.

Many things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.

... when we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief.

Deteriorated science is a cult, so is imitative or deteriorated Sufism.

Talking about straws and camels' backs is just one way of approaching things. If you have enough camels, no backs need be broken.

Before garden, vine or grape was in the world," writes one, "our soul was drunken with immortal wine.

Give and Take
The Chief takes less than he is given
And gives more than he has taken

I have heard all that you have had to say to me on your problems.
You ask me what to do about them.
It is my view that your real problem is that you are a member of the human race.
Face that one first.

A short time in the presence of the Friends (the Sufis) is better than a hundred years' sincere, obedient dedication.

You yourself are your own barrier – rise from within it.

There can be no spirituality, according to the Sufi masters, without psychology, psychological insight and sociological balance.

The Sufi way of thinking is particularly appropriate in a world of mass communication, when every effort is directed towards making people believe that they want or need certain things; that they should believe certain things; that they should as a consequence do certain things that their manipulators want them to do.

Too much kindness towards the fox may mean doom for the rabbit.

Saying of the Prophet
Envy
Envy devours good deeds, as a fire devours fuel.

What is sometimes thought to be clever is, significantly often, merely an advanced form of foolishness.

The Sufis,' runs the saying, 'understand with their hearts what the most learned scholars cannot understand with their minds

Humility has to precede instruction.

A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.

Sufis are those who have expunged from their minds the human tendencies of envy and enmity.

A man's capacity is the same as his breadth of vision.

Enemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.

A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything

Man (as he imagines himself to be), in general, is a possibility, not a fact.

God provides the food, men provide the cooks.

Knowledge of yourself may involve, if we are learning at the present time, a knowledge of the way of thinking of your society and to realise that you are probably its product, and that this knowledge can be attained in fact by such anthropological and psychological observations made by the Sufis in the course of their teaching how to pursue new and more promising extra perspectives.

Exaggeration is a standard peculiarity of man. To deprecate is often a form of exaggeration which people do not notice, because it appears to be its opposite.

Pick up a bee from kindness, and learn the limitations of kindness.

In the realm of Greater Understanding, the workshop is dismantled after the work is finished.

A motto of the human race: Let me do as I like, and give me approval as well.

There is no purpose in hammering cold iron.

Saying of the Mulla Nasrudin. If I survive this life without dying, I'll be surprised.

Sufis hold that the superior experience and knowledge comes to a man or woman in exact accordance with his worth,capacity,and earning of it.

Q: What is a fundamental mistake of man's?
A: To think that he is alive, when he has merely fallen asleep in life's waiting-room.

But the world itself, as well as special attitudes, properly understood, constitute the Sufi school.

Because sugar is not arsenic, many graves are full.

To bind one free man with love is better than to release a thousand slaves.

Knowledge. How curious that a man who closes his hand upon air so often thinks that he has a ruby within his grasp.

IMPRESSIONS
Time brought a thousand impressions.
Not one of them had I seen in the mirror of the imagination.
(Anwar-i-Suhaili)

The process of learning is the process of discovering what really exists.

The Sufi saying has it: God, to the bee, is something which has TWO stings!

Many Sufis are not guides.

People change and needs change. So what was Sufism once is Sufism no more.

The Sufi is one who does what others do – when it is necessary. He is also one who does what others cannot do – when it is indicated.

If you are uninterested in what I say, there's an end to it. If you like what I say, please try to understand which previous influences have made you like it. If you like some of the things I say, and dislike others, you could try to understand why. If you dislike all I say, why not try to find out what formed your attitude?

No surgeon can treat the wounds of the tongue.

Saying of the Prophet
Truth
Speaking the truth to the unjust is the best of holy wars.

Scraps
The scraps from the meal of the Emir are larger than the gifts of halwa from the merchant.

Timur Fazil

Saying of the Prophet
Humility
Humility and courtesy are themselves a part of piety.

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.

The impatient man is his own enemy; he slams the door on his own progress.

What goes into a salt-mine becomes salt.

Few things are more absurd than wise saws originally designed to inculcate or maintain the social needs of a society long past - when they are applied to today.

Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another.

The answer to a fool is silence. (Proverb)

It is the goldsmith who can assay the gold.

Definitions from Mulla Do-Piaza.
Worry: Something to make you unnecessarily ill.

Right time, right place, right people equals success.
Wrong time, wrong place, wrong people equals most of the real human history.

Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience and you will know'.

The existence of relative truth does not prove the non-existence of universal truth.

The would-be students wish to transcend books.
But, ask yourselves: if someone says that books do not contain wisdom, and yet he writes books; books do not contain Sufism, and yet he continues to publish books on Sufism, what is really happening? It really is your duty, and not mine, to ask and to find the answer to that question, if you are interested enough.

Saying of the Prophet
Food
Nobody has eaten better food than that won by his own labour.

As Ibn Arabi says: 'Absolute existence is the source of all existence'.

Our heads are filled with 'knowledge', a knowledge that in some areas pre-empts our seeing anything at all.

If you give what can be takes, you are not really giving.
Take what you are given, not what you want to be given.
Take what is given:
Give what cannot be taken.

If I knew what two and two were – I would say Four!

Understanding and knowledge are completely different sensations in the realm of Truth than they are in the realm of society.

Humility is a teacher of itself. It is learnt by means of its practise.

Opportunity's precious, and time is a sword.

The significance of the dwelling is in the dweller.

Saying of the Prophet
Distribution
God it is who gives: I am only a distributor.

Sufi service has to be the right kind of service; neither servitude nor hypocrisy.

MAGHRIBI: Learning is in activity. Learning through words alone is minor activity.

When a belief becomes more than an instrument, you are lost. You remain lost until you learn what 'belief' is really for.

When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration.

Water shrinks wool, urgency shrinks time.
Shrinkage may be an advantage or the reverse, according to expectation.

Learn about hornets from those who have been stung by them.

Patience is a garment which has never worn out.

Correct teaching brings out human excellence.

Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.

However fast you run, or however skilfully, you can't run away from your own feet.

To be obsessed by the idea of freedom, for instance, is itself a form of slavery. Such people are in the chains of the hope of freedom, and are therefore able to do little else than struggle with them.

Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do.

Are you ignorant enough to expect horsemanship from blacksmiths?

When the ignorant have become numerous or powerful enough, they have been referred to by a special name. This names is 'the Wise'.

Teach honesty by all means - you do know what it is, don't you?

One should not pray if that prayer is vanity.

The sufis believe that they can experience something more complete.

Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services.

The Sufi must be able to alternate his thought between the relative and the Absolute, the approximate and the Real.

People used to play with toys.
Now the toys play with them.

A real secret is something which only one person knows.

I ask about the sky, but the answer is about a rope.

Saadi: Be a true renouncer, (zahid) and [you can even] ware satin.

You fear tomorrow: yet yesterday is just as dangerous.

Inheritance and culture obscure people's higher capacities.

When the human being says:
'It is not true ... '
He may mean:
'I don't know about it, so I think it is untrue.'
Or:
'I don't like it.

A man is deficient in understanding until he perceives that there is a whole cycle of evolution possible within himself: repeating endlessly, offering opportunities for personal development.

People carry on whole conversations in proverbs. But they are not LIVING the proverbs.

Sufism, the "secret tradition," is not available on the basis of assumptions which belong to another world, the world of intellect.

How many friends would you have if you went from one to another asking them to conceal a dead body?