01c. 1960 ADAssume that you are part-hypocrite and part heedless, and you will not be far wrong.Idries Shah / quote ↗
02c. 1960 ADThe man who knows must discharge a function. The one who does not, cannot arrogate one to himself; he can only try to do so.Idries Shah / quote ↗
03c. 1960 ADThere is no wisdom where there is no common sense: it cannot under those conditions find any expression.Idries Shah / quote ↗
04c. 1960 ADNone should say: 'I can trust' or 'I cannot trust' until he is a master of the option, of trusting or not trusting.Idries Shah / quote ↗
05c. 1960 ADYou have come a long way, and you do not know it. You have a long way to go, and you do know what that means.Idries Shah / quote ↗
06c. 1960 ADMany things which are called 'secrets' are only things withheld from people until they can understand or effectively experience them.Idries Shah / quote ↗
07c. 1960 ADYou can learn more in half an hour's direct contact with a source of knowledge (no matter the apparent reason for the contact or the subject of the transaction) than you can in years of formal effort.Idries Shah / quote ↗
08c. 1960 ADIt 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'.Idries Shah / quote ↗
09c. 1960 ADAnybody or anything may stand between you and knowledge if you are unfit for it.Idries Shah / quote ↗
10c. 1960 ADOne can give or withhold in a manner far more effective, sophisticated, useful, which is quite invisible to people who think that giving or withholding is done by external assessment. If you seek some mark of favour or 'promotion', know that you are not ready for it. Progress comes through capacity to learn, and is irresistible. Nobody can stand between you and knowledge if you are fit for it.Idries Shah / quote ↗
11c. 1960 ADPlease, not again what you studied, how long you spent at it, how many books you wrote, what people thought of you - but: what did you learn?Idries Shah / quote ↗
13c. 1960 ADThe Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.Idries Shah / quote ↗
14c. 1960 ADIf the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?Idries Shah / quote ↗
15c. 1960 ADInner Knowledge -- You want to become wise in one lesson: First become a real human being.Idries Shah / quote ↗
16c. 1960 ADThe human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.Idries Shah / quote ↗
17c. 1960 ADBecause there is a word for perfection, people will always imagine that they know it.Idries Shah / quote ↗
18c. 1960 ADEnemies are often former or potential friends who have been denied - or think that they have been denied - something.Idries Shah / quote ↗
19c. 1960 ADFrom a personal experience and the examination of literature, I feel that we cannot take for granted that a dialogue, without information and perhaps without understanding, is possible between any individuals or groups on all levels. So the prerequisite is information.Idries Shah / quote ↗
20c. 1960 ADThe important place held by Jesus among the world's six hundred million Moslems... and the agreement of both religions about the necessity for surrender to God as the means of salvation, thus makes it comparatively easy for a Moslem to address himself to Christians: the sympathy and the history are already there.Idries Shah / quote ↗
21c. 1960 ADFrom imperial, economic and ideological causes, many cultures are the inheritors, and hence the prisoners, of attitudes of scorn and disdain for other faiths – outlooks which are not ennobling to anyone.Idries Shah / quote ↗
22c. 1960 ADAnd there are many people, both Moslem and Christian, who have a good grasp of each others0 conceptions of surrender to God an other principles. But the widespread existence of bias, misinformation and lack of knowledge (…) militate against the effectiveness of dialogue, (…) by the most subtle and one of the most effective of instruments, the subconscious, almost the subliminal, introduction of hostility.Idries Shah / quote ↗
23c. 1960 ADChristian scholars often say that Sufi theories are close to those of Christianity. Many Moslems maintain that they are essentially derived from Islam. The resemblance of many Sufi ideas to those of several religious and esoteric systems are sometimes taken as evidence of derivation. The Islamic interpretation is that religion is of one origin, differences being due to local or historical causes.Idries Shah / quote ↗
24c. 1960 ADThese 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.Idries Shah / quote ↗
