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 Bogey-Man

THE LIVING DEAD

UNA

Amin, the Faithful Trustee

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

CHARACTERS OF THE PLAY

SCENE ONE

Scene Two

Scene Three

Scene Four

Vol. 12, Four Plays

UNA

Scene Two

Mother's bedroom. Mother ill in bed. Una enters, embraces her mother.

Una. Dear Mother, I was sorry to hear that you don't feel well. No sooner had Father left the studio than I hurried to see how you were. As much as I love my art, I do not wish to be away from home, Mother dear, when you are not well.

Mother. Dear Girl, with us old people there is always something wrong; one moment we feel well, the next moment we don't. What worries me is to see you going only in one direction. The art to which you are so devoted is to us a foreign word. For you know, however poor we may be in our family, there is no such thing known among us as an artist.

Una. Dear Mother, it is not that I love art in order to become an artist. I don't want to become anything; it is beauty that I love.

Mother. My simple child, beauty is to be seen in nature; you need not go to art in order to see beauty. Besides, as they say: 'The country is made by God, the town is made by man.'

Una. Dear Mother, I have always felt that what is not completed in nature is finished in art by the Master of all things. The hand of the artist is guided by the eyes unseen.

Mother. But what do you gain by devoting all your time to something in which you don't wish to make your career? You must think of the future, my dear girl!

Una. Mother dear, we all make our future with whatever we do. But it is the future that will tell what we made. Life to me is the making of something; it only depends what we make. We each make something; it is we who make our highest ideal.

Mother. What do you mean by ideal, my dear child? There is no such thing, my darling girl. Ideal is not to be found in this world. You are yet too young, my darling, to know this. When we were young, we thought also of ideals, but alas, in the end we found that it was only a word.

Una. You are right, Mother, there is never an ideal to be found under the sun, if we do not make it. It is we who, out of our own selves, give all that the ideal wants for it to become an ideal. What we make remains; what we are is destroyed.

Rumi says, in his Mathnawi (I, 30),
Beloved is all in all, the lover only veils Him;
Beloved is all that lives, the lover a dead thing.
Rumi, Mathnawi I, 30

One creates a heart out of a rock; another turns a heart into a rock.

Mother. Say simple things, my dear girl. This is all confusing to me; what your mother wants is your welfare, your happiness. This is all we wish for you, I and your father both.

(Enter Father.)

Father. Are you here, Una? Get ready to go to the ball. Have you forgotten you were invited to go to Mrs. Wilkins' house?

Una. I had quite forgotten, Father. Thank you for reminding me. I'll just go and get ready. (She embraces her mother and departs.)

Curtain