Idries Shah

“The would-be Sufi needs guidance precisely because books, texts, while telling you what is needed, do not tell you when.”

“Mediation - Before you learn how to meditate, you must unlearn what you think meditation might be.”

“Never follow any impulse to teach, however strong it might be. The command to teach is not felt as an impulsion.”

“One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.”

“The barren branches may appear inelegant: They are, to the cook, the means to make his fire.”

“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.”

“It is a Sufi contention that truth is not discovered or maintained by the mere repetition of teachings. It can only be kept understood by the perpetual experience of it. And it is in the experience of truth that the Sufis have always reposed their trust. Sufism is therefore not 'Do as I say and not as I do', or even 'Do as I do', but 'Experience it and you will know'.”

“Definitions from Mulla Do-PiazaIntellectual: One who knows no craft.”

“The decline in the influence of religion has been due, in the main, not to religion itself, but to the very shallowness of many practitioners. People who are indoctrinated and mistake implanted obsession for faith, are themselves destroyers of the very thing which they imagine themselves called upon to try to protect.In fact, of course, they have no such call: and their capacity to protect something which is other than their imaginings makes for a comical situation.”

“Advice is priceless: when it becomes interference it is preposterous.”

“Saying of the ProphetDesireDesire not the world, and God will love you. Desire not what others have, and they will love you.”

“Much travel is needed before the raw man is ripened.”

“When the mind is full of established biases, it will not be able to graft Sufism on top of them.”

“Knowledge is not gained, it is there all the time. It is the "veils" which have to be dissolved in the mind.”

“One should not pray if that prayer is vanity.”

“Sufism," according to the Sufi, "is an adventure in living, necessary adventure.”

“Patience is a garment which has never worn out.”

“These lecture provide material for the consideration of common factors, in theory and in development, from the viewpoint of the idea of surrender to the Divine Will, reviewing some aspects of the interplay between Christians and Moslems, and introducing material from and about Sufis.”

“ANDAKI: EFFORT IS NOT EFFORT WITHOUT ZAMAN, MAKAN, IKHWAN (RIGHT TIME, RIGHT PLACE, RIGHT PEOPLE).”

“… the Sufi attitude is: ‘Let the real truth, whatever it may be, be revealed to me’.”