The Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan

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Idol worship has been taught to mankind that man might learn to idealize God even if he were not developed enough to understand the ideal of God in its true sense. This was a training, as a little girl receives her first training in domestic life by playing with dolls. Man can only idealize God as man, for, in the first place, every being sees in another himself. A rogue would be afraid of the roguery of another, and a kind person would be expecting kindness from his fellow man. Man has always thought of ghosts, spirits, jinns, fairies, and angels as being in human form! Although sometimes, to make them different, he has added to them wings or horns or a tail, yet he has kept them as close to the human form as possible. And so it is no wonder that his highest ideal he has pictured in the form of man, and has called it the reverse; instead of saying, "I have created God in my own image," he says, "We have created man in Our own likeness." Even such ideals as the idea of liberty are pictured by the man of today in the form of a woman or man, the sign of which exists in the port of New York and on the postage stamps of France.


 
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