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

The Personality of God

Very often, many who are ready to accept the God-Ideal, question the personality of God. Some say: "If all is God, then God is not a person, for "all" is not a person: "all" is what is expressed by the word all." This question can be answered that, though the seed does not show the flower in it, yet the seed culminates in a flower, and therefore the flower has already existed in the seed. If one were to say that in the image of the seed the flower was made, it would not be wrong, for the only image of the seed is the flower. If God has no personality, how can we human beings have a personality, who come from Him, out of His own Being, and we who can express the divine in the perfection of our souls?

If the bubble is water, certainly the sea is water. How can the bubble be water and the sea not be water? Only the difference between the human personality and the Divine Personality, God's Personality, is that the human personality can be compared; God's Personality has no comparison. Human personality can be compared because of its opposite; God has no opposite, so His Personality cannot be compared. To call God all is like saying God is a number of objects, all of which exist somewhere together. The word all does not give that meaning which can explain the God-Ideal; the proper expression for God is The Only Being.

The God-Ideal is so enormous that man can never comprehend it fully, therefore the best method which the wise have adopted is to allow every man to make his own God. By this he only makes a conception which he is capable of making.

  • He makes Him the King of the Heavens and of the earth;
  • he makes Him Judge, greater than all judges;
  • he makes Him Almighty, Who has all power;
  • he makes Him the Possessor of all grace and glory;
  • he makes Him the beloved God, merciful and compassionate;
  • he recognizes in Him the providence, the support, the protection;
  • and he recognizes in Him all perfection.

This ideal becomes as a steppingstone to the higher knowledge of God. The man who has no imagination to make a God, and the one who is not open to the picture of God that the other man presents to him, he remains without one, for he finds no steppingstone to reach that knowledge which his soul longs for but his doubts deny.

Many would ask if it would not be deceiving oneself to make a God of one's imagination, Someone Who is not seen in the objective world. The answer is that our whole life is based and constructed upon imagination, and if there is one thing in this objective world which is lasting, it is imagination. The one incapable, who has no value for imagination, is void of art and poetry, of music, manners, and culture. He can very well be compared to a rock, which never troubles to imagine.

Man is not capable of picturing God as other than a person -- a person with all the best qualities, the ideal person. This does not mean that all that is ugly and evil does not belong to the universe of God, or, in other words, is not in God Himself. But the water of the ocean is ever pure, in spite of all the things that may be thrown into it. The Pure One consumes all impurities, and turns them all into purity. Evil and ugliness are only in man's limited conception; in God's great Being these have no existence; therefore, he is not wrong who makes God, in his imagination, the God of all beauty, free from ugliness; the God of all the best qualities, free from all evil, for by that imagination he is drawn nearer and nearer every moment of his life to that Divine Ideal which is the seeking of his soul. And, once he has touched divine Perfection, in it he will find the fulfillment of his life.