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Idries Shah. THE WISDOM OF
SUFIC HUMOR
Sufism is a rich mystical
tradition that arose in the In so doing, the Sufis
have played a unique part, for no other body of things
and reject others, Sufis try to provoke the experience in a person. Why provoke or develop
experience instead of teaching dogmatic principles or processes?
The Sufis assert that knowledge comes before ritual. Rituals may become outworn, may not
function as intended when practiced by communities for which
they were not designed. If rituals and practices are, as Sufis believe them to be, specially
developed psychological methods, only those who have the knowledge that lies
behind them can confirm whether historically notable ones are
still functional. Hence priority is given to knowledge and understanding over
feeling or belief. Sufis are often compared
with the products of other mystical systems, but there
is little inward resemblance. For Sufis, there are many more dimensions, more sides, to the
attainment of higher consciousness than are found in other systems.
Where Sufis insist that ecstatic experience is a contaminated by-product, a distortion
of experience that never happens in an enlightened person,
other systems often strive for this ecstasy alone. Where Sufis insist that there are all kinds
of emotions and that a certain degree of emotion, whether perceived as
religious or not, is harmful to spiritual perceptions, others include many who
believe that extreme emotionality, when religiously tinged,
must be better than anything less intense. Where the Sufis state that there are stages in
mystical appreciation, and that one must not attempt the developments that
accompany one stage before completing the preparedness that comes from attaining the
one before it, numerous other systems make no such provisos. ever to most Westerners,
as relics of specific, scripted, and measured formulas
designed in the past to help people in the past to attain knowledge storm
the gates of heaven is someone not prepared to prepare. Such an assault essentially tries to
abolish the problem of intricacy by denying that it exists: It is like
solving the problem of a missing button by sewing up the buttonhole. odd
clothes. For the Sufis, humanity is already full of misconceptions and unsuitable,
counterproductive habit patterns that must be attended to before there
is a fair chance of progress toward a more objective understanding. "You must empty out
the dirty water before you fill the pitcher with clean" is one
of the ways they put it. emotional-psychological-social
life renamed, Sufis start with this aspect when trying to clear up the
confusion that is the usual condition of most people's minds. out
something similar. In the past, Sufis lacked the support of such parallel research
and therefore often had to teach in secret. Hysteria was often considered
sacred; monomaniacs were sometimes regarded as saints. Only recently
have most societies accepted the idea that greed, say, is sure to be situation, while those
who do not understand the priorities clamor for "spiritual"
teachings. Such teachings are useless if floated on top of the psychology of the
ordinary individual, however useful that psychology is for limited
purposes. For this reason, a
person's illusions of self-esteem may have to be deflated. Many people cannot endure
such an approach, and the result is that some leave and set up synthetic Sufi
systems, some turn against the Sufis, and some become
servile because they mistake humility for self-abasement. A few, on the other
hand, understand what is going on and profit from it. The Sufi has no responsibility
to work with people who reject his attitude. In fact, he is incompetent
to do so. This rejection is often unconscious, since many would-be learners in reality are
seeking social stabilization, comfort, or attention, not
knowledge and understanding. things
depend on small beginnings, and how the base is the foundation of the at
school. "Not so well," says the other, "because they are
trying to teach him
to spell 'cat' with a C instead of with a K." things
somewhat askew, as well as the need for context and grounding. In this case, that need is
reflected in the fact that it is essential to know the alphabet
before rendering a mature judgment. only
for certain purposes -- and do not help the person who suffers from them. This miniature parable is
also linked with the effects of vanity. before
the interference that prevents higher understanding can be stilled. People are always
supposing that they can realize their full potential if they can
only discover the way, the key, the method, and apply it. But applying the method may involve taking
care of all the things within them that are not helping them, such as the
habit of applying fashionable though ineffective techniques
to a problem. A key works only in a lock. When they were walking on
the grounds of the presidential place, a large and fierce-looking dog tore
the loincloth off a Hindu guru who was also present and,
barking loudly, cornered him by a wall. Now this guru had the reputation of being able to tame
tigers with a glance, but he obviously had no such way with
dogs, and he called out to my friend to do something. the three elements in a
mind are aligned (the guru, the visitor, and the dog, as they are called in
this picture of it), the situation is, to put it mildly, unpromising.
