The Commanding Self

Described by the author as a key to the entire corpus of his work, The Commanding Self describes the mixture of primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, that inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding. This book is designed to offer a way to transcend the limits imposed by this "commanding self."

While complete in itself as an anthology of hitherto unpublished work, the book serves to illustrate and amplify Idries Shah's preceding books on the Sufi Way. Based on tales, lectures, letters, and interviews, it offers both an introduction to Sufi thought and further study for those already acquainted with Shah's writings.

SUFI THOUGHT, EXPERIENCE AND TEACHING

Thousands of books and monographs have been written on Sufism and the Sufis, almost all of them from the point of view of other ways of thinking. The result has been chaos in the literature, and confusion in the reader. Over the centuries, some of the world's most eminent scholars have fallen into the trap of trying to examine, assess or consider the Sufi phenomenon through a set of culture-bound preconceptions.

All this may not be as foolish as it looks to us, today: after all, it is only relatively recently that students, including academics and people of the spirit, have begun to realize that their attitudes have traditionally been heavily influenced by subjectivity and unexamined assumptions. Although the pendulum is slowly swinging back, there is still no lack of people--specialists and others--who continue to look at anything, including Sufis, in anything but an objective way.

The problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.

The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.

Following closely after the primary misconception is the general impression that all spiritual entities must strongly depend upon emotion. Indeed, there is a marked confusion, even in the most lucid writers, between spirituality and emotionalism. Such confusion does not exist in authentic Sufi teaching or study.

The misconceptions of which the above two are typical produce in the student a frame of mind through which he or she will try to approach the understanding or study of Sufism, with predictably useless results. For this reason Sufi literature shows a marked rejection of ultra-formalism, of mental fetishes, the over-simplifications which hamper understanding. The Sufis refer to the action of the mixture of primitive emotionality and irrelevant associations which bedevil outside would-be observers as that of the Commanding Self.

It is only since the nineteen-fifties, with the discovery of the far-reaching effects of conditioning, brain-washing and attitude-engineering, that the subjective nature of virtually all approaches to knowledge has been perceived to the degree to which the Sufis, for centuries, have tried to establish.

The Sufis have always taught: 'Examine your assumptions; avoid mechanicality; distinguish faith from fixation'.

The Sufi teacher, in the first place, has to be someone who has experienced all the stages of the Way along which he will conduct his disciples. Outward observers are not capable of commenting upon Sufism, only upon its externals. they lack both the experience and the capacity to discriminate between real and degenerate forms. 'Who tastes, knows' is a Sufi saying. Equally, whoever does not taste, does not know.

The validity of this concept is, naturally enough, strenuously opposed by outward observers. But if, in any field, an unqualified person, lacking essential experience, decides to 'become and expert', it is inevitable that the specialist, the person with the experience, will--indeed must--assert the primacy of proper knowledge.

It has to be remembered here that the externalists (whether people of the spirit or of the pen and tongue) are themselves not particularly to blame. Reared on the concept that anyone can, at will, examine anything, they are victims of their own culture's assumptions. After all, this approach is adequate for a large number of disciplines. They have merely applied a principle which holds good in one area to a subject where it does not.

The Sufi, unlike the externalists, cannot, and does not, work mechanically. The projection of the message and the help which is given to the learner, must always vary in conformity with the needs of the time, the culture involved and the nature and potential of the student.

But as soon as we say this, we can see that Sufi organisation, teaching and learning differ fundamentally from all other 'systems'.

The Sufi, in short, is aiming for a development, not to produce conditioned reflexes. He is teaching, not training. he intervenes, to provide the right stimulus at the right time for the right person. Such an activity is seen as chaotic by those who cannot perceive its purposefulness; just as the way of life in some open societies feels the unbearably disorderly to those who have escaped from regimented ones: something which frequently happens today.

Copyright © 1994. Idries Shah. All rights reserved.