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. Our Physical Constitution

2. The Experience of the Soul

3. The Destiny of the Soul

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

The Journey to the Goal (1)

The Journey to the Goal (2)

The Purpose of Life

Self-realization

The Divine Light

The Soul

The Destiny of the Soul

The Connection of the Soul with the Mind and the Body

The Radiance of the Soul (1)

The Radiance of the Soul (2)

Vol. 5, Metaphysics, The Experience of the Soul Through the Different Planes of Existence

3. The Destiny of the Soul

The Journey to the Goal (2)

Though one sees different desires in different people, yet when one studies them keenly one finds they are all different paths leading to one common goal. When one realizes this one's accusations, complaints, and grudges cease at once. However, there is also a natural tendency in man to find the easiest and quickest path to reach the desired goal, and there is also the tendency to share his pleasure, happiness, or comfort with others, and it is this that prompted the prophets and reformers to help mankind on its journey to the goal. Those that follow in their footsteps, forgetting that moral, drag people by the neck to make them follow them, and this has brought about the degeneration of religions.

Christ said, "In my Father's house are many mansions." The Prophet Mohammed has said, "Every soul has its peculiar religion"; and there is a Sanskrit saying, which perhaps deludes those who do not understand it, but which yet means the same thing: "As many souls as there are, so many gods are there."

The Sufi, therefore, never troubles which path anybody takes, Islam or Kafir; nor does he worry which way anyone journeys, the way of evil or of righteousness. For every way to him seems leading to the goal, one sooner and one later, one with difficulty, one with ease. But those who walk with him willingly, trusting in his comradeship, are his mureeds and call him murshid, and he guides them, not necessarily through the same path he has chosen for himself, but through the path best suited to them.

In reality the goal is already there where the journey begins. It is a journey in name; it is a goal in the beginning and in the end. It is absurd to say, "How wicked I am..." or "How undeveloped I am for reaching the destination !" or to think, "How many lives will it take, before I shall be ready to arrive at the goal?"

The Sufi says, "If you have courage and if you have sense, come forward. If now you are on earth, your next step will be heaven." The Sufi thinks, "From mortality to immortality I will turn as quickly and as easily as I change sides in sleep."