The pathways into Sufic thinking are, it is traditionally said, almost as varied as the number of Sufis in existence.
~ Idries Shah
The totality of life cannot be understood, so runs Sufi teaching, if it is studied only through the methods which we use in everyday living.
Practise your knowledge, for knowledge without practice is a body without life
As with any other specialisation, teaching is a vocation, open only to those who are truly capable of discharging its functions.
The fruit of timidity is neither gain nor loss.
When you get a principle on which everyone is agreed, you get the beginning of complacency and deterioration.
When you feel least interested in following the Way which you have entered, this may be the time when it is most appropriate for you.
The secret protects itself. It is found only in the spirit and practice of the Work.
Unbelief and belief are both marching on His road, while both are saying, ‘He is one and He has no associates’.
Understanding and knowledge are completely different sensations in the realm of Truth than they are in the realm of society.
If you forsake a path, it is because you were hoping for conviction from it. You seek conviction, not self-knowledge.
Do not dwell upon whether you will put yourself into the hands of a teacher. You are always in his hands.
Debating whether one trusts or not is a sign that one does not want to trust at all, and therefore is still incapable of it.
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.
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.
A Sufi is one who is not bound by anything nor does he bind anything
Things which are seemingly opposed may in fact be working together
Like calls to like, truth to truth and deceit to deceit.
Whatever goes into a salt-mine becomes salt.
It is experience which teaches, not controversy based on supposed logic and assumptions of what is likely to be true.
Sufism is education, in that it has a body of knowledge which it transmits to those who have not got it.
Sufi Teachers are not, as you might hope, people who make you feel peace and harmony.
Of whom can we think well when it is believed that if nothing bad is done to you, this has been a kindness?
Sufism is that which succeeds in bringing to man the High Knowledge.
What you are pleased to call Sufism is merely the record of past method.
Brave is the thief who carries a lamp in his hand.
The definition of the word 'finished' is: 'This word means finished.
I will not serve God like a labourer, in expectation of my wages.
Your medicine is in you, and you do not observe it. Your ailment is from yourself, and you do not register it.
Information about the activities of one body of Sufis may be harmful to the potential of another.
Nothing cheap without reason.
Until you can understand illogicality, and the meaningfulness of it, shun the Sufis except for limited, precise, self-evident services.
When sense has left a head, it should be called a tail.
Generosity is also marked by doing what one says one will do. Saadi teaches: ‘when the generous promise, they perform
BARQI: AESTHETICS IS ONLY THE LOWEST FORM OF PERCEPTION OF THE REAL.
If you want to be a calligrapher, write, and write, and write.
A book, for the Sufis, is an instrument as much as it is something to give information.
I am the Real, for I have not ceased to be real – through the Real.
If the father cannot, the son will finish the task.
No effort makes a black crow into a white hawk.
