Wealth has always proved to be the central object in the life of the world, an object towards which every mind is naturally attracted and which can solve most of the problems of life. However earthly they may seem, all things become good or bad by their use or abuse. In all ages man has made coins of gold, and there man proves again his soul's longing for light, for gold is the color of light and among metals gold reflects the light most.

In the Qur'an it is said, "All that we have created on earth and in heaven is for thy use", which means: not for you to fear it or to hate it or to renounce it, but to use it. It is easy for the poor to ridicule wealth and the wealthy, but once the poor man possesses wealth then the question is whether he holds it or throws it away.

We realize from this that it is important that man should learn first in his life the right use of wealth. This problem can be solved by first considering the question from all points of view, from the moral as well as from the psychological, and also from the social and political point of view: in what way wealth can be rightly acquired. The present chaotic state of the whole world is caused by the lack of this particular knowledge. Today man only knows one thing: he needs money, he must acquire money, and if he has money he must hold on to it. But still the question remains: why does he need money, how can he acquire money, and for what purpose shall he acquire it? Through lack of this knowledge both rich and poor are at a loss.

The rich everywhere are anxious to hold what they have and are nervous; for if conditions go on as they are now, what will happen tomorrow? Their heart is not at rest, even with money locked up in their safe.
The moneyless, striving every moment of their life to possess all that the wealthy have got, win it perhaps at the cost of the destruction of a nation or a race, of a moral code, or of culture and beauty and goodness. They only think of how to achieve this and how to take the wealth away from those who now possess it, but not how far they are justified in having the wealth which belongs to another, nor what use they will make of this wealth.

This fight for life has so blinded humanity today that man is intoxicated in the struggle of life. He has no time to think of anything else, yet a thorough study of the problem from all points of view is the first thing necessary, and it can be the greatest help in living a better life and in doing good to one's fellowmen.

Money being the principal thing for which man toils, he should know the best way to acquire it. He must first judge his talent, his capability, his art, profession, or work. He must judge fairly, without a personal thought, what he really deserves for what he does. Everyone is blind to this. A person only thinks of what another man earns, how very rich another person is, and how good it would be if he were in his place. Today man's cry for democracy is in order to pull down another man from his high place, instead of taking enough trouble to rise to high places by his own efforts and with the justification in his own conscience of deserving that place.

Whatever man earns in life, and however great and rich he becomes through it, without the development of the sense of justice he is like a blind man. Externally a wealthy man seems enviable, but in point of fact, if one only knew his true condition, one would not envy his circumstances for a moment, for they not only blind him but blind those who surround him too; he has not only enemies among his adversaries, but he has enemies among his dearest friends. He may have an enemy in his brother or sister, in his wife or child. It is not their fault; it is that wealth is blinding.

When a man develops his qualification, his merit, his talent, and when by that right he earns his living, he is quite justified in demanding what he really deserves. But man cannot be very just when there arises the question of self; therefore he must also be open to compare his idea of his qualifications with the opinion of others, and he should be ready to recognize the superiority of someone else's qualifications.

Today man, blinded by the thought of competition and rivalry, ignores the superiority of talent, merit, art, or culture in another person.

In business the honor of the word is the first lesson that every business man should learn. Honor in business is the first commercial virtue. At the same time, to fight avarice is the duty of every business man, and also to think of the advantage of both sides, of himself and of his customer. In modern trade, externally there is little bargaining, but the bargaining spirit exists inwardly. Business today is a battle between buyer and seller, the one wanting to succeed at the expense of the other. Therefore it is not a business; it is a battle, and a battle mostly results in destruction. Now, after all the profiteering during the war years, is there peace in the commercial world? Every business man is crying out with grievances, no matter to what country he may belong. This shows that in reality it is the profit of each which is the profit of all. Whether in art, industry, labor, the professions, or commerce, one thing must be kept in view, and that is consideration for others, with an eye open for justice and fairness.

Today there is great conflict between capital and labor.

The capitalists wish labor to be under their control and to work for their profit, so that they depend solely upon the power of capital.
This spirit of selfishness, reacting upon the mind of the workman, revolts against the profit that the capitalist makes.

The consequence is that this selfishness on both sides causes trade to dwindle. On one side the war has destroyed lives and wealth and food that nature had supplied for humanity, while the remaining destruction is caused by this dwindling. If labor absorbs all the capital, then the capital is in the hands of labor; however, the evolution of life in every direction, social, educational, moral, or religious, mostly depends on the mentality of those who are well off.

There is a side issue of the present state of affairs which is its natural consequence, and that is the difference between the circumstances of a man who works with his hands and those of one who works with his head. Today, as conditions are, an intellectual man has the greatest struggle to live, and if they continue thus it will mean the ruination of the intellect in general, and instead of evolving the world will naturally go backward. The answer to the question whether the work of the hands deserves more wages than the work of the head, depends on whether the hand rules the mind or the mind rules the hand. Just now man is going from bad to worse. Doctors, professors, thinkers, teachers, poets and learned people have hardly enough money to live on, as labor demands higher wages than intellect does. Unions of workmen have spread all over the world, and in this way the conflict between the intellectual and the labor world becomes sharper every day.

Now the question is, what can the solution of this problem be? Can the workman be at the same time a capitalist? Can a man who works with his hands not be a thinker at the same time? The answer will be: not necessarily, since for everything certain conditions are necessary. If the workman is a capitalist he is no longer a workman. While working, if he is going over his accounts in his mind he will spoil his work. Can a man of action be a man of thought at the same time? This is difficult too. Can a man be running after trains and buses and write poetry at the same time? For poetry he wants tranquillity of mind, comfort, ease. What is possible is this one thing: that the workman should have every opportunity to become a capitalist. In this way he could know both: how to be a workman and how to be a capitalist. The man who works with his hands should have the opportunity to develop intellectually. Every working man should be given a chance, so that if he has the faculty in him to become a thinking man he may grow up to become a thinking man, and so that he will not die at his work.

There are two methods of progress, one right and the other wrong. The right way is to give equal opportunity to each to rise to his highest ideal; and the wrong way is when a man, revolted by present conditions, pulls down another who seems to him on any kind of eminence in the life of the world, so as to bring everyone down to the same level. This latter idea of equality can be pictured as a piano of which the strings are loosened to the same tone, perhaps of its lowest key. When each key sounds the same note, it cannot be a piano any more.

The present tendency of man seems to be to try to pull another down instead of himself rising to the place where the other is. It takes a long time to build, but it takes only a moment to destroy a thing. It is the rising to the height which is difficult; it is not difficult to walk down the slope. Man today seems to seek the way of least resistance; to strive to rise needs patience and perseverance. Thus in order to become equal with others he wants to pull the others down to his own level.

There is a great deal of talk going on in the world just now about communism. Yet if communism is devoid of a spiritual ideal, it could be only a change of condition on the surface. The extreme principles which man wishes to introduce in the form of communism may have the effect of destroying individual beauty and culture. There is more uniformity to be seen in the West than in the East. No doubt it has worked to the great advantage of the West, but at the sacrifice of individual progress; no thoughtful person can deny this. Great personages in any country of the East or West have become so by their individualistic progress, and it is the law of uniformity which hampers the progress of an individual. It also hampers the progress of art in all its forms, in architecture, in music, in poetry; for the majority pulls the minority back from progress. Under present conditions the man above is enjoying his place, and he tries in every way to prevent others from rising to his pedestal. The man who stands below is therefore waiting for every opportunity to pull him down.

A world where such a conflict exists between classes cannot promise harmony, order, and peace; and a definite change is necessary in the attitude of both classes. The struggle between the higher and the middle class is a story of the past; it hardly exists any more. Today's conflict is between what is called the intellectual man and the working man. The solution to this problem is that every community should provide adequately for the five principal needs of every individual: food, clothes, a roof, education, and medicine. It is intolerable to think that many are dying without food and clothes. If humanity would open its eyes to the most critical moment that has ever come to the world, the solution of this problem would become its first task.

Now the question is, how can this be arranged? It might be conveniently provided if only those who have an income higher than what is necessary to live comfortably, would give half of this to the community; and if those who leave their property to their children would leave half of this property for the benefit of the community. Otherwise if this question is not considered, the present revolt of the average man will end in violence and the destruction of art, morals, religion, beauty, and culture.

