[NetBehaviour] Doris Lessing pays tribute to a great exponent of Sufism

[Fung-Lin Hall]

Oh. I also created an archive for Doris.. 
http://www.mutanteggplant.com/vitro-nasu/category/books/doris-lessing/
Looks like we'll be talking more about Doris Lessing than Sylvia Plath's 
suicide.

F.L.
> Doris Lessing pays tribute to a great exponent of Sufism
>
> The Times 1994.
>
> Thirty years ago there appeared The Sufis, a book which at once
> announced itself as unlike any other. Hundreds of books by non-Sufis
> appear every year, disappear without trace or wash up on obscure shelves
> in academic libraries. This book was at once "recognised" -- a Sufi term
> which may be summed up by "like calls to like" -- by a remarkable range
> of people, many of them poets. The Sufis is a classic, and was by Idries
> Shah, who represents a genuine mystic tradition -- there are many imitators.
>
> Since then he has written or compiled over 30 books, providing a
> comprehensive experience of the Sufi view of life. The whole body of
> work, together with his reissuing of still relevant Sufi classics, adds
> up to a many-faceted whole. There are people who have taken part in this
> process, book by book. Others have found this or that book useful or
> entertaining. The Commanding Self is both a summing up of a third of a
> century's work, and a development. People who have stayed the course
> will find similar ideas here, but put into a new context or taken a step
> further, sometimes unexpectedly.
>
> "The commanding self" is a Sufi term for the false personality. Their
> contention is that we are all products of ideas put into us by our
> parents, by our culture, by the time we live in, and that what is real
> in us is very small (and precious). It is this part the Sufis aim to
> reach and teach. Some people, hearing that nearly everything they seem
> to be is only a mask made by conditioning, will say, "Well, of course!"
> -- and want more information, while others may feel threatened. The
> picture on the cover is a photograph of an ancient figurine, a
> representation of the commanding self, like a savage dog. "Do you want
> to live an angry biting life?"
>
> more…
> http://ishk.net/sufis/lessing.html
>