A Perfumed Scorpion: A Way to the Way

Rating:
Summary: A Mix
Review: " All that glitters is not gold. ", the saying has it. Yet, as Idries Shah writes here, citing the Persian poet and Sufi, " Counterfeit gold, as Rumi said, is made only because there is such a thing as real gold for people to try to imitate. " Besides Rumi, Shah quotes frequently, and approvingly, from such other classical writers as Ghazzali and Saadi, among many others, but the understanding of the Sufi tradition he presents here is one largely divorced from the Middle Eastern and even from the Islamic historical and cultural contexts,as well as from such popular images as the turbanned fakir or the whirling dervish,with which it has commonly been associated.In so doing, Shah provides a perspective on " Sufi education ", and on " spiritual " development, generally, which I believe will be essentially new to the majority of readers. In A Perfumed Scorpion, perhaps the most straightforward exposition possible of his distinctive and multifaceted point of view, Shah invites those interested in the possibilities of the full realization of the human potential not merely to stand observing from the shore, but to approach the contemporary " Sufi work ... in the only way in which ancient and still valid experience has shown it to be approachable: by means of the methods which the higher knowledge itself indicates to be effective. " A Perfumed Scorpion should be of interest to those dissatisfied with contemporary psychology, with traditional religious practice, or with the more trendy and facile " New Age " philosophies of our day.

Rating:
Summary: Truth Seeks You
Review: A Perfumed Scorpion consists of unusually straightforward statements of what the Sufi path is all about. It can't be described in just so many words because the path consists of knowledge coming from experience that can only be achieved as one develops the capacity for it. The attitudes and abilities needed to approach and pursue Sufi learning are described. And Shah always makes it understood that a teacher is needed. You can't really do it alone.

This is pithy material and not for the faint hearted. For instance, Shah quotes a Sufi teacher saying, "If you want to be owned by a tyrant, accept someone who only imagines he is a pupil." What's going on, here? Is this a put-down or is Shah passing on a helpful and practical observation? He goes on to describe the type of teacher who "feels a need to teach". Then he adds another saying, "Patience is the food of understanding."

He Says, "Sufi knowledge is the knowledge of something beyond customary human perceptions, yet reached through the very world whose characteristics often stand in the way of such perceptions. This could well be a summary of the theory and practice of the Sufis." He quotes from John Donne's sermons, "I neglect God and his angels for the noise of a fly, for the rattling of a coach, for the whining of a door." He interprets this, not as melancholy irony but, surprisingly, as a hint that such distractions can be used, "in this prison of dimensions, to get beyond these dimensions." He says, "Truth seeks you totally. Make sure that you really seek it."

This book is a mind-blower. And even if you are not of a mind to take up the Sufi path - the Tarika - to understand the gentleness and power of what is involved can be seen as a real gift.

Rating:
Summary: The inner dimensions of eastern psychology
Review: From the product description:
Whoever might perfume a scorpion
Will not thereby escape its sting.
--Sufi master Bahaudin Naqshband

It has been said that, in the Sufi tradition, the scorpion symbolizes energy (a part of the essence of reality) and perfume represents labels. Perfuming a scorpion, therefore, expresses the notion of "labelling energy", or "observer defining reality"; and with such acts, one receives the payload of such observer-created realities -- hence, "will not thereby escape its sting."

Profound psychological processes have been expressed in many centuries by eastern spiritual traditions with certain methods for certain groups of people. At least one element of Shah's multi-faceted, multi-dimensional writing was to undertake the daunting task of fleshing out "perrenial wisdom" obscured to a western readership. Perhaps not so oddly enough, despite all the warnings, pointers, and advisories, people continue to "perfume the scorpion" to which one can only revert to the wisdom of Bahaudin Naqshband.

Peace & Blessings upon your Path.

Rating:
Summary: A Mix
Review: Here are some very real psychological insights, mixed in with stories, jokes, criticisms, mind-games, obscurities, improbabilities, myth-building, brow-beating and sometimes blame-the-student harshness verging on name-calling. According to Idries Shah, people can learn from a variety of methods, and not just through the implicit flattery of many teaching systems, what he seems to consider "perfumed scorpions." However, if someone were to try to slap me, I would try to move out of the way--my reflex would have nothing to do with whether I was blameworthy in any sense of not. Therefore Shah's "love humanity but hate people" version of Sufism is attention-getting but most probably self-defeating. Most people would not stand still for it.

Rating:
Summary: What is a perfumed scorpion?
Review: While this book makes abundant use of materials by Sufis of the past, it also contains many illustrations from contemporary Western sources. In fact, it introduced me, as if for the first time, to the very Western milieu within which I had lived all along but had not "seen."

Do not be fooled by the copywrite date. This book cannot be pinned down that way.

For those who want classic Sufi, technical formulas, here they are: Ghazzali's Ten Duties; The Eleven Rules of the Naqshbandiyya; and The Five Subtleties (Lataif-i-Khamsa).

I began by assuming that I was reading a conventional exposition, but somewhere in the middle of the chapter, I began to experience the sensation of bewilderment. I paged back to find my way out only to get further lost. It seemed that a line of reasoning began, but the author took no tangents. The line didn't take unexpected turns. It disappeared altogether. The grammar was odd; not really wrong, but peculiar. Words had the right denotations but reversed conotations. Just when I was about to give up in despair, Shah let the cat out of the bag and admitted what he had been doing. "It will not have escaped your notice," I read, "that I have been moving from one illustration to another without necessarily linking the two; that we have alternated arguments with tales and imagery; that stress has been placed on allegory and imagery within a sequential narrative which is not, however, expressed in historical, personality or logical terms for very long."

This brand of Sufism may or may not be associated with religion. Often Shah expresses it in totally secular terms. I find it illuninating scientific conundrums, anthropological questions--even business decisions!

This book may be less than 200 pages long, but budget more time for it than you would expect. I found I must study it as one might study a thing, not as one would read about a thing. "This involves," he says, "a method which is not entirely uninteresting and is certainly selective of materials." Can you tell me what that means?

Rating:
Summary: What is a perfumed scorpion?
Review: While this book makes abundant use of materials by Sufis of the past, it also contains many illustrations from contemporary Western sources. In fact, it introduced me, as if for the first time, to the very Western milieu within which I had lived all along but had not "seen."

Do not be fooled by the copywrite date. This book cannot be pinned down that way.

For those who want classic Sufi, technical formulas, here they are: Ghazzali's Ten Duties; The Eleven Rules of the Naqshbandiyya; and The Five Subtleties (Lataif-i-Khamsa).

I began by assuming that I was reading a conventional exposition, but somewhere in the middle of the chapter, I began to experience the sensation of bewilderment. I paged back to find my way out only to get further lost. It seemed that a line of reasoning began, but the author took no tangents. The line didn't take unexpected turns. It disappeared altogether. The grammar was odd; not really wrong, but peculiar. Words had the right denotations but reversed conotations. Just when I was about to give up in despair, Shah let the cat out of the bag and admitted what he had been doing. "It will not have escaped your notice," I read, "that I have been moving from one illustration to another without necessarily linking the two; that we have alternated arguments with tales and imagery; that stress has been placed on allegory and imagery within a sequential narrative which is not, however, expressed in historical, personality or logical terms for very long."

This brand of Sufism may or may not be associated with religion. Often Shah expresses it in totally secular terms. I find it illuninating scientific conundrums, anthropological questions--even business decisions!

This book may be less than 200 pages long, but budget more time for it than you would expect. I found I must study it as one might study a thing, not as one would read about a thing. "This involves," he says, "a method which is not entirely uninteresting and is certainly selective of materials." Can you tell me what that means?