Inayat Khan and the Alchemy of Happiness

The Wild Reed’s 2025 Lenten series continues with a second 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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Happiness cannot be bought or sold, nor can you give it to a person who has not got it. Happiness is your own being, your own self – that self that is the most precious thing in life. All religious and all philosophical systems have in different forms taught humanity how to find it by the religious path or the mystical way; and all the wise ones have in some form or another given a method by which the individual can find happiness for which the soul is seeking.

Sages and mystics have called this process alchemy. The stories of the Arabian Nights, which symbolize mystical ideas, are full of the belief that there is a philosopher’s stone that will turn metals into gold by a chemical process. No doubt this symbolic idea has deluded people in both the East and West; many have thought that a process exists by which gold can be produced. But this is not the idea of the wise; the pursuit of gold is for those who as yet are only children. For those who have the consciousness of reality, gold stands for light or spiritual inspiration. Gold represents the color of light, and therefore an unconscious pursuit after light has made people seek for gold. But there is a great difference between real gold and false. It is the longing for true gold that makes people collect the imitation gold, ignorant that the real gold is within. A person satisfies the craving of their soul in this way, as a child satisfies itself by playing with dolls.

This realization is not a matter of age. One person may have reached an advanced age and still be playing with dolls, and their soul may be involved in the search for this imitation gold, while another may have begun in youth to see life in its real aspect. If one studied the transitory nature of life in the world and how changeable it is, and the constant craving of everyone for happiness, one would certainly endeavor at all costs to find something one could depend upon. Humanity, placed in the midst of this ever-changing world, still appreciates and seeks for constancy somewhere. People do not know that they must develop the nature of constancy in themselves. It is the nature of the soul to value that which is dependable. But is there anything in the world on which one can depend, which is above change and destruction? All that is born, all that is made, must one day face destruction. All that has a beginning has also an end; but if there is anything one can depend upon it is hidden in the heart of each one of us. It is the divine spark, the true philosopher’s stone, the real gold, which is the innermost being of all.

A person may follow a religion and yet not come to the realization of truth, and of what use is their religion to them if they are not happy? Religion does not mean depression and sadness. The spirit of religion should give happiness. God is happy. God is the perfection of love, harmony, and beauty. A religious person should be happier than one who is not religious. If a person who professes religion is always melancholy, their religion is disgraced; the form has been kept, but the spirit has been lost. If the study of religion and mysticism does not lead to real joy and happiness, it may just as well not exit, for then it does not help to fulfill the purpose of life. The world today is sad and suffering as the result of terrible wars; the religion that answers the demand of life today is one that investigates and gives life to souls, that illuminates the heart of humanity with the divine light that is already there; not necessarily by any outer form, though for some a form may be helpful, but by showing that happiness that is the desire of every soul.

As for the question of how this method of alchemy is practiced, the whole process was explained by the alchemists in a symbolical way. They said gold is made out of mercury; the nature of mercury is to be ever-moving, but by a certain process the mercury is first stilled, and once stilled it becomes silver; then the silver has to be melted, and the juice of an herb is poured onto the molten silver, which is thereby turned into gold. This, if course, gives only an outline, but one can find detailed explanations of the whole process. Many childlike souls have tried to make gold by stilling mercury and melting silver, and they have tried to find the herb, but they were deluded, and they would have done better to have worked and earned money.

The real interpretation of this process is that mercury represents the nature of the ever-restless mind. Especially when he tries to concentrate, a person realizes that the mind is ever-restless. The mind is like a restive horse: when it is ridden it is more restive than when it is in the stable. Such is the nature of the mind – it becomes more restless when one desires to control it. It is like mercury, constantly moving.

When by a method of concentration one has mastered the mind, one has taken the first step in the accomplishment of a sacred task. Prayer is concentration, reading is concentration, sitting and relaxing and thinking on one subject are all concentration. All artists, thinkers, and inventors have practiced concentration in some form: they have given their minds to one thing, and by focusing on one object have developed the faculty of concentration, but for stilling the mind a special method taught by the mystic is necessary, just as a singer needs to be taught by a teacher of voice-production.

The secret of this concentration is learned in the science of breath. Breath is the essence of life, the center of life, and the mind may be controlled by a knowledge of the proper method of [meditative] breathing. . . . When the mind is under perfect control and no longer restless, one can hold a thought at will as long as one wishes. This is the beginning of phenomena. Some abuse these privileges, and by dissipating the power thus obtained, they destroy the silver before turning it into gold. The silver must be heated before it can melt, and with what? With that warmth that is the divine essence in the heart of all, which comes forth as love, tolerance, empathy, service, humility, and unselfishness, in a stream that rises and falls in a thousand drops, each drop of which could be called a virtue, and all coming from that one stream hidden in the heart of each one of us, the love element; and when it grows in the heart, then the actions, the movements, the tone of the voice, and the expression all show that the heart is warm. The moment this happens a person really lives, they have unsealed the spring of happiness that overcomes all that is jarring and inharmonious, and the spring has established itself as a divine stream.

After the heart is warmed by the divine element, which is love, the next stage is the herb, which is the love of God. But the love of God alone is not sufficient; knowledge of God is also necessary. It is the absence of the knowledge of God that makes a person leave their religion, for there is a limit to their patience. Knowledge of God strengthens a person’s belief in God and throws light on the individual and on life. Things become clear; every leaf on a tree becomes as a page of a holy book to one whose eyes are open to the knowledge of God. When the juice of the herb of divine love is poured on the heart, warmed by love for one’s fellow humans, then that heart becomes the heart of gold, the heart that expresses what God would express. [None of us have seen God, but we have seen the effects of God’s transforming presence in our lives and the lives of others], and when this happens, then verily everything that comes from such a person comes from God.

– Inayat Khan
Excerpted from The Awakening of the Human Spirit
Omega Press, 1982
pp. 2-6

NEXT:
A Light That Will Always Shine


NOTE: Each post in this series is accompanied by Sufi music. Today it is an instrumental piece called “As You Start to Walk on the Way, the Way Appears” from the YouTube channel Buddha’s Lounge’s RUMI Spiritual Music Live Stream. I find this music perfect for times of meditation and prayer. Perhaps you will too.






See also the previous Wild Reed posts:

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
• Sufism: A Call to Awaken
• Don’t Go Back to Sleep
• 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 MYSTIC 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”
• Called to the Field of Compassion to Be Both Prophet and Mystic
• Mysticism and Revolution

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).

Opening image: Artist unknown.
Image 2: A 1916 portrait of Inayat Khan. (Photographer unknown.)