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-

The Message Papers

Ways of Receiving the Message

August 4, 1925

My Blessed Mureeds,

There are two ways of receiving the divine Message: receiving from the heart, and receiving through the head. The Message received through the head will whirl around the head, till the wind of reason rises and blows it off. The Message that is received into the heart will settle in the heart, will remain in the depth of the heart, out of which virtues, morals, merits, and inspirations, besides the strength and power will come. It is easy to perceive the Message through the head. One has only to give a thought to it. And it is difficult to receive the Message into the heart, because one has to prepare the heart first to receive it.

There is a saying of the mystics that spiritual things, the spiritual teachings, can be given from the heart, can be taken into the heart. That is what the sign of the Sufi Movement denotes. It requires a certain preparation to make the heart a receptacle of the Message. By concentration, by contemplation, and by meditation, the heart is purified, enlarged, and made into a receptacle of the Message. Therefore it is that among many thousand mureeds, if you begin to take the real benefit of the Message, although others are benefitted in another way, the full benefit of the Message is received by knowing how to take the Message.

And now coming to the question: what are the principal things that the Message must give to people?

  • The first principal thing is to understand the essence of religion and to practice outwardly, by putting in a universal form, which are Universal Worships.

  • The next is practicing the love and sympathy which one has cultivated through devotion in one's practical life, regarding pleasure and displeasure of our fellowmen, and being gentle, kind, tolerant, and patient to them, rendering any service we can render. And this idea is represented by our Brotherhood activity.

  • To dive deep into the self and to rise as high as the consciousness can rise; to widen one's horizon, making it larger than the universe; to realize the meaning of God: it is this that the Sufi Order, our esoteric school, represents.

If a mureed says, "One activity of the Sufi Message appeals to me and the other does not appeal to me, " he does not yet understand that all these three activities -- the Universal Worship, the Brotherhood, and the esoteric school, the Sufi Order -- all three help one to perfection.

God Bless You.