The Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
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But what is man? Is man a physical being, or is there something else called man? If the physical being is man, then what of the elephant, who is twenty times bigger? Then the elephant would never have listened for one moment to what man says, and yet when he says, "Sit down", the elephant sits down; "Stand", and he stands; "Walk", and he walks. At the same time the elephant is conscious of his heavy body, and the strength that he has. Then not only the elephant, but the tiger and the lion--the kings of the forest as they call them in the East--we can see them mastered in the circus by one man. Although these most brutal animals keep killing other animals, and live by the terror they evoke, so conscious are they of their strength, yet man has mastered them. Evidently there is something hidden in man. The word man means mind, and when the time came for mind to develop, man came into being; the physical being had been developed as long as the animal being. |