When religion decays, when materialism reigns, and when commercialism pervades all the world, it is then that man overlooks the fact of how he acquires his wealth, and his only object is to become wealthy. It is then that all manner of unhappiness breeds in the multitude and among individuals. Man is not only a child in his childhood, but he remains a child in many things all through life. There are things that man can digest, and there are things that he cannot digest; it depends from what source they come. The Prophet calls wealth that can be digested Halal, and the wealth that cannot be digested he calls Hararn. It is not the particular aspect of wealth that is digestible or indigestible, it is the attitude with which man has acquired it. It makes a great difference whether one acquires it honestly or dishonestly, honorably or dishonorably, by force or by work.

Money rightfully earned must certainly bring peace, but money earned by causing pain to another, by ruining the life of another, by dishonesty or by injustice, man cannot digest. It is not a question of having wealth; it is a question of living happily with wealth. Today the average man has no education of that kind. He toils through the day and looks for his wages in the evening. Perhaps he goes to church once a week, but this education still remains to be given. The man with wealth has so many things with which to occupy his life that he hardly thinks about these things. Yet the life of a wealthy person is perhaps more unhappy than that of a working man. At the root of this whole question a psychological secret lies hidden: how did one earn one's wealth?

Now coming to the use of wealth, there is a door to man's heart; it is either closed or open. When he holds a thing and says, "This is mine", he closes the door to his heart; but when he shares his goods with others and says, "This is yours as well as mine", this opens his heart. We must learn consideration for others, it does not matter whether they are rich or poor. We may have only one slice of bread, but when there is another sitting by our side we share that slice with him. By doing this, even if our bodily appetite remains unsatisfied, our heart is filled with joy to think that we shared our happiness with another. It is this spirit which is necessary just now to change the condition of the world, not political and commercial disputes. We must be awakened to the main truth, that the happiness and peace of each can only be the happiness and peace of all.

'The one who earned and used what he has earned, has gained. The one who earned and collected, and departed, has lost," says Sa'di. We learn from this that it is not only important to earn money, it is of greater importance to know how to use it. There are many in this world who possess wealth and yet are unhappy; they cannot profit by it themselves, nor can they benefit anyone else. The one who earns money and keeps it in the safe is not the possessor of that money; he is the doorkeeper of his treasure.

There are four different ways of spending money: by extravagance, by profiteering, by using it, and by saving it. No one can judge another man for his way of using his money, but everyone can judge himself for the method he employs in using what money he possesses. It is not necessary for a man to be rich in order to show these tendencies; even a poor man can be extravagant.

Extravagance has three forms.
- One is caused by ignorance: a simple man who does not know the value of money spends his pearls for pebbles.
- Another form of extravagance is when a man who is in charge of another person's money spends it without any qualms; he thinks that anyhow it is not his property.
- The third form of extravagance occurs when a man has no control over his will and is attracted by anything that appeals to his weakness; he then spends more than he should. But the one who is master over his will, who is a lover of beauty and generous of heart, even if he spent his last penny for his ideal he cannot be called extravagant, for he is the master. He who is not able to spend what he possesses is the servant of his wealth; he does not know life.
When a person demands more than the things he possesses are worth, when he wants to make more profit than he is really justified in making, when he strays away from fairness in his business dealings, that is profiteering. Although for the moment it may seem a profit, yet sooner or later it must end in a loss. That is because selfishness and injustice are plagues, and they are likely to spread. Thus a man who makes an excessive profit from one person will then be brought in contact with someone else who is cleverer than he, and who will try to make a still larger profit from him. This is not only a theory; it is the normal condition nowadays. The present state of trade and business is working more or less to the disadvantage of every nation.
The normal way of using money is to understand life's needs and necessities, and to preserve a right proportion between the earning and spending of money. One thing should always be kept in mind, and that is the thought that one does not exist alone; the world is beside one. Of course everybody is not in a position to help the world, but to think about it even for a few moments every day can awaken the spirit of beneficence, which is generally asleep in the heart of man.

No doubt charity begins at home. One's first duty is to consider those who depend upon one. He who has no consideration for those who depend upon him, while perhaps being generous to others, certainly lacks a great virtue in life. Surely, as it is taught in the Bible, one's neighbor should be considered. Neighbor means friend, relative, fellow-countryman; and as long as one does not stop at this but extends one's consideration still further and reaches humanity, then there is no doubt that one progresses in life, in whatever condition one may be.
Saving certainly is a consideration, but there is a limit to it. In some cases saving is wise, but in many other cases it is avarice. It is a fact that the great gifts given to charitable works in the world mostly come from those who were wise enough to save. It depends whether one saves with a good intention, or only from a tendency to save. This tendency comes from consideration for tomorrow. From the practical point of view this consideration is necessary, and the philosophy of Omar Khayyam, to forget about tomorrow, only means to give up the extra worry and anxiety about tomorrow, as one also learns from the teachings of Christ, where he points to the lilies of the field. This teaching should not make a man careless, especially in the conditions of life today, but it should relieve a man who has nothing to save from the worry and anxiety about tomorrow.

The Mystery of Telepathy

To some, telepathy is a mysterious phenomenon; but to those who understand it, it is as easy and natural as ordinary conversation in our everyday life. Everyone can understand that thoughts have existence, and many scientists nowadays perceive that thoughts are made of vibrations, which mystics and sages have understood throughout the ages.

As the physical body is made up of physical atoms, so our mind is composed of vibrations; every activity of the mind is thought. Now thoughts are of two kinds. First there is imagination. This is an activity of the mind as well as thought, but in imagination the activity is not controlled by the will. When a person is resting in a chair without thinking about anything in particular, the mind has a habit of wandering. In this respect it is like a wild or untamed horse that runs off into the jungle at will. It goes off without knowing whither or why, for it is its habit just to wander about. So the imagination is not specially directed and wanders about on various lines just as it pleases, yet at the same time following the lines to which the mind is accustomed. This is why a musician's imagination naturally dwells on music and on musical things, and an artist's imagination on artistic things. A thief's imagination will dwell on how to rob and that of a writer on what he has been writing about. All this is imagination; that is, it is not controlled by the will.

This is what takes place in the average mind. From morning till evening the will is actively working on the lines to which the mind has become accustomed, the lines which the mind has already formed. For example, consider a person who is always thinking of construction, of how to construct a factory or how to build up a certain type of business. During this time he has been forming lines in this area of his mind or mental being. These lines are open to the imagination, and so the mind goes on working along the same lines which his thought has previously been following, even when he is not thinking specially of those subjects. He still follows the same line he has been thinking on. The lines which the will has made in the mind are the directions along which the imagination unconsciously travels. As it is said, "Where your treasure is, there will your heart be also."

Secondly there is thought proper, when the power of the will is directing the activity of the mind. This explains the words "thoughtful" and "thoughtless." The thoughtful person is he whose will directs his mind, whether he is doing something or speaking or thinking. It is he whom people will call a thinker. But the one who does not control his action, speech, and thoughts by his will is thoughtless; his thought is really imagination, his speech does not make sense, his actions become thoughtless and inconsiderate. In brief, these three things--thought, speech, and action--reveal the character of the thought. If they are controlled by the will they show thoughtfulness, but if they are not so controlled the person is called thoughtless.

Now we have been given two main faculties of perception: the senses of touch, smell, and taste, which form the lower senses, and the hearing and seeing faculties called Sami and Basir in Sufi terms, which are the higher or principal senses. These two groups both work with the physical body, the latter with the ears and eyes, but in reality they work in the mind; it is the mind which listens and sees. The mind is listening when it is aware of things without people telling us. We notice when a person is displeased. A person may say, "Thank you", and yet the mind perceives that he is not really thankful but is using these words as a formality, or even out of sarcasm. So it is the mind which discriminates; the ears of the mind listen. The more developed the mind is, the more it can listen even without the help of the ears; it listens to another person's thought without the utterance of a sound. The mind can see the form of the thoughts and discriminate between them, and this is what a seer does; however, it is easier for the mind to perceive by hearing than by seeing.

This brings us to the subject of concentration. A person who is sitting with closed eyes is not necessarily concentrating; he may just be resting or he may be asleep. If he is dreaming, that is not concentration either. Concentration is an act of the will during which the mind actually sees, during which the seeing faculty of the mind acts as well as the hearing faculty. To concentrate well one should think of a hot pan in which the oil is always fluid, so that things cook quickly in it. Do not let that pan cool through extraneous occupations. If one's mind is strongly concentrated on one thing, whatever else comes in the way will be done as well.

