[Note: Hazrat Inayat Khan used the masculine gender to refer to all people, according to the custom of his time. He used the female gender to refer to women in particular. He did not distinguish men in particular. He would not have wished to convey the idea that any role, master, saint or prophet, was gender-specific.]

Three Paths

There are three roads to spiritual attainment, which meet in the end at one junction. One road is of the Master; another comes from quite a different point, and is the road of the Saint; and the middle path between the two is of the Prophet.

Expressive and Receptive

Among the Sufis, there are two kinds of adepts, the expressive and the receptive, and each has its own line of progress and action. They are not called so for their temperament but for their method of progress and action. The expressive among them, with their great psychic power, can prophesy and cast out devils and heal, and control the world and heavens, according to their development. They are the masters. The receptive ones are with God throughout the day and night, who love and repent, and bless and serve, and glorify the name of their Lord, and guide their followers through all difficulties in the spiritual path, and draw people to God from the struggles of life. Their way is that of the saints.

The Master

The path of the Master is a path of war--war with outer influences which prevent one from making one's way through life. The path of the Master wants self-discipline and will power to make headway through life. He conquers himself; he battles with life; he is at war with destiny; he crusades against all that seems wrong to him; he finds the key to the secrets unknown to him; he turns all conditions, all things, all people, into the shape that he wishes, and molds as he likes the personalities that come in touch with him; he tunes personalities to the tone which would suit his orchestration.

It is a path of accomplishment. All that the Master takes up, he accomplishes; all that the Master desires, he attains sooner or later. Yet the Master's one desire is spiritual attainment at its fullest. Therefore all other attainments, spiritual or material, are nothing before him other than many steps on a staircase.

Resistance against all that increases his weakness or that appeals to his weakness, the tendency of continual perseverance, courage and boldness, firmness and steadiness, all such qualities manifest in the master.

The struggle in the path of the Master is great; he has struggle all along. Every condition that meets him on the way to accomplishment is harder to get through than the condition before. No doubt, as he proceeds on the path of attainment, he gains power through struggle. The greater the struggle through life, the greater his power. He has command over objects; he produces effects in objects, which are not there naturally. He can even rise to a state where he can command Nature, and the spiritual hierarchy is made of the Masters. For the world is ruled; it is governed. Although outward governments are different, the inward government is the spiritual hierarchy. In the East such are called Wali, whose thought, whose feeling, whose glance, whose impulse, can move the universe. And the Master may advance gradually through the five principal stages of attainment, and may even arrive at the stage of Rasul in the end.

The Saint

The saintly temperament is the receptive temperament, resigned, perfectly resigned, to the will of God. The saint has learnt patience, confidence, endurance, tolerance. He has carried the cross, he is crucified a thousand times in his life. He knows what love means. He has taken a path of devotion; he leads a life of service; he has effaced himself; he has crushed his personality. He has dissolved the rock out of which he was made into water. His way is not the way of the hammer but of the water. The hammer breaks a rock but the water surrounds it and makes its way. That is why the saintly personality gives peace and harmony and comfort to those who come in contact with it.

The path of the Saint is one of love, harmony, and beauty; ready to give, ready to sacrifice, ready to renounce, ready to give in and to yield. The saintly soul takes all insults as one would take something as a purifying process. He is resigned to every loss, for there is no loss without some gain and there is no gain which is without any loss; there is always a hidden loss in the gain and a gain in the loss. Renunciation is not difficult for that soul, for in renunciation that soul finds its freedom. No sacrifice is too great for the saintly soul, for it gives him happiness. Generosity that soul need not learn: it is its nature, its character. Modesty, humility, tolerance, forgiveness, are part of his being; he cannot do otherwise, for he knows no differently.

Through this path, no doubt in the beginning the saintly soul finds difficulty. The path of the Saint has a constant battle with the self, for there is no end to the world's demands; in this world no one can be too good or too kind. The better one is, the more good is asked of one; the kinder one is, the more kindness is expected from one; and so it goes on through life. The happiness a saintly soul finds, through all the continual sacrifices that he makes as he goes through life, is in his will gradually becoming harmonized to the Will of God, so that God's Will and his will in time become one. And that happiness no one can imagine except the souls who have experienced the feeling of resignation through all the crosses that one has to meet in life.

It is not just a fable that the trees and plants and rocks spoke to the saints. It is the truth. When a person has developed that sympathy, he is sympathetic to rock and plant and tree; everything in nature opens up before him. It is through that at-one-ment that he is able to communicate with every form of life, whatever it is. The spirit of a Saint results in being tuned to the whole universe. He is in tune with the climates, with the weather, with nature, with animals and birds; he becomes in tune with the trees and plants, in tune with all atmospheres, with all human beings of various natures, because he becomes the keynote to the whole universe. All harmonize with him; the virtuous souls, the wicked souls, angels and devils; all become in tune. He becomes in harmony with every object, with every element; with those who have passed from this earth he is in tune; with those in the atmosphere he is in tune, and in tune with those who live on earth. The moral of a Saint is very difficult, but the spirit of the Saint is a benediction to himself and blessing to others.

The Work of the Master

The work of the Master is to protect individuals and protect the world. The work of the Master is to keep away all disasters that might come about, caused by the inharmony of the nature of individuals and of the collectivity. The work of the Master is not usually to heal the feeble or right the weak, but just when that person is in a situation where he is opposed by a powerful enemy and needs the help of a Master.

