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Tales of a Modern Sufi: The Invisible Fence of Reality and Other Stories
 
 
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Tales of a Modern Sufi: The Invisible Fence of Reality and Other Stories [Paperback]

Nevit O. Ergin (Author), Coleman Barks (Foreword)
5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)

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Book Description

February 12, 2009
A collection of modern Sufi tales by renowned Rumi translator and Sufi initiate Nevit Ergin

• Contains 24 deceptively simple stories that invoke questioning and awareness

• By the renowned English translator of Rumi’s complete Divan-i Kebir

Sufi stories have traditionally been a means of opening a portal that allows us to advance from our basic perceptions into states of extraordinary awareness. This collection of deceptively simple stories by renowned Rumi translator and Sufi Nevit Ergin has the ability to remove readers’ complacent sense of self and identity and to expand their ordinary awareness of reality from every possible direction. In his stories the primrose path we travel suddenly turns into a trickster’s hall of mirrors where we learn that we are not children of Adam and Eve so much as children of our perceptions.

The protagonists and antagonists of these stories are constantly morphing and exchanging places. They exist in a world where individuals are stalked by a cricket that is an “invisible monster with the face of a demon,” confront the ambiguous burden of ridding oneself of one’s own corpse, and discover the “invisible fence of reality” existing in the layers of a discarded piece of art. The symbols in these stories are booby traps designed to release the mind from the sense of its own importance and awaken the realization that “if you refuse to be born, you cannot die.” Blind faith, the author says, has proved itself incapable of producing wisdom, tolerance, or world peace. This is because the answers to humanity’s problems lie beyond our ordinary perception and require love and ecstasy to be made visible. Our thirst for wisdom and understanding must go to the fountain of universal truth. These stories provide water from that fountain.


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Customers buy this book with The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication $9.89

Tales of a Modern Sufi: The Invisible Fence of Reality and Other Stories + The Forbidden Rumi: The Suppressed Poems of Rumi on Love, Heresy, and Intoxication


Editorial Reviews

Review

“The stories told in Sufism teach us that life is a journey, that every moment is worth living, every step is an achievement, every crossroad is an experience, and every experience is a teacher. Tales of Modern Sufi, compiled by one of the foremost translators of Rumi, offers us this valuable gift of storytelling and shares with us a taste of Sufism and its magnificent heritage.”
(Nahid Angha, codirector of the International Association of Sufism and executive director for Sufism Journal )

From the Back Cover

RELIGION / SUFISM

“The stories told in Sufism teach us that life is a journey, that every moment is worth living, every step is an achievement, every crossroad is an experience, and every experience is a teacher. Tales of Modern Sufi, compiled by one of the foremost translators of Rumi, offers us this valuable gift of storytelling and shares with us a taste of Sufism and its magnificent heritage.”
--Nahid Angha, codirector of the International Association of Sufism and executive director for Sufism Journal

Sufi stories have traditionally been a means of opening a portal that allows us to advance from our basic perceptions into states of extraordinary awareness. This collection of deceptively simple stories by renowned Rumi translator and Sufi Nevit Ergin has the ability to remove readers’ complacent sense of self and identity and to expand their ordinary awareness of reality in every possible direction. In these stories the primrose path we travel suddenly turns into a trickster’s hall of mirrors where we learn that we are not children of Adam and Eve so much as children of our perceptions.

The protagonists and antagonists of these tales are constantly morphing and exchanging places. They exist in a world where individuals are stalked by a cricket that is an “invisible monster with the face of a demon,” confront the ambiguous burden of ridding oneself of one’s own corpse, and discover the “invisible fence of reality” existing in the layers of a discarded piece of art. The symbols in these stories are booby traps designed to release the mind from the sense of its own importance and awaken the realization that “if you refuse to be born, you cannot die.” Blind faith, the author says, has proved itself incapable of producing wisdom, tolerance, or world peace. This is because the answers to humanity’s problems lie beyond our ordinary perception and require love and ecstasy to be made visible. Our thirst for wisdom and understanding must take us to the fountain of universal truth. These stories provide water from that fountain.

