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40 of 43 people found the following review helpful:
5.0 out of 5 stars
An Uncommon Approach to "Self Help", August 31, 2001
Idries Shah's book, `The Commanding Self' stands out in sharp contrast to the "Me Generation" popular fads of the last two decades. It is written from a very different standpoint than that underlying the numerous books, seminars, videos, support groups, subliminal tapes and so forth that promise (though always at a price) an easy road to "self-help" and "self-development."
The message in "The Commanding Self' is not that we can develop and improve ourselves by these or any other similar means. It is not that we need to develop ourselves or create a more positive image of ourselves or learn to feel better about ourselves. It is not that we ought to learn better to express ourselves. It is not either that we ought to learn to love ourselves.
To the extent that `The Commanding Self' can appropriately be said to have a "message" at all, the message about the self is one that is quite shocking to our contemporary popular psychology. It is that what we take to be our individual self, far from being something to be developed, is more correctly understood as something to be overcome. It is that what one takes to be one's "self," one's apparent "personality," is in fact a relentless opponent, one's most severe obstacle to any real development.
From the perspective underlying `The Commanding Self," virtually all the Me Generation self-development schemes of the 1980s and 1990s amount to little more than fertilizer for the weeds that make up our false self, the false personality that chokes out our true possibilities for real growth. They flatter and encourage the very aspects of our false self, our commanding self, that most need to be seen for what they are: parasitical growths in the garden of the true self.
The form, however, of `The Commanding Self' will likely prove to be, to the reader who has not previously encountered Shah's writings, even more shocking than the content. In fact, just how shocking the content really is will very probably not be immediately apparent to a new reader of Shah's material. Rather, the content will initially remain concealed within the form. That form is one which many will find unsettling and unfamiliar on first encounter.
For Shah, like Rumi and others who have preceded him in the Sufi tradition, does not adhere to the simple, didactic, expository form to which we are already accustomed in ordinary books the way one is, as G. I. Gurdjieff once put it, "to one's own smell." You will find nothing in "The Commanding Self' along the lines of "Seven Simple Ways to Improve Your Life" or `Your Checklist to a Better You."
Instead, you will find what may at first seems to be a baffling mixture of brief expository sections, question and answer dialogs, stories and tales, poems, jokes and so forth. These are arranged in a sort of literary enneagon of nine sections, the plan and pattern of which is unlikely to be readily apparent to the casual reader. Only after considerable study of the material and a fair amount of "absorption time" is even a hint of the coherence of the whole likely to reveal itself.
In that sense, `The Commanding Self' provides both an introduction to and a summary of Idries Shah's more than 30 titles in print in English (with dozens of editions in other languages). Its publication comes virtually on the 30th anniversary of the publication of Shah's "The Sufis" which, in 1964, set in motion major reevaluations of assumptions in areas as disparate as psychology, theology, history and literature.
For one of the most fascinating incidental aspects of Idries Shah's work has been the way his books have been, for well over a quarter of a century, not only widely read but also hardly known. From the superficial perspective of mere literary phenomena, Shah is undoubtedly one of the most widely circulated, prolific and broadly appreciated but as yet "unknown" and "undiscovered" authors in the English language.
Despite that his books are assiduously read, appreciated and even quoted by diplomats, scholars, poets, psychologists, musicians, painters, ministers, rabbis and even rock stars, Shah nevertheless has somehow simultaneously managed to remain all but obscure to the general public. Despite that his books have been awarded numerous literary prizes of the most prestigious sort and have long been available in public libraries throughout the United States, relatively few readers have ever heard of him, let alone know something of what he writes.
My hunch is that `The Commanding Self' will very likely mark the transition of Shah's material into much wider recognition and greater popularity with the general reader. By its very nature, it is not likely to become a major bestseller (although even stranger things can and do happen with astonishing regularity). It does, however, provide a very accessible way into Shah's material for the new reader. I cannot think, offhand, of another of Shah's books that would be a better starting point for someone interested to learn about the real possibilities of human development yet who is not already familiar with Shah's work.
On the other hand, for the hundreds of thousands of people who already are familiar with Shah's books, `The Commanding Self' provides an indispensable "summa" that both incorporates and expands upon the essential material already available in titles such as "The Sufis," "Caravan of Dreams," "Learning How to Learn," "The Perfumed Scorpion," "Seeker After Truth," "The Magic Monastery," "Sufi Thought and Action" and Shah's numerous other books.
Shah once pointed out that the oft-repeated supposedly Chinese saying, "the journey of a thousand leagues begins with a single step" fails to note directly that if one does not know in which direction to step (or, for that matter, why to undertake a journey in the first place) one can readily go badly astray. For those who are truly interested in their real possibilities and in the possibilities of their real self, however, to read "The Commanding Self' by Idries Shah is almost certain to be a useful step in the right direction.
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