The Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan

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One may think: "Where is it? What is it? Where is it to be found?" The answer is: What little man knows about himself is only about his body. If you tell a man to point out where he is, he will point out: this arm, this hand, this body. He knows little further than that. There are many who, if asked: "Where is it in your body that you think?", will say: "Thinking? In my brain." They limit themselves to that little physical region which is called body, thus making themselves smaller than what they really are. The reality is that man is one individual with two ends, just like one line with two ends. If you look at the ends, it is two; if you look at the line, it is one. One end of the line is limited, it is limitedness; the other end of the line is unlimited. One end is man, the other end is God. Man forgets this end, and knows only that end of which he is conscious, and it is the consciousness of limitedness which makes him more limited. Otherwise he would have a greater scope for approaching that Unlimited which is within himself, which is only the other end of the same line, the line which he calls, or which he considers to be, himself. When a mystic speaks of self knowledge this does not mean knowing: how old I am, or how good I am, or how bad I am, or how right or wrong I am. It means knowing the other part of one's being, that deeper, subtler aspect of one's being. It is upon the knowledge of that being that the fulfillment of life depends.


 
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