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

Unity and Uniformity

Religion

The Sufi's Religion

The Aspects of Religion

How to Attain to Truth by Religion

Five Desires Answered by Religion

Law

Aspects of the Law of Religion

Prayer

The Effect of Prayer

The God Ideal

The Spiritual Hierarchy

The Master, the Saint, the Prophet

Prophets and Religions

The Symbology of Religious Ideas

The Message and the Messenger

Sufism

The Spirit of Sufism

The Sufi's Aim in Life

The Ideal of the Sufi

The Sufi Movement

The Universal Worship

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

God is Love

Two Points of View

The Kingship of God

Belief in God

The Existence God

Conceptions of God

Many Gods

The Personality of God

The Realization of God

Creator, Sustainer, Judge, Forgiver

The Only King

The Birth of God

Three Steps

God the Infinite

God's Dealings with Us

Dependence Upon God

Divine Grace

The Will, Human and Divine

Making God Intelligible

Man's Relation to God

Divine Manner

Vol. 9, The Unity of Religious Ideals

The God Ideal

The Birth of God

The reason why the soul seeks for the God-Ideal is that it is dissatisfied with all that momentarily satisfies it. All beauty, goodness and greatness which man attributes to God is something he admires and seeks through life. He admires these things in others, and strives to attain them for himself; and when, at the end of examination, he finds that all that he touches as good, great, or beautiful falls short of that perfection which is his soul's seeking, he then raises his eyes towards the sky and seeks for the One Who has beauty, goodness, and greatness, which is God. The one who does not seek for God, he has, in the end of his journey of illusion, a disappointment, for through the whole journey he did not find the perfection of beauty, goodness, and greatness on the earth, and he neither believed nor expected to meet such an ideal in heaven. All disappointments, which are the natural outcome of this life of illusion, disappear when once a person has touched the God-Ideal, for what one seeks after in life, one finds in God.

Now the question is: all beauty, goodness and greatness, however small and limited, can be found on the earth, but where can the same be found in the Perfection called God? This may be answered that what is first necessary is the belief that there is such a Being as God, in Whom goodness, beauty, and greatness are perfect. In the beginning it will seem nothing but a belief; but in time, if the belief is kept in sincerity and faith, that belief will become like the egg of the phoenix, out of which the magic bird is born.

It is the birth of God which is the birth of the soul. Every soul seeks for happiness, and after running after all objects which, for the moment, seem to give happiness, finds out that nowhere is there perfect happiness except in God. This happiness cannot come by merely believing in God.

Believing is a process. By this process the God within is awakened and made living. It is the living of God which gives happiness. When one sees the injustice, the falsehood, the unfriendliness of human nature, and to what degree this nature develops, and that it culminates in tyranny of which individuals and the multitude become victims, there seems to be only one Source, and that is the center of the whole life, which is God, in Whom there is the place of safety from it all, and the source of peace, which is the longing of every soul.