When it first appeared in 1964, The Sufis was welcomed as the decisive work on the subject of Sufi thought. Rich in scope, author Idries Shah explained clearly the traditions and philosophy of the Sufis to a Western audience for the first time. In th...

The Sufis

The Way of the Sufi presents an unparalleled cross-section of material from Sufi schools, Sufi teachings, and classical writings as a basic course of Sufi study. The author begins with the outward aspects of the teaching most likely to puzzle the stu...

The Way of the Sufi

Audie Award Finalist, Audio Drama, 2014 With a full cast and thousands of sound effects, the award-winning Colonial Radio Theatre is proud to present this faithful adaptation of the greatest science fiction novel of all kind, The War of the Worlds. A...

The War of the Worlds (Dramatized)

Caravan of Dreams distills the essence of Eastern thought in a feast of Sufi stories, sayings, poems, and allegories collected by one of the world's leading experts in Oriental philosophy and Sufism. Idries Shah builds up a complete picture of a sing...

Caravan of Dreams

Orphaned John Trenchard grows up in the village of Moonfleet with his aunt, entranced by the local legend of the ghostly Blackbeard, who rises each winter night to search for his lost diamond. While conducting his own hunt for the treasure, John is t...

Moonfleet

100 Conversations with Idries Shah Condensed from more than three million words, these conversations involve housewives and cabinet ministers, professors and assembly-line workers, on the subject of how traditional psychology can illuminate current h...

Learning How to Learn

"Perfectly designed models for isolating and holding distortions of the mind which so often pass for reasonable behavior." (Idries Shah)  Today we find Idries Shah in a high-level physics report, illustrating phenomena that can't be described in ordi...

The Exploits of the Incomparable Mulla Nasrudin

Although enormously attractive as sheer entertainment, Dervish tales were never presented merely on the level of a fable, legend, or folklore. They stand comparison in wit, construction, and piquancy with the finest stories of any culture, yet their ...

Tales of the Dervishes

In Idries Shah's Wisdom of the Idiots, the "idiots" are Sufis, called this because their wisdom penetrates to a depth which renders it inaccessible to the merely intelligent or academically knowledgeable. The stories of the Sufis are tools prepared f...

Wisdom of the Idiots

The Commanding Self, in Sufic terminology, is that mixture of the primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding. This audiobook was described by Shah as the key to understanding ...

The Commanding Self

The "perfuming of a scorpion", referred to by the great Sufi teacher Bahaudin, symbolizes hypocrisy and self-deception: both in the individual and in institutions. In A Perfumed Scorpion, Idries Shah directs attention to both the perfume and the scor...

A Perfumed Scorpion

Read by David Ault, this unabridged recording of Idries Shah's Reflections is a collection of Sufi fables, aphorisms, and statements that challenge the conditioned mind. The audiobook confronts the listener with unaccustomed perspectives and ideas in...

Reflections

Previously published only as separate essays, Sufi Thought and Action - assembled and introduced by Idries Shah - covers an extraordinary diversity of Sufi ideas and activities in many countries and cultures. Included in the volume are papers on Sufi...

Sufi Thought and Action

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...

The Elephant in the Dark

Based on university lectures at the New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of California, San Francisco, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Studies deals with many of the problems of Sufic methods of study and those which militate against its effective progress in the modern world, notably the unrecognized assumptions which we make about ourselves and about learning and its process.

Neglected Aspects of Sufi Studies

The appeal of Nasrudin is as universal and timeless as the truths he illustrates. His stories are read by children, by scientists and scholars, and by followers of philosophy. Sufi scholar Idries Shah assembled this collection of Nasrudin's trials an...

The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin

Special Illumination is a term used by the great poet and mystic, Jalaluddin Rumi, to stress the importance of humor in metaphysical experience. Of it, Idries Shah says, "Rumi directly contradicts such numerous sour-faced religionists as, in all persuasions, find that humor disturbs the indoctrination which is all that they usually have to offer."

Special Illumination

Oriental Magic is recognized as a brilliant study of how, what and why people think, in territories extending from North Africa to Japan. The book is the product of years of research and fieldwork in a dozen different cultural regions. Its scholarly ...

Oriental Magic

Thinkers of the East is a collection of anecdotes and "parables in action" illustrating the eminently practical and lucid approach of Eastern Dervish teachers. Distilled from the teachings of more than 100 sages in three continents, this material str...

