The Commanding Self

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 ti

Suggests ways to deal with the psychological barriers to spiritual progress. Shah emphasizes the need for people to discern their own emotional ebb and flow and come to an understanding of it, so that they operate it, and not it them. In particular, The Commanding Self helped me to develop honest and useful responses to issues of vanity, ambition, personal recognition and worldly success.

Westerners are very sophisticated when it comes to knowing the difference between "the real thing" and a fake if we are talking about material goods. But in the area of knowing what IS and what IS NOT real spirituality, we still have a long way to go. This book, "The Commanding Self" will give the reader a tremendous opportunity to examine his/her own assumptions about what is spirtuality and to experience one of the greatest minds of the twentieth century. Idries Shah is so practical, so funny, so filled with insight, that one can almost feel one's brain expanding while reading this book. His style incorporates lecture, question and answer and the magic of the Sufi teaching story. Just when you think you have wrapped your brain around a concept that Shah eloquently explains, he illustrates it with a teaching story and allows you to "grok" it in yet another way. I have read this book many times, and feel I have only scratched the surface of understanding everything there is in it. What is especially appealing is that in this New Age of nostrums and the expansion of so-called spirituality into the entertainment industry, Shah's book offers a sane, refereshingly intelligent look at how we have to prepare ourselves for real spirtiual progress. Interestingly enough, we may need to understand more about how the brain/mind works in order to appreciate how the teaching story operates. To talk about it would be like "trying to send a kiss by messenger" so I suggest you take a look at this wonderful book.

I loved this book. Am fascinated to know how "we tick" and what drives human beings' behavior. This is a genuine rendering of information that MAKES SENSE!

The "commanding self" is a Sufi term for the false personality, the mixture of primitive emotionality and conditioned responses which rule the personality most of the time, inhibiting human progress. This book, like others by Shah, is designed to offer a way to transcend the limits imposed by the commanding self. The author, Idries Shah, has been described as "the most significant worker adapting classical spiritual thought to the modern world" and this book, according to the author, is a key to the entire corpus of his work. Based on tales, lectures, question-and-answer sessions, letters and interviews, the book forms both an introduction to Sufi thought and clarifies many superceded ancient classics. As novelist Doris has said, "People tempted to sample [the Sufi phenomenon] could not do better than to try this book