Whereas our physical being uses five senses to perceive things, our mental being uses only two: seeing and hearing. When we visualize we see things with the help of the mind. It is not everyone who can visualize. When there is no power to visualize it is because things seen that way seem so vague and insubstantial compared with the things we see in the external world. It is difficult for us to think of such visualized things as real. Everything that is before our eyes and ears we consider to be real, whereas whatever comes before the mind's eye we regard as imagination, as something passing, as a dream. It is the same mind that perceives and hears the things of everyday life, yet what it perceives in the other way we think of as being just imagination, although it is actually these things which are the true realities.

To a mystic the reality of the external world is not more real than the reality on the mental plane, for just as the first is subject to change so all things on the mental plane are subject to change too.

Two conditions must be fulfilled before external vibrations can become audible. You hear me speak because there is no wall between you and myself. A wall prevents communication. Then when a person is speaking out in the open with the same pitch of voice as I use at this moment, you cannot hear his voice as well as mine, for the house we are in gives the sound a place to echo in and become clearly audible. Thus these are the conditions: first a current must be established, a channel or opening through which the sound or the words can reach another person; and secondly the sound must not be able to scatter in all directions, but it must be directed and concentrated towards the other, so that it can reach the inner or mental process which we call thought.

If we wish to retain thought, or transmit thought, we must learn the process of "throwing the ball" to hit a certain goal. We must direct our aim right, and we must put enough force in it to enable it to reach the goal. It is the force of the will that sends the thought to reach another person, and the aiming, whereby one focuses one's mental eye upon the other in telepathy, is concentration. In brief, two things are necessary for telepathy: strength of will and power of concentration.

There used to be a sage living in Hyderabad, and people went to him for help. But he never came out to see them unless he was in a mood to do so. So after a while people came to think of him as so disagreeable that they would not seek an interview unless they had great confidence in his power.

One day a man came and said, "My case is coming before the court, but I have no money, and so if I lose the case it will go hard with my children." Thereupon the sage wrote on a piece of paper the words, "I see nothing in this case; I will dismiss it", and he told the man to go home and not trouble himself further about the matter. In due time the man went to court, and he answered all the questions put to him. The judge also asked various questions of the barrister on the opposite side, and finally he wrote down his opinion, using the exact words which the sage had written down. What had the sage done? He had engraved on the mind of this judge the selfsame words that he had used.

What a wealth of power is latent in man, and yet his lack of confidence bars him from it! Sometimes he is afraid to offend his religious belief, sometimes he is afraid of unknown dangers, sometimes he may think he is offending friends, enemies, people in high places. But we are in this world not just to roam about and eat and drink and sleep and amuse ourselves, without ever getting to know and understand this world around us, to understand ourselves, to understand life and the powers latent in us, the inspiration and unused power. We may have become wholly absorbed in some power in our daily life, but this does not mean that we are to go no further towards the realization of our real self. No, if on the road along which we pursue our real self we meet with some realities and powers not before suspected, surely it is worth our while to take notice of them, to understand them, and to use them for a good purpose.

Mystics know that a certain moral evolution is necessary before a person can attain a certain power, so they do not teach it indiscriminately; this is not out of a desire to reserve a monopoly or to hold back something which they possess, but what will a child do if you give it a loaded rifle to play with? It does not understand what killing means. Yes, if we stop to examine our aims, our aspirations, the pursuits in life to which we attach such great importance, perhaps we shall discover that we are not very far removed from children. The world as a whole is not prepared or ready to use spiritual powers. The sages and mystics ask of someone, "Will he do real justice to the power if he has it?" This explains why they select a few awakened souls and leave the children to go on playing. They think it is a sin to take little children from their play when they wish to continue to play; why make them grave, serious, anxious, sorrowful? Surely it is better for the present to give them more toys, more of the occupations they are so engrossed in, more of the sports they love so much.

In the East it is regarded as a sin to awaken a person from his sleep. Let him rest; he is comfortable; it is not yet time for him to wake up. So if one went and woke him up one would make him unhappy and even resentful. Let him go on sleeping till the time comes when he will wake up naturally. A person is asleep when he says that there is no such thing as telepathy, no such thing as heaven, no such thing as God. Let such a one be; he is not ready.

So mystics do not talk openly about mysticism but keep their knowledge for the few who have awakened. And when a person wakes up he will see for himself. The only purpose which the sage or the mystic fulfills is to take this person's hand when this happens, when he thinks "It is now his time to awaken; I must give him help." This is called initiation, and from that time a person is ready to enter into the mysteries of life.

Should everyone learn mysticism? The only difficulty in learning mysticism is man-made; it is not of God's making. The higher life is so much simpler than life on the surface of the earth, but man does not know what he is. He does not know that he is a drop on the surface of the ocean, and yet an ocean himself in his innermost part; that there is nothing that is not within him. A person who says to himself, "I do not possess this faculty", "I cannot put up with this", "I am sorry but I could not think of such a thing", and so forth, well, all these ideas are his imagination, part of the confusion of his thought and lack of understanding of what he is. If a person understood what he is he would never say, "I cannot do this." Instead he would become a real man, that which a man ought to be. The mystic only says, "I cannot" or "I have not" very seldom, and he believes these words still less often.

When God is with you everything is with you; when God is in you everything is in you. Inspiration, knowledge, light, all are then within you. But if you find joy in confusion, if you confuse yourself and keep yourself in darkness, you may do so. However, you have inherited from the heavenly Father His inspiration, His light, His power. You have inherited might from the Almighty God; you have inherited light from the Light of the universe. Therefore you are blessed with all these things, if you can only open your eyes and see the blessing.

What is the sign that one is ready to awaken from sleep? It is when a person begins to think, "All that I have learned and understood seems so unreal; there are some realities of which I am vaguely aware, and yet compared with them all I have studied and done seems to be of no account." As the dawn comes after the night of darkness, so he sees light appearing; but he has not yet seen the sun; he is only beginning to awaken.

People think that life is simple: the things that seem good to them they believe to be good; the things that seem bad they just think are bad, and so on. But the time comes when a person asks himself in a bewildered manner whether these things are really good or bad, whether the ideals of his people are really high or low. He is beginning to see things in a different light; he sees joy in sorrow and sorrow in joy, right in wrong and wrong in right, low in the high and high in the low. And at this point he does not know where to turn, so he has to speak to himself and unlearn what he has learned all his life. He discovers that there is a knowledge in the light of which everything appears the opposite to its previous appearance. In fact everything is different. It is like a person who admired a theatrical performance and found out how different everything was next morning. On awakening to the day, how different the view of the world becomes! Before the awakening, man with his little knowledge thinks he knows so much, but now his pride is broken. He finds that all he has known hitherto is useless, that he has to begin all over again. But this is the very time when inspiration and power come.

The power of concentration is the means by which to acquire not only the power of telepathy, but willpower, moral power, inspirational power, moral courage, mental strength, physical strength, and all the different kinds of development in life. It is the first stage, and maybe it is the last stage, when a person's eyes open to real light.

There are three different steps in concentration: observation, concentration, and vision.

Observation is developed by singleness of glance. For instance, if I look at a person I can see that one person much better than if I look at many people, and it is thus with everything in life. The first step in learning mysticism is just this: to develop our observation. We are always looking at a hundred things around us, and hardly ever study one thing properly at all. To understand and know a thing better we must keep looking at it; if we keep looking at everything we look at nothing. Such is the law of observation.
The next step, concentration, implies steadiness of mind. We cannot concentrate until we have made the external part steady. Just think: can we keep our eye fixed on one spot for some time without moving it? Can we sit in one posture without fidgeting? Why, many people cannot sit still even for a photographer! This shows us that the vehicle given us to control and utilize is not completely in our power, and if the lowest vehicle we have is not in our power, though this is the simplest thing to control, how then can our mind be in our control? How can we acquire more pure and more powerful thoughts?

Various postures have been recommended to enable us to acquire control. The body has to be made our obedient servant first, and when the body has been subdued the mind will learn obedience from it, for order teaches order. The inner self cannot be in order if the external self is not in order, for our mind is always affected by the body. In order to learn to control the mind we must therefore first learn to control the body.
The third step is vision. When concentration has been mastered the vision becomes clear, and when the vision is clear we can aim clearly, like one who has learned to aim a ball at a "certain spot and hit it. If he does not throw the ball properly how can it reach the goal? To hold the ball in our hand and aim it at and hit the desired goal we must master three things: observation, concentration, and vision.

