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-

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

6. The Character of the Beloved

In Persian poetry a certain characteristic called Shukhi is given to the beloved woman. The charm which the Persian poet describes by Shukhi is more usually found in woman than in man, although it is possible that many women would consider it a characteristic of the men whom they love. This character of the beloved can scarcely be called beautiful, although it is alluring. Its chief property is heedlessness, or a kind of careless independence that is touched with insolence.

Changeable, she shows and yet she does not show herself; quick to laugh, she is quick to seize upon the amusing or ridiculous side of things; and yet she herself is sensitive to ridicule and to attentions; trying very daintily to test just how deep her lover's feeling for her has gone.

Selfish and amiable, she responds and yet refuses to respond; light-hearted and talkative, mocking and perpetually amused, though ready to take offence, she is a constant source of surprise to her lover, who feels he must ever be on the alert if he would really hold her; and too, that he must move gently, lest he should injure a being that seems to him so much gayer and lighter, so much weaker and softer, so much more delicate and airy and graceful than he knows himself to be.

This beloved is life to her lover; and thereby in truth lies the secret of her attraction for him. She is always fluttering outside the reach of his comprehension. Her sunshine and laughter invigorate; her mockery and ridicule, her thousand demands are incentives; even her light-hearted insolence is a spur to prompt him to efforts in all kinds of directions, where otherwise he would never have ventured.

But what reason does he give to himself for his love? He will give a hundred reasons, and yet be puzzled to give even one that is sufficient. He despairs of making her understand the depth of his feeling; he imagines himself ill and dying, and her answer when the news is brought to her:

She lightly laughed; "And so is Mazhar dead? Alas, poor helpless one! I knew not, I, what was his trouble." Then again she said: "I did not think him ill enough to die."

Or the lover imagines himself dead and in his grave; and he pictures her, as she lightly steps over the grass that covers him, drawing her draperies closely round her lest perchance he should stretch up his hands and touch them. And yet love, like the fire, dies out unless it is fed with fuel; and the lover in his despair recognizes this too, and blames her for giving the encouragement that he desires. She represents in herself the evanescence of joy, the swift passing of laughter, the difficulty of holding the moment of beauty.

The heart's unending malady is she, And she herself the only remedy.