Idries Shah Quotes

Walnuts have a shell, and they have a kernel. Religions are the same. They have an essence, but then they have a protective coating. This is not the only way to put it. But it's my way. So the kernels are the same. However, the shells are different.

Every man is a book in which God himself writes.

Vertical attention is not the same as, and doesn't evolve from nor imply, hierarchy. We could say that hierarchy is associated with power, and vertical attention with longing for the Divine Feminine, for the Divine Masculine, for what the Sufis call 'wine.'

I don't think it's a coincidence this happened. God does things for a reason ... It's a good message for back home.

The secret of Sufism is that it has no secret at all'.

Today is important only in light of what we do for God.

We must love all facts, not for their consequences, but because in each fact God is there present.

To penetrate into the essence of all being and significance, and to release the fragrance of that inner attainment for the guidance of others, by expressing in the world of forms- truth, love, purity and beauty - this is the sole game which has any intrinsic and absolute worth. All other happenings, incidents and attainments can, in themselves, have no lasting importance.

Everything is full of sacramental substance, everything. Each thing and each function is ever ready to light up into a sacrament.

In God's eyes the most significant is often the most hidden.

Let man's soul be a sphere, and then, in this, The intelligence that moves, devotion is.

I began realizing that it wasn't important for me to concern myself with the perception of truth.

What is important to me is not the truth outside myself, but the truth within myself.

O Ceremony, show me but thy worth? What is thy soul of adoration? Art thou aught else but place, degree, and form, Creating awe and fear in other men?

His constant fight is with the Nafs (self-interest), the root of all disharmony and the only enemy of man. By crushing this enemy man gains mastery over himself; this wins for him mastery over the whole universe, because the wall standing between the self and the Almighty has been broken down. Gentleness, mildness, respect, humility, modesty, self-denial, conscientiousness, tolerance and forgiveness are considered by the Sufi as the attributes which produce harmony within one's own soul as well as within that of another.

The soul is forever being. It is being what it is being, regardless of what the body is doing, not because of what it's doing. If you think your life is about doingness, you do not understand what you are about.

I think Easter is most profoundly about meaning, not mechanism.

Its like a finger pointing away to the moon. Dont concentrate on the finger or you will miss all that heavenly glory.

Reverence invites Revelation

Is the work of sun worshippers to honor those who think they can see the sun? Or to worship the sun?

The illuminated ones can take any form -- a man, a woman, a child, an elder, or even a dog. It is not inconsequential that the English language allows for the dyslexia of the spelling of the word dog: God spelled backward.

If any one phrase could gather its (religion's) universal message, that phrase would be, - All is not vanity in this Universe, whatever the appearances may suggest.

My place is the Placeless, my trace is the Traceless ; 'Tis neither body nor soul, for I belong to the soul of the Beloved. I have put duality away, I have seen that the two worlds are one; One I seek, One I know, One I see, One I call.

God is not someone or something separate but is the suchness in each moment, the underlying reality.