Idries Shah

When it first appeared in 1964, The Sufis was welcomed as the decisive work on the subject of Sufi thought....

Although enormously attractive as sheer entertainment, Dervish tales were never presented merely on the level of a fable, legend, or folklore....

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? These questions and more are answered in Idries Shah’s remarkable volume World Tales. Listen to learn more....

The Way of the Sufi presents an unparalleled cross-section of material from Sufi schools, Sufi teachings, and classical writings as a basic course of Sufi study....

Caravan of Dreams distills the essence of Eastern thought in a feast of Sufi stories, sayings, poems, and allegories collected by one of the world's leading experts in Oriental philosophy....

The stories of the Sufis are tools prepared for a specific purpose. On this level the movements of the characters in a story portray psychological processes....

Thinkers of the East is a collection of anecdotes and "parables in action" illustrating the eminently practical and lucid approach of Eastern Dervish teachers....

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....

Contemporary esoteric systems almost always play on the desire of mankind to seek or acquire knowledge. All but universally neglected in such systems are the often unrecognized barriers which prevent knowledge and understanding....

The Commanding Self, in Sufic terminology, is that mixture of the primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding....

Condensed from more than three million words, these conversations involve housewives and cabinet ministers, professors and assembly-line workers, on the subject of how traditional psychology can illuminate current human, social, and spiritual problems....

The "perfuming of a scorpion", referred to by the great Sufi teacher Bahaudin, symbolizes hypocrisy and self-deception: both in the individual and in institutions. In A Perfumed Scorpion, Idries Shah directs attention to both the perfume and the scorpion - the overlay and the reality - in psychology, human behavior and the learning process....

The Idries Shah Anthology is a special collection of previously published work by Idries Shah, and was edited by Saira Shah....

In three definitive volumes, Shah takes us to the very heart of this mysterious mentor, the Mulla Nasrudin....

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....

Oriental Magic is recognized as a brilliant study of how, what and why people think, in territories extending from North Africa to Japan....

First published in 1957, The Secret Lore of Magic contains within it a series of major source books of magical arts. Many of them translated into English for the first time, these works are annotated....

Special Illumination is a term used by the great poet and mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, to stress the importance of humor in metaphysical experience....

Assembled by Idries Shah, The World of the Sufi is a comprehensive collection of learned essays and papers on the subject of Sufi thought....

According to the Sufis, human faculties, although perceptive, are limited: Like a radio set, which can receive only certain electromagnetic waves and not other parts of this band. The inability to transcend the barrier of limited senses explains human subjectivity....