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A treasure house of teaching materials, assembled in the Sufi manner.Seeker after Truth contains both traditional tales and stories gleaned from contemporary sources, and snippets of table talk, discussions and teachings, letters and lectures by Idries Shah.Taken together, it constitutes a handbook of materials designed to provoke a different kind of thought.

First published in 1957, The Secret Lore of Magic contains within it a series of major source-books of magical arts. Many of them translated into English for the first time, these works are annotated and fully illustrated.The book's title in itself signalled the fact that the bulk of material in this bibliographical study had never been published openly before.Together with Oriental Magic which appeared in the preceding year, it provided a complete survey of fundamental magical literature, and thus a comprehensive reference system for psychologists, ethnologists and others interested in the rise and development of human beliefs. Both books also introduced the general reader to dependable information about what was a shadowy and confusing subject.

100 Conversations with Idries ShahCondensed from over three million words, these conversations involve housewives and cabinet ministers, professors and assembly-line workers, on the subject of how traditional psychology can illuminate current human, social and spiritual problems.More than a hundred tales and extracts from Sufi lore, ranging from the eighth century Hasan of Basra, to the modern Afghan poet Khalilullah Khalili, are woven into Shah's narratives of how and why the Sufis learn, what they learn: and how spiritual understanding develops and deteriorates in all societies.

How can it be that the same story is found in Scotland and also in Pre-Columbian America? What can account for the durability and persistence of tales? Was the tale of Aladdin and his wondrous lamp really taken from Wales (where it has been found) to the ancient East and, if so, when and by whom?These questions and more are answered in Idries Shah's remarkable volume World Tales, which is subtitled, 'The extraordinary coincidence of stories told in all times, in all places'. In his introduction, Shah remarks, 'Working for thirty-five years among the written and oral sources of our world heritage in tales, one feels a truly living element in them which is startlingly evident when one isolates the 'basic' stories; the ones which tend to have travelled farthest, to have featured in the largest number of classical collections, to have inspired great writers of the past and present'.

Based on university lectures at the New School for Social Research, New York, and the University of California, San Francisco, Neglected Aspects of Sufi Study deals with many of the problems of Sufic methods of study and those which militate against its effective progress in the modern world; notably the unrecognised assumptions which we make about ourselves and about learning and its process.

Special Illumination is a term used by the great poet and mystic Jalaluddin Rumi to stress the importance of humour in metaphysical experience.Of it, Idries Shah says, 'Rumi directly contradicts such numerous sour-faced religionists as, in all persuasions, find that humour disturbs the indoctrination which is all that they usually have to offer.'

A serious, yet entertaining, look at the impediments in current thought which prevent certain forms of understanding between people. The title story was made into an award-winning film with script by Idries Shah, and chosen as an Outstanding Film of the Year.The Dermis Probe comprises a collection of extracts from the written and oral tradition of Eastern thinkers.In his preface, Shah notes, 'In this book you can find illustrated some of the peculiarities of thought in the country which is today's world, seen by its inhabitants and by those who call themselves visitors.'

Previously published only as separate essays, Sufi Thought and Action - assembled and introduced by Idries Shah - covers an extraordinary diversity of Sufi ideas and activities in many countries and cultures. Included in the volume are papers on Sufi Principles and Learning Methods; Ritual, Initiation and Secrets in Sufi Circles; and Key Concepts in Sufi Understanding. The volume stands as a clear and simple handbook to many facets of Sufi study and thought. Shah's introduction begins, 'The object of Sufi spiritual teaching can be expressed as: to help to refine the individual's consciousness so that it may reach the Radiances of Truth, from which one is cut off by ordinary activities of the world'.

Many of Idries Shah's books are comprised of tales and teaching stories taken from both written and oral sources, which illustrate the instructional methods employed by Eastern wise men for thousands of years.The Magic Monastery differs from its predecessors in that it contains not only traditional tales, mostly unpublished - but also stories specially written by Shah to complete the book as a 'course in non-linear thinking'. As with all of his works, The Magic Monastery is rich in thought-provoking material, and can be read and enjoyed at many levels.

