It is reported that a fakir who wanted to learn without effort was after a time
turned away from the circle of Sheikh Shah Gwath Shattar. When Shattar
was dismissing him, the Fakir said:
'You have the reputation of being able to teach all wisdom in the twinkling
of an eye, yet you expect me to spend much time with you!'
'You have not yet learned to learn how to learn; but you will find out what I
mean,' said the Sufi.
The Fakir pretended to go away, but he used to steal into the tekkia every night
in order to see what the Sheikh did. Not long afterwards he saw Shah Gwath take
a jewel out of a certain engraved metal casket. This gem he held over the heads of
his disciples, saying: 'This is the repository of my knowledge, and it is none other
than the Talisman of Illumination.'
'So this is the secret of the Sheikh's power,' thought the Fakir.
In the advanced hours of that very night, he entered the meditation-hall again
and stole the talisman.
But in his hands the jewel, no matter how he tried, would yield no power and
no secrets. He was bitterly disappointed. He set himself up as a teacher, enrolled
disciples and tried again and again to illuminate them, or himself, by means of the
talisman, but all to no avail.
One day he was sitting in his shrine, after his disciples had gone to bed,
meditating upon his problems, when Shattar appeared before him.
'O Fakir!' said Shah Gwath, 'you can always steal something, but you cannot
always make it work. You can even steal knowledge, but it can be useless to you,
like the thief who stole the barber's razor, made through the knowledge of the
swordsmith but lacking the knowledge of shaving. He set himself up as a barber
and died in misery when he could not even shave a single beard, but instead cut
several throats.'
'But I have the talisman, and you have not,' said the Fakir. 'Yes, you have the
talisman, but I am Shattar,' said the Sufi.
'I can, with my skill, make another talisman. You, with the talisman, cannot
become Shattar.'
'Why, then, have you come – merely to torture me?' cried the Fakir.
'I came to tell you that, if you had not been so literal- minded as to imagine that
to have a thing is the same as being capable of being transformed by it, you would
have been ready to learn how to learn.'
But the Fakir thought that the Sufi was only trying to get his talisman back,
and, because he was not ready to learn how to learn, he decided to persist in
experiments with the jewel.
His disciples continued to do so: and their followers, and theirs. In fact, the
rituals which are the result of his restless experimenting nowadays form the
essence of their religion. Nobody could imagine, so sanctified by time have these
observances become, that they had their origin in the circumstances which have
just been related.
The hoary practitioners of the faith, too, are held to be so venerable and infallible,
that these beliefs will never die
THE END/