1
If wine is the enemy of religion, I shall devour the enemy of religion.Idries Shah
2
The Sufis regard systems which treat everyone alike as mechanical and degenerate.Idries Shah
3
A man must be a Solomon before his magical ring will workIdries Shah
4
A man must be a Salomon before his magical ring will work. (Hafiz)Idries Shah
5
Imagination blocks you like a bolt on a door. Burn that bar. (Rumi)Idries Shah
6
Sufis (the name for the realised individual, not the learner or follower) are reunited with objective Reality and Unity.Idries Shah
7
The clothes may vary, but the person is the same.Idries Shah
8
Sufis deny the absolute reality of time, space and physical form. These things are both relative and local. They only appear to be absolute.Idries Shah
9
People who cannot trust are themselves not trustworthy, and therefore cannot be entrusted with important things.Idries Shah
10
Inheritance and culture obscure people’s higher capacities.Idries Shah
11
Trust is needed before lessons can be learnt.Idries Shah
12
Well-meant techniques such as arbitrary self-mortification, are useless.Idries Shah
13
Humility has to precede instruction.Idries Shah
14
Saadi: Be a true renouncer, (zahid) and [you can even] ware satin.Idries Shah
15
How many friends would you have if you went from one to another asking them to conceal a dead body?Idries Shah
16
A Sufi is alive to the value of time, and is given, every moment, to what that moment demands.Idries Shah
17
Sufism, they say, is that which enables one to understand religion, irrespective of its current outward form.Idries Shah
18
One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.Idries Shah
19
The Sufis are unanimous that a Guide (Sheikh) is absolutely essential, though never available on demand: 'the Sufis are not merchants'.Idries Shah
20
If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?Idries Shah
21
The human being, whether he realises it or not, is trusting someone or something every moment of the day.Idries Shah
22
Sufis aim to refine human consciousness. This is Sufi mysticism: not mystification or magic, but a specific Path.Idries Shah
23
Much religious teaching in the world is in reality a confused or deteriorated form, very different from its roots.Idries Shah
24
Sufi secrets are perceived, not understood by words.Idries Shah
25
The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk. As Prince Dara Shikoh says, in a Persian poem: Do you wish to be included with the Lords of Sight? From speech (then) pass on to experience. By saying 'Unity', you do not become a monotheist; The mouth does not become sweet from the word 'SugarIdries Shah
26
Materialism, attachment to things of the world, includes pride. Many religious people suffer from pride: taking pleasure or even delight in being good, or religious.Idries Shah
27
Form is useful, but it is secondary.Idries Shah
28
There are as many paths to Truth as there are souls of men.Idries Shah
29
Nothing can defile the Sufi, and he in fact purifies everything.” Abu-Turab al- Nakhsabi.Idries Shah
30
As with any other specialisation, teaching is a vocation, open only to those who are truly capable of discharging its functions.Idries Shah
31
The aspirant has to be guided by a mentor. The stage at which this guidance can take effect is seldom, if ever, perceptible to the learner.Idries Shah
32
Those who say ‘I am ready to learn’, or ‘I am not ready to learn’ are as often mistaken as they are correct in their surmise.Idries Shah
33
Miracles, to the Sufi, are not evidential, they are instrumental.Idries Shah
34
Eat what you desire, but dress like other people.Idries Shah
35
Continuously, in commemoration of the FriendWe drank wine, even before the creation of the vine.Idries Shah
36
Whoever knows God, does not (any longer) say “God”.Idries Shah
37
He is the completed Man who, from his completeness, performs, with his Mastership, the work of a slave.Idries Shah
38
Everyone does not know the secrets of TruthThe States of Truth are not evidential.Idries Shah
39
To Him who has sense, a sign is enough For the heedless, however, a thousand expositions are not enough.Idries Shah
40
The bird which has no knowledge of pure water, has his beak in salt water all year round.Idries Shah
41
The Sufi way is through knowledge and practice, not through intellect and talk.Idries Shah
42
But one may say something and yet not be able to do it. Try, for instance, lifting yourself up by the bootstraps.Idries Shah
43
Self-mortification, far from producing liberation from material things, is far more likely to cause either an unhinged mind, delusions or a masochistic taste for more suffering, experienced, of course, as joy.Idries Shah