The Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan      

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Volume

Sayings

Social Gathekas

Religious Gathekas

The Message Papers

The Healing Papers

Vol. 1, The Way of Illumination

Vol. 1, The Inner Life

Vol. 1, The Soul, Whence And Whither?

Vol. 1, The Purpose of Life

Vol. 2, The Mysticism of Sound and Music

Vol. 2, The Mysticism of Sound

Vol. 2, Cosmic Language

Vol. 2, The Power of the Word

Vol. 3, Education

Vol. 3, Life's Creative Forces: Rasa Shastra

Vol. 3, Character and Personality

Vol. 4, Healing And The Mind World

Vol. 4, Mental Purification

Vol. 4, The Mind-World

Vol. 5, A Sufi Message Of Spiritual Liberty

Vol. 5, Aqibat, Life After Death

Vol. 5, The Phenomenon of the Soul

Vol. 5, Love, Human and Divine

Vol. 5, Pearls from the Ocean Unseen

Vol. 5, Metaphysics, The Experience of the Soul Through the Different Planes of Existence

Vol. 6, The Alchemy of Happiness

Vol. 7, In an Eastern Rose Garden

Vol. 8, Health and Order of Body and Mind

Vol. 8, The Privilege of Being Human

Vol. 8a, Sufi Teachings

Vol. 9, The Unity of Religious Ideals

Vol. 10, Sufi Mysticism

Vol. 10, The Path of Initiation and Discipleship

Vol. 10, Sufi Poetry

Vol. 10, Art: Yesterday, Today, and Tomorrow

Vol. 10, The Problem of the Day

Vol. 11, Philosophy

Vol. 11, Psychology

Vol. 11, Mysticism in Life

Vol. 12, The Vision of God and Man

Vol. 12, Confessions: Autobiographical Essays of Hazat Inayat Khan

Vol. 12, Four Plays

Vol. 13, Gathas

Vol. 14, The Smiling Forehead

By Date

THE SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS

Heading

1. Sex

2. Half-Bodies

3. Attraction and Repulsion

4. On Some Ideals

5. Types of Lovers

6. The Character of the Beloved

Four Types of Women

7. Modesty

8. The Awakening of Youth

9. Courtship

10. Chivalry

11. Marriage

12. Beauty

13. Passion

14. Celibacy

15. Monogamy

15. Pologamy

17. Perversion

18. Prostitution

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

i.

ii

iii

iv

Vol. 3, Life's Creative Forces: Rasa Shastra

17. Perversion

iii

It is said that ignorance is bliss, but ignorance may well prove to be a curse. There is a tendency in every child that needs guidance, the neglect of which is a most fertile soil for perversion.

This whole subject of perversion is in itself cold and dead; there is no beauty in it; the contemplation of it is deadening and freezes one. A mother or father turns naturally away to other, creative displays of life and spirit, which have some light and warmth in them, giving an insight into character. For instance, if a child tells a lie, there is as a rule some interest in noticing the type of story that he tells; or perhaps he tells a tale that is in itself thoroughly imaginative and amusing.

Also the innocence of a child is so disarming; and innocence is the surest protective armor against all hurt, a truth every parent knows at heart. But what every parent should recognize is that the intelligence of the child is all the time pushing it to make investigations and experiments that are interesting and new. And it is for the guardian to see that this interest receives no unwholesome stimulus. Wherever interest seems strong, it should certainly be disentangled and made straight and clear of mystery in the little mind.

A feeling may be fully awakened in a child before the unperceptive guardian will even think there could be any possibility of the child's having any idea of sex; and a child in its ignorance will deal in its own way with a thing which it finds enjoyable or interesting, and will discover some means or other of self enjoyment. The parents have not spoken to it of such things; and having found some new sensation in life, it gladly seeks a comrade to share in the new interest. In this way one child learns from another, hiding the fact from its parents; and so a habit may grow and become quite natural without having any special significance to the child at all.

The impression produced by a habit of this kind has results that are almost incalculable. The abnormal child will no doubt be given a direction that will develop into a definite taste for abnormalities in later years. But the average child will suffer in other ways; for instance it may with the years develop a distaste for marriage, or a coldness that affects relationship in marriage. Undeniably the impression received by its mind will color its attitude towards life for many years to come, arousing perhaps a feeling of contempt or of shame for sex; but whatever unhealthy attitude towards nature is thus evoked will affect its whole existence. If parents could realize that every child has an inclination towards perversion which starts as play, and that it needs teaching and guidance in its inclinations, some to a greater and some to a lesser extent, many disasters might be prevented.

A child is intelligent and can easily be brought to notice the difference between people, and to admire the noble and beautiful. It can easily be trained to a healthy discrimination, with an inclination towards all that is sane, wholesome, and vigorous, as being productive of the greatest happiness and pleasure, with a contempt of all uncleanness, and with a fear of the consequences of all unlawfulness. There is no need to punish or to frighten a child, any more than there is any need to feel disgust or fear for a child when it shows an inclination that needs correction; words usually produce the best remembered impressions.

Children have many influences to deal with that come from without. Not only through other children come unpleasant and perverting suggestions in playtime, as an English saying goes, "Satan finds some mischief still for idle hands to do"; but also through older people. Old age often blunts the fineness of feeling; and even among the aged and trusted may be found monstrous tendencies which enjoy watching the spring of interest in the child; ignorant nurses, perhaps without thought of harm, will play with that interest, and there are monster souls who enjoy above all the thought of being the first to enjoy the passion of youth; and others, who have perhaps the greatest refinement and delicacy of thought and life and sentiment, but who find such an overwhelming attraction in the rigor, in the springlike beauty of youth, as not to be able to refrain from tampering with it, to get enjoyment and interest out of it in some way or other. Also there are many older people who have a hatred for the opposite sex which they impart to children. This is especially true of women; and it is not uncommon for women to make a mission of prejudicing young girls against a normal and healthy attitude towards men.

Perhaps there is no grown person who has not a recollection of some occurrence of the sort in his or her own life; but with a dim memory of the strangeness and horror of it, the grown person remembers too his own extraordinary youthful innocence that came to his rescue; and so he feels inclined to trust to the strength of that same innocence in his own child, not considering in what unknown and difficult situation a child may be entangled.

Or else a parent may be anxious to protect his girl, and less inclined to protect his boy; never having perhaps traced very carefully what depth of influence that early experience of his, even if of short duration, had on his own life; and therefore never having realized what lack of vigor in body, what amount of indecision in mind, of obscurity of purpose, of loss of the total sum of his individual happiness or success might be traced to it. Before the mind of a parent these human tendencies should ever be present; and it is his obligation to awaken in good time the youth under his care.