The Divine Presence

Our relation to God can be understood in five different ways: in idealizing God, in recognizing God, in communicating with God, in realizing God, and in attaining Perfection.

Idealizing God. Every sincere and earnest believer in God experiences this stage. It is the stage in which he stands before God in humility and gentleness, or with repentance for his sins and faults, or looking up to heaven and asking for pardon. Whether the Being or Person he idealizes is much greater or only comparatively greater than himself, he understands that he is a mere drop in comparison with the ocean, that he is a most limited being as against an unlimited God, that he is most feeble while the other is almighty. He realizes that there is a Being filled with all the virtues and goodness and justice and mercy and compassion imaginable. Everyone, whatever his religion, experiences this first stage during which he is a faithful believer in God.

This is the ideal taught from childhood even in ancient times. Today some teach it, and some do not. Education has taken a different turn, with the result that the idealization of God has been disappearing from the stage of life. However, in the East this ideal is still taught to little children by instilling in them a respect for the father and mother, and they are also taught to consider their elder brother or sister as well as the friends of their parents. In this way the child is brought up with a feeling of respect; he is given a kind of ideal to look up to and to understand. He will be shown that he must not contradict his father, because he is not yet old enough to understand the full meaning of his father's words.

For instance he would not understand that it may be better to say an untruth rather than a truth in a case where the former would make for harmony and the latter for disharmony. Many things seem to be untrue for the moment, yet as we grow up to understand things better we find that from another point of view they may be true. Therefore a child should show consideration for his elders. The Prophet rebuked his grandson for not calling a servant "uncle"; the servant, being older, must know more than he.

Gentleness, sense of respect, and veneration make man different from the animals. If men did not behave like animals the past war would not have been possible. Dogs bark at each other. Not only one but all of the prophets have brought the message that man should show himself higher than the animals in this respect, and that they should give way to one another instead of barking at each other.

The first lesson imparted to humanity has been that of idealizing. It is not only the Bible that calls the humble, the gentle, and the meek blessed; the Qur'an and other sacred books say so too. It was even taught in ancient Rome. Each nation which has arrived at a certain point of understanding and acts according to true humanity has come to realize that man is different from the animals only to the extent of his idealizing. This is greater than art, greater than religion, greater than anything; and it is the source of great joy. Before we can enjoy life we must become delicate, sensitive, and evolved. When this is attained a person experiences a kind of joy in bowing his head such as is not experienced by ordinary people.

If we study the lives of the prophets, saints, and sages we notice that however exalted a position they might occupy, their manner was most humble. The customs, the forms and ceremonies and dogmas taught in temples and mosques and other places of worship and prayer were all for the express purpose of increasing the knowledge of this first lesson in approaching God. All the various modes of expressing veneration and respect and worship were given to one Being, in recognition of the fact that there is only one Being worthy of such expression. By practicing this continually we succeed in reproducing the same attitude in ourselves.

But if this were the end of our way of life, then what should we think of those who took the other four steps? For, truly, this Shariat, as the Sufis call it, is only the first step.
Recognizing God. This is the second step; it is called Tariqat. At this stage the believer in God thinks of Him not only as in heaven where all praise, worship, honor, and respect are due to Him, but he recognizes that God is on earth also.

If you take a man called John, and you ask him the name of each part of him, he can give a certain name for each, for every part of his body has a name. But which is John? Which part of his being is John? How shall I recognize John? If I'll recognize him from his head, why not call his head John instead of "head'? If I recognize him from his hand, then why do we not call his hand John; why call it "hand'? If I recognize him from his body, why not call his body John instead of "body'? But if the body is John, and the body dies, then where is John? There where the dead body is, is John there? No, surely John is different from his body, yet at the same time he represents himself with his body. It is his inner self that is really John, yet it is not his inner self that he shows to our external eyes, which are limited; it is his limited self, which we call John, that he shows us. John is behind his limited self. Our eyes are only the vehicle for seeing, but we can see something beyond our eyes; and the ones who see thus are the seers.

If we study this more carefully we come to realize that God is the Creator, and that therefore He must have something to create from. When a sculptor sets to work he has something in his mind before he starts, and he has to have a piece of wood or stone to work on. Every worker has a certain thing besides himself to create from. So we may ask: was there anything besides this world for God to make it from? Where did God get the things to make the universe from? If He created it out of something already made then this substance out of which He made the universe must have been made by some other god, or perhaps by thousands of gods, and even then we may not have come to the end!

But this cannot be. The whole of creation derives from one Being whose wisdom is unlimited; one Being whose art is unlimited, whose power is unlimited. He creates of Himself with His own power; therefore the creation and the Creator are not two, just as man and his body are not two. Or rather, they are two but at the same time they are not. When we recognize a man we do not recognize him only from his body but from his spirit as well. If we recognize God we can recognize Him not only in heaven but also on earth. Those who recognize Him see Him in all.

A Hindustani song expresses it thus:

Ah! how desirous I was to see the divine Beloved!
It is not the fault of the Beloved that you do not see;
He is before you!
It is the fault of you who recognize Him not.
Everything, whatever you see, is nothing else but
The Presence of God!

But if, you might say, all the world is the presence of God, then what is in heaven? I do not say that the body is John; I say that behind the body is John, even though the body too is John. Thus God is in heaven, but His manifestation is also God.

Think of how the followers of all the different religions have fought one another! Some were convinced that there are a thousand or numberless gods, whereas others were convinced that there is but one. To the mind of the Sufi both are right, although both are each other's opposite in knowledge. One religion wishes to teach that all these infinite varieties are just one God, and to impress the idea that this is God. Those who have learned that there is one God cannot conceive the idea of many gods, so they have fought throughout all their lives, without ever recognizing who really is their God. They teach that some day they will actually be taken before Him for judgment, when in fact they are before Him all the time, all day long, all night long! Once one understands this a great change of outlook will develop; one's thoughts about God will change so much that one's entire moral standpoint will change.

The following story will illustrate the manner of this change. A great king of Persia, named Jamsheyd, had a certain wrestler named Rustam. He was the greatest of all wrestlers in the kingdom, and he became so proud of his strength and power and bravery that the king thought he would humble him in some way. But he could not find anyone who could be trained so as to be capable of matching Rustam: he was the only one of his kind in the whole land. Then it happened that Rustam went to Arabia, and during his absence a son was born to him, who was given the name of Kushtam. The child's mother died soon after, and this was the opportunity the king sought. He took the child into his palace, and no one knew he was Rustam's son. In the course of time the youth became a great fighter, so strong and powerful that no one in the land could match him. And then, after many years, Rustam returned. Jamsheyd did not tell the youth that Rustam was his father; he only said that a powerful wrestler had come from Arabia, and that he must fight him.

Now it was the custom for every wrestler to wear a dagger with which to kill a vanquished opponent if he refused to surrender. Everybody went to see the wrestling match in the arena. The king felt sure that Kushtam, the son, would conquer his father, and indeed, with great energy and strength, the young man brought Rustam down. But Rustam, being so proud of his great power throughout his life, did not wish to surrender, so he must be killed. Kushtam unsheathed his dagger, whereupon Rustam said, "It does not matter, some day when my son grows up he will vanquish you."

The youth asked, "Who is your son?" Rustam then said, "But who are you?" and then the secret came out that this youth was his own son. There was no end to Kushtam's sorrow. He made obeisance at his father's feet, saying, "Father, I would rather be the one to be killed than be your conqueror." His father replied, "Do not let it grieve you, for now I am happy to know that at least I have not been vanquished by anyone but my own son, who is my own self."

This was the cause of great tragedy to the son, and the same tragedy and the same attitude comes into the life of every man from the time that he begins to discover his heavenly Father on earth. He cannot subscribe to the command "love thine enemy" unless he first recognizes in him his Father in heaven.

He may recognize his own father in a friend, but when he recognizes him also in the enemy, then he can love him too. This is the lesson. We flee from God as Cain did till we discover that He is actually here. Just think what a change there would be in the attitude of a man if once he realized his heavenly Father, the only one to whom reverence is due, in his fellowmen!