Until that potential is strong
enough to be realized, it remains latent and so inconsequential that if people were to have their potential removed, the operation
would be minor. To increase it would produce not a flourishing plant,
but a giant, unviable weed. insufficient information
or does not know what questions or actions will yield productive answers or
reactions, the situation must be corrected as soon as possible.
One quite useful joke incarnates the circumstances that occur when this
has been done. fool
the enemy." know
- keep on firing!" learner often has to
experience higher perceptions so that he can recognize their
individual flavor. Once he can do that, he can stabilize his state when these perceptions occur
and can avoid imagining that useless, subjective experiences
are spiritual ones. He or she can now seek the flavor again and stabilize
it. This is the doctrine called "He who tastes, knows," but the value of the taste
depends in part on the irreplaceable presence and activity of
the spiritual equivalent of taste buds. disoriented
and they usually have unrecognized problems. Their adherents do not know the parameters
or the places to test and perceive because they cannot tell
a spiritual from an emotional experience. Neither do they usually realize in what order various
experiences have to be stimulated, or even that there is such
an order. fishing
illustrates this situation. The men caught some fine fish. When they were going home, one said
to the other, "How are we going to make our way back to
that wonderful fishing place again?" a
different boat?" instinct, and part
obsession or conditioning may answer well enough for many purposes, but it must be
possible to set aside that self in order to get to the
real thing. Sufi teaching often has to resort to indirect methods in order to eliminate the
destructive effect of those activities that give great pleasure
to the individual but actually inhibit his potential -- as well as it.
He would not be quiet, no matter what anyone else said or did. Various people who called
themselves Sufis, and other well-wishers, were called in by neighbors
and asked to do something about the child. so much noise, perforate
his eardrums; this reasoning was too advanced for the child,
who was neither a scientist nor a scholar. The second told him that drum beating was a sacred
activity and should be carried out only on special occasions.
The third offered the neighbors plugs for their ears; the fourth gave the boy a book; the
fifth gave the neighbors books that described a method
of controlling anger through biofeedback; the sixth gave the boy while,
but none worked for very long. a
hammer and chisel, and said, "I wonder what is INSIDE the drum?" Incidentally, a lot of
diversionary activity such as musical assemblies, dressing up, and
incantations - well but erroneously know in the West and all unknowing, they
sometimes render avarice in the form of greed for "higher things."
There is an excellent Western story that freezes this situation on a lower, illustrative
level, allowing us to see the relative absurdity of meanness
and also its comparative unproductivity. suggested that his
initials be put on the ball, so that anyone who found it could
return the ball to the clubhouse where he might later claim it. The Aberdonian
was interested. "Yes,' he said, "please scratch my initials, A.M.T., for Angus McTavish, on the ball. Oh, and if there is room, add
M.D., as
I am a physician." The instructor did this. Then McTavish
scratched his head.
"While you are about it," he said, "you might as well add,
'Hours, to
4'" be distinguished from practitioners who are interested only in gathering tribes
of followers. As an example, there is the one in which two mothers talk about
their sons. get
rid of some of the old ones." afford
NOT to take on everyone who applies to him!" laugh at these stories;
if they cannot, then they should not be considered spiritual
teachers at all, because they are so insecure. Paranoid behavior, too, is often seen in the
manifestation of hostility towards such tales, when the listener thinks that
he or she is being challenged by what sounds like an antiguru story. Would-be disciples who
do not enjoy such jokes are often rejected
by genuine Sufis.
