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

Health

Physical Condition

Physical Culture

Control of the Body

Balance

Balance in Solitude

Balance in Greatness

Life's Mechanism

Harmony

Mastery

Self-Mastery

Self-Discipline

A Question about Fasting

Self-Control

Physical Control

Questions about Vaccination and Inoculation

Breath

The Mystery of Breath

The Science of Breath

The Philosophy of Breath

The Control of the Breath

The Control of the Breath

The Power of Silence

A Question about Feelings

The Control of the Mind

The Mystery of Sleep

Five Stages of Consciousness

Dreams

Dreams are of Three Kinds

Spiritual Healing

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

Everyday Practice

1. Position

2. Eating and Drinking

3. Thinking and Forgetting

4. Free of the Environment

Complaints Cease

Mastery Over One's Kingdom

Vol. 8, Health and Order of Body and Mind

Self-Discipline

4. Free of the Environment

After one has practiced these three aspects of discipline, one is able to arrive at the fourth aspect which is greater; it is greater, because in this way one arrives at spiritual experience. That discipline intends to free one's consciousness from one's environment. This is the experience of the adepts who have worked at it for a long time in order to achieve it. In the old schools of the Sufis, and even to-day, there is the custom that, when they arrive in the room of meditation, or when they go out of it, one of them is there to suggest this idea in words. He says, "Solitude in the crowd", which means: when you are in the midst of the crowd, even then you can hold your tranquillity, your peace; you are not disturbed by the environments. It is this which enables one to live in the midst of the world and yet progress spiritually. It takes away that necessity which compelled many souls in ancient times to go to the wilderness in order to develop spiritually.

It is difficult no doubt, yet at the same time it is simple and in a small way everyone experiences it, but automatically. A person engaged in something that interests him most or that occupies his mind altogether, often is not conscious of his environment. A poet, a writer, a composer, a thinker, when he is entirely absorbed in something he does, is for that moment not conscious of his environment. It happens very often that one is so absorbed in something one is doing or thinking about, that one is not conscious of one's own body or one's own self. Only that which a person is conscious of, that alone, exists, not even his self. This is the stage which is termed by Sufis fana. The word nirvana, of which so much has been spoken, is simply to be understood in this manner: it is only an experience of consciousness. In other words it is freedom of the soul, it is being able to arrive at a stage where one is not thinking about oneself, where one is not thinking about environments that surround one.

One might ask: is this not dangerous in any way? And many may think so. But I should say: everything is dangerous in this world. If we think of it, there could be a danger every moment: in eating, in drinking, in going out and coming in. It is dangerous to go into the water, but when you can swim, that acts against it. It is even dangerous to walk in the street, but if you can walk and run, that acts against it. It is in being able to meditate and to raise the consciousness above environments that lies the secret of spiritual development.