The Dermis Probe
''The Dermis Probe'' is a book by Idries Shah published by Octagon Press in 1970. A paperback edition was published in 1989 and again in 1993. The stories presented in the book are also available in an audio format. Shortly before he died, Shah stated that his books form a complete course that could fulfil the function he had fulfilled while alive. ''The Dermis Probe'' can therefore be read as part of a course of study on Sufism. Content ''The Dermis Probe'' is a collection of teaching stories and proverbs drawn from Sufi tradition. The book also contains a section of supporting notes; "These notes are of varying subject: sometimes amplification of the theme, sometimes book references, sometimes biographical; some stories, too, have no note at all, though not many, being either self-explanatory or – in Sufi style – entities in themselves which should not be interfered with." The title piece is a modern retelling of the ''Blind men and an elephant'' published by Sanai of ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Idries Shah
Idries Shah (; hi, इदरीस शाह, ps, ادريس شاه, ur, ; 16 June 1924 – 23 November 1996), also known as Idris Shah, né Sayed Idries el-Hashimi (Arabic: سيد إدريس هاشمي) and by the pen name Arkon Daraul, was an Afghan author, thinker and teacher in the Sufi tradition. Shah wrote over three dozen books on topics ranging from psychology and spirituality to travelogues and culture studies. Born in British India, the descendant of a family of Afghan nobles on his father's side and a Scottish mother, Shah grew up mainly in England. His early writings centred on magic and witchcraft. In 1960 he established a publishing house, Octagon Press, producing translations of Sufi classics as well as titles of his own. His seminal work was '' The Sufis'', which appeared in 1964 and was well received internationally. In 1965, Shah founded the Institute for Cultural Research, a London-based educational charity devoted to the s ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Ghazna
Ghazni ( prs, غزنی, ps, غزني), historically known as Ghaznain () or Ghazna (), also transliterated as Ghuznee, and anciently known as Alexandria in Opiana ( gr, Αλεξάνδρεια Ωπιανή), is a city in southeastern Afghanistan with a population of around 190,000 people. The city is strategically located along Highway 1, which has served as the main road between Kabul and Kandahar for thousands of years. Situated on a plateau at 2,219 metres (7,280 ft) above sea level, the city is south of Kabul and is the capital of Ghazni Province. Ghazni Citadel, the Minarets of Ghazni, the Palace of Sultan Mas'ud III, and several other cultural heritage sites have brought travelers and archeologists to the city for centuries. During the pre-Islamic period, the area was inhabited by various tribes who practiced different religions including Zoroastrianism, Buddhism and Hinduism. Arab Muslims introduced Islam to Ghazni in the 7th century and were followed in the 9th ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sufi Literature
Sufi literature consists of works in various languages that express and advocate the ideas of Sufism. Sufism had an important influence on medieval literature, especially poetry, that was written in Arabic, Persian, Turkic and Urdu. Sufi doctrines and organizations provided more freedom to literature than did the court poetry of the period. The Sufis borrowed elements of folklore in their literature. The works of Nizami, Nava'i, Hafez, Sam'ani and Jami were more or less related to Sufism. The verse of such Sufi poets as Sanai (died c. 1140), Attar (born c. 1119), and Rumi (died 1273) protested against oppression with an emphasis on divine justice and criticized evil rulers, religious fanaticism and the greed and hypocrisy of the orthodox Muslim clergy. The poetic forms used by these writers were similar to the folk song, parable and fairy tale. Background Sufi literature written in Persian flourished from the 12th to 15th centuries. Later major poets linked with the Sufi tra ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The New York Times