The life of a Sufi in the East is the life of a true disciple of Christ. People may recognize the teachings of Christ in scripture, in a church, or in a chapel, yet to the Sufi none of this is Christ. The only true disciple of Christ is the one who sees God as Father, as Mother, in all his fellowmen. Thus in India, Arabia, and Persia they call a faqir, a sage, a dervish, Bawa or Baba, that is "father", and a lady "mother", seeing both aspects of God in all things. Certainly, there are degrees; these are called Fana-fi-Shaikh, Fana-fi-Rasul, and Fana-fi-Allah; but they recognize their teacher in everyone. This is the first step.

One day I was walking in a city and met a dervish with a wonderful personality. He was dressed in a patched robe, but his speech, his voice, his thought, his movements, his atmosphere, were all most winning. At that time I was very young in the pursuit of philosophy. Youth is a time when pride has full play. So as we were walking along, and he called me "Murshid", I was very glad. He addressed me as Murshid every time he spoke to me!

Presently we met another person, who seemed to be without any education, without any knowledge of philosophy or religion or anything out of the way, but he called him "Murshid" too. My pride was hurt, especially when next he came across a policeman whom he also called "Murshid."

So then I asked my teacher what could be the meaning of all this, and he said, "Your dervish showed you the first step towards recognizing God: to recognize all beings as your teacher. A foolish person can teach you, a wise person, a learned person, a student, a pious or a wicked person, even a little child; everyone can teach you something. Therefore have this attitude towards everybody, then it may be said that you recognize God."

There is a Hindu saying, "When the chela is ready, the guru appears", which means that when you are ready to discern it, you will find your teacher beside you.

We can even learn love from doves and faithfulness from dogs.
Communicating with God

When an ordinary or an illiterate person meets a poet, he sees the man-part and not the poet-part. But if he is told that this person is a poet he may see the poet-part when he meets him. He now sees that he is a poet in his actions and in his words; in everything about him he sees the poet, whereas otherwise he would not have been able to see this. Thus a great poet may go among a crowd and the people will only see the man in him; they do not see the poet, and they do not know how profound his thoughts are. So once a person begins to recognize God in man he does not see the man any more but God. The man is the surface, while God is deep within him. Such recognition brings a person into touch with everyone's innermost being, and then he knows more about people than they know themselves.. He will know their sorrow, their joy, their secrets. Such a person is called a seer.

The seer sees God with his own eyes and also recognizes his divine Beloved in every form, in every name. He reaches Him and touches the God-part in every being, however limited this individual appears to be on the surface. From now on a softness develops in his nature, a magnetism, a winning quality, a beauty rarely to be found. Those who have attained to this stage are able to meet people with awakened minds, and when a person meets them he wants to stay with them for ever.

A very well-known seer, the great Shams-i-Tabriz, went to see Jelal-ud-Din Rumi when the latter was teaching at the university of Qoniya. He was a dervish, and he approached Rumi appearing like a savage. The first thing he did was to seize Rumi's manuscripts and throw them into a nearby tank. Rumi looked at him, wondering at his action in throwing away all that knowledge, and asked him the reason for it. The seeming vagrant said, "Because you have been reading all your life and you should now do something more. You should understand what you are and where you are. Everything in front of you is spelt out in letters, if only you could read them; then you could read life, which is greater than any scripture, better than any tradition that you can be told. It would disclose the secret of all being." Rumi, studying him and his expression and hearing all he said, was so won by him that he wrote down in his diary, "The God whom I have been worshipping all my life has today appeared before me in the form of a man."

It is said, "By the vision of God, their self will become God." This happens when we come to see God in everybody. We develop goodness in our actions; our words become God's words, because we are impressed with all that reflects only goodness and is mirrored around us. Then we become a museum or a picture of goodness. We reflect it from morning till evening, we reflect forgiveness, we reflect tolerance, we reflect all these lovely qualities.

As it is said, "If my Beloved is in every kind of man, how considerate I ought to be towards all!" The lover is always very careful when he is with his beloved; he becomes thoughtful and tender.
Realization. It is after feeling the presence of God and after being in communication with Him that we come to realize Him. When we can touch God in everyone then God tells us about Himself, because He sees that we have no hate, no prejudice. We have seen our Beloved, and our Beloved tells us all. Still, realization is difficult, for it involves discerning the difference between me and you. What is this difference? It is a great question, a great problem. Our "I" and "you" are just like a pair of compasses with which we draw circles on paper. The one point of the compass is the "I", the other point is the "you", and where they join there is no "I-you." The "I" and "you" only remain as long as we see ourselves; but when we rise above them or beyond them, the thought brings us nearer and nearer to God in that consciousness in which we all unite.

Self-realization is not self-expression; it is not work; it is not an art; it is not realization of a mental or artistic self. It is realizing God; it is union with God. It is not a matter of creating something to live forever as Shakespeare or Beethoven did. It is an attainment.

Self-realization is where the word is silent. The object of the Sufi is to enter into the silence, to learn to leave the form and the external world with all its attributes, to cease striving for anything but the goal. God is not in time, therefore He is in the silence. Sound is part of the world of time. The sage cannot say more than this, for the subject is so vast; when we come to this conception we find that it is altogether too subtle, too vast, to express.
Perfection. Divine perfection is perfection in all powers and mysteries. All these are manifested without specially striving for them. Perfection and annihilation is that stage where there is no longer 'I" and no longer "you", where there is what there is.

One's Aim in Life

If we have studied the chapter on the Silent Life in "In an Eastern Rose Garden" it may seem contradictory to speak of the other aspect of life. We might ask: Why did creation take place? Why is man on earth? Is it to seek the silent life, or what is the reason of all this happening? Are we to throw out everything that we call life, our position, our rank, our strength, and everything we have so far thought worthy of pursuit? Shall we continue to seek to attain these things, or should we discard them all in favor of the pursuit of the silent life?

The answer to these questions is found in the words of the Lord's prayer: Thy will be done in earth, as it is in heaven. We can extend this to: Thy perfect will be done on earth as well as in heaven, or: That which Thou desirest in heaven we must do on earth, or: I will do as Thou desirest me to do. Yet at the same time the mystic thinks, "My soul is not separate from Thy spirit; therefore my will is not separate from Thine; therefore my will be done on the earthly plane as Thine is done on the heavenly plane, namely on that of my mind. Thus that which I have been thinking to do will happen on the plane of the earth."

Omar Khayyam said, "Heaven is the vision of fulfilled desire; hell is the shadow of a soul on fire." The fulfillment of desire, however small or great it be, is the first step towards perfection. Unfulfillment of desire, however high or low, is a going back.

We may ask: But what if the desires we have are not worth while? Our desires may indeed be imperfect ones; they may not be right; but what of that? We cannot desire things which lead to our destruction. Is there no good desire in our heart? Is not the heart the vehicle of good through which one desires? So we see that our desire is God's desire, and that creation's whole purpose is the fulfillment of that desire. As the Vedanta say, this life is the dream of Brahma. The creative faculty or power desired what Brahma desired; it produced what He desired. This is why the Sufi regards as the first lesson to learn through concentration and meditation: that my desire shall be accomplished.

Religion teaches the same in the Lord's prayer: Give us our daily bread. In another place the Gospel says: "Knock and it shall be opened unto you", and again: "If his son ask bread, will he give him a stone?" If you tell yourself that you do not desire anything, you go back. Your progress lies in desiring whatever you wish. The fulfillment of your desire is the first proof that your concentration is successful. This is called Vilayat. A person may be able to see into things and yet not be a master; to be a master implies being master of all situations in life. Although a seer is one who can see, yet unless he has mastery also he can only see and nothing else. Mastery is greater than seership, because the master both sees and accomplishes.

This whole creation is the result of desire. The purpose of creation, therefore, must be the fulfillment of this desire. Thus your first step towards accomplishment or attainment, whether it be spiritual or worldly, will also be to proceed with purpose towards the goal of your desire.

You may think, "But if I keep on with the pursuit of my material desires, perhaps I may never reach the spiritual goal and will never get beyond my desires." The answer to this is that if you let the desire go unfulfilled and you lack the patience needed to accomplish the desire, your progress will be arrested. This failure will keep you back from spiritual progress. When once you have accomplished one desire, you will have that something which is needed for the accomplishment of something greater. Every desire you accomplish is one step further towards that final goal which every soul ultimately has to reach.

