The Course of the Seeker

 The Course of the Seeker,
Paperback - 300 pages,
by Omar Ali Shah.


Description :

This first collection of talks by the contemporary Sufi teacher Omar Ali-Shah was a milestone in Sufi literature, since for the first time a Sufi master was willing to openly share his "trade secrets" with his pupils, i.e., give a clear and uncluttered account of the various obstacles in contemporary life which prevent the seeker from achieving the lucidity we are all aiming for and which ought to be within our grasp, and also outline the group interactions and other techniques by which such a teaching is carried out.

 

This re-edited version of the book originally published in 1988 is completed with the addition of five new chapters dealing with the master/pupil relationship, clearly the biggest hurdle to acceptance of the Sufi Tradition in the western world, insofar as a Sufi envisages the intellectual mind, so idolized in western education, as an artisan considers a tool, i.e., a good servant but a poor master.


Excerpt:

--- It is a necessary function of the Tradition that a person’s individual characteristics, problems, energies and capacities should be allowed for within the context of the Tradition, and within one’s capacity to use it.

It is no good saying “Go off and read Jami, Hafiz, Saadi, Rumi” in the hope that a person will hit on something useful or which says something to them. This hit-and-miss type of thing causes confusion and makes people despondent: they blame themselves, the technique, somebody else, and of course everything ends in tears. ---