The Canon / Pillars / Sufism
Pillars · 1964
The Sufis
Sufi Mysticism (popularizer)The Sufis is an influential survey that reframes Sufism not as a historical or religious subject but as a living science of human development. Its central claim is that Sufi teaching stories, including the tales of the wise fool Mulla Nasrudin, are practical instruments for transforming the mind rather than mere literature.
The argument rests on a theory of conditioning and its bypass. Treating ordinary cognition as a system of automatic, culturally installed patterns, it holds that teaching stories work by their structure, planting ideas the analytic intellect cannot immediately rationalize away and so allowing insight to operate beneath habitual defenses.
The book became the principal popular gateway to Sufism in the English-speaking world, shaping a lay understanding of it as practical psychology. Its emphasis on narrative and metaphor to reach below resistance connects it to subconscious-reprogramming themes, though the author's sourcing has been questioned by scholars.
In its words
He is hidden in His manifestation, manifest in His concealing.
Like the bat, the Sufi is asleep to "things of the day"—the familiar struggle for existence which the ordinary man finds all-important—and vigilant while others are asleep. In other words, he keeps awake the spiritual attention dormant in others.
Practices it teaches
The Nasrudin Mirror — Catching Your Own Self-Deception in the Wise Fool
Mulla Nasrudin is the "wise fool" of the Middle Eastern oral tradition — a figure who is by turns absurdly stupid and unexpectedly profound.
Lineage
The author
Idries ShahTeaching-story conditioning bypass
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