Two Stories:
A thirsty lion, having found his way to a lake, was startled when he bent over to take a drink, to see (as he thought) another lion looking back at him. He roared at it but it didn’t go away, and the other animals watching nearby laughed at him. Finally he charged into the lake to attack the "other lion," to discover that there wasn’t any other lion there at all — it was his own reflection. (Told by Idries Shah in the "Dreamwalkers" program of the BBC TV series, "One Pair of Eyes.")
Mulla Nasrudin, as everyone knows, comes from a country where fruit is fruit, and meat is meat, and curry is never eaten. One day he was plodding along a dusty Indian road, having newly descended from the high mountains of Kafiristan, when a great thirst overtook him. "Soon," he said to himself, "I must come across somewhere that good fruit is to be had."
No sooner were the words formed in his brain than he rounded a corner and saw sitting in the shade of a tree a benevolent-looking man, with a basket in front of him.
Piled high in the basket were huge, shiny red fruits. "This is what I need," said Nasrudin. Taking two tiny coppers from the knot at the end of his turban, he handed them to the fruit-seller.
Without a word the man handed him the whole basket, for this kind of fruit is cheap in India, and people usually buy it in smaller amounts.
Nasrudin sat down in the place vacated by the fruiterer, and started to munch the fruits. Within a few seconds, his mouth was burning. Tears streamed down his cheeks, fire was in his throat. The Mulla went on eating.
An hour or two passed, and then an Afghan hillman came past. Nasrudin hailed him. "Brother, these infidel fruits must come from the very mouth of Sheitan!"
"Fool!" said the hillman. "Hast thou never heard of the chillis of Hindustan? Stop eating them at once, or death will surely claim a victim before the sun is down."
"I cannot move from here," gasped the Mulla, "until I have finished the whole basketful."
"Madman! Those fruits belong in curry! Throw them away at once."
"I am not eating fruit any more," croaked Nasrudin, "I am eating my money." (from, The Pleasantries of the Incredible Mulla Nasrudin, by Idries Shah).
Sufi stories like the two above are funny and entertaining in their own right. They also offer morals for daily life. Beyond both purposes, however, lies something more: Sufi stories are part of a method for developing perception.
Let us begin from a perspective on the brain as a developing organ of perception. We know that the language in which so much of our communication, culture, education, and thought is based is a function and product largely of the left cerebral hemisphere (in most people). The right hemisphere has more to do with perception and orientation. Its language use can be more poetic or lyrical than linear. The right hemisphere of the brain can be associated with certain emotions, but there is certainly quite a big difference between the ways in which the two hemispheres use language.
People with left hemisphere damage often lose much or all of their ability to speak and/or understand speech, depending on where in the hemisphere the damage is. People with damage to the right hemisphere continue to be able to speak but suffer deficits in their ability to understand the situations that they are in and the complexities and contexts of their relationships with other people. Thus, developing the "organ" of perception would necessarily involve both verbal and nonverbal development, as well as supporting the integrated operation of these functions at higher levels of perception of meaning.
"The Legend of Nasrudin," in Idries Shah’s Thinkers of the East, refers to this as a higher development of intuition, linked both to the emotions and the intellect, when they are functioning in a certain harmony. Sufis have traditionally spoken of the development of an "organ of perception."
Many people think the purpose of education is to prepare students for jobs of one sort or another: psychologist or automobile mechanic, business manager or cosmetologist. But while learning how to make a living is an important goal of growing up for everyone, such a view of education ignores the quality and purpose of life. More intellectual types see the aim of education as mental culture, as if lofty thinking were an end in itself. But that ignores the role of intuition and perception in real understanding. "A donkey with a load of books on its back remains a donkey," some have said.
Education as we practice it does not train the capacity of intuitive perception, it just stuffs us with facts and intellectual ways of processing them. Theocratic or dictatorial cultures use education to instill obedience to certain dogmatic principles. They teach people to believe what their controllers want them to believe, and use rewards and punishments in very obvious ways. More sophisticated cultures use coercion in more subtle ways, which doesn’t make it any less coercive, just harder to identify and avoid. Only the very fortunate get to work with a teacher who can help them to learn through experience, and they are exceptions to this prevailing situation.
