The Idries Shah Podcast | Practical Psychology for Today

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features selections of The Englishman's Handbook, by Idries Shah. The Englishman’s Handbook is the third book in Idries Shah’s best-selling trilogy on why the English are as strange as they are. He examines the ‘baffling phenomena of the British and Britishness’, presenting a manual of handy tips on how to muddle through while visiting English shores. An illuminating and often hilarious read, the book is just as valuable to the British as it is to foreigners. It contains all sorts of extraordinary information on how to confuse foreigners with sheer Englishness, if any do manage to break through the barriers.

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features selections of The Natives are Restless, by Idries Shah. The Natives Are Restless chronicles some of the amazing, amusing, and thought-provoking adventures of the Afghan traveller and writer, Idries Shah, among members of what he calls the ‘English tribe’.  It is an enthralling sequel to his bestselling Darkest England, the narrative illustrating his practised eye as an anthropologist. Shah observes how the English see themselves, and contrasts it with how the rest of the world views this eccentric island race.  He also speculates on the likely continuing effect of Englishness on the future development of global society, offering unsuspecting parallels between English attitudes and Oriental wisdom.

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features selections of Darkest England, by Idries Shah. In his best-selling Darkest England, Idries Shah asserts that the English hail from a little-known place called ‘Hathaby’, but their roots go back much farther, perhaps to the distant Asian realm of Sakasina. Once a nomadic tribe of warriors, the English fled westward, bringing with them epic tales, traditions, and an Oriental way of thought. Shah charts the genius of the English in adopting and adapting ‘almost anything spiritual, moral or material’ for their own use – a faculty that has transformed them from warrior nomads into successful diplomats, businessmen, thinkers and scientists.

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features selections of Knowing How to Know, by Idries Shah. Contemporary esoteric systems almost always play on the desire of mankind to seek or acquire knowledge. All but universally neglected in such systems are the – often unrecognised – barriers which prevent knowledge and understanding. Before learning can take place, certain conditions and basic factors must be in place; in the individual or the group. Building on the foundations laid in Learning How to Learn and The Commanding Self, Idries Shah in Knowing How to Know illuminates those factors.  Like an ultra-violet light shone onto the petals of flowers, it reveals concealed patterns, normally invisible to our customary modes of thought. 

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features selections of The Idries Shah Anthology, by Idries Shah. The Idries Shah Anthology is a special collection of previously published work by Idries Shah, and was edited by Saira Shah. This title includes an Introduction by Saira Shah, as well as comments and annotations throughout the text. Each chapter includes a selection from the works of Idries Shah on topics such as Sufism, Nasrudin, fables, poetry, proverbs, and teaching stories.   It includes methods of the masters and themes for study and contemplation. This new compilation of excerpts from the classic texts of Idries Shah will leave you with a new perspective on his work.

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features selections of Special Problems in the Study of Sufi Ideas, by Idries Shah. A remarkable conspectus of philosophical contacts between East and West through the ages. This important monograph constitutes the whole text of Idries Shah’s Seminar at Sussex University, fully annotated, indexed and with a bibliography and notes. It knits together the available knowledge about Sufi thought and literature in its passage through many deforming influences, such as the development of cults, the misinterpretation by literalist scholars, and the fallacious comparisons of committed “specialists”.

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features a selection of The World of Nasrudin, by Idries Shah. Nasrudin is the greatest of all Arab folk heroes, and is found across the Islamic World, from Morocco to Pakistan, and beyond. He is said to have been the wisest fool who ever lived – that is if he ever did live at all. Stories of Nasrudin’s many incarnations are studied by Sufis for their hidden wisdom, and are universally enjoyed for their humour. Sometimes Nasrudin is an impoverished itinerant or stallholder, and at others, he is the mayor, judge, vizier, or even the King. The World of Nasrudin is the fourth book in the corpus written by Idries Shah, and is the last to be published by the celebrated Afghan author. 

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features a selection of A Perfumed Scorpion, by Idries Shah. The ‘perfuming of a scorpion’, referred to by the great Sufi teacher Bahaudin, symbolizes hypocrisy and self-deception: both in the individual and in institutions. In A Perfumed Scorpion, Idries Shah directs attention to both the perfume and the scorpion – the overlay and the reality – in psychology, human behaviour and the learning process. Crammed with illustrative anecdotes from contemporary life, the book is nevertheless rooted in the teaching patterns of Rumi, Hafiz, Jami, and many other great Oriental sages. It deals with the need for and the path to knowledge and information.

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features a selection of A Veiled Gazelle, by Idries Shah. A ‘Veiled Gazelle’, as the great mystic Ibn Arabi explains in his Interpreter of Desires, is a subtlety, an organ of higher perception. Sufi experientialists refer to the activation of these centres of awareness as the awakening of real knowledge of Truth beyond form. A Veiled Gazelle considers the symbolic and instrumental employment of its literature in Sufi studies. Seldom didactic, and never meant only as entertainment, such works are regarded as some of the world’s greatest and most important writing. 

Welcome to the Idries Shah Foundation podcast, practical psychology for today. This weekly podcast features selections from Idries Shah books, as well as original recordings. It has been made available by The Idries Shah Foundation, and is voiced by David Ault. This episode features a selection of The Commanding Self, by Idries Shah. 'The Commanding Self', in Sufic terminology, is that mixture of the primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding.  This book was described by Shah as the key to understanding his entire corpus of work. While complete in itself as an anthology of hitherto unpublished work, it serves to illustrate and amplify Idries Shah’s preceding books on the Sufi Way.  In its introduction, he writes, ‘Thousands of books and monographs have been written on Sufism and the Sufis, almost all of them from the point of view of other ways of thinking. The result has been chaos in the literature, and confusion in the reader. Over the centuries, some of the world’s most eminent scholars have fallen into the trap of trying to examine, access or consider the Sufi phenomenon through a set of culture-bound preconceptions.’