There is another story
that infuriates some second - rate teachers: undiscernible beings, and I have met
them,' people will not dispute it. But if you say, 'It is a nice
day today,' some fool will always reply, 'But not as nice
as it was yesterday'. And if you put up a sign saying WET PAINT, who will take
you at your word? You can tell how few by the number of finger marks the doubters
leave on it." things maintain, at the
expense of truth, their version of how things are, produce
situations in which these people have to be shown up as absurd. An old tale told in follower
of a guru went to get his blessing. This was no vegetarian guru, but a Tantric
type with more than a dash of Kali, the goddess of destruction, in his
thoughts. The blessing was given, but no ducks appeared at the shoot. got
on: "I expect you shot many ducks?" rather
that Mother Kali had decided to be merciful to the birds." mechanisms as rationalizations
continue to be described as recent Western discoveries,
for this knowledge has been common in the East for centuries. If we
do not admit this, we miss the meaning of many valuable Eastern teachings. insisted that scientific
and scholastic methods are often blind to their own limitations.
You may have to take the Sufis' word for this initially, but you can, little by little,
taste the disabling subjectivity of many people who are often
regarded as objective or scholarly repositories of wisdom.
I do not say that they are
all like this, or that you will find in life an exact
counterpart to the following joke, but it will enable you to identify geniuses
are totally vain, even if they oversimplify and don't talk much." these assumptions exist
only to please those who make them, and are not meant to
take anyone or any idea a stage further.
Sufis, like others in the field of education, use assumptions either as launching
pads or as something to be challenged, not as dogma. laudable
and altruistic acts and thoughts. One day a Westerner was watching a
Chinese gentleman burning bank notes before the tablets of his ancestors. The Westerner said,
"How can your ancestors benefit from the smoke of paper money?" departed
relatives appreciate the flowers you put on their graves." Yet similar
assumptions drench our spiritual thinking. you
pleasure. But to think at the same time that the act is doing something else
is, at best, irrelevant to human progress. All human progress comes through NOT thinking that
one thing is, in fact, another; that is, through right
judgment. in
fact able to separate the two. But generally when they manifest this ability in the form of
behavior, people tend to think that they are either great
sages, humorists, or idiots. My three collections of Nasrudin
jokes give many such examples, partly
to illustrate this characteristic and training, and partly
to help you make it, as it were, your own property. statesman
Daniel Webster. He was being sued by a butcher for a debt when he ran
into the butcher on the street. Webster immediately asked the butcher why he
had not come for any order lately. The butcher said he had thought that Webster would not, under
the circumstances, want to deal with him. But Webster, showing this
perfectly lucid attitude said, "Tut, tut. Sue all you wish
- but, for Heaven's sake, don't try to starve me to death." lucidly, a proposition
often advanced by confused thinkers, is an absurd misunderstanding.
A confused person will, and often does, choose a confused and confusing series of
inapplicable techniques to approach higher understanding. The wisecrack aspect of
jokes is, of course, a degeneration, perhaps due to surfeit - which is one reason why Sufi masters have actually given and withheld
permission to jest from their disciples, as Ghazali
reminds us in a stream-of-consciousness
approach that I do not yet find clearly understood in and
can usually be disentangled. I was once standing at a corner of the huge market street called the Bhindi Bazaar in troop of determined
Western seekers-after-truth descended and clustered around an
old man who was squatting on the side of the road. They photographed him and
chattered excitedly. One of the visitors tried to start a conversation with him, but he only
stared back, so she remarked to the guide, "What a sweet old
man; he must be a real live saint. Is he a saint?" tell a lie and a need to
please his clients, said, "Madam, saint he may be, but
to us he is the neighborhood rapist." ridiculous,
right alignment and respect (for materials, for students and and an
advisory editor of HUMAN NATURE. He was born in family and many
of his ancestors have been among the Sufi masters of 20 years he has been relating the Sufi
heritage to contemporary Western thought, and in the process he
has written more that 20 books. In 1966 Shah introduced the study of Sufism into English universities when
he lectured at the the United States his best known books
are the volumes of Sufi teaching tales that describe the
adventures of Mulla Nasrudin. Due to imperfections of the scanning process the text may contain
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