| Hazrat
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
3. There is One Holy Book
the Sacred Manuscript of Nature,
the only scripture which can enlighten the reader.
Most people consider as sacred scriptures, only certain books or
scrolls written by the hand of man, and carefully preserved as holy,
to be handed down to posterity as divine revelation. Men have fought
and disputed over the authenticity of these books, have refused
to accept any other book of similar character, and, clinging thus
to the book and losing the sense of it, have formed diverse sects.
The Sufi has in all ages respected all such books, and has traced
in the Vedanta, Zendavesta, Kabala, Bible, Qur`an,
and all other sacred scriptures, the same truth which he reads in
the incorruptible manuscript of nature, the only Holy Book, the
perfect and living model that teaches the inner law of life: all
scriptures before nature's manuscript are as little pools of water
before the ocean.
To the eye of the seer every leaf of the tree is a page of the
holy book that contains divine revelation, and he is inspired every
moment of his life by constantly reading and understanding the holy
script of nature.
When man writes, he inscribes characters upon rock, leaf, paper,
wood or steel; when God writes, the characters He writes are living
creatures.
It is when the eye of the soul is opened and the sight is keen
that the Sufi can read the divine law in the manuscript of nature;
and that which the teachers of humanity have taught to their followers
was derived by them from the same source; they expressed what little
it is possible to express in words, and so they preserved the inner
truth when they themselves were no longer there to reveal it.
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. |