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

Unity and Uniformity

Religion

The Sufi's Religion

The Aspects of Religion

How to Attain to Truth by Religion

Five Desires Answered by Religion

Law

Aspects of the Law of Religion

Prayer

The Effect of Prayer

The God Ideal

The Spiritual Hierarchy

The Master, the Saint, the Prophet

Prophets and Religions

The Symbology of Religious Ideas

The Message and the Messenger

Sufism

The Spirit of Sufism

The Sufi's Aim in Life

The Ideal of the Sufi

The Sufi Movement

The Universal Worship

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

God is Love

Two Points of View

The Kingship of God

Belief in God

The Existence God

Conceptions of God

Many Gods

The Personality of God

The Realization of God

Creator, Sustainer, Judge, Forgiver

The Only King

The Birth of God

Three Steps

God the Infinite

God's Dealings with Us

Dependence Upon God

Divine Grace

The Will, Human and Divine

Making God Intelligible

Man's Relation to God

Divine Manner

Vol. 9, The Unity of Religious Ideals

The God Ideal

Three Steps

The God-Ideal is meant to waken in the soul God, that it may realize His Kingship. It is this which is suggested in the prayer of Christ where it is said,

"Thy Kingdom come, Thy Will be done."

It is on this realization that the Kingdom of God comes; and what follows is that His Will is then done. But when a person does not know who is the king, he does not know what is the kingdom. The kingdoms of the earth, from the time man has evolved so as to understand his affairs, have been established.

  1. Where man has learned the first lesson, when he first knew what a king means, what a kingdom means, he knew that there was someone whose command was obeyed by all, great and small, in the kingdom; who is the upraiser and the judge of all those who deserve honor and respect, who possess a treasure in the kingdom; who is as a mother and father of his subjects. Once this was learned, it gave the person an education to understand what a king means, as a child, after playing with her dolls, begins to understand the cares of the household.

  2. The next step was taken in the spiritual path when the spiritual hierarchy was recognized. The Prophet or the high priest was recognized, representing the spiritual head. Then there was the hierarchy. In this way the next step was taken with the realization that it is not the outer environments, money and possession, which make a king, but it is the spiritual realization which can make a person greater than a king with all his kingly surroundings.
  3. This was proved to people when the king, who was accepted as the principal and head of the community, went before the high priest with bent head, and knelt down in the place of prayer. This gave the next lesson -- that kingship is not in outer wealth, but in spirituality; that even the king stands humbly at the door of the God-realized man.

  4. When once this step was taken, then there was the third step, which was to see that the high priest -- considered as such even by the king -- knelt down and bent his head low to the Lord, King of humanity, showing his greatness as dust before God, to Whom alone belongs all greatness. When the greatness of God was realized, God was glorified and the purpose of aristocracy was fulfilled, for it was nothing but a rehearsal before the battle.

    Once man realized that it is God alone before Whom man should bow, it is God alone Who really is rich and all are poor, it is God alone Whose wisdom and justice are perfect -- then before him the kingship of the king and the holiness of the high priest faded away; before him remained only one King, the King of Kings; on Him he depended, and under Him he sought refuge under all the different circumstances in life.

After one had taken these three steps towards the goal, he found the goal to be quite different from the way that he had taken it, and the goal was the finding out the traces of that King within himself; a spark of that divine light which is the illumination of one's own heart; a ray of that Sun which is the light of the whole universe. And so self-realization developed, in which the soul found that wisdom, illumination, and peace which was the purpose of the God-Ideal.