Rating: 
Summary: Best book to open the windows in your brain
Review: After 10+ years of reading the stories in this book, I still come away with a different level of understanding of each story with each passing year. A master storyteller, Idries Shah's writing reaches right into the very thought processes that make you who you think you are and then snap you into remembering who you really are on earth and beyond. Like an onion, the stories all have multiple layers that only reveal themselves with time. Good for the beginner as well as the most advanced --
Rating:
Summary: Tales of the dervishes are valuable instruments
Review: I first read TALES OF THE DERVISHES thirty years ago, and I've been re-reading them ever since. My daughter preferred these ancient stories to the standard Western fairy tales at bedtime, asking me to read them to her over and over again, which delighted me because I too found them spellbinding. It's easy to understand why they've endured a thousand years because they are perhaps the most beautiful and intriguing examples of the storytelling art that I've ever encountered.
Rating: 
Summary: unbearable mumbo-jumbo
Review: I have just reread Idries Shah's Tales of the Dervishes. The 82 tales from Sufi teaching of the last thousand years include current material. Shah calls it "work material". These vivid and vital accounts are communications, really. They invite the reader to experience the challenge and mystery of Sufi lore and teaching. I was surprised to find that after ten years, I still remember nearly every tale: the feel of the words and drama as well as details of action. The characters, though often odd and unlikely also seem oddly familiar. Their escapades stimulate emotional as well as intellectual involvement. The outcomes seem at once impossible and inevitable. We are reading about ourselves here: the lucky time when we got it right and all the missed opportunities.
After each tale Shah gives historical notes and useful comments.
Excerpt.
STRIKE ON THIS SPOT
Dhun-Nun the Egyptian explained graphically in a parable how he extracted knowledge concealed in Pharaonic inscriptions.There was a statue with pointing finger, upon which was inscribed: 'Strike on this spot for treasure.' Its origin was unknown, but generations of people had hammered the place marked by the sign. Because it was made of the hardest stone, little impression was made on it, and the meaning remained cryptic.
Dhun-Nun, wrapped in contemplation of the statue, one day exactly at midday observed that the shadow of the pointing finger, unnoticed for centuries, followed a line in the paving beneath the statue.
Marking the place he obtained the necessary instruments and prised up by chisel-blows the flagstone, which proved to be the trapdoor in the roof of a subterranean cave which contained strange articles of a workmanship which enabled him to deduce the science of their manufacture, long since lost and hence to acquire the treasures and those of a more formal kind which accompanied them.
Rating: 
Summary: Jewels Of Spiritual Insight
Review: Idries Shah presents a selection of stories from hundreds of years worth of Sufi literature and tradition. The stories are short, entertaining, and easily read, but also challenging since they are not so easily understood in many instances. Nevertheless, there are certainly jewels of spiritual insight to be gleaned from this book, regardless of any puzzlement one might experience in regard to its many obscurities. The patient reader will find that some stories which seem terribly obscure to begin with will, at some later reading, become perfectly obvious as to their relevance.
Rating:
Summary: Ancient stories from a spiritual tradition
Review: Many of these stories are quite old, yet all are given a modern and entertaining voice by the author, and each has its own applicability to specific problems. This is a very rich collection. It should not be overlooked by anyone interested in world literature or spiritual traditions.
Rating:
Summary: A Map of Human Experience
Review: Most books that deal with metaphysics or consciousness are written by people who like to tell others what they have found. We get an individual interpretation magnified and glorified. There seems to be quite a market for such books, which I suppose must mean there is a taste for them. Tales of the Dervishes, a book which contains Teaching Stories from Sufi Masters, is very short on interpretation of Reality, or descriptions of Reality, or categorizations of Reality, and very long on the means to develope one's own perception and understanding. In these pages we find animals and Kings, beggars and fools, a princess, the water of life and many other familar characters and subjects. Watching themes develope and characters interact is like watching a map of human experience slowly develop. What emerges is that you have just been shown yourself.
Rating:
Summary: A wonderful book
Review: One of many wonderful books by this author. Takes the form of short stories from a third of a page to 4 pages. I hesitate to describe it further than that because it might limit the potential readers expectation to something less than it is. However, I value Shah's books as the single most important source of knowledge I have come across.
Rating:
Summary: Dare to question everything
Review: Stories that will shake your assumptions and strict belief in the established, conventional, trusted and safe relationship between cause and effect. These stories, if nothing else, open your mind to a different way of thinking. By doing that, it awakens parts of your brain that normally stay dormant. A fresh look at everyday occurrences, unquestioned practices and established thought-processes. It has an invigorating value. You don't have to 'believe' anything the author says: he is not selling anything, not even ideas. Just read and observe what happens to yourself, since these stories are about you.
Rating:
Summary: Dare to question everything
Review: Stories that will shake your assumptions and strict belief in the established, conventional, trusted and safe relationship between cause and effect. These stories, if nothing else, open your mind to a different way of thinking. By doing that, it awakens parts of your brain that normally stay dormant. A fresh look at everyday occurrences, unquestioned practices and established thought-processes. It has an invigorating value. You don't have to 'believe' anything the author says: he is not selling anything, not even ideas. Just read and observe what happens to yourself, since these stories are about you.
Rating:
Summary: Stories as Tools
Review: This book, like all of Shah's other books, is remarkable in its impact and subtlety. Each story is a blueprint of human thinking but the value of the book will be lost on those who try to forage it for instant enlightment.
|