Thinkers of the East

First published in 1957, Destination Mecca was both an ambitious travel book and a work of ethnographic and cultural research. Shah documents a wide range of fascinating journeys, from his quest for the gold mines of King Solomon on Sudan's Red Sea C...

Destination Mecca

Traditionally known as The Hundred Tales of Wisdom, this collection comprises excerpts from the life, teachings, and miracles of the Sufi teacher Jalaluddin Rumi, together with certain important stories from his works. As well as being part of the be...

The Hundred Tales of Wisdom

A treasure house of teaching materials, assembled in the Sufi manner. Seeker After Truth contains both traditional tales and stories gleaned from contemporary sources, and snippets of table talk, discussions and teachings, letters, and lectures by Idries Shah. Taken together, it constitutes a handbook of materials designed to provoke a different kind of thought.

Seeker After Truth

Many countries claim Nasrudin as a native, although few have gone so far as Turkey in exhibiting a "grave" of the wisest fool who ever lived, and holding an annual Nasrudin Festival. He is the greatest, most intriguing, character of folklore found in any Eastern land.

The Subtleties of the Inimitable Mulla Nasrudin

Contemporary esoteric systems almost always play on the desire of mankind to seek or acquire knowledge. All but universally neglected in such systems are the often unrecognized barriers which prevent knowledge and understanding. Before learning can t...

Knowing How to Know

How can it be that the same story is found in Scotland and also in pre-Columbian America? What can account for the durability and persistence of tales? Was the tale of Aladdin and his wondrous lamp really taken from Wales (where it has been found) to...

World Tales

A serious, yet entertaining, look at the impediments in current thought which prevent certain forms of understanding between people. The title story was made into an award-winning film with script by Idries Shah, and chosen as an Outstanding Film of ...

The Dermis Probe

A Veiled Gazelle, as the great mystic Ibn Arabi explains in his interpreter of desires, is a subtlety, an organ of higher perception. Sufi experientialists refer to the activation of these centres of awareness as the awakening of real knowledge of tr...

A Veiled Gazelle

According to the Sufis, human faculties, although perceptive, are limited: Like a radio set, which can receive only certain electromagnetic waves and not other parts of this band. The inability to transcend the barrier of limited senses explains huma...

Observations

The Magic Monastery  Many of Idries Shah's books are comprised of tales and teaching stories taken from both written and oral sources, which illustrate the instructional methods employed by Eastern wise men for thousands of years.  The Magic Monaster...

The Magic Monastery

In December of 1979, Soviet tanks rolled across the borders of Afghanistan, beginning a period of barbaric aggression that triggered a turning point in modern history. Idries Shah's brilliant novel chronicles the courageous 10-year resistance of the ...

Kara Kush

Evenings with Idries Shah collected by R. Easterling and Kamil Hafiz. The Sufis have been using carefully constructed stories for teaching purposes for thousands of years. Though on the surface these often appear to be little more than entertaining f...

Evenings with Idries Shah

According to the Sufis, human faculties, although perceptive, are limited: like a radio set, which can receive only certain electromagnetic waves and not other parts of this band. The inability to transcend the barrier of limited senses explains huma...

Letters and Lectures

Nasrudin is the greatest of all Arab folk heroes, and is found across the Islamic World, from Morocco to Pakistan, and beyond. He is said to have been the wisest fool who ever lived - that is if he ever did live at all. Stories of Nasrudin’s many inc...

The World of Nasrudin

In his best-selling Darkest England, Idries Shah asserts that the English hail from a little-known place called "Hathaby", but their roots go back much farther, perhaps to the distant Asian realm of Sakasina. Once a nomadic tribe of warriors, the Eng...

Darkest England

This first installment of the Cliff Weller mystery series opens with a down-on-his-luck Cliff drinking his blues away at Nicky Congo's bar. But the gearshift of his luck slams into fast forward when a baffling but attractive woman seeks his help in l...

The Geminus Conspiracy

The Indian Guru and His Disciple - ISF Monograph Series, book three, by Peter L. Brent About Peter L. Brent: Peter Brent was the author of many books, among them a major biography of Darwin (Charles Darwin: A Man of Enlarged Curiosity) and also two s...

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