''The New York Times'' (''the Times'', ''NYT'', or the Gray Lady) is a daily newspaper based in New York City with a worldwide readership reported in 2020 to comprise a declining 840,000 paid print subscribers, and a growing 6 million paid digital subscribers. It also is a producer of popular podcasts such as '' The Daily''. Founded in 1851 by Henry Jarvis Raymond and George Jones, it was initially published by Raymond, Jones & Company. The ''Times'' has won 132 Pulitzer Prizes, the most of any newspaper, and has long been regarded as a national "newspaper of record". For print it is ranked 18th in the world by circulation and 3rd in the U.S. The paper is owned by the New York Times Company, which is publicly traded. It has been governed by the Sulzberger family since 1896, through a dual-class share structure after its shares became publicly traded. A. G. Sulzberger, the paper's publisher and the company's chairman, is the fifth generation of the family to head the p ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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The Guardian
''The Guardian'' is a British daily newspaper A newspaper is a periodical publication containing written information about current events and is often typed in black ink with a white or gray background. Newspapers can cover a wide variety of fields such as politics, business, sport .... It was founded in 1821 as ''The Manchester Guardian'', and changed its name in 1959. Along with its sister papers ''The Observer'' and ''The Guardian Weekly'', ''The Guardian'' is part of the Guardian Media Group, owned by the Scott Trust Limited, Scott Trust. The trust was created in 1936 to "secure the financial and editorial independence of ''The Guardian'' in perpetuity and to safeguard the journalistic freedom and liberal values of ''The Guardian'' free from commercial or political interference". The trust was converted into a limited company in 2008, with a constitution written so as to maintain for ''The Guardian'' the same protections as were built into the structure of the ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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New York City
New York, often called New York City or NYC, is the most populous city in the United States. With a 2020 population of 8,804,190 distributed over , New York City is also the most densely populated major city in the United States, and is more than twice as populous as second-place Los Angeles. New York City lies at the southern tip of New York State, and constitutes the geographical and demographic center of both the Northeast megalopolis and the New York metropolitan area, the largest metropolitan area in the world by urban landmass. With over 20.1 million people in its metropolitan statistical area and 23.5 million in its combined statistical area as of 2020, New York is one of the world's most populous megacities, and over 58 million people live within of the city. New York City is a global cultural, financial, entertainment, and media center with a significant influence on commerce, health care and life sciences, research, technology, educa ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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London
London is the capital and List of urban areas in the United Kingdom, largest city of England and the United Kingdom, with a population of just under 9 million. It stands on the River Thames in south-east England at the head of a estuary down to the North Sea, and has been a major settlement for two millennia. The City of London, its ancient core and financial centre, was founded by the Roman Empire, Romans as ''Londinium'' and retains its medieval boundaries.See also: Independent city#National capitals, Independent city § National capitals The City of Westminster, to the west of the City of London, has for centuries hosted the national Government of the United Kingdom, government and Parliament of the United Kingdom, parliament. Since the 19th century, the name "London" has also referred to the metropolis around this core, historically split between the Counties of England, counties of Middlesex, Essex, Surrey, Kent, and Hertfordshire, which largely comprises Greater London ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Richard Williams (animator)
Richard Edmund Williams (March 19, 1933 – August 16, 2019) was a Canadian-British animator, voice actor, director, and writer, best known for serving as animation director on ''Who Framed Roger Rabbit'' (1988), for which he won two Academy Awards, and for his unfinished feature film ''The Thief and the Cobbler'' (1993). He was also a film title sequence designer and animator. Other works in this field include the title sequences for ''What's New Pussycat?'' (1965) and ''A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum (film), A Funny Thing Happened on the Way to the Forum'' (1966) and title and linking sequences in ''The Charge of the Light Brigade (1968 film), The Charge of the Light Brigade'' and the intros of the eponymous cartoon feline for two of the later ''The Pink Panther (film series), Pink Panther'' films. In 2002 he published ''The Animator's Survival Kit'', an authoritative manual of animation methods and techniques, which has since been turned into a 16-DVD box set as ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Masnavi
