the reference is to "The Elephant in the Dark", the little fable about people who feel different parts of an elephant, all believing that what they feel is the whole beast. I felt it answered questions I had been mulling over all my life. I was far from the only person who, having heard that a genuine Sufi teacher had arrived, waited for a book that would be called, simply, Sufi books are written in response to a demand, say the Sufis, and this one was eagerly anticipated. Is the definitive book for our time: essential to the Sufi way of thinking is that books and teachings are for a time and a stage in culture, and must be superseded. This was remarkable for a book at such an angle to our materialist western ideas. Had a preface by Robert Graves, and attracted attention from some distinguished people, among them Ted Hughes and Geoffrey Grigson. For one thing he was a friend, and often an adviser, of scientists. (1964) - he challenged some pretty stereotyped ideas about what a mystic should be. He was a Sufi exemplar and teacher, that is to say, a mystic, but right from the first of his books where he began to describe the Sufi outlook. It is not easy to sum up the life of as multifaceted a man as Idries Shah, who died last winter, and particularly not his literary achievements which covered such a range of subjects and disciplines, amounting to a kind of map of Sufi living, learning and thinking. The Sufis and Idries Shah The Sufis and Idries Shah
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