Thinkers of the East is a collection of anecdotes and 'parables in action' illustrating the eminently practical and lucid approach of Eastern Dervish teachers.Distilled from the teachings of more than one hundred sages in three continents, this material stresses the experimental rather than the theoretical - and it is that characteristic of Sufi study which provides its impact and vitality.The emphasis of Thinkers of the East contrasts sharply with the Western concept of the East as a place of theory without practice, or thought without action.The book's author, Idries Shah, says 'Without direct experience of such teaching, or at least a direct recording of it, I cannot see how Eastern thought can ever be understood'.

First published in 1957, Destination Mecca was both an ambitious travel book and a work of ethnographic and cultural research.Shah documents a wide range of fascinating journeys, from his quest for the gold mines of King Solomon on Sudan's Red Sea Coast, to encounters in desert caravanserais and sojourns with Mediterranean contraband smugglers, to his time as a personal guest of the elderly King Ibn Saud.As readable now as it was when first published, Destination Mecca acts as a beacon for hands on adventurers and those of a more sedate kind.

In a darkened room a group of men once sought to examine an elephant.Taking hold of a different part - an ear, a leg, the tail - each one mistook his particular part for the whole. In the darkness, each of the men became convinced that the elephant was the object he himself had felt - a fan, a rope, a pillar - and so on.With this ancient fable, first described by the Sufi Master Jalaluddin Rumi, Idries Shah presents the Sufi perspective that Christianity and Islam stem from one, inner, origin.Based on Shah's celebrated Geneva University lectures, this book dazzles with the breadth of its scholarship, and the profound depth of its message.In a world riven by cultural and religious differences, The Elephant in the Dark offers fresh thinking, hope, and the ability to look at what we think we know in new ways.

Oriental Magic is recognized as a brilliant study of how, what and why people think, in territories extending from North Africa to Japan.Profusely illustrated, the book is the product of years of research and field-work in a dozen different cultural regions.Its scholarly accuracy and genuine contribution to cultural understanding have made it a key text for anyone interested in informal beliefs, and esoteric practices.The work includes material on Indian alchemy, the Arabian Abjad system, on divination and talismanic charms, and it even contains an ancient Brahmin spell for immortality.

Although enormously attractive as sheer entertainment, Dervish tales were never presented merely on the level of a fable, legend or folklore. They stand comparison in wit, construction and piquancy with the finest stories of any culture, yet their true function as Sufi teaching stories is so little-known in the modern world, that no technical or popular terms exist to describe them. The material in Tales of the Dervishes is the result of a thousand years of development, during which Dervish masters used these and other teaching stories to instruct their disciples. The tales are held to convey powers of increasing perception unknown to the ordinary man.

The appeal of Nasrudin is as universal and timeless as the truths he illustrates. His stories are read by children, by scientists and scholars, and by followers of philosophy. Idries Shah assembled this collection of Nasrudin's trials and tribulations from ancient manuscripts and oral literature, from sources in North Africa and Turkey, the Middle East and Central Asia. Many were known to the great Sufi masters, Rumi, Jami, and Attar the chemist.

Small in size, but with a powerful punch, Idries Shah's Reflections is a collection of fables, aphorisms, and statements that challenge the conditioned mind. The book confronts the reader with unaccustomed perspectives and ideas, in an attempt to set the mind free, to see how things really are. As the book's foreword states, 'Do you imagine that fables exist only to amuse or to instruct, and are based upon fiction? The best ones are delineations of what happens in real life, in the community and in the individual's mental processes'.

Used for more than seven hundred years as a teaching story, The Book of the Book is one of the most compelling and astonishing texts ever to emerge from the Orient. Its central premise is the simple phrase: 'When you realise the difference between the container and the content, you will have knowledge.' When the book first appeared in English thirty-five years ago, its printers questioned how it could be a book, as did reviewers, scholars, and people who paid money to buy it.The Book of the Book is now in its seventh impression, and is studied at university level, appreciated by all for its simple brilliance.

In Idries Shah's Wisdom of the Idiots, the 'idiots' are Sufis, called this because their wisdom penetrates to a depth which renders it inaccessible to the merely intelligent or academically-knowledgeable. The exercise-stories of the Sufis are tools prepared for a specific purpose.On this level the movements of the characters in a story portray psychological processes, and the story becomes a working blueprint of those processes.Wisdom of the Idiots has been awarded many prizes, including two gold medals, one for being 'Best Book', in conjunction with UNESCO's World Book Year.