Thus the way to go is this, even for attaining spiritual perfection. Those who renounce their desires for God, for spiritual perfection, bury their own desires in their heart. It is more than renouncing; it is killing them and burying them; but they are there all the same. They are entombed in the heart, and there they will produce all sorts of germs and worms, and they will decay. There will only be pain and nothing else, and so spiritual accomplishment cannot be attained in this way.

The steps you take towards the goal by accomplishing your desires, your patience in doing this, your perseverance with it, these are what teach you. One may compare it with playing with dolls. The child who plays with a doll is learning to be a mother; learning how to be kind to children, putting them to bed, waking them up and dressing them. When once a little girl has learned this she will later be a good mother; this means she will accomplish her desire.

The man who has become rich or powerful, material though this may be, has attained something all the same; something has been accomplished; the mind gets strength and confidence. Then he can take the next step, which is the spiritual step.

A person has prepared himself for renunciation when he has risen above the object he demands. He is only entitled to say that he does not want the sweet when he has had so much of it that he cannot eat any more. If he is still longing, well, he may say "No", but it will be only a formality; perhaps it would not be good etiquette to say "Yes", but he longs for it just the same!

So it is that you have to rise above everything that you renounce. You have not really renounced until you have done that. You go on seeking as long as you have a desire for a thing.

The Tragedy of Life

When we look around us we cannot but notice how everyone has something to complain about: lack of wealth, lack of comfort, lack of kindness from those around him, from his relatives. Everywhere there are heartbreaks, disappointments of one kind or another. In the Qur'an this is expressed by the saying: "God alone is rich; everyone else is poor." People may live in palaces or in cottages, they may enjoy wealth and fame, money or good positions; no matter what they possess, they are still poor for all that.

The more we study life, the more we see how poverty is everywhere, how everyone is poverty-stricken no matter how much he may possess. How is this? What is the meaning of it? Only one thing can explain this situation, and that is limitation.

This one word explains the reason for the gradations from king to pauper, from the very great to the most insignificant. There is the limitation of poor physical health and of mental power, the limitation of wealth, and so forth. Nothing but limitation explains the real cause of all these grievous things.

A seer or thinker may well find it amusing to watch how the whole world is busily active from morning till night, in body as well as in mind. Everyone is trying to get relief from this poverty, trying to overcome all the things he has to complain about, trying to gain the means of conquering all those conditions of poverty. So he who watches all this sees the people always striving, striving for this, striving for that; yet in spite of all their striving they only find still more poverty. The objects they desire are limited, but their desire is unlimited; in any case limited objects can never satisfy limitless desire.

There is a Hindustani poem which says, "When you have ten lakh" (lakh = 100,000 rupees) or twenty, or fifty, or a hundred, you will still want a thousand; if you obtained them you would still want more." In fact you would want the whole world, and even if you had that your desire would not come to an end. The reason for this is that whatever man desires is always limited, whereas his desire itself knows no limits. When one desire is satisfied there is another and then another, and so on and on. Man's desire remains much greater and vaster and wider than every object that can be desired, and since the one who desires does not know his own value, nor the value of the objects sought by him, he remains in a state of poverty. This poverty degrades his life; the degradation of all human life proceeds from this one thing.

A Persian poet has said, "Though I see myself in the greatest and highest and most perfect Being, yet I find myself in poverty, limitation, and distress. The reason for this is `just my own ignorance of myself, of my true self. It is the delusion of the limitation of life.'

Whereas so many people are constantly endeavoring to get relief from this limitation which is called poverty, the Sufi strives to overcome the source of the poverty hidden within the life of everyone. The source of this poverty is limitation, and he breaks this limitation by raising his light. In the Bible we are advised to raise that light which so far we have hidden under a bushel. When we raise the light we remove the poverty.

We may ask: But how do we raise the light? What do we see with this light when it has been raised? The answer is that the intelligence is light. Raise the intelligence, and when the intelligence experiences life through the medium or vehicle of the body and mind then, no doubt, it remains limited. If we reflect that this body and this mind occupy two different planes, then we will understand that there is more limitation on the one than on the other. For example, if we want to go to a particular street or place with our body it will take a certain time, but if we go there in our mind we can get there in a moment's time. That is the difference between the two planes in regard to the accomplishment of things. It may take much time and effort to accomplish something in the physical world, but it takes less time and effort to accomplish it when we work mentally. When the intelligence works through the mind less effort and less time are needed, whereas when it works through the physical body more time and effort are needed. This is because the physical world has more limitations and the mental world has fewer. So when the intelligence can be raised above and beyond the mental world, we gain interest on all planes of existence. There is a greater playground for the intelligence there.

Two of the principal sources of pleasure in the physical world are good food and bodily comfort, yet one single beautiful thought or one charming mental image may provide more pleasure and joy than all the beauty there is in the whole physical world. So we can see that when we raise the intelligence from the physical plane, and then even higher, we will come to a state of realization where we see that life is not really limited at all; that it too is unlimited. It is when our experience is confined to the lower phases of existence that we find that our life is limited. Herein lies the whole tragedy of life.

So if we want to see happy people, full of joy and peace, people who are generous minded, people with a desire to serve, a desire for generosity and charity, we will find them if we look among those who do not have worldly wealth or fame or a great name. We will find them among the people who do not care for the world and its spirit; here we will find those who are kings in themselves. In the East they are called dervishes or fakirs or sannyasins. All these have lifted their intelligence above the sphere of limitation.

Mastery (1)

The difference between a scientist and a mystic is that the former analyses the things he is interested in, studying them by different methods in order to ascertain as much information about them as he can, the ways in which they can be of any benefit, their uses, and their nature, whereas the mystic, though in a way doing the same, first aims at lighting that light within himself by which he can see in this world of darkness and illusion, instead of using some technical instrument or special scientific process. As it is said, "Seek ye first the kingdom of heaven", so his first task is to light the candle within.

The story of Aladdin illustrates this truth. Aladdin could only win the princess if he first obtained the lamp which she desired. He goes out into the world but cannot find the lamp there, so he goes into the forest where he meets someone who is able to show him the way to reach it. But this man cannot himself give it to him, which means that emotion by itself does not suffice to bring it. Aladdin is told to go to a certain mountain and repeat certain words which will cause the side of the mountain to open. He does this, and the mountain opens, but when he is within the cave he begins to suffocate because there is no air. Nevertheless, persevering, he penetrates farther into the mountain and in time he comes upon the lantern.

It is with this light that the mystic gains the knowledge within himself. As soon as he has gained possession of this candle everything discloses its secret, and he gains a wisdom greater than that possessed by any scientist. One may think that a mystic cannot find out all that the scientist knows. True, but though the details discovered by the scientist may appear different, yet the mystic perceives the same truths which the scientist is seeking. He does not use the same words or terms; he does not know about all the processes that the scientist does, and yet he finds the outlines of the whole of what the scientist gets to know by his laborious methods.

Some scientists have happened to be Sufis: Avicenna was one; Luqman was another; and their knowledge was greater because of their having the candle. Perhaps even without any technical training the mystic may have the greater knowledge. He may not know exactly how to make a chemical substance as a scientist may claim to do, but he can see the secret behind every object and the purpose which underlies it.

The mystic can analyze the whole world very easily and understand it through the vehicle of one individual body. It is true that he cannot realize everything at once, but when he sets about knowing some particular thing he will do so much sooner than anyone else can, because he has the light within him.

His method is meditative. The object of meditation is to raise the soul above the body and the mind. It is like opening oneself; opening the vehicles, the senses, and the various unseen faculties of the mind, the abstract faculties which are beyond the perceptive faculties. These vehicles are open by way of meditation, and the soul now works through all parts, seen and unseen, instead of only blindly through one part of the being as hitherto. Even the bodily senses become more sensitive.

The sense of touch becomes more acute, the sense of sight becomes more keen, as also the sense of hearing and the senses of taste and smell. In fact, activity as a whole, rigor of action, enthusiasm, all increase after meditation. When the bodily energy and its sensitiveness are greater this indicates that the other faculties which are not seen have also been increased: the reason, the imagination and its power of creation, the memory and its power of retaining thought. The ego is also developed; then after all these have been developed a still higher part of one's being begins to develop, the abstract being which is linked up with the others. The mind becomes the mind of another person, the thought becomes the thought of someone else. After this the mystic begins to work through objects and not merely through the people around him, and from this time on the objects work as he desires them to work.

