Learning How to Learn
Written in response to more than 70,000 questions received about the Sufi tradition from people around the world, this keystone work is crucial for readers wishing to approach the Sufi Way.
Learning How to Learn presents traditional teaching stories, anecdotes, and question-and-answer exchanges to illustrate the barriers and prerequisites to Sufi learning. Shah uses the language of Western psychology—concepts known in the ancient wisdom traditions of the East—to explain how and why Sufis learn, and how spiritual understanding may be developed.
The author draws from a vast array sources to illustrate the challenges and pitfalls inherent in real self-development work: from the Eastern parables of Jesus, to the ancient Sufi classics, to the tales of the Oriental wise fool and joke-figure Mulla Nasrudin. Automatic thinking, and the power of desires, hopes and fears that wrongly drive personal development, are among the more notable barriers to progress.
Many of concepts which Shah introduced including the vital role of right time, place and company in higher studies, and the very idea of ‘learning how to learn’, have since spread in the wider culture. A section dedicated to Shah's theory of the human need to give and receive attention is also considered groundbreaking.
But more than just a manual for the would-be student, Learning How to Learn is an essential book in helping to guard against the chicanery and nonsense found in the spiritual marketplace.
BEST DEALS
About the Author
Idries Shah was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition and is considered one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century. He devoted his life to collecting, translating and adapting key works of Sufi classical literature for the needs of the contemporary West. These works represent centuries of thought – some call it “practical philosophy” – aimed at developing human potential. Shah’s literary output – more than three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and cultural studies – includes uniquely instrumental teaching stories, some of which he retold for children. His work is regarded as forming an important bridge between the cultures of East and West. It has been translated into dozens of languages and has sold millions of copies around the world. In his writings for adults, Shah presented Sufism as a universal form of wisdom that predates Islam. Emphasizing that Sufism is not static but always adapts to the current time, place and people, he often framed his teaching in Western psychological terms. For more than 40 years, Shah sifted through oriental literature and oral Sufi tradition to bring his contemporary audience narratives, poetry, aphorisms and an enormous range of teaching stories that are appropriate for our time and culture. He pointed out that this work “connects with a part of the individual which cannot be reached by any other convention, and ... establishes in him or in her a means of communication with a non-verbalized truth beyond the customary limitations of our familiar dimensions.”