Knowing How to Know is an incisive selection of stories, observations, epigrams and question-and-answer sessions designed to render clarity and deeper understanding as part of Shah’s wider course on contemporary Sufi studies. It looks at the often-unrecognised barriers which prevent knowledge and the necessary conditions and factors which must be present for learning to take place.

In the preface, Shah insists that human learning only occurs through a proper balance of inclusion and exclusion. The ensuing pages expand and contracts around this central theme: that optimal human learning can only occur if the operational elements are present and the dysfunctional ones kept at bay.

Like an ultraviolet light shone onto the petals of flowers, Knowing How to Know reveals concealed patterns, normally invisible to our customary modes of thought.