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

The Message

Free Will and Destiny in the Message

What is the Message?

Lecture for Mureeds and Friends

Wakening to the Message

Aspects of the Sufi Message

The Message

Relationship Between Murshid and Mureed

Personalities of the Servants of God

Our Efforts in Constructing

Teaching Given by Murshid to his Mureeds

Ways of Receiving the Message

The Path of Attainment

Interest and Indifference

The Call from Above

The Message

Unlearning

Spiritual and Religious Movements

Peculiarity of the Great Masters

Abraham, Moses and Muhammad

Four Questions

The Spreading of the Message

Jelal-ud-din Rumi

Peculiarities of the Six Great Religions

Belief and Faith

"Superhuman" and Hierarchy

Faith and Doubt

Divine Guidance

The Prophetic Life

There are two Kinds Among the Souls

The Messenger

The Message Which has Come in all Ages

The Sufi Message

The Message

Questions Concerning the Message

The Inner School

The Duty of Happiness

Five Things Necessary for a Student

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

Buddhism

Hinduism

Zoroastrianism

Judaism

Christianity

Islam

The Message

The Message Papers

Peculiarities of the Six Great Religions

Christianity

And when we come to Jesus Christ, it was pure mysticism, a mysticism of love: to judge no one, to forgive everyone, to develop that quality in oneself that all without being commanded come to you; to get above what one calls the worldly knowledge and come to that knowledge which instead of making you clever makes you innocent. The master was not only innocent in his thought and word and in his atmosphere, but those inspired by him also reached that stage of innocence which is the sign of the saintly spirit.

Self-sacrifice was the central theme. And if you read the Beatitudes from beginning to end and you begin to practice any of them or all of them, you will find it is nothing but self-sacrifice, self-denial, erasing the self, while cultivating the thought of gentleness, the thought of meekness, the thought of mildness. All this shows to us that his mission was to melt the hearts from grossness, from denseness, from hardness, to soften them, to make them refined, to have them enlightened, to liberate them. His coming and going was the example that a soul is brought here to do something and then is called back. His lesson was not the lesson of mystery, yet in his lesson there was every mystery, all mystery.

The lesson which he gave was, "Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all will be added unto you."

This shows that by studying this, and by studying that, and by striving for this, and by striving for that, you get nowhere. There is only one thing and that is the first thing, the principal thing, and the last thing, and that is God.

And in his simple statement he has said the final word, and that was, "Be ye perfect as your Father in heaven is perfect."

That is the last word. Nothing more can be said in metaphysics or philosophy than this: that the aim is perfection and that you can reach that perfection which is the perfection of the Father in heaven if you attempt it, if you try for it.

Jesus Christ taught the theory of dependence on God by giving the example of the lilies. Make God living and depend upon Him for all you need and He will provide your needs. Mankind has forgotten that lesson in its earthly strife. But at the same time, whenever man comes to that lesson he will begin to find the phenomena of life: that no sooner do we give over our responsibility to God than God begins to feel responsible for us.

It is this hint of the master that Sa'adi has interpreted in The Rose Garden, where he says, "Karsaze kare man man", ("The Creator is busy doing what I wish, but my anxiety about it is my natural illness, I cannot help it").

Sa'adi was humorous, and he has interpreted most of the wonderful sayings of the master in a most beautiful language.

"Yes," people very often ask, "What Jesus Christ has taught leads one to spirituality no doubt, but how can we follow it and live it in this material world?" There is a natural leaning one has towards the world, it should not be taught. We should not be taught how to be practical, we are already practical. We need not be told how to be clever, we are already clever. We need not be instructed or advised to fight with our enemy, we are already inclined to it. If Jesus Christ did not teach it, it was only in order to make a balance. We should hear something else, think of something else, feel something else than what we are naturally inclined to, in order to provide a balance.