Considered one of Idries Shah’s cornerstone works, Knowing How to Know was published posthumously by Octagon Press and builds on the foundations laid in the author’s previous landmark books: Learning How to Learn and The Commanding Self.

Knowing How to Know is an incisive compilation of stories, observations, epigrams and question-and-answer sessions designed to render clarity and deeper understanding as part of Shah’s wider course on contemporary Sufi studies. It looks at the often-unrecognised barriers which prevent knowledge, and the necessary conditions and factors which must be present for learning to take place.

The book opens with a preface insisting that human learning only occurs through a proper balance of inclusion and exclusion. The ensuing pages expand and contract around this central theme: that optimal human learning can only occur if the operational elements are present and the dysfunctional ones kept at bay.

Like an ultraviolet light shone onto the petals of flowers, Knowing How to Know reveals concealed patterns, normally invisible to our customary modes of thought.

‘This would not be a book by Shah if it were not often very funny. In short, those who know Shah's work will not need to be told it is a cornucopia of very various delights; those who do not may find it a fascinating introduction to the Sufi view of life.’

Doris Lessing, Sunday Telegraph

Preface

SECTION
Inclusion and Exclusion – a prologue

SECTION II
Real and Imitation Sufi Groups
An Assumption Underlying All Human Cultures
Acceptance
Attention
Notice
A Real Community
Are Men Machines?
Assessment and Service
Academics Anonymous
Are You Above or Beyond This?
All Knowledge Is Everywhere
Adopted Methods
Apparatus
Books and Reading
Boredom, Study and Entertainment
Basic Considerations

SECTION III
Background, Techniques and Theory of Esoteric Systems
Conceit
Charity
Consideration
Constant Exhortation
Criticism
Corrective
Clarity and Perplexity
Cause and Effect
Cult-Makers
Caution
Discovery
Direct Transmission
Didactic
Dilution and Concentration
Depths and Range of Traditional Materials
Effect of Opinion, When Ingrained, Even on Scientists
Elements Being Used in Our Courses
Exercising Power
Effort, Stretching and Straining
Environmental Maladjustment
Exercises
Eight Points on Initiatory Literature
Energy and Enthusiasm
Emotion
Emotion and Primitive State
Egregious
Eternalism as a Vice
Every Feeling Is Qualitative
Fame and Altruism
Fools’ Wisdom
Four States of Being
Fear
Fill the Pitcher
Greed Is Always Greed
Greed
Guilt, Reward, Punishment
Guarding the Woad Supplies
Group Politics
‘Gharadh’
Golden Age

SECTION IV
Humility and Superiority
How to Study
Human Knowledge
How to ‘Broaden Your Outlook’ by Narrowing It
Honour
Higher Ranges of Study
Human Duty
Hypocrisy
Human Thought Passing Through the Whole Organism
Higher Nutritions
Honour of the Wise
Harmful Ideas
Single-Formula Systems
Students
Stupidity
Social Concern
Summary of Orientation Points
Solving Problems
Seeking and Finding
Showing
Specialists
Strange World
Single-Minded
Sane and Mad
Service and Self-Satisfaction
Sufism
To an Enquirer
Time, Place and Materials
Transformation Process
Threes and Ones
To Be Remembered
Truth and Belief
Transformation of One’s Worldly Life
Three Disabling Consequences of Generalisation
Thought
There Comes a Time
Thought and Property
Terminology
The Worst Ailment
The Meaning of Life
‘The Right to Know’
The Higher Learning
The Sufis and Worldly Success
The Use of Initiatory Texts