NEVIT O. ERGIN is the original English translator of the complete Divan-i Kebir and is the coauthor, with Will Johnson, of The Forbidden Rumi and The Rubais of Rumi. Since 1955, he has been an initiate in the Itlaq (“total liberation”) path of Sufism under the tutelage of Sufi master Hasan Lutfi Shushud. He lives in California.

Product Details

  • Paperback: 160 pages
  • Publisher: Inner Traditions (February 12, 2009)
  • Language: English
  • ISBN-10: 1594772703
  • ISBN-13: 978-1594772702
  • Product Dimensions: 8.8 x 5.9 x 0.9 inches
  • Shipping Weight: 7.2 ounces (View shipping rates and policies)
  • Average Customer Review: 5.0 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (4 customer reviews)
  • Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,024,458 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Authentic expression of Sufi tradition, December 15, 2010
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This review is from: Tales of a Modern Sufi: The Invisible Fence of Reality and Other Stories (Paperback)
I have been pondering the stories in Tales of a Modern Sufi for some months now and have come to count the book as one of a handful that I can return to repeatedly to help me understand the path. The stories are deeply unsettling--in a very positive way. They seem to speak not only to my `personality', but also, directly to something deeper. My personality, of course, wants to take them literally and simply enjoy the stories, but my essence is spurred to see by reading them. Interestingly, many of these deeper understandings are not really available to my personality initially, even when they are crystal clear to my essence. This kind of multi-level teaching is certainly one of the traditional purposes of teaching stories, as opposed to more didactic forms of explanation. To me it marks them as the genuine article.

The stories are framed in the context of modern western culture rather than the more obscure culture of medieval Islam. They can be apprehended in a more direct way. I do not really know, for instance, what the traditional Sufi stories were intended to mean to a 13th century dervish, but only what they mean to me now. What I do know is that I lack the tacit cultural understandings that would make them directly accessible. In my experience this tends to turn reading the more traditional teaching stories into an intellectual exercise rather than a transformative one.

In his preface, the author writes: "Self becomes a hair in the eye, a thorn in the bottom of the foot." The process by which this `self' is removed from its place at the centre of our experience is, I think, the primary subject of the book. As the set of perceptions and experiences the author illuminates change, the perspective of the narrator and the symbolism change as well. Death is his symbol for annihilation (fana), blindness for freedom from the material world, and so forth. The way his rather disturbing symbolism is used gives the stories poignancy and power. No other book I know of illuminates the struggle among the different parts of ourselves and our consequent confusion as well as this one does.

As far as I can see, the book is the true expression of authentic Sufism framed in the strange world of our own experience in the early 21rst century. And after all, this is where our own lives and transformation take place.
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars Astounding!, October 27, 2010
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This review is from: Tales of a Modern Sufi: The Invisible Fence of Reality and Other Stories (Paperback)
What to expand your consciousness? Buy this book and read it. Wow! It really cannot be described. It just needs to be read with an open mind. Loved it (smile)
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4 of 4 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars SPIRITUALLY INSPIRED, POETIC AND HAUNTING, October 9, 2010
I've read quite a bit of sufi literature over the decades, particularly of the Idries Shah variety. I found these stories got into my mind and toyed with it far more than the Idries Shah stories. It's almost as if some of the historical sufi stories lost their zing when they were translated across languages and cultures.

These stories definitely retain their zing in the English language and in the culture of North America. Obviously, the author is a sufi from Turkey but he has lived in North America for a long time. I've really never read anything like these. The more historical stories are more like fruit punch and these stories are 80 proof,if you know what I mean. These are industrial strength.

Some of these stories are almost unnerving in the way something like an old Twilight Zone episode is only they are far more poetic and the spiritual vibe they emit is always clearly discernible.

So, if you want to experience what sufi stories were really like for the original audience definitely try these. I read them every evening before sleep and can honestly say I only wish there were a few hundred more of them.

Spiritually haunting is what they are! You'll find they aren't soon forgotten. Good luck to one and all.
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