OVERCOMING ASSUMPTIONS THAT INHIBIT SPIRITUAL DEVELOPMENT

A lecture by Idries Shah delivered before a live audience, plus teaching-stories and narratives selected from Tales of the Dervishes

ISHK Audiobooks, 2001

This lecture, delivered in 1976, was previously entitled A Psychology of the East. Shah addresses the nature of assumptions, those that inhibit understanding and those that might be useful at certain stages of study but need to be set aside by the student at a later time in order to progress. This requires a flexibility of approach that is not customary in the West, one cultivated by study and exposure to Sufi ideas. It´s a very humorous and lively lecture, full of stories and anecdotes. Among the other topics Shah addresses are the difference between emotionality and spirituality, the danger of looking for easy answers, and the way in which the paths of East and West are converging.

This set includes a recording of teaching-stories and narratives, selected and read by members of The London College of Storytellers, from Shah´s best-selling work, Tales of the Dervishes.

Two digitally-mastered cassettes, running time: approx. 2.5 hours

So one must learn to be flexible, one must learn to question assumptions, one must learn to put up other assumptions than one's customary ones to study things...some of the things are, for example, our narrative materials which I have published... Now various points of view on these produce a certain kind of flexibility. Trying too hard doesn't work, trying to make out what they mean doesn't work because this material is instrumental not indoctrination.
--From Overcoming Assumptions That Inhibit Spiritual Development © 1976, 1977 by The Estate of Idries Shah