SECTION V
The Nature of Sufic Study
The Nature of the Study Circle
The Anopheles Mosquito Situation
The Sociological Problem
The Age of the Fish
The Faculty of Speech
The Influence of a Teaching
The Emperor’s Clothes
The Unknown
The More You Think
The Eighth Day
The Village
The Greed of Generosity
The Hidden Current in Man
The Value of Opinion
The Values of Alchemy
The Cycle of Human Thought
The Use of Direct Language
The Rewards of Virtue
The Third System
The Defeatist Culture
Unusual Experiences
What Cannot Be Answered
When ‘This Is Not the Time’ Does Not Have to Mean ‘I Am Busy’
Walking
World of Their Own
Words and Violence
Will Travel
Why People Follow Lesser Aims
Why Not Tell Me?
Working Within Limitations
What Self-Examination Is
Why No No-Book Teaching?
Warming Water
Why People Escape Learning
Ways to Understand the Teaching
Virtuality
Views on Incongruity
When and Where?
What Have You Got?
Withdrawing From the World
Studies and Exercises as Variables
Technology
Imitation in Techniques
Infantile Desires
Ignorance and Hate
Information and Experiences
Imagination versus Understanding
Information and Knowledge
Ideology’s Effect
Importation of Technique
I Can Teach You
‘I Did Not Come Here to Be Insulted!’
Information and Expectation
Judgement
Keeping On
Knowledge and Behaviour

SECTION VI
Liking and Disliking
Labels and Ancestry
Listen
Last Resort
Look At Me
Metaphor of the Kaleidoscope
Man Becoming Something Else
‘Man Hates What Is Good for Him, Loves What Is Bad’
Men of Learning
Morality and Culture
Merit
Meditation
No Accident in These Studies
Needs, Not Fantasy
‘Nothing Is Happening’
News
Observation
Organisation, Study, Belief
Original Function of Practices
Pure Water
Pupil and Teacher Interchange
Payment
Purposes of Experiences
Prescience
Possible Functions of Studies
Patience
Practice of Virtue
‘Prescription’ versus Mixing
Purpose of Regular Meetings
Qualitative Perceptions
Questions and Desires
Real Teaching
Random and Real Seeking
Reinfection
Ritual
Nitrogen
Reason for Exercising Sincerity
Reviews
Relationship With a School
Right Thought
Running Before You Can Walk
Reflection Theme
Respect
Real, Empirical and Imitative Study
Reasons for Discipline
The Loaf
Sufi Sayings and Their Application in Teaching Situations

SECTION VII
Systematic Study
Strange Literature, Odd People
Slaps
Teachers and Pupils
The Sheep’s Ear
Love and Fear
The Sign of a Master
The Guardian
The Mad Rabbit
The Hammer
Unaltered
Unwitting Knowledge
Withered
Why Some Stay and Some Pass By...
What Is the Sufi Enterprise?
Wind and Water
Wirewalkers
Why Do We Not Get More?
Human Identity
The Spice-Market
Understanding Sufi Study
The Elements of the Situation
The Melon
The Stone and the Tree
The Path of Love
One’s Own Advantage
The Sheep’s Ear
Love and Fear
The Sign of a Master
The Guardian
The Mad Rabbit
The Hammer
Unaltered
Unwitting Knowledge
Withered
Why Some Stay and Some Pass By...
What Is the Sufi Enterprise?
Wind and Water
Wirewalkers
Why Do We Not Get More?
Human Identity
The Spice-Market
Understanding Sufi Study
The Elements of the Situation
The Melon
The Stone and the Tree
The Path of Love
One’s Own Advantage

SECTION VIII
Turnips
The Wise Man
After a Swim
All in One Man
The Fish-Eating Monkey
The Chocolate Bar
The Vanishing Dirham
Diseases of Learning

SECTION IX
Guide to Major Principles in the Use of Humour in Human Development
The Story of the Fool
Choosing a New Teacher
Fire and Straw
And Wear Them Out…?
Mystical States
In a Sufi School
Where the People of Learning Go Wrong
Working Through the World
Today and Yesterday: Jami
The Taste of No Taste
Protecting People Against False Teachers
Pleasing All the People
How to Find the Right Way
Conduct
Testing the Disciple
Criticism by Sufis
What the Master Does
You and Me
Just as Useful
Webbed Feet
Authenticity
Speech and Silence
Fire-Worshipper

SECTION X
The Giving of Knowledge
Religious and Wise
The Three Chests and the Balance
When Is a Prayer Not a Prayer?
Wisdom...
The Half-Blind King
Sufi Introduction
Sufi Attitudes Towards Religious and Other Cults
The Tale of Two Frogs
The ‘Net’ at the Meetings
Shearing
Efficiency
Uncomplimentary
The American
Confrontation

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.