Written in response to more than 70,000 questions received about the Sufi tradition from people around the world, this keystone work is crucial for readers wishing to approach the Sufi Way.

Learning How to Learn presents traditional teaching stories, anecdotes, and question-and-answer exchanges to illustrate the barriers and prerequisites to Sufi learning. Shah uses the language of Western psychology – concepts known in the ancient wisdom traditions of the East – to explain how and why Sufis learn, and how spiritual understanding may be developed.

The author draws from a vast array sources to illustrate the challenges and pitfalls inherent in real self-development work: from the Eastern parables of Jesus, to the ancient Sufi classics, to the tales of the Oriental wise fool and joke-figure Mulla Nasrudin. Automatic thinking, and the power of desires, hopes and fears that wrongly drive personal development, are among the more notable barriers to progress.

Many of the concepts which Shah introduced in this book including the vital role of right time, place and company in higher studies, and the very idea of ‘learning how to learn’, have since spread in the wider culture. A section dedicated to Shah's theory of the human need to give and receive attention is also considered groundbreaking.

But more than just a manual for the would-be student, Learning How to Learn is an essential book in helping to guard against the chicanery and nonsense found in the spiritual marketplace.

‘A remarkable tour de force... full of wit, wisdom and common sense.’

Asian Affairs

‘Astonishing in its pioneer content and treatment of human problems.’

World Future Studies Federation Newsletter

‘Bracing and often shocking ... a brisk and informed common-sense at its highest level.’

Books and Bookmen

‘Certain irresistible keys keep the reader on the edge of the seat...marks the watershed in studies of the mind.’

Psychology Today, ‘Choice of the Month’

‘…a profoundly more subtle understanding of the importance of attention than found in Western psychology till now…’

Ivan Tyrrell and Joe Griffin in Human Givens: A New Approach to Emotional Health and Clear Thinking

Introduction

1. REAL AND IMAGINED STUDY
Sufis and Their Imitators
Attaining Knowledge
Secrets and the Sufis
When to Have Meetings
The Ceiling
Conflicting Texts
Self-Deception
Journeys to the East
What a Sufi Teacher Looks Like
Books and Beyond Books
Saintliness
Secrecy
‘You Can’t Teach by Correspondence’
Background to ‘Humility’
How Serious Is the Student?
Social and Psychological Elements in Sufi Study

2. ON ATTENTION
Characteristics of Attention and Observation
Operation of the Attention Factor
Motivation of Transactions
Attention under Personal Control
Excess and Deprivation of Attention
Study of People and Ideas apart from their Attention Value
Identification of Underlying Factors
Raising the Emotional Pitch
Fossil Indicators

3. SUFI STUDY THEMES
Assumptions Behind Actions
Exercising Power through Kindness
Copying Virtue
Finding a Teacher
What Is Gained from Repetition
Robes and Apparatus of the Sufi
Why You Are Asked to Help
Laziness

4. THINGS OF THE WORLD
An Eastern Sage and the Newspapers
Basis for People’s Interest
Thinking in Terms of Supply-and-Demand
The Effect of Tales and Narratives
Stories of the Miraculous
Continuous versus Effective Activity
Capacity Comes before Opinion
Sanctified Greed
Psychic Idiots
When Criticism Can Stop
Information and Experience
The Teaching is a Matter of Conduct
Knowing One’s Own Sincerity
The Would-Be and Should-Be people
Satisfactions and Purpose of Ritual
Real and Ostensible Self-Improvement
Roles of Teacher and Student

5. ACTION AND MEANING
Real and Relative Generosity
Why Do Sufis Excel?
Confusion as a Personal Problem
Being a ‘Guru’
Systems
The Vehicle and the Objective
Concern and Campaign
Use, Misuse and Disuse of Forms of Study
Potentiality and Function
Conditioning and Education
The Search for an Honest Man
How Can One Method Be as Good as Another?

