Teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan

Hazrat Inayat Khan was an Indian musician and Sufi mystic who came to America in 1910. He died in 1927.

The Sufi thinks that a person was not created to live the life of an angel, nor was one created to live the life of an animal. For the life of an angel, angels are created, and for the life of an animal, there are animals. The Sufi thinks the first thing necessary in life is for one to prove to one's own conscience to what extent one can be human.

The being of each person is a mechanism of body and mind. When this mechanism is in order, there is happiness and fullness of life. When anything is wrong with the mechanism, the body is ill and peace is gone. This mechanism depends upon winding. Just as a clock is wound and then goes on for 24 hours, so also in meditation a person sits in a reposeful attitude, puts the mind in a condition of repose, and regulates the work of this mechanism by meditation. Like winding, the effect is felt all the time, because the mechanism is put in order.

Breath is a link through which one individual is connected with another individual, and space does not make a difference once connection of breath is established. The communication will be sure and clear if only the wire is tied to sympathetic hearts. There is much that is common to the science of electricity and the science of breath. The day is not far off when science and mysticism both will meet on the same ground in the realization of the electricity which is hidden in the breath.

Question: Is it better to give an outlet to one's joy and sorrow or to suppress them? HIK: The expression of joy should not be extreme. The wise are never overjoyed because there is no worldly circumstance that can give them great joy. And also they know that the extreme expression of joy will bring sorrow after it. You can see that in everyday life. If you make a little child laugh very much or enjoy very much for five minutes, in one hour, or in two hours, or before evening, it will feel very unhappy. And if the wise person does not give an outlet to his joy, still less will he give an outlet to his sorrow. Because not only would that humiliate a person, but to be in extreme sorrow increases the idea of self. I have seen this with my Murshid. I knew him for years, and often there were circumstances which would have caused great joy, but I never in all those years saw his even cheerfulness altered. The wise person is in the thought of God, and what is there in this world so great that it can move him much? Before that, I had seen the same thing with my fatther.