What is the character of the Sufi message? The core of it is mysticism. As a realized mystic, looking at Western culture, what Inayat Khan was destined to do was to open a path to inner realization that so many in the West could not find anymore. He was inspired to invoke the mysteries and the beauty of that path in many ways. He described the successive steps the seeker for truth has to go through. And he created the inner school of the Sufi Movement, the Sufi Order, to give personal guidance to sincere seekers. To initiates in this inner school he offered the possibility to develop the discipleship that has always been so important on the mystical path, and a range of spiritual practices that can help to open the heart and the inner senses but are also suitable for Westerners who remain active in worldly life.
For an essential aspect of Inayat Khan’s teaching was balance. He did not advocate withdrawing from the world in order to focus only on the inner life: on prayer, contemplation, and meditation. He shows us a human way, living in the world, meeting our obligations to our fellow human beings with sympathy and understanding – and at the same time learning to turn within and to come in touch with the peace and inspiration of the divine light. Then we discover the fullness of life. We can reach a balance between the inner life, where we open our hearts in surrender to the divine spirit, and the outer life, where we have to work actively to achieve our ideals and meet our obligations. Then our actions can be guided by the inspiration and wisdom we receive in our inner attunement, which will more and more shine through our outer work.
This mystical vision illuminates the whole of life: religion, philosophy, and psychology. The mystical path is also the essence of religion. For the purpose of the inner life – as Inayat Khan puts it – is to make God a reality. Not a theory, a dogma, or an abstraction, but the deepest experience we can have. This vision then leads to understanding the fundamental unity of all the great religions. For these religions have all been brought to humanity by successive messengers in different ages to awaken the feeling and realization of the divine. Inayat Khan shows that the God ideal is a great help for this, but that we have to realize that it can only be a help, a stepping-stone: that the divine Reality is beyond our limited intelligence and can only be experienced in the depths of our being, our soul, which itself is a spark of the divine light. Then we can see all religions as converging ways to the same goal. To express this idea, Inayat Khan created the Universal Worship, in which all religions are brought together in a ritual that shows how they are all kindled from the same divine light.
The philosophical aspect of the Sufi message is also important. The tremendous development of science and technology in the present time has made it difficult for many people to find their way to religion and to the inner life. For traditional religious dogmas and representations are at odds with modern scientific insight. But Inayat Khan’s mystical philosophy is completely in line with the deepening understanding of modern science.
The human way that the Sufi message shows means that through the experience and difficulties of the outer life we can make progress toward the inner goal. This is the psychological aspect of Inayat Kan’s teachings. Here he gives a remarkable insight into the workings of our mind. He shows the importance of the impressions which we receive constantly through the outer world, which will be registered in our memory and become living, influencing our feelings, thoughts, words, and actions. And he explains how we can learn to control our mind, allowing only the positive and desirable impressions to live and work within us. By controlling our mind we can then control our life. But as important as the impressions are in our life, they are still only reflections on the mirror of our soul, our inner consciousness. The soul itself remains always pure. Its nature is divine; and it is that divine nature that we have to discover in life.
In their moral aspect Inayay Khan’s teachings also describe a way of gradual progress, of evolution. He speaks about “moral culture” and “civilization of the heart.” We must learn to understand other people and their points of view, to develop consideration and sympathy for them. That widens our consciousness and helps to overcome the identification with our limited being, the great illusion which blocks our way to the knowledge of God.
– H.J.W.
From the Foreword to The Inner Life
Shambhala, 1997
pp. xi-xiv
From the Foreword to The Inner Life
Shambhala, 1997
pp. xi-xiv
In the following video Filip Holm of the Let’s Talk Religion podcast explores the life of Inayat Khan and the universal expression of Sufism he promulgated.
See also the previous Wild Reed posts:
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Inayat Khan
• Inayat Khan and the Heart of Sufism
• Inayat Khan on the Art of Selflessness
• Inayat Khan: “There Must Be Balance”
• Inayat Khan and the Fountain of Happiness Within
• Inayat Khan and the Alchemy of Happiness
• A Light That Will Always Shine
• A Living Light
• A Perpetual Fire Within
• One Wisdom
• Awakening and Turning
• Inayat Khan on Mysticism
• The Sufi Way
• Sufism: Way of Love, Tradition of Enlightenment, and Antidote to Fanaticism
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Sufism: A Living Twenty-First Century Tradition
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Kabir Helminski
• As the Last Walls Dissolve . . . Everything is Possible
• Clarity, Hope, and Courage
• “Joined at the Heart”: Robert Thompson on Christianity and Sufism
• The Mystic Jesus: “A Name for the Unalterable Love That All of Us Share”
• Doris Lessing on the Sufi Way
• In the Garden of Spirituality – Doris Lessing
• The Soul’s Beloved
• The Gorgeous One
• Resting in the Presence of the Beloved
• You Are My Goal, Beloved One
• Be In My Mind, Beloved One
• Finding Balance in the Presence of the Beloved
• Your Peace Is With Me, Beloved One
• I Need Do Nothing . . . I Am Open to the Living Light
• New Horizons
• Saaxiib Qurux Badan and the Winged Heart
• Held in the Presence of God
• The Act of Surrender
• The Journey Home
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