A Sufi Message Of Spiritual Liberty

By Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

God

Beloved ones of God, you may belong to any race, cast, creed, or nation, still you are all impartially beloved by God. You may be a believer or an unbeliever in the Supreme Being, but He cares not. His mercy and grace flow through all His powers, without distinction of friend or foe.

‘Every leaf of tree, Allah’s praise displays,

Only the pious mind can hear their sacred lays.’

The sun, moon, and stars give light; the timely change of seasons promotes health and cheerfulness; the rain grows corn, fruits, and flowers; and the alternation of day and night provides the opportunity for work and rest.

‘Earth, water, fire and air,

All work harmoniously.

For thee they always food prepare,

Thou shouldst not eat unthankfully.

For how each day the sun shines and serves,

All praise from thee Allah deserves.’

If you study your own body, you will find its mechanism to be the original model of the artificial mechanism of the world. Art and science fail if compared with that of His nature. The ear, eyes, and all other organs, how perfectly they are adapted in shape and mechanism to the purpose which they must serve! How liberally the needs of life, water, air, and food, are supplied; even milk is prepared in the mother’s breast for the unborn infant. Should we not appreciate the liberality of the Creator, and thank him each moment with all humility and gratitude? ‘Praise be to Allah, the worship of whom is the means of drawing closer to Him, and the giving of thanks to whom involves an increase of benefits. Every breath which is inhaled prolongs life, and when exhaled it quickens the frame. In every breath, therefore, two blessings are contained, and for every blessing a separate thanksgiving is due’ (Sa’di).  

He has fashioned and molded you after His own image, and made you Ashráf al-Makhluát, the highest of all beings and the pride of the universe, having given you command over all other beings of both worlds. As is said in the Qur’an, ‘Do you not see that Allah has subjected all things on earth to you?’ And at the same time He has given you, by His grace, the attributes of humanity: kindness, gratitude, faithfulness, justice, modesty, piety, sympathy, reverence, bravery, patience, love, knowledge, and wisdom. This is an open proof of your being the real object of creation and the most beloved of God.

Nature

The argument has been raised that all manifestation is due to the interaction of natural elements, working by their own force; every cause has its effect, and the effect again becomes a cause for the reaction; thus nature works unaided. The answer is that every cause must have some preceding cause, or first cause, to produce it; and logically one cause may produce many effects, which effects again become second causes, producing new reactions, ‘While intellectual minds are seeking second causes, the wise man only perceives the first cause. Air, earth, water, being second causes, the precedent cause, which makes them act and pause, is hidden.’

The Personal Being

Granting that we see nature, and also admitting its original cause, upon what grounds do we consider the cause to be a personal God, meriting worship? The answer is that nature itself consists of different personalities, and each of them has its peculiar attributes. The sum total of all these personalities is One, the only real personality. In relation to that One all other personalities are merely an illusion. Just as, in a limited form, a nation or a community is the sum of many personalities. Just as nature manifested in numerous names and forms is still called nature, singular not plural, just as the individual combines within himself the different parts of his body, arms, limbs, eyes, ears, and is possessed of different qualities yet is one person, so the sum total of all personalities is called God.

He is the possessor of all the visible and invisible attributes of the Absolute, and has different names in different languages for the understanding of man. It may be said that the personality of a man is quite comprehensible, since his actions exhibit him as a single individual, whereas God’s personality has no clear identification of its own. The answer is, that variety covers unity. ‘Hidden things are manifested by their opposites, but as God has no opposite He remains hidden. God’s light has no opposite in the range of creation whereby it may be manifested to view’ (Jelal-ud-Din Rumi).

The wise man by studying nature enters into the unity through its variety, and realizes the personality of God by sacrificing his own. ‘He who knows himself knows Allah’ (Sayings of Mohammed). ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ (Bible). ‘Self-knowledge is the real wisdom’ (Vedanta).

God’s relation to nature may be understood by analysing the idea expressed in the words, ‘I myself’. This affirmation means the one individual; at the same time it identifies the dual aspect of the One. In this phrase ‘I’ is the possessor, and ‘myself’ is the possessed. So also God, the unmanifested, is the possessor; and nature, the manifestation, is the possessed, which has its source hidden within itself.

