Namaste, Welcome to SAM-VAD (Together In Conversation) today we look at yet another aspect of our personalities commanding self, highlighted through this tale.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
“The Commanding Self” here points to the “mixture of primitive and conditioned responses, common to everyone, which inhibits and distorts human progress and understanding”.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
Written in response to requests for “clarification, interviews, question-and-answer sessions, lectures”, the following section of the book present a study theme intended to enable the student to observe the functioning of their own emotional and conditioned responses.<\/p>\n\n\n\n
The World<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n People follow one creed or system after another, each one believed to provide the answer, the thing that will solve all problems. In the West, for instance, people followed religion and then threw it up for \u201creason\u201d; then they put all their money on industry and finally on technology. Until they have run of panaceas they are unlikely to cure this habit.<\/p>\n\n\n\n There was once a man who took a flock of sheep and some bags of grain to market. He sold the grain, and hid the money about him, and was looking for a buyer for the flock when a trickster approached him.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI know someone who wants a flock of sheep just like that one,\u201d he said, and led the farmer to a gate. \u201cJust wait outside this house,\u201d he said, \u201cand I will drive the sheep into the yard and let the owner look at them. He knows me, and is suspicious of rustics.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He drove the animals through the gate and through the alleyway at the back of another road. Shortly afterward he sold the sheep very quickly and cheaply.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Disguising himself as a pilgrim, he hurried back to where the dupe had just realized that he had been cheated. \u201cGood sir,\u201d he cried, \u201cI have just seen a man such as you describe driving a flock of sheep like yours into a certain barn. Come with me and I will show you.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n When they arrived at a large barn the trickster said, \u201cGo in there, quickly I will hold your horse.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n As the farmer walked to the barn, intent on getting his sheep back, the thief galloped away with the horse and sold it in the market for one-tenth of its value.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The farmer was deeply distressed and ran hither and thither, crying out, \u201cI have been robbed!\u201d The thief now disguised himself as a scholar and found the distraught man once again. \u201cHave you nothing left, my poor friend?\u201d he asked.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWell I have the money I got from my grain, so I had better walk home to such-and-such a place where I live, and count myself lucky that something remains to me.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cAs it happens,\u201d said the trickster, \u201cI am going that way myself with this bag of money, which is to be used to build a new college.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n He indicated a bag which he had filled with stones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Let us travel together, for safety on the road.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n The farmer agreed, and they set off.<\/p>\n\n\n\n After some time the pair were crossing a bridge over a stream when the thief let his bag fall into the water.<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cOh!\u201d he cried. \u201cI am ruined\u2026 I am too old and frail to descend into the river, and the money is lost. I shall be disgraced\u2026\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cI\u2019ll get the bag,\u201d said the farmer, \u201cif you give me ten percent of what is in it.\u201d<\/p>\n\n\n\n \u201cWillingly,\u201d agreed the villain \u2013 and the farmer stripped off his clothes and left them, together with his own profit from the grain, on the bridge.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The thief made off with the money and the clothes.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When the naked and dripping farmer reached the bank and opened the bag, he found the stones.<\/p>\n\n\n\n The shock finally turned his head. He is now convinced, they tell me, that all he has left \u2013 himself \u2013 will be stolen from him, and he ranges the street of the town alternately calling for his lost goods and cursing the thief whom he so often thought to be his friend. <\/p>\n\n\n\n The Commanding Self \u2013 Idries Shah<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n You can buy your book from the link below or from any bookstore near you or on-line portal accessible to you:<\/p>\n\n\n\n