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. The Philosophy of Love

2. Shirin and Farhad

3. Yusuf and Zuleikha

4. The Moral of Love

5. Leila and Majun

6. Divine Love

Sub-Heading

-ALL-

All virtues are made of love

Continuing to Love

Selfish Love

The Part of the Lover

Sins Against Love

The Service of Love

Separation

The Pain of Love

Signs of the Lover

The Sorrow of the Lover

Images of the Nature of Love

The Joy of the Lover

Two Objects of Love

Love Creates Love

Vol. 5, Love, Human and Divine

4. The Moral of Love

Separation

Separation 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.

  • Indra has its origin in the word Andar or Antar, which means inner, the innermost spirit, which man idealizes as God the Almighty.
  • The Peris are the souls that He created out of His own Being, whose dance in His praise, in His knowledge, in His presence, is the only thing He wants of them.
  • The black Deva is the symbol of darkness, which in Sanskrit is called Tamas, under which the soul has built for itself house of earthly elements, the physical body. God has created the world out of darkness.
  • Sabz means green, which is symbolical of water, the first element that formed substance, matter in other words.
  • Sabzpari means a soul drawn to the material body.
  • When the soul involves itself in the earthly body, which Gulfam signifies, then the soul involved in the body becomes absorbed in earthly experiences, its love on earth, its joy on earth, and its comfort on earth.

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.