When a person has attained mastery, it may be called an inner initiation. From that time he is consciously used to fulfill a certain purpose. Every soul is here on earth in order to fulfill a certain purpose in the scheme of life; but when one has reached mastery, from that moment one is chosen by Providence to be used as a tool, an instrument, to accomplish a certain purpose. Humanity, every single human being, is a kind of raw material which destiny uses. The master-mind, however, is a finished instrument which destiny handles to accomplish its purpose.

The Work of the Saint

The work of the Saint is to comfort individuals and comfort the world. The work of the Saint is to console the wretched, to take under the wings of mercy and compassion those left alone in life, to bless the souls that come in his way. It is the saintly personality which heals and lifts up those who are groping in darkness, who are touching the depths of the earth. He has developed the love that one sees in a mother and father but he has that love for every person, for every soul.

Master and Saint Contrasted

This is the difference between Master and Saint: one is active, the other passive; one is resigned, the other persistent. But at the same time both are going forward. Only their ways are different; one is the positive way, the other the negative way; one is the way of power, the other of gentleness. Nevertheless, both have their purpose to accomplish in the scheme of nature.

In the Master's path the will is used mostly in regard to outer things; in the saintly path the will is used to control one's own self; in other words it is used for the time being against one's own self. The Saint is resigned to Kaza, the Will of God, and the Master has regard for Kadr, his own will. In order to know the will of God it is wise first to take one's own will in hand and use it in the knowledge that it is given for some great purpose in life.

The Prophet

The way of the Prophet is a more balanced way, for in the life of the Prophet there is a balance of these two attributes--the power of attainment and the patience to resign to the Will of God. So the Prophet is a warrior and a peacemaker, both at the same time. This line is called kemal, the perfect, or balanced.

The work of the Prophet is not only his own spiritual attainment, but he has some certain service of great importance to perform. To the souls who ask him for that compassion which they would ask from a saint, he gives it; to those who ask him for that power and strength which are necessary to be able to stand through the sweeping waves of life, the prophet gives that. As the Prophet goes through the stages of realization, he acts on his way towards the fulfillment of his life's mission as a warner, as a healer, as a reformer, as a lawyer, as a teacher, as a priest, as a preacher.

Therefore such service keeps the Prophet away from what his soul always craves for, and that is the solitude in the wilderness. He longs for one place, and he is put in another place. The soul who yearns constantly to fly away from the crowd is put, owing to his mission, in the very midst of the crowd. In this way the work of the Prophet in the world becomes as hard as if a person were asked to jump into the water and then come out dry. He must live in the world and not be of the world. However, it is the prophetic soul whose life's mission very often is to serve humanity in the time of its need, and it is the fulfillment of this service which makes him Rasul, the Messenger.

The Prophet is the Message bearer; the Prophet is master and a servant at the same time; the Prophet is a teacher and at the same time a pupil, for there is a great deal that he must learn from his experience through life, not in order to make himself capable to receive the Message, but in order to make himself efficient enough to give the Message. For God speaks to the Prophet in His divine tongue, and the Prophet interprets it in his turn in the language of men, making it intelligible to them, trying to put the finest ideas in the gross terms of worldly language.

Therefore all that the Prophet comes to give to the world is not given in words, but all that cannot be given in words is given without words. It is given through the atmosphere; it is given by the presence; it is given by the great love that gushes forth from his heart; it is given in his kind glance; and it is given in his benediction. And yet the most is given in silence that no earthly sense can perceive. The difference between human language and divine words is this: that a human word is a pebble; it exists, but there is nothing further; the divine word is a living word, just like a grain of corn. One grain of corn is not one grain; in reality it is hundreds and thousands. In the grain there is an essence which is always multiplying, and which will show perfection in itself.

Summary

Q. Will you please explain what you said yesterday about the two paths, the one who leads to saintliness, and the one who leads to mastership?

A. I had said of the two paths, one of the Saint, and the other of the Master. The path of the Saint is renunciation, abnegation, resignation, self-denial, from the beginning to the end. And by doing this one arrives to that meeting ground where one touches that divine perfection.

And then there is the path of the Master, the path of firmness and obstinacy, breaking and penetrating through every difficult situation that comes before him. And so fighting all along from the beginning to the end. In this he has to fight with himself and with the life outside. Therefore there is struggle on both sides. And there is all the time the work of the will-power, and all through there is a battle; and in this battle all the conditions that one has to go through are of the same character and nature as of the warfare, to be wounded and to cause wounds, and to be hurt and to hurt another also. And in this way it is a constant struggle. But still for the higher aim, and for the greater gain.

In the end [the master] strikes the same note which the saint has struck. Neither the path of the Saint is easy, nor of the Master. There is a place where they both meet and become one. For resignation brings the Saint to the realization of harmony with the Infinite, and struggle brings the Master to the same conviction in the end.

There is a third temperament, and that is the middle temperament. In which temperament there is the saintly temperament and the temperament of the Master; and that is the Prophetic temperament. Because the Prophet begins his life with both, struggle and resignation. One moment struggle, and another moment resignation. Gain and resignation, continually going on. And therefore in the Prophet one sees the Saint and the Master, both in one.