Bücher veröffentlicht von ISF Publishing

AMERICAN ENGLISH EDITION

AMERICAN ENGLISH EDITION

A treasure house of teaching materials, assembled in the Sufi manner.Seeker after Truth contains both traditional tales and stories gleaned from contemporary sources, and snippets of table talk, discussions and teachings, letters and lectures by Idries Shah.Taken together, it constitutes a handbook of materials designed to provoke a different kind of thought.

Special Illumination is a term used by the great poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi to stress the importance of humour in metaphysical experience.Of it, Idries Shah says, 'Rumi directly contradicts such numerous sour-faced religionists as, in all persuasions, find that humour disturbs the indoctrination which is all that they usually have to offer.'

How can it be that the same story is found in Scotland and also in Pre-Columbian America? What can account for the durability and persistence of tales? Was the tale of Aladdin and his wondrous lamp really taken from Wales (where it has been found) to the ancient East and, if so, when and by whom?These questions and more are answered in Idries Shah's remarkable volume World Tales, which is subtitled, 'The extraordinary coincidence of stories told in all times, in all places'. In his introduction, Shah remarks, 'Working for thirty-five years among the written and oral sources of our world heritage in tales, one feels a truly living element in them which is startlingly evident when one isolates the 'basic' stories; the ones which tend to have travelled farthest, to have featured in the largest number of classical collections, to have inspired great writers of the past and present'.

Based on university lectures at the New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of California, San Francisco, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study deals with many of the problems of Sufic methods of study and those which militate against its effective progress in the modern world; notably the unrecognised assumptions which we make about ourselves and about learning and its process.

Previously published only as separate essays, Sufi Thought and Action - assembled and introduced by Idries Shah - covers an extraordinary diversity of Sufi ideas and activities in many countries and cultures. Included in the volume are papers on Sufi Principles and Learning Methods; Ritual, Initiation and Secrets in Sufi Circles; and Key Concepts in Sufi Understanding. The volume stands as a clear and simple handbook to many facets of Sufi study and thought. Shah's introduction begins, 'The object of Sufi spiritual teaching can be expressed as: to help to refine the individual's consciousness so that it may reach the Radiances of Truth, from which one is cut off by ordinary activities of the world'.

Many of Idries Shah's books are comprised of tales and teaching stories taken from both written and oral sources, which illustrate the instructional methods employed by Eastern wise men for thousands of years.The Magic Monastery differs from its predecessors in that it contains not only traditional tales, mostly unpublished - but also stories specially written by Shah to complete the book as a 'course in non-linear thinking'. As with all of his works, The Magic Monastery is rich in thought-provoking material, and can be read and enjoyed at many levels.

In a darkened room a group of men once sought to examine an elephant.Taking hold of a different part - an ear, a leg, the tail - each one mistook his particular part for the whole. In the darkness, each of the men became convinced that the elephant was the object he himself had felt - a fan, a rope, a pillar - and so on.With this ancient fable, first described by the Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi, Idries Shah presents the Sufi perspective that Christianity and Islam stem from one, inner, origin.Based on Shah's celebrated Geneva University lectures, this book dazzles with the breadth of its scholarship, and the profound depth of its message.In a world riven by cultural and religious differences, The Elephant in the Dark offers fresh thinking, hope, and the ability to look at what we think we know in new ways.

Used for more than seven hundred years as a teaching story, The Book of the Book is one of the most compelling and astonishing texts ever to emerge from the Orient. Its central premise is the simple phrase: 'When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.' When the book first appeared in English thirty-five years ago, its printers questioned how it could be a book, as did reviewers, scholars, and people who paid money to buy it.The Book of the Book is now in its seventh impression, and is studied at university level, appreciated by all for its simple brilliance.