The possessed could not have been created from anything other than the possessor’s own self, as there existed none but the possessor. Although the possessor and the possessed are considered to be two separate identities, in reality they are one. The possessor realizes the possessed through the medium of his own consciousness, which forms three aspects, the Trinity, of the one Being. The German philosopher Hegel says, ‘If you say God is one, it is true; if you say He is two, that is also true; and if you say He is three, that is true too, because it is the nature of the world.’  

God is regarded from three points of view: personality, morality, and reality. According to the first view, God is the most high; man is dependent upon Him and is His most obedient servant. According to the second view, God is the all-merciful and all-good Master of the Day of Judgement, while all evil is from Satan. The third is the philosophic view that God is the beginning and end of all, having Himself no beginning nor end. As a Sufi mystic has said, ‘The universe is the manifestation of Allah, where from His own unity He created, by involution, variety — the state of various names and forms — thereby distinguished as Allah, worthy of all praise and worship.’

Dual Aspect

According to Sufi tenets the two aspects of the Supreme Being are termed Zát and Sifat, the Knower and the Known. The former is Allah and the latter Mohammed. Zát being only one in its existence, cannot be called by more than one name, which is Allah; and Sifat, being manifold in four different involutions, has numerous names, the sum of them all being termed Mohammed. The ascending and descending forms of Zát and Sifat form the circle of the Absolute. These two forces are called Nuzul and Uruj, which means involution and evolution. Nuzul begins from Zát and ends in Sifat; Uruj starts from Sifat and ends in Zát, Zát being the negative and Sifat the positive force.

Zát projects Sifat from its own self and absorbs it within itself. It is a rule of philosophy that the negative cannot lose its negativeness by projecting the positive from itself, though the positive covers the negative within itself, as the flame covers the fire. The positive has no independent existence, yet it is real because projected from the real, and it may not be regarded as an illusion. Human ignorance persists in considering Zát to be separate from Sifat, and Sifat independent of Zát.

Worship

We may ask: why we should worship God, and whether the theoretical knowledge of His law in nature is not sufficient for the highest realization. The answer is: no. Theoretical knowledge of a subject can never take the place of experience, which is necessary for realization. Written music cannot entertain us unless it is played, nor the description of perfume delight our senses unless we smell it, no recipes of the most delicious dishes satisfy our hunger. Nor can the theory of God give complete joy and peace; we must actually realize God or attain that state of realization which gives eternal happiness through the admiration and worship of nature’s beauty and its source. ‘The Beloved is all in all, the lover only veils him; the Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing’ (Jelal-ud-Din Rumi).

Truth

Different methods called religions and philosophies have been adopted by different nations at various periods. Though the form and teachings of the several religions appear so unlike, their source is one and the same. But from the very beginning the differences have created prejudice, envy, and antagonism between man. Such dissensions occupy a large portion of the histories of the world and have become the most important subject in life.

‘So many castes and so many creeds,

So many faiths, and so many beliefs,

All have arisen from ignorance of man,

Wise is he who only truth conceives.’

A wise man realizes that the fundamental basis of all religions and beliefs is one: Haq, or truth. The truth has always been covered by two garments: a turban on the head, and a robe upon the body. The turban is made of mystery known as mysticism, and the robe is made of morality, which is called religion. Truth has been covered thus by most of the prophets and saints, in order to hide it from ignorant eyes, as yet too undeveloped to bear it in its naked form. Those who see the truth uncovered, abandon reason and logic, good and bad, high and low, new and old; differences and distinctions of names and forms fade away, and the whole universe is realized as nothing other than Haq. Truth in its realization is one; in its representation it is many, since its revelations are made under varying conditions of time and space.

As water in a fountain flows in one stream but falls in many drops, divided by time and space, so are the revelations of the one stream of truth. Not everyone can comprehend the idea of different truths being derived from the one truth. Common sense has been so narrowly trained in this world of variety, that it naturally fails to realize the breadth and subtlety of a spiritual fact so far beyond the reach of its limited reasoning.

The Sufis

The word Sufi is derived from Safa meaning pure, purified of ignorance, superstition, dogmatism, egotism, and fanaticism, as well as free from limitations of caste, creed, race, and nation. The Sufis believe in God as the Absolute, the only Being; and that all creation is the manifestation of His nature.

There have been Sufis at all periods of human history. Though they have lived in different parts of the world, speaking different languages and born into different faiths and beliefs, they have recognized and sympathized with each other, through the oneness of their understanding. Yet with their deep knowledge of the world and of spiritual mysteries, they have concealed their beliefs from the multitude, and have pursued in secret their way of attainment to the highest bliss.