The mystic's experiences and also his dreams are now more than mere phenomena; and so when a thought comes to him it grows into something greater than mere imagination, and it becomes a force acting through his mind to achieve an effect, be it constructive or destructive. Whatever arises in his mind becomes a reality, and the further he develops the more real does his kingdom become.

It is better to receive personal help than to practice yoga; there can be no system of training in which all the pupils receive the same, for each needs a different method which is adapted to his condition of life, his type of mind, his environment, his age, his education, the spiritual development to which he has attained, and his devotional tendency. Is devotion the best method, or is study or are practices best? This depends upon the pupil's needs and capabilities. It is exactly the same as when a physician prescribes for a person: he must use different medicines according to the individual's type and personality. Patent medicines will not always do!

Man must realize that he has a power in him which is greater than all other powers, and this power is his will. Anger is a power, for it is a part of the energy which manifests as anger. Excitement, passion, and other emotions are manifestations of one energy, yet all such powers are in the hands of one single power, namely the will. They are ruled, controlled, and utilized by it. A person cannot be angry unless his will is at the back of it. He has to have the willpower to defend himself, otherwise the anger would be helpless. The anger is there, but the willpower is greater. If the willpower is not behind it the faculty will not work, even if not suppressed. As long as the willpower does not help, the faculty is ineffective, though present.

This one power, the willpower, is within. Should this power work with the consent of wisdom, everything would become allowable -- anger, calmness, war, fighting, peace, love, hate. For instance there is a time when anger helps, and there is a time when peace helps, when calmness helps. We have to understand their rhythm, for, as in music, if we do not keep the right time it is because we do not understand the rhythm; but if we understand it, it will not matter what we do; things will turn out all right. All is right when wisdom, counsel, and willpower are in harmony, but if the will is under the control of anger or other passions, so that they manifest regardless of wisdom and come into play at their own time, which again depends on the person's habits, then he will surely get angry every day. He gets cross because he has made it a habit, and his will has submitted. If this happens every day for eight days it will happen also on the ninth, or else perhaps he may fall ill. The power which should be obedient to the will controls it instead, and so the will works without wisdom, in spite of the fact that wisdom is the only reliable power which God has given to man.

There is a passage in the Qur'an which says, "Rise to pray during the night or part of it and recite the Qur'an; surely We will light upon you a weighty word ... And remember the Name of thy Lord ..." What speculation this passage has aroused!

The solution of its mystery is this, that desire for comfort controls the will so much, the willpower has become so subjected to the desire for comfort, that comfort controls the will. The will has become a slave to the experiences of joy and pleasure that we get from all kinds of comfort. For instance there is no greater comfort than sleep, so when we have to get up before dawn to repeat the name of the Lord we do not feel inclined to do this. We have to fight the greatest comfort we can experience each day, but once we have started fighting we begin to crush the power on the surface, which is pleasure, comfort. It is this ego, fed on pleasures and comforts of all kinds, which is our enemy. Therefore once we crush this ego our will becomes the ruler over our pleasures, and when the will is master we are master. The variety of our past life is now submitted to the unity of our being.

There is one part of our being which we can call "my self", and that one part must control the many beings -- the nose, eyes, ears, etc. -- which belong to us. Once we have gained control we can proceed without interference by them; we can keep them out whenever we please. From that time light comes, and we get to know and understand all the things we never knew of before. The light has now been disclosed to us by God.

There are three things which we should master during our everyday life, and three ways of achieving them. Consider the power of half-an-hour's concentration as compared with the weakness of giving in all day long! We can control ourselves in all the requirements of the body and of our senses, and the mind must give permission to every demand on their part, without being confused in the matter.

There is the beginning of the act,
there is the act itself, and
there is the result of the act.

And these three stages in the life of self-mastery or self-control bring increasing happiness and satisfaction.

There is the satisfaction in the thought of fulfilling some particular desire;
there is the satisfaction during the time it is being fulfilled, and
there is the satisfaction after it has been fulfilled.

When there is no confusion or depression or despair or remorse or repentance, then the happiness increases. There is no other proper way of directing one's life.

The various practices recommended by the mystics all have the same purpose, whether it be fasting, stretching out the hands, clasping the fingers, or whatever it may be. The mystic withholds all activity for a moment, for half a minute, perhaps for fifteen minutes. Nature wants motion, so when we stop the desire, and sit straight and erect, the mind at once gets a grasp on the whole body, for the whole body is now under discipline. It is discipline when the body obeys the mind; that is why all through life our mind should be in control of all things.

The next thing to consider is character. We must take care never to do anything which, when we see another person do it, we consider a mistake or undesirable or actually foolish. If it is something we do not approve of we must resist the inclination to do such an undesirable thing ourselves, to do something we cannot tolerate when another person does it. It is by this resistance of impulses that we control ourselves.

A more perfect way of behaving is the religious way. We should realize that the essence of every religion is to regard as our goal the God whom we are worshipping. He whom we seek is nowhere else but in the human heart. By reflecting on this thought we come to recognize that whatever kind of person we meet, be he foolish or wise, weak or strong, poor or rich, wicked or virtuous, we are in the presence of the Lord before whom we all bow; for if He is anywhere it is in the human heart, even in the heart of a wicked person. We must say to ourselves, "My ideal, my desire, is to please my Lord before whom I bow my head. So when I stand before anyone I stand before the Lord, my God." This is real religion; but if we were careful not to hurt a loved one or a friend but did not mind hurting a servant or a wicked or foolish person, that would not be real religion.

Love will recognize the ideal of love, the divine ideal, in every heart, and will refrain from using words which will make another unhappy: words expressing pride, thoughtless words, sarcastic words, any words that will disturb a person's peace of mind or his sensibilities. So an abrupt action is harmful too. What can one gain by it?

Thus when developing fineness of character one learns to consider another person's feeling. A man may consider himself very sensible, and at the same time wish that another person would not hurt or insult him. He thinks to himself, "This man talks too much; he annoys me; how badly he dresses, etc." Whereas we believe one person to be sensible and understanding, another we think is not; but we should forget what we ourselves think, and bethink ourself of what another thinks. It shows so much greater fineness of character when one does not give grounds for offense to others, but it is very difficult to attain this. There is no benefit in making our life so regular and orderly that it offends everybody else; it is in the understanding and consideration of other people's feeling that true religion lies.

Mastery (2)

Ghazali has said in his Alchemy of Happiness that the spiritual path is like shooting an arrow into the dark. You cannot know where it will fall or what it will strike. You are going along blindly, not knowing what you really seek or what you have achieved so far. There is only one commendable procedure; and so if your walk along the spiritual path makes you better able to manage your thoughts, and makes you stronger on your feet, you will be able to realize all that can be accomplished by patience and by hope. If you only paid attention to this all your life long and watched what you did, you would see your own progress, and what encouragement that would be!

There are people who keep complaining that nothing is ever manifested to them on their spiritual path--no forms, no ghosts, no colors, no voices, no word. But even if such a person had experienced manifestations of this kind they would have been no help to him; however, he is discouraged because he has not received any. The teacher he would like to have might easily lead him astray from the path, simply because he is aiming at things that do not matter, and a real teacher will not encourage him to seek such things.

The words "no, it does not matter" form a sort of principle to adopt in life. Of course there are things which obviously do matter. It matters a great deal if you do not follow your ideal, if you have made a slip of the tongue, or any other shortcoming. But it does not matter if somebody else is not following the same ideal as you; you cannot alter his plan of life, nor his opinions, and so they cannot matter to you. The Sufi's way is to seek unity and not get lost in variety. People can take up philosophy, theosophy, and all the rest if they wish, but these are not the concern of the Sufi. He will let those people restrict themselves if they wish to be restricted. His path is the direct path towards unity, and his is the path of balance. If a person compares two pictures and calls the one good and the other poor, let him be. It does not help if the fire in his ego-faculty is aroused. Some day he will see.

The spiritual path may be natural, and it may be unnatural. When man attaches his thought and mind to the external world he comes to partake of earth rather than of heaven, of matter rather than of spirit. By partaking of the qualities and habits and limitations of matter he forgets all the qualities of spirit. Whatever qualities he partakes of, those qualities draw man to the substance to which they belong, and such a man is therefore drawn more to earth than to heaven as he proceeds. Such people would rather not go to heaven but would prefer to stay on earth in spite of all the struggles, difficulties, and illnesses that belong to life on earth. Man is so attached to it! He does not know the joy and peace and pleasure and happiness and comfort of the other side, for he has had no experience of spirit whatsoever.

