Rules or Secrets of the Naqshbandi Order

Author: Omar Ali-Shah
Publisher: Tractus Books
Year: 1998
Pages: 346
Printed: USA
ISBN: 2-909347-09-5
Binding: Soft Cover
Book Condition: New
Weight: 510 gr.
Description: This collection extends the original version of this book, first published by Tractus in 1992 as a working textbook for the students of Omar Ali-Shah throughout the world. By adding about three-quaters of hitherto unpublished material, mostly concerned with the internalization and application of the rules, the book takes on a new and more general focus, and is possibly destined to become a classic of contemporary sufism.
The rules themselves, eleven simply-expressed concepts which students of sufism were expected to work over and apply, were first drafted in the twelfth and fourteenth century by the Sufi Masters Abd al-Khaliq Ghujawani and Bahaudin Naqshband, who founded the order. Contemporary orientalists have generally relegated them to the category of interesting historical footnotes, but the genius of Omar Ali-Shah has been to dust off these shelved ideas and show us how relevant they are to our lives and inner thinking here and now. They are not secrets in the sense of inpenetrable mysteries, they are secrets because they refer to hidden or intimate aspects of ourselves which must be exercised to develop further.