... when we are talking about 'Christians' and 'Moslems' we must first make sure that we are talking about people who have an idea, which should be more or less correct, as to what the other is supposed to believe and what he is expected to do as a consequence of that belief.

Opinion is usually something which people have when they lack comprehensive information.

Anyone can see that an ass laden with books remains a donkey. A human being laden with the undigested results of a tussle with thoughts and books, however, still passes for wise.

Exercise power by means of kindness, and you may be causing more damage than you could by cruelty. Neither approach is correct.

One cannot learn from someone whom one distrusts.

If the path has been laid down, why the successive appearance of different teachers? Why would anyone reinvent the wheel, if everything were as cosy and sequential as primitive longing so easily convinces us?

The main problem is that most commentators are accustomed to thinking of spiritual schools as 'systems', which are more or less alike, and which depend upon dogma and ritual: and especially upon repetition and the application of continual and standardised pressures upon their followers.The Sufi way, except in degenerate forms which are not to be classified as Sufic, is entirely different from this.