| Hazrat
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
10. There is one Path
the annihilation of the false ego in the
Real,
which raises the mortal to immortality, in which resides all perfection.
"I passed away into nothingness, I vanished; and lo! I was all
living." All who have realized the secret of life understand
that life is one, but that it exists in two aspects. First as immortal,
all pervading, and silent; and secondly as mortal, active, and manifest
in variety. The soul being of the first aspect becomes deluded,
helpless, and captive by experiencing life in contact with the mind
and body, which is of the next aspect. The gratification of the
desires of the body and the fancies of the mind do not suffice for
the purpose of the soul, which is undoubtedly to experience its
own phenomena in the seen and the unseen, though its inclination
is to be itself and not anything else. When delusion makes it feel
that it is helpless, mortal and captive, it finds itself out of
place. This is the tragedy of life, which keeps the strong and the
weak, the rich and poor, all dissatisfied, constantly looking for
something they do not know. The Sufi, realizing this, takes the
path of annihilation, and, by the guidance of a teacher on the path,
finds at the end of this journey that the destination was himself.
As Iqbal says: "I wandered in the pursuit of my own self;
I was the traveler, and I am the destination!"
In a few instances, Hazrat Inayat
Khan's original gender-specific wording of the 10 Thoughts and 3
Objects has been slightly altered, by Pir Moineddin Jablonski, Murshid
Wali Ali Meyer, and Pir Shabda Kahn, as a reflection of ongoing guidance. The commentary associated
with each Thought has been extracted directly from the Sufi Message
of Hazrat Inayat Khan, Volume I, Part 1: The Way of Illumination (© 1979,
International Sufi Movement, All rights reserved.), and as a quoted passage,
Hazrat Inayat Khan's use of gender specific language has not been updated. |