Learning how to learn by Idries Shah

Learning how to learn by Idries Shah

Condensed from over three million words, these conversations answer questions prompted by Shah's sixteen books, his university lectures and radio and television programmes. He answers housewives and cabinet ministers, philosophy professors and assembly-line workers, on the subject of how traditional psychology can illuminate current human, social and spiritual problems. More than a hundred tales and extracts, ranging from the 8th Century Hasan of Basra to today's Ustad Khalilullah Khalili, are woven into Shah's narratives of how and why the Sufis learn, what they learn, and how spiritual understanding may be developed: as well as how it inevitably deteriorates in all societies.

Shah draws on over 70,000 questions, from Afghanistan and California, Delhi and Strasbourg; quotes Eastern parables of Jesus, the ancient classics of the Sufis, contemporary encounters with teachers and students, the Mulla Nasrudin teaching-figure, Omar Khayyam and Western mass-circulation journals.

Many of the concepts which Shah has introduced: including the vital role of the right time, place and company of higher studies, the very concept of 'Learning How to Learn' and the instrumental, specialized function of ordinarily automatically performed exercises and rituals, have recently been widely copied by psychologists and gurus alike. This book contains the real material, however, on these and dozens of other subjects.