Topic: Idries Shah

[Michael]

That's a classic Sufi theme.

I'm not so sure it happens exactly that way. I see it more as a gradual change. But nonetheless, I was thinking on this issue only recently. I do see that continued consumption of certain 'foods' lead to a subtle yet definite change in an area I am most focused on.

These foods are not just tummy foods, although they are important. Steiner certainly believed that tummy foods caused a dramatic change, and thus processed and mass-produced foods caused people to lose the capacity to apply our ideals to our life, and so the capacity to change ourselves according to our intent.

What really matters is what you spend your time focusing on - people, books, TV, music, ideas, and the quality of the air you breath.

[Jahn]

and the quality of the air you breath.

And the quality of the place where you spend the most of the time in your life.
The bed.

[Michael]

There is another story, I think related by Shah, which you may come across, that has not so easy a resolve.

A man lived in a village. He somehow got the idea that the village he lived in was not the only reality. He left and went on a long journey.

After many years he returned, and told his fellow villages that there existed another place. This other place he said, was exactly the same - everyone in the village also existed exactly the same in this other place. The villages believed he had gone mad, and left him to his stories.

However the man lost all reason for living, and slowly he gave up everything he had and everything he did. He wilted away, and slowly died.

[Nichi]

The Camel and the Tent

A Bedouin, making a long desert trek, pitched his small black tent and lay down to sleep. As the night grew colder his camel woke him up with a nudge. "Master, it is cold. May I put my nose inside the tent to warm it?" The traveler agreed, and settled down to sleep again.

Scarcely an hour had passed, however, before the camel began to feel colder. "Master, it is much colder. Can I put my head inside the tent?"

First his head was admitted to the tent, then, on the same argument, his neck. Finally, without asking, the camel heaved his whole bulk under the cloth. When he had, as he thought, settled himself, the bedouin was lying beside the camel, with no covering at all. The camel had uprooted the tent, which hung, totally inadequately, across his hump.

"Where has the tent gone?" asked the confused camel.

Abdul-Aziz of Mecca
as collected by Idries Shah

Mysterious!