SUFI THOUGHT AND ACTION

Assembled by Idries Shah

Octagon Press, London, 1990

This book is an anthology of the extraordinary diversity of Sufi ideas and activities in many countries and cultures today. Nothing approaching this kind of survey has ever been assembled.

Included are firsthand accounts of Sufi learning methods; the Sufi meeting place; avoiding imitators; Sufi work enterprises; the idea of organic enterprises; entry into a Sufi group; the Sufi Adept and the projection of mind; extra-sensory perception; what the Sufis do not want us to know; and more.

IN THE WORLD, NOT OF IT'
The members of all communities, including nations and whole civilizations, are infused with the prevailing ideologies of those communities. These, in turn, create attitudes of mind which include certain capacities and equally positively exclude others.
The ideologies may be so ancient, so deep-seated or so subtle that they are not identified as such by the people at large. In this case they are often discerned only through a method of challenging them, asking questions about them or by comparing them with other communities.
Such challenge, description or questioning, often the questioning of assumptions, is what frequently enables a culture or a number of people from that culture to think in ways that have been closed to most of their fellows.
--From 'Sufi Activity' by Emir Ali Khan in Sufi Thought and Action © 1990 by Octagon Press