Re: Idries Shah>Audio recorded lectures in 1976 - 1977
Posted by Eddie on 10/14/2011 11:14:51
In reply to Re: Idries Shah>Audio recorded lectures in 1976 - 1977 posted by Perk Clark on 07/07/2011 07:54:40
Perk & Classroom Talk
At the risk of appearing to be attempting to be about being some lower
leveled exponent of Sufi knowledge; I’ll give as a rather belated
response here, a couple of quotes, and then afterwards a few comments
of my own. The first quote being from Shah’s book “Learning How to
Learn” and the second being a quote I have transcribed from one of
Shah’s recorded lectures I have previously posted here in Classroom
Talk entitled “On The Nature of Sufi Knowledge –part 2; each of which
contain the potential of transmitting the means of exposing and
disrupting some of my own potential personal “nafs” as you have stated
them.
“Virtually all organizations known to you work largely by means of
your greed. They attract you because what they say or do appeals to
your greed. This is concealed only by their appearance. If you stop
listening to their words and look at the effect, you will soon see it.
Remember that greed also includes the greed for not being greedy. So,
if someone says: 'Do not be greedy, be generous', you may inwardly
interpret this in such a manner that you will develop a greed for
generosity. This, however, remains greed.”
--From Learning How to Learn © 1978, 1980, 1983 by The Estate of
Idries Shah
Transcribed here by me, from the end of the before mentioned
lecture: “…Sufism…is grounded in a certain sort of attunement to
something which is beyond our customary limitations. This thing, is I
insist, rendered both in psychological, in terms of psychology and
physics, and also in Devine terms… As to whether we will be able to
benefit from it, and or contribute to it, a lot depends on our
sincerity. Sincerity is very difficult to establish, very difficult to
recognize, very difficult to maintain. It is best maintained not by
adopting a sentimental posture but by adopting a fair, honest, and
straight forward posture, a posture of measurement if you like, rather
than of emotional debts.
The Sufi preparation, which anybody can do, in this culture, will
involve familiarizing ones self with what is currently available about
Sufism, and if one has to, joining all the lunatics who are running
various cults, or if one doesn’t have to, understanding a little more
about what other people are doing who may also be lunatics, or who may
not. The study materials for this purpose are easily available. You
won’t get any more from a Sufi Master or from a face to face
confrontation with a representative of Sufism unless you have already
yourself done something about it, and this involves an examination of
Sufi thought, practice and writings already available to you.
There’s an old Sufi story I suppose some of you may know it…’a man was
walking along and he saw a stone in the road and the stone said (it
was written on the stone) turn me over and ‘read’; and he turned the
stone over; and it said underneath, written on the stone, why do you
want to know more when you have not made any use of what you know
already?’
Jalal ad-Din Rumi wrote about this, about how people are not just
inert lumps of wood whom we or anybody else processes, whittles, turns
into something, but there is, there is something incumbent on you to
do about yourself. If you don’t do it you remain like some sort of an
insect or an animal he says; that is to say you have these kinds of
characteristics of this kind of a thing: and…he says: two insects eat
from the same place, from one you get a sting and from the other one
you get honey; two kinds of dear have the same grazing, and they drink
the same water, but from one we get dung and the other musk; each of
two kinds of cane feeds from one thing, but this one is empty and the
other is full of sugar.
I do tell you quite honestly that you will not find Sufism hard to
understand, you will not find it hard to find, you will not find it
mystifying and difficult, if ‘you’ do something other than adopting
a ‘posture’ of sincerity or greed. That is to say pretending you’re
very keen on something, ‘to yourself’, or desiring it to much, you can
find this thing, it cannot in fact be withheld from you if you really
have the kind of attitude towards it that attracts it to you. That’s a
very difficult thing for us to ah, to render in terms which don’t
sound dreadfully banal, or which don’t sound mawkishly religious…we
are living in a difficult time, but it can be done, it is being done
by people and it is actually worth doing more particularly because it
doesn’t really occupy as much of your time and effort as you might
think, not that I am trying to sell it to you but the great woman Sufi…
said, in a prayer; oh God if I worship you from desire for Paradise
exclude me from Paradise, and if I worship you from fear of hell throw
me into hell.”
The first part of this recoded lecture I have here transcribed is well
worth the listen I.M.O. as well, and has hints that ‘we’ (that are
left behind here) might be concerned with as we proceed form here with
our participation at TTFMT. I have also given it here along with the
quote from Shah’s book “Learning How to Learn” as in being part of my
belated response to Perk and as an antidotal teaching example in
regards to my own personality.
And as well ‘obviously’ this post has the “Time Capsule” element first
and for most. It will be interesting to see if anyone happens to even
find it.
Eddie