Sufi teaching, on the other hand, sees the real purpose of education as the development of capacities of perception that are latent within humanity, and which, once developed, allow the person to apply himself or herself more completely and effectively to life. Information plays a necessary part in this process — you can’t learn what you don’t know anything about, or what you have incorrect assumptions about — but the role of teaching is to support experiential learning, which develops the latent capacities.
Sufis criticize education for its reliance on partial, often incorrect information, and also for failing to balance conditioned belief and informational learning with experiential learning. A Sufi quoted in one of Idries Shah’s books says: "’I believe it is true’ is no substitute for‘this is how it is done’."
Sufi teachers — that is, genuine teachers as opposed to self-appointed imitators, which abound — are rare. They also have duties which accord with their perceptions, and often have to work with many people at a distance. Even when a teacher is physically present, students may be too "raw" to benefit from his or her presence; they may need a course of experiential development to help them get ready to begin learning, so to speak. For these reasons, instruments are needed which can contain knowledge and provoke experience while taking a form that is initially acceptable to the brain’s word processor.
These instruments also must be able to stimulate and/or support a further development of perception under correct circumstances. And, if they’re entertaining or funny, so much the better, because then people will tell and retell them, and the instruments will survive even when there is no specialist around to understand and employ their deeper applications. Eventually, there will be. Such instruments are — you guessed it — stories. But they are not ordinary stories. Sufis use special tools known as "teaching stories," which have multidimensional, multi-level potential.
Now, let us return to the two stories given at the start of this article. In the form they are given, they are perfectly suitable as children’s stories: kids like them, and such stories no doubt help to develop children’s attention and cognitive capacities. Most people stop there. Some go further, and appreciate their wry humor and entertainment value, perhaps seeing their neighbors or co-workers’ behavior exemplified by the lion or Nasrudin. Most of those stop there. But these stories have much more to offer.
Try to take them a step deeper: try on the structure of the stories as if they were written just for you. Has there been a time when you, like the lion, were scared of reaching out for something you needed because of your own unrealistic fears, which you projected onto the situation? Was there a time when you stuck with something through to the end, even after you realized it wasn’t good for you, because you "paid for it?" Of course, we may literally do this with food, but what about belief systems: how often do we cling to a belief system, or ways of seeing or doing things that clearly are not doing us any good (if they ever did) because we "paid for it" in one way or another?
Thus, Sufi teachers provide students with stories to soak themselves in, stories that provide some information useful right away, and additional dimensions of potential value which become activated as and when the student is ready for them. Sufis do not indoctrinate, and, indeed, one of the things that most appealed to me when I began reading Sufi literature, as presented by the Afghan Sufi writer Idries Shah, is that the Sufis see conditioning as a widespread, often unsuspected, and nearly entirely destructive force in humanity’s existence.
Shah, who is the foremost modern exponent of Sufism, has made an entire body of study materials available to modern people, East and West, who are interested in the contemporary and effective application of this knowledge. The tales and stories are sometimes like children’s or fairy tales, or they may be narratives of interactions between teachers and students, letters and lectures of teachers, poetry, all ranging from the apparently mundane to the apparently fantastic and back again. Contemporary people of great achievement and influence who have publicly acknowledged the value of Shah’s work include the psychologist Robert Ornstein, the novelist Doris Lessing, the psychiatrist Arthur Deikman, the zoologist Desmond Morris, and the poet Robert Graves. The Society for Sufi Studies in Los Altos, California, is identified in Shah’s books published by Octagon Press as the place to write for further information. However, there is no use writing without having first familiarized oneself with Shah’s books; he is on record as saying that people who want further instruction without having first read his books are ignoring the fact that he has written the books for them to read before trying to take a next step.
Nasrudin has a story about this, too. It seems that he wanted to play the guitar, and went to see a teacher, inquiring about cost. "Twenty dollars for the first lesson, ten dollars for the subsequent ones," said the teacher. "Excellent," said Nasrudin, "I’ll start with the second lesson." (slightly adapted). To begin at the beginning, try a story on for size.
Jay Einhorn is a psychologist in Winnetka, IL.