Customer Reviews

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

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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.

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)

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.

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.