| Hazrat
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
8. There is One Object
of Praise
the beauty which uplifts the heart of its worshipper
through all aspects from the seen
to the Unseen.
It is said in the Hadith [the
sayings of Prophet Muhammed - editor], "God is
beautiful, and He loves beauty."
This expresses the truth that man, who inherits the Spirit of
God, has beauty in him and loves beauty, although that which is
beautiful to one is not beautiful to another. Man cultivates the
sense of beauty as he evolves, and prefers the higher aspect of
beauty to the lower. But when he has observed the highest vision
of beauty in the Unseen by a gradual evolution from praising the
beauty in the seen world, then the entire existence becomes to him
one single vision of beauty.
Man has worshipped God, beholding the beauty of sun, moon, stars,
and planets; he has worshipped God in plants, in animals; he has
recognized God in the beautiful merits of man, and he has with his
perfect view of beauty found the source of all beauty in the Unseen,
from whence all this springs, and in Whom all is merged.
The Sufi, realizing this, worships beauty in all its aspects,
and sees the face of the Beloved in all that is seen, and the Beloved's
spirit in the Unseen. So wherever he looks his ideal of worship
is before him. "Everywhere I look, I see Thy winning face;
everywhere I go, I arrive at Thy dwelling-place."
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. |