The Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan
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Volume SayingsSocial GathekasReligious GathekasThe Message PapersThe Healing PapersVol. 1, The Way of IlluminationVol. 1, The Inner LifeVol. 1, The Soul, Whence And Whither?Vol. 1, The Purpose of LifeVol. 2, The Mysticism of Sound and MusicVol. 2, The Mysticism of SoundVol. 2, Cosmic LanguageVol. 2, The Power of the WordVol. 3, EducationVol. 3, Life's Creative Forces: Rasa ShastraVol. 3, Character and PersonalityVol. 4, Healing And The Mind WorldVol. 4, Mental PurificationVol. 4, The Mind-WorldVol. 5, A Sufi Message Of Spiritual LibertyVol. 5, Aqibat, Life After DeathVol. 5, The Phenomenon of the SoulVol. 5, Love, Human and DivineVol. 5, Pearls from the Ocean UnseenVol. 5, Metaphysics, The Experience of the Soul Through the Different Planes of ExistenceVol. 6, The Alchemy of HappinessVol. 7, In an Eastern Rose GardenVol. 8, Health and Order of Body and MindVol. 8, The Privilege of Being HumanVol. 8a, Sufi TeachingsVol. 9, The Unity of Religious IdealsVol. 10, Sufi MysticismVol. 10, The Path of Initiation and DiscipleshipVol. 10, Sufi PoetryVol. 10, Art: Yesterday, Today, and TomorrowVol. 10, The Problem of the DayVol. 11, PhilosophyVol. 11, PsychologyVol. 11, Mysticism in LifeVol. 12, The Vision of God and ManVol. 12, Confessions: Autobiographical Essays of Hazat Inayat KhanVol. 12, Four PlaysVol. 13, GathasVol. 14, The Smiling ForeheadBy DateTHE SUPPLEMENTARY PAPERS | Heading 1. The Philosophy of Love2. Shirin and Farhad3. Yusuf and Zuleikha4. The Moral of Love5. Leila and Majun6. Divine Love |
Sub-Heading -ALL-All virtues are made of loveContinuing to LoveSelfish LoveThe Part of the LoverSins Against LoveThe Service of LoveSeparationThe Pain of LoveSigns of the LoverThe Sorrow of the LoverImages of the Nature of LoveThe Joy of the LoverTwo Objects of LoveLove Creates Love |
Vol. 5, Love, Human and Divine4. The Moral of LoveSeparationSeparation is needed according to nature's law, although it is most painful. Where there are two hearts that are united in love, separation awaits them. Separation must be accepted. A Persian poet says, "If I had known what pain separation gives in love I would never have allowed the light of love to be kindled in my heart." God is jealous, as the Japanese say, of any other besides Himself. Whoever it may be that you love, it is this spirit of God in nature that separates sooner or later. This idea is symbolically expressed in an Indian story called Indra Sabha. A fairy, Sabzpari, who was one of the dancers of the court of Indra, the King of Heaven, was attracted by Prince Gulfam, a man on earth, while she was flying over his palace. Her servant, the black Deva, carried Gulfam at her desire from earth to heaven. Gulfam was at first most unhappy in the strange place, but then the love of Sabzpari attracted him so much that he lived in her love. Sabzpari had to be at the court of Indra every night to dance and entertain him, and as, in the love of Gulfam, she was absent a few times, everyone at the court wondered why she was not there. But her going every night to the court of Indra made Gulfam suspect that perhaps there might be someone else who was entertained by Sabzpari's charms. He asked her about this many times, and every time she refused to tell him, until he became vexed and Sabzpari thought she could not hide it from him any longer. On hearing her explanation Gulfam requested her to take him to the court of Indra. She said, "No man has ever been there, no man can ever go there, and if Indra should see thee it will at once end our sweet days of love and happiness. We shall surely be separated, and I know not what he will not do to thee." Gulfam said, "No. It is a woman's tale. Thou art perhaps in love with some Deva, and wishest to hide it by telling me a story." She was most unhappy, finding herself in a helpless situation. Under the spell of the agony that his arrow-like words had produced in her heart she consented, without thinking, to take Gulfam to the court of Indra, saying to herself, "What will be, will be." Sabzpari took him to the court, hiding him behind the folds of her garment and wings which spread about her. The red Deva sensed the presence of a man in the court, and, looking all around, he found that Sabzpari was dancing most skillfully before Indra, hiding Gulfam behind her. He humbly brought him before Indra, the Lord of the Heavens, who was sitting on a throne with a glass of wine in his hand, his eyes red with the wine and his high being full of glory and grandeur. When Indra saw that a man had been brought into the apex of the heavens he rose in great wrath and said to Sabzpari, "O shameless one, how darest thou bring a man into the summit of the heavens, where no earthly creature has ever been allowed to come?" The red Deva said, "It is her love for this earthly creature, my Lord, that has turned her faithless to the heavenly crown and made her fail in her duty at the supreme court of your Majesty.' Sabzpari said to Gulfam, "Seest thou, my darling beloved, what has befallen us through thy insistence?" Indra said, "Separate them at once, that they may no more speak a word to one another. Throw him back into the depths of the earth, and tear her wings off and keep her captive until the love of Gulfam is wiped from her heart. Then purify the polluted one from the five elements. Then only can she come again, if she be allowed by our favor, forgiveness, and mercy." The symbolism of this story tells us of the jealous God.
As the duty of the soul is forgotten by it, it being in the earthly pursuit, the red Deva, the power of destruction, who is constantly busy causing all change in nature by his power of destruction, then causes separation, death being the separation of body and soul. Still the soul, the dweller of the heavens, becomes wingless by the curse of the supreme Spirit and inclines earthward until it is purified from the five elements that constitute the lower world. "Unless a man be born again of water and of the spirit, he shall in no wise enter into the kingdom of God", one reads in the Bible. It is only then that the soul rises above all earthly helpfulness and dances for ever before the most high Indra, the Lord of lords. |