All the same there are people who feel a kind of call from the spirit, and yet they are attached to the objective world in so many ways. It is as if they are so intimately woven into the web of this world that it is very difficult for them to get away from it. For every step that a man takes towards heaven he is drawn backward ten steps to the earth.

Whoever sets out on this path is therefore in constant warfare. He has to encounter opposition from his relatives, from his friends and acquaintances; he gets into trouble with those who misunderstand his aims; they misuse him; they misjudge him and blame him for doing things and thinking in a manner which they believe to be unjustified.

Think of Christ, whose thoughts were so contrary to the religious thought of his time. How difficult to pass from the thought of an ordinary person to the thought of Christ! What difficulties there are to face! But once you fight these difficulties, and the further you advance, the more you are drawn to the spirit by the spirit. This goes on up to a certain limit, and all this time the difficulties are very great, but once you reach the limit everything becomes easy. If only the willpower is in control it will overcome all inertia.

Dervishes sometimes do humorous things. There is a story about a certain dervish sitting in the shade of a tree, who was always very kind and helpful to those who came to see him. But one day a young man, a soldier, was passing by, and he said something to the dervish which made him cross. So they had a few words. Thereupon the soldier began to bully him and give him blows on his back and neck, without the dervish making any protest. The soldier then went on his way.

A wise man sitting near by was thinking to himself, "What a funny thing, for this dervish is always good and kind and hospitable, so why should this soldier be so angry as to punch him and hit him all over?" So he watched attentively and noticed the dervish saying to himself, "Is it enough, or do you want some more?"

The man wondered why the dervish said this, but the explanation is that the ego always wants feeding, and the more you feed it the more energy it has. What are you feeding it with? You feed it by your inclinations, by getting praise from people or attentions, benefits, help, or love. Whether these come justly or through injustice, rightfully or not, this ego is never satisfied; it keeps on wanting attention. As a result it begins to rule over the higher faculties of inspirational and spiritual power, of wisdom, reason, and justice -- all the beautiful qualities. This Nafs or ego or Satan (for the ego is Satan) governs all these faculties, and a man cannot become saintly until he has crushed it; there is no other way whatever than this. The saintly personality cannot come into being until all this is achieved.

But how can you walk along this path in the course of your practical life, with all the responsibilities inherent in the life of the world? The servants take advantage of a saintly person; selfish people and those who are blind to justice take every advantage of a person who behaves kindly and considerately and helpfully towards others! Well, the answer is simple. This development is really for yourself, and once you have attained it the course of action is in your hands. For example, suppose you are taking the part of a king on the stage and your part calls on you to become angry with a servant, you do not really become angry. You just play the part of a king who is cross. Thus you can be cross without being actually angry.

This is just what happens in the development of a saintly personality. When once the Nafs is crushed you will never find it necessary to be angry any more, though you can act the part of one who is angry and pretend to be angry. So if it is necessary to show anger this does not mean the fire of hell for you as it would be for others, for you are only using an instrument, and that instrument is not your master. In the same way you are justified in whatever course you find before you in life, as long as you really have freed yourself from control by the Nafs.

There is a story about a great Sufi master who lived in Arabia. During some war a certain battle was fought. Now in those days battles were hand-to-hand fights, and this man's enemy was overpowered by him and he was about to kill him. But at this moment the enemy spat in his face. The teacher immediately let go of the man and did not kill him. The enemy was greatly surprised at this and said, "You were about to kill me; why did you not do so?" He replied, "The reason is that you did something that was bound to rouse my anger, and if I had killed you while under the influence of anger I would have acted against my principles. Therefore, as soon as I caught myself in this fault I became unable to carry through my first intention."

This shows how a person can even fight and yet keep control over his anger and pain. As long as he is the master he can be blamed for nothing. But that is just the question: to be the master! Suppose a person is angry and you get cross with him too. It may bring a certain satisfaction to give an outlet to that anger at the moment, but if only you would discover the joy of being able to smile when the other person is cross, what a difference from the satisfaction one derives from the other act! The joy is so much greater because you keep control: it is just like not adding more fuel to a fire.

The best way to control sudden outbursts of emotion is by developing the habit of exercising the willpower suddenly, promptly. If you return anger or jealousy or hatred or prejudice or any other bitterness, you only keep the flame of that emotion alight. It is just the same as when one keeps love alive in another's heart by adding a little affection and love all the time. If you withhold it it will die, for there is nothing to stimulate it. When a person is always offended, or when he dislikes this or that, he is keeping the fire going, whereas once you pass it by and smile you raise yourself above it and it will die out, for then it has no more food to live on.

'Resist not evil", the scripture says. When there is resistance to evil in the other person do not become angry with him. When you foster the same emotion you add to his, and you also increase the same fire in yourself. It is like infecting yourself with a contagious disease instead of curing it. Anger and bitterness will die out in time.

There was a small group of people in London who were working along spiritual lines. They felt a sort of rivalry against my little society, and they began to try to do us harm by telling stories against us and by setting others against us. My helpers came to tell me how we were being damaged in this way and asked if they should not do something to stop this. But I answered, "The best way to treat this is with indifference. Take no notice." And when they insisted that these doings would do us great harm I said, "Not at all. The only harm it could do would be if we allowed this harm to enter our circle. Let them do as they like and let us go on doing what we are doing!" As the years went by they never heard us say a word against them; on the contrary, we welcomed them, we helped them, we served them in whatever way we could. In time this resistance completely vanished. We have been going forward, and they still stand where they were. Just a little indifference was enough!

You cannot expect all people to be just. When they are children, how can we expect them to behave as grown-ups? You cannot expect all kinds of fruit to ripen at once; it takes time, but in time they will all become sweet. So wait patiently, and it will become plain to them in time. Why blame others when they are not up to your ideal? How can a disagreeable person be agreeable if his evolution prevents him from being otherwise and wisdom does not permit him to act differently? Help him in whatever way you can, without expecting him to be different. Why should you ruin your own life over it? Your own life is very precious. When you do not worry about others, or judge them, you can meditate, think, be silent, and at the same time be serviceable to the world. There is plenty in our own selves to judge, enough to keep us fully occupied all our life long!

Jesus Christ said, "My Father's house has many mansions." By these are meant places of being, paths of attainment, roads to travel on. Once you are on the real road you will keep on learning every moment of your life, not only during your sleep in dreams, but at any time. An owl cannot see in the daytime; it is during the night that he learns things. But this is only a partial inspiration; the mystic gains experience in every aspect of life, when eating, sitting, walking, in all actions. All these are channels of learning. The real road is to be followed at all times, and it is the one who has seen the Master who is really the one being taught. Once you have linked yourself with love, a flood of inspiration is revealed to you, whatever the subject, whatever the problem in life may be. Whatever it be that your eye casts its glance upon, it will disclose itself. Then you are on the real road, and what a joy this is!

Breadth of heart is what is needed for all this. The weapon is the thought that nothing matters. It takes courage to say: "Nothing matters." It is the breadth of heart that makes a man great, whereas it is narrowness of heart that makes him small. The great heart does not think about how troublesome a person is, and why he should be bothered like this. It is only the narrow heart that thinks, "I will cause him some trouble." It may be justified, but still it is a narrow thought. The one with a broad heart thinks, "This is a small thing, I can put up with it; not much harm will come from it."

The Nizam wrote this verse, "The width of the land and the water cannot be compared with the width of man's heart. If man's heart is wide enough there is nothing greater than that."

The heart becomes wide by forgetting the self, and narrow by thinking of the self and by pitying one's self. To gain a wide and broad heart you must have something before you to look upon and to rest your intelligence upon, and that something is the God ideal. This is the prescription for killing the self, and to kill the self is the basis of every religion. Then, keeping your self before your consciousness and by resting your consciousness on God, God who is unlimited will come to you; and thus your knowledge and your powers will become unlimited also.

Discipleship (1)

When the question of learning or of understanding a mystical or occult subject arises, the first thought that comes to the mind of a person in the East is that of discipleship. In the language of the Vedanta there is the Guru and the Chela; in Sufi terms we speak of Murshid and Mureed.

Just as in every civilization we meet with what the Sufis call Muruwwat -- the regard that people have for their relations, the regard between father and son, mother and daughter, friend and friend, lover