6. TWENTY-THREE STUDY POINTS
A Viable Unit
Being Supported
Being Physically Present
Intensely Standardised
Organisations and Greed
Generosity as a Greed
What You Do for Yourself
Graduating to a Higher Morality
Concluding that We Are Worthless
That which Attracts You about Us…
Giving and Withholding – and External Assessment
Standing between You and Knowledge
Direct Contact with a Source of Knowledge
Latent Knowledge
Provoking Capacity
Systematic Study
Consistency and System
Illumination and Information
Habit of Judging
Higher-Level Work
Games and Annoyance
Aspirations and Acquisition
Opinion and Fact

7. OVERALL STUDY
Learning and Non-Learning
Some Characteristics of Sufi Literature
Impartiality as a Point of View
Characteristics and Purposes of a Sufi Group
Prerequisites for a Student of Sufism
In Step Is Out Of Step
‘Dye Your Prayer-Rug with Wine’
The Master-Dyer
Method, System and Conditioning
Western Culture
The Western Tradition
How Does the Sufi Teach?
Idiot’s Wisdom
Attacking Fires
A Bridge and its Use
Deterioration of Studies
Community and Human Growth
The Value of Question and Answer Sessions
Dedication, Service, Sincerity
Sufis and Scholars
An Enterprise Is Measured by Intention,
Not by Appearance
Sufi Organisations

8. SUFI STUDIES
Coming Together
Concealment of Shortcomings
Saints and Heroes
The Levels of Service
Ritual and Practice
To Be Present
The Way to Sufism
The Giving of Charity
The Number of Readings of a Book
Decline in Religious Influence
Why Can’t We Have a British Karakul Lamb?
Teaching Methods and Prerequisites
Sorrow in ‘Spiritual Enterprises’
Shock-Teaching
Emotional Expectations
Jumping to Conclusions
The Rosary and the Robe
Random Exercises
On the Lines of a School
Conduct-Teaching
The Curriculum of a School
Knowing All About Someone
Remarks upon the Matter of the Dervish Path
Meetings, Groups, Classes
Internal Dimensions
Explanation

THE GIVING OF CHARITY

Q: Have you any remarks to make on the giving of charity among Sufis?

A: One commanding principle of all Sufis, binding upon them, is secret charity. Charity takes many forms. As to monetary charity:

If money is given with a sense of joy, that joy is ‘payment’ for the charity, and the good which comes to the giver is restricted to that emotion. Although this kind of giving is familiar to most people, it nevertheless remains the minor form of charity. The second part of the minor form of charity is to give in order that the person may help himself. Thus a person might buy a tool for a carpenter, so that he could earn his living. This may not be emotional, but could still be ‘calculated’ charity. Its limitations make it less than true charity.

Money or valuables are given by Sufis, or those who
desire to be counted among them, in accordance
with the principle: ‘Let your left hand not know
what your right hand does.’

A Sufi will:

Give before being asked;
Give whatever he has, without counting it;
Give when asked;
Give no emotional or calculated charity unless he can give true charity.

It is meritorious to give money to a Sufi for him to distribute it. He will give it out, in large or small amounts, to those who are deserving, not necessarily in accordance with their outward need. A beggar or a poor man may get a thousand gold pieces, not just a copper coin.

Charity does not always involve money, as you know. Charity is not only given, as you call it. It is lived and performed, which means ‘being and doing’.

As Saadi, the great dervish, says in his Gulistan:

‘You who are unmoved by others’ suffering are not entitled to the name of man.’ Charity has been made into a great virtue only because of the low level of human decency.

If you still think that charity is not a necessity but a high virtue, you do not even know what your contemporaries, in your own civilisation, have discovered, and which has been published in mass-circulation newspapers on the subject.

Idries Shah was born in India in 1924 into an aristocratic Afghan family. He was an author and teacher in the Sufi tradition and is considered one of the leading thinkers of the 20th century.

Shah devoted his life to collecting, translating and adapting key works of Sufi classical literature for the needs of the West. Called by some 'practical philosophy' - these works represent centuries of Sufi and Islamic thought aimed at developing human potential. His best-known works include the seminal book The Sufis, several collections of teaching stories featuring the ‘wise fool’ Nasrudin, Reflections and Knowing How to Know.

Shah's corpus - over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and cultural studies - have been translated into two dozen languages and have sold millions of copies around the world. They are regarded as an important bridge between the cultures of East and West.