Sufis Say “Put Your Hands on Your Head”

It strikes me that there’s a game that Idries Shah used to play, and encourage us to play. It’s called “Sufis say ...” which has been handed down since time immemorial from murshid to murid (master to disciple). A contemporary form still exists in elite circles, where it is called “Shah says ...”

We may know it in a lesser, degenerate form, so we are told, by the name “Simon says ...”, a game now played by small children and fools.

The rules of the game are these: when the adult begins a request with the words “Simon says ...”, such as “Simon says jump in the air” or some other action like “Simon says clap with one hand”, the children are to comply, and carry out the action eagerly, but if the request does not begin with the words “Simon says ...”, for example just worded as “Jump in the air”, or if anybody other than Simon issues the request, for example “Swami Gupta says sit cross-legged” or “Professor Piffle says scratch your head”,[1] any child who complies with the request is removed from the game, until finally only one participant is left, they win the game, and they are rewarded with some small prize.

Notes

[1] Or pretty much any Western esotericist you can think of, for that matter. What I love about the invisible college of Western tradition and the Golden Chain of transmission, is that it is such a broad and accepting church.

[2] In boot camp, when the instructor shouts “Jump!”, the correct and immediate response is “How high, Sergeant?”

Image

Image: Simon says (1067760534) / Regan Walsh from Barrie, ON, Canada / Wikimedia Commons (orig. Flickr) / CC BY-SA 2.0.