The Divine Emanations

For as long as he could remember, a man had been convinced that he was privy to divine emanations, but he could never quite pin down what they were or where they came from. They just seemed to arise as if from nowhere or arrive on the wind. And so obsessed did this man become, that he left his family and his job and set out one day to find the source of the emanations, travelling far into the mystical East.

He went from one wise man or woman to another and sat in their presence and enjoyed their rich hospitality for countless hours and from time to time he'd sense the divine emanations as they arose and say: “There you are! Did you, such a wise man, not notice that? That's what I was trying to explain to you: the Divine Emanations! That is what I seek.” But time and time again, the wise men and women would merely shrug their shoulders and shake their heads, apologizing that they could not be of assistance to the man in this matter, and he would leave their company to carry on his noble quest.

And then one day, this man came to the door of a Sufi – indeed the door of the Teacher of the Age. And no sooner had he finished the particularly rich and spicy meal that his host offered him and had begun to explain to him his great desire to sit in the presence of the source of the Divine Emanations, than he let out a whoop of joy. “There! That is what I mean! That is what I have dedicated my whole life to seeking. The Source of the Divine Emanations! Surely, you must sense it too? Could it be that after all these years of selfless devotion to my quest I have finally been rewarded by being allowed into the presence of the Source?”

The Teacher of the Age looked the man straight in the eye and shook his head. “Divine Emanations, my friend? Yes, there are indeed divine emanations, emanations so potent that merely spending time in the presence of the elect is sufficient to transform a man or woman.”

“But, listen carefully to me ...”

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 Legend of the Cake-Baking Islanders

or "The king who divined his fortune"

A king who was also an astrologer read in his stars that on a certain day and at a particular hour a calamity would overtake him. He therefore began to stockpile all manner of raw ingredients such as flour and eggs and milk and posted numerous guardians outside, stacking the materials from floor to ceiling until he could no longer leave the warehouse he had built-up. By this time he was beginning to have second thoughts about the whole matter, but he could no longer conceive of any means of escape.

Then one day a Sufi, passing by, looked in through one of the remaining small openings, took in the situation and called to the King:

'Friend, if you wish to escape, you must first of all use some of these provisions to bake me a cake.'

Can you spare any change?

Sadly, #BuyMyBook! is an ever-more-frequent and insistent message to be seen in the social media, and the screen shot from Twitter, shown below, really is a classic example of how not to hawk one's wares:

Old school marketing

This kind of approach, which you could call legalized spam, is based on old school marketing, the erroneous belief that one is in competition with tens of thousands of other authors, and that the only way to have your message heard is to shout more loudly and more frequently than all the others.

Things are not made any easier by a minority of authors who shamelessly abuse the new linebreak feature at Twitter (which is great when used in moderation) to post multiline "display adverts" so that they stand out in the crowd. Nor are things made easier by authors invading or hijacking hashtags used by genuine readers, such as #amreading, to advertize their books when they have so many hashtags of their own that they could use, like #kindlebook and #99cents.

It goes without saying that adopting this approach, the "tweet-readers' experience" can only go from bad to worse, and that for the tweet-authors, there will be a rapidly diminishing rate of return. And there is sure to be an angry or frustrated backlash, especially from the old guard of traditional publishing, who just love to crow about the failings of the unwashed masses, the hoi polloi and the dire threat posed to civilization by latter day "vanity publishing".

Nasrudin, the Wise Fool: I think you are right!

There was a magical exchange across at the Facebook page of the Web Organization for Research into Knowledge (W.O.R.K.) the other day, and I feel that it is well worth reproducing here, for posterity, before it is lost in the labyrinthine archives. But first, a little more context.

Humour in the Sufi Way

At the Facebook Page for the writer, thinker and Sufi mystical teacher, Idries Shah, the page owner had been posting one quote from the works of Idries Shah each day and folk were commenting on those quotes. There were a couple of relevant quotes on the page, taken from the book Special Illumination, which also help explain the use of humour by the Sufi mystics:

"Jokes are structures, and in their Sufic usage they may fulfil many different functions. Just as we may get the humour nutrient out of a joke, we can also get several dimensions out of it on various occasions: there is no standard meaning of a joke."

"One of the characteristics of many truly metaphysical jokes (that is, tales and quips intended to jolt the consciousness) is that they are viable in several different ranges of meaning."

One of the commentators, B.D., thoughtfully explained that: "The Nasrudin tales are perhaps the best example of the 'metaphysical joke' genre. In any one tale it is difficult to tell, solely by looking at his external behavior whether the Mulla [Nasrudin] is 1) a wise man 2) a fool 3) a wise man who is acting the part of a fool as a mirror for his audience, or 4) a fool who is rationalizing his foolish behavior in order to make himself appear wise. All of these possibilities are present in the best Nasrudin jokes, and while we are on the topic, all of these possibilities (in so far as Nasrudin is a mirror) are present in our own behavior." [Nasrudin holds up a mirror to our faces, so that we can see our wayward self reflected in the jokes].