“Idries Shah has introduced to the West a remarkable collection of traditional and contemporary tales. Their wisdom penetrates to a depth inaccessible to intellectual knowledge. They are widely acknowledged for their beauty and entertainment value, but these stories are also skillfully designed exercises. The movement of the characters portray psychological processes, and the story becomes a working blueprint of the mind, moving the reader towards his own vision of truth in a way no ordinary tale could do.”
— Robert Ornstein, psychologist, author of The Right Mind“The Sufis must be the biggest society of sensible people there has ever been on earth.”
— Ted Hughes, poet“There is no record of any other body of ideas or system which has penetrated so widely and so far into so many departments of life and thought, in the East and the West. No mind has been trained to expect such a thing... ”
— Los Angeles Free Press[The work of Idries Shah is] “...a watershed in studies of the mind.”
— Psychology Today“A way of re-learning to use the mind.”
—The American Scholar“I can’t remember being more provoked and stimulated.”
—The Spectator“A present for anyone who, though religious, finds the current orthodoxies unpalatable.”
— Times Literary Supplement“More than rewarding and impossible to forget.”
— Book World“At first it was poets and writers who recognized its importance, but now its influence has spread where long overdue — among scientists, psychiatrists, biologists ... above all, a way of re-learning to use the mind.”
— Doris Lessing“I was entertained, enchanted, stopped short, upset, delighted, tantalized — and sometimes struck with an almost palpable blow that knocked sideways my usual patterns of thought. ... Strikingly appropriate for our time and situation — a jewel flung in the marketplace.”
— The Sunday Times
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