Knowing How to Know: A Practical Philosophy in the Sufi Tradition

by Shah, Idries

• ISBN13: 9780863040764
• ISBN10: 0863040764
• Format: Paperback
• Copyright: 2000-04-01
• Publisher: Ishk Book Service

Summary

Contemporary esoteric systems almost invariably play on the desire of mankind to seek or acquire knowledge. Almost universally neglected in such systems are the -- often unrecognised -- barriers which prevent knowledge and understanding. Before learning can take place, certain conditions and basic factors must be in place; in the individual or the group.

Building on the foundations laid in Learning how to Learn and The Commanding Self, Idries Shah in Knowing how to Know illuminates those factors. Like an ultra-violet light shone onto the petals of flowers, it reveals concealed patterns, normally invisible to our customary modes of thought.

Table of Contents

Preface
Section I
Inclusion and Exclusion	3	(26)
Section II	29	(34)
Real and Imitation Sufi Groups
An Assumption Underlying All Human Cultures
Acceptance
Attention
Notice
A Real Community
Are Men Machines?
Assessment and Service
Academics Anonymous
Are You Above or Beyond This?
All Knowledge is Everywhere
Adopted Methods
Apparatus
Books and Reading
Boredom, Study and Entertainment
Basic Considerations
Section III	63	(38)
Background, Techniques and Theory of Esoteric Systems
Conceit
Charity
Consideration
Constant Exhortation
Criticism
Corrective
Clarity and Perplexity
Cause and Effect
Cult-Makers
Caution
Discovery
Direct Transmission
Didactic
Dilution and Concentration
Depths and Range of Traditional Materials
Effect of Opinion, when Ingrained, even on Scientists
Elements being used in our Courses
Exercising Power
Effort, Stretching and Straining
Environmental Maladjustment
Exercises
Eight Points on Initiatory Literature
Energy and Enthusiasm
Emotion
Emotion and Primitive State
Egregious
Eternalism as a Vice
Every Feeling is Qualitative
Fame and Altruism
Fools' Wisdom
Four States of Being
Fear
Fill the Pitcher
Greed is always Greed
Greed
Guilt, Reward, Punishment
Guarding the Woad Supplies
Group Politics
`Gharadh'
Golden Age
Section IV	101	(38)
Humility and Superiority
How to Study
Human Knowledge
How to `Broaden Your Outlook' by Narrowing it
Honour
Higher Ranges of Study
Human Duty
Hypocrisy
Human Thought passing through the Whole Organism
Higher Nutritions
Honour of the Wise
Harmful Ideas
Single-Formula Systems
Students
Stupidity
Social Concern
Summary of Orientation Points
Solving Problems
Seeking and Finding
Showing
Specialists
Strange World
Single-Minded
Sane and Mad
Service and Self-Satisfaction
Sufism
To an Enquirer
Time, Place and Materials
Transformation Process
Threes and Ones
To be Remembered
Truth and Belief
Transformation of One's Worldly Life
Three Disabling Consequences of Generalisation
Thought
There comes a Time
Thought and Property
Terminology
The Worst Ailment
The Meaning of Life
`The Right to Know'
The Higher Learning
The Sufis and Worldly Success
The Use of Initiatory Texts
Section V	139	(44)
The Nature of Sufic Study
The Nature of the Study Circle
The Anopheles Mosquito Situation
The Sociological Problem
The Age of the Fish
The Faculty of Speech
The Influence of a Teaching
The Emperor's Clothes
The Unknown
The More You Think
The Eighth Day
The Village
The Greed of Generosity
The Hidden Current in Man
The Value of Opinion
The Values of Alchemy
The Cycle of Human Thought
The Use of Direct Language
The Rewards of Virtue
The Third System
The Defeatist Culture
Unusual Experiences
What Cannot be Answered
When `This is not the Time' does not have to mean `I am Busy'
Walking
World of their Own
Words and Violence
Will Travel
Why People follow lesser Aims
Why not tell Me?
Working Within Limitations
What Self-Examination is
Why no No-Book Teaching?
Warming Water
Why People Escape Learning
Ways to Understand the Teaching
Virtuality
Views on Incongruity
When and Where?
What have you Got?
Withdrawing from the World
Studies and Exercises as Variables
Technology
Imitation in Techniques
Infantile Desires
Ignorance and Hate
Information and Experiences
Imagination versus Understanding
Information and Knowledge
Ideology's Effect
Importation of Technique
I Can Teach You
`I did not come here to be Insulted'
Information and Expectation
Judgement
Keeping On
Knowledge and Behaviour
Section VI	183	(38)
Liking and Disliking
Labels and Ancestry
Listen
Last Resort
Look at Me
Metaphor of the Kaleidoscope
Man Becoming Something Else
`Man Hates what is Good for Him, Loves what is Bad'
Men of Learning
Morality and Culture
Merit
Meditation
No Accident in these Studies
Needs, not Fantasy
`Nothing is Happening'
News
Observation
Organisation, Study, Belief
Original Function of Practices
Pure Water
Pupil and Teacher Interchange
Payment
Purposes of Experiences
Prescience
Possible Functions of Studies
Patience
Practice of Virtue
`Prescription' versus Mixing
Purpose of Regular Meetings
Qualitative Perceptions
Questions and Desires
Real Teaching
Random and Real Seeking
Reinfection
Ritual
Nitrogen
Reason for Exercising Sincerity
Reviews
Relationship with a School
Right Thought
Running Before You Can Walk
Reflection Theme
Respect
Real, Empirical and Imitative Study
Reasons for Discipline
The Loaf
Sufi Sayings and their Application in Teaching Situations
Section VII	221	(34)
Systematic Study
Strange Literature, Odd People
Slaps
Teachers and Pupils
The Sheep's Ear
Love and Fear
The Sign of a Master
The Guardian
The Mad Rabbit
The Hammer
Unaltered
Unwitting Knowledge
Withered
Why some Stay and some Pass By
What is the Sufi Enterprise?
Wind and Water
Wirewalkers
Why do we not Get More?
Human Identity
The Spice-Market
Understanding Sufi Study
The Elements of the Situation
The Melon
The Stone and the Tree
The Path of Love
Tattoos and Soup not Spiritual?
Section VIII	255	(32)
Turnips
The Wise Man
After a Swim
All in One Man
The Fish-Eating Monkey
The Chocolate Bar
The Vanishing Dirham
Diseases of Learning
Section IX	287	(36)
Guide to Major Principles in the Use of Humour in Human Development
The Story of the Fool
Choosing a New Teacher
Fire and Straw
And Wear them Out...?
Mystical States
In a Sufi School
Where the People of Learning go Wrong
Working through the World
Today and Yesterday: Jami
The Taste of No Taste
Protecting People against false Teachers
Pleasing all the People
How to Find the Right Way
Conduct
Testing the Disciple
Criticism by Sufis
What the Master Does
You and Me
Just as Useful
Webbed Feet
Authenticity
Speech and Silence
Fire-Worshipper
Section X	323
The Giving of Knowledge
Religious and Wise
The Three Chests and the Balance
When is a Prayer not a Prayer?
Wisdom
The Half-Blind King
Sufi Introduction
Sufi Attitudes towards Religious and other Cults:
The Tale of Two Frogs
The `Net' at the Meetings
Shearing
Efficiency
Uncomplimentary
The American
Confrontation