In a darkened room, a group of men once sought to examine an elephant. Taking hold of a different part – an ear, a leg, the tail – each one mistook his particular part for the whole. In the darkness, each of the men became convinced that the elephant was the object he himself had felt – a fan, a rope, a pillar, and so on.

With this ancient fable, first described by the Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi, Idries Shah presents the Sufi perspective that Christianity and Islam stem from one, inner origin.