One Wisdom

The Wild Reed’s 2025 Lenten series continues with a sixth excerpt from The Awakening of the Human Spirit by Inayat Khan. (For the first installment of this series and an explanation for why I chose this book, click here.)

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There are those who see divinity in Christ. They say, “Christ was God, Christ is divine.” And there are others who say, “Christ was a man, one like all of us.” When we come to look at this question, we see that the one who says, “Christ is divine” is not wrong. If there is any divinity shown it is in the human being. And the one who says, “Christ was a man,” is not wrong either. In the garb of humanity, Christ manifested.

Those who do not want Christ to be human drag down the greatness and sacredness of the human being by their argument, by saying that humanity is made of sin and by separating Christ from humanity. But there is nothing wrong in calling Christ human or divine. It is in the human being that divine perfection is to be seen. It is in the human being that divinity is manifested. There are Christ’s own words “I am Alpha and Omega.” Many close their eyes to this, but the one who said, “I am Alpha and Omega” existed also before the coming of Jesus, and the one who says, “first and last,” must exist also after Jesus.

In the words of Christ there is the idea of perfection [or wholeness]. He identified himself with that spirit of which he was conscious. Christ was conscious not of his human part but of his perfect being when he said, “I am Alpha and Omega.” He did not identify himself here with his being known as Jesus. He identified himself with that spirit of perfection that lived before Jesus and will continue to live to the end of the world, for eternity.

If this is so, then what does it matter if some say, “Buddha inspired us,” and millions are inspired by Buddha? It is only a difference of name. It is all Alpha and Omega. If others say Moses, or Muhammad, or Krishna, what difference does it make? Was it not from one and the same spirit? Was it not the same Alpha and Omega of which Jesus Christ was conscious? Whoever gives the message to the world, whatever illuminated human beings have raised thousands and millions of people in the world, they cannot but be that same Christ whom the one calls by this name and the other by another name.

Yet human ignorance always causes wars and disasters on account of different religions, and different communities, because of the importance they give to their own conception, their own corrupted conception, which differs from another. Even now, on the one hand there is materialism and on the other there is bigotry.

What is necessary today is to find the first and last religion, to come to the message of Christ, to divine wisdom, so that we may recognize this wisdom in all its different forms, in whatever form it has been given to humanity. It does not matter if it is Buddhism, Islam, Judaism, Christianity, Zoroastrianism, or Hinduism. It is one wisdom; that call of the spirit awakens each one of us to rise above limitation and to reach for perfection.

– Inayat Khan
Excerpted from The Awakening of the Human Spirit
Omega Press, 1982
p. 88-89

NEXT:
Awakening and Turning


NOTE: Each post in this series is accompanied by Sufi music. Today it is an instrumental piece called “Dervish Dream ✧ Duduk Meditation Music” from the YouTube channel Blueberry Meditation’s “Sufi Winds” series. I find this music perfect for times of meditation and prayer. Perhaps you will too.





See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

UNIVERSALITY
• Douglas Richer: “God is Love and There Is That of God Within Everyone”
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”
• Guidelines for the Advent of a Universal Mysticism: An Introduction | Part 1 | 2 | 3 | 4 | 5 | 6 | 7 | 8
• In Search of a “Global Ethic”
• In the Garden of Spirituality: Richard Rohr – Part 1 | 2
• The Many Manifestations of God’s Loving Embrace

AWAKENING
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Peng Roden Her
• Awakening
• An Extraordinary, Precious Opportunity
• The Task at Hand
• The Beauty and Challenge of Being Present in the Moment
• Shining On . . . Into the New Year

JESUS
• Jesus: Mystic and Prophet
• Jesus and the Art of Letting Go
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”
• The King of Love My Shepherd Is
• Jesus: Path-Blazer of Radical Transformation
• Jesus: Our Guide to Mystical Love in Action – Part 1 | 2 | 3
• Why Jesus is My Man

THE SUFI PATH
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• The Sufi Way
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• Bismillah
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything Is Possible

INAYAT KHAN
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness

THE DIVINE PRESENCE
• “Everything Is Saturated With the Sacred”
• The Most Sacred and Simple Mystery of All
• The Source Is Within You
• Michael Morwood on the Divine Presence
• Prayer and the Experience of God in an Ever-Unfolding Universe
• Prayer of the Week – October 28, 2013
• Neil Douglas-Klotz: Quote of the Day – December 29, 2011
• Cultivating Stillness
• Thoughts on Transformation | II | III

THE LENTEN JOURNEY
• Blessing the Dust
• “This Beloved Quickened Dust”
• Ash Wednesday Reflections
• The Ashes of Our Martyrs
• Lent: A Season Set Apart
• A Lenten Resolution
• Lent: A Time to Fast and Feast
• “Here I Am!” – The Lenten Response
• Let Today Be the Day
• Pope Francis on Lenten Fasting
• “The Turn”: A Lenten Meditation by Lionel Basney
• Lent: A Summons to Live Anew
• Now Is the Acceptable Time
• Lent With Henri
• Waking Dagobert
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 1)
• “Radical Returnings” – Mayday 2016 (Part 2)
• Move Us, Loving God

Recommended Off-site Link:
Inayat Khan and Universal Sufism – Filip Holm (Let’s Talk Religion, December 8, 2024).

Image: Robby.