The ''Masnavi'', or ''Masnavi-ye-Ma'navi'' ( fa, مثنوی معنوی), also written ''Mathnawi'', or ''Mathnavi'', is an extensive poem written in Persian by Jalal al-Din Muhammad Balkhi, also known as Rumi. The ''Masnavi'' is one of the most influential works of Sufism, ascribed to be like a "Quran in Persian". It has been viewed by many commentators as the greatest mystical poem in world literature. The ''Masnavi'' is a series of six books of poetry that together amount to around 25,000 verses or 50,000 lines.Allamah Mohamad Taghi Jafari, ''Tafsir Masnavi''Karim Zamani, ''Tafsir Masnavi Ma'navi'' It is a spiritual text that teaches Sufis how to reach their goal of being truly in love with God. General description The title ''Masnavi-ye-Ma'navi'' ( fa, مثنوی معنوی) means "The Spiritual Couplets". The Masnavi is a poetic collection of anecdotes and stories derived from the Quran, hadith sources, and everyday tales. Stories are told to illustrate a point and each ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Rumi
Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Rūmī ( fa, جلالالدین محمد رومی), also known as Jalāl al-Dīn Muḥammad Balkhī (), Mevlânâ/Mawlānā ( fa, مولانا, lit= our master) and Mevlevî/Mawlawī ( fa, مولوی, lit= my master), but more popularly known simply as Rumi (30 September 1207 – 17 December 1273), was a 13th-century PersianRitter, H.; Bausani, A. "ḎJ̲alāl al-Dīn Rūmī b. Bahāʾ al-Dīn Sulṭān al-ʿulamāʾ Walad b. Ḥusayn b. Aḥmad Ḵh̲aṭībī." Encyclopaedia of Islam. Edited by: P. Bearman, Th. Bianquis, C.E. Bosworth, E. van Donzel and W.P. Heinrichs. Brill, 2007. Brill Online. Excerpt: "known by the sobriquet Mewlānā, persian poet and founder of the Mewlewiyya order of dervishes" poet, Hanafi faqih, Islamic scholar, Maturidi theologian and Sufi mystic originally from Greater Khorasan in Greater Iran. Rumi's influence transcends national borders and ethnic divisions: Iranians, Tajiks, Turks, Greeks, Pashtuns, other ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Afghanistan
Afghanistan, officially the Islamic Emirate of Afghanistan,; prs, امارت اسلامی افغانستان is a landlocked country located at the crossroads of Central Asia and South Asia. Referred to as the Heart of Asia, it is bordered by Pakistan to the east and south, Iran to the west, Turkmenistan to the northwest, Uzbekistan to the north, Tajikistan to the northeast, and China to the northeast and east. Occupying of land, the country is predominantly mountainous with plains in the north and the southwest, which are separated by the Hindu Kush mountain range. , its population is 40.2 million (officially estimated to be 32.9 million), composed mostly of ethnic Pashtuns, Tajiks, Hazaras, and Uzbeks. Kabul is the country's largest city and serves as its capital. Human habitation in Afghanistan dates back to the Middle Paleolithic era, and the country's Geostrategy, strategic location along the historic Silk Road has led it to being described, pict ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |
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Sanai
Hakim Abul-Majd Majdūd ibn Ādam Sanā'ī Ghaznavi ( fa, ), more commonly known as Sanai, was a Persian poet from Ghazni who lived his life in the Ghaznavid Empire which is now located in Afghanistan. He was born in 1080 and died between 1131 and 1141. Life Sanai was a Sunni Muslim. Edward G. Browne, ''A Literary History of Persia from the Earliest Times Until Firdawsh'', 543 pp., Adamant Media Corporation, 2002, , (see p.437) He was connected with the court of the Ghaznavid Bahram-shah who ruled 1117 – 1157. Works He wrote an enormous quantity of mystical verse, of which ''The Walled Garden of Truth'' or ''The Hadiqat al Haqiqa'' (حدیقه الحقیقه و شریعه الطریقه) is his master work and the first Persian mystical epic of Sufism. Dedicated to Bahram Shah, the work expresses the poet's ideas on God, love, philosophy and reason. For close to 900 years ''The Walled Garden of Truth'' has been consistently read as a classic and employed as a Sufi t ... [...More Info...]       [...Related Items...]     OR:     [Wikipedia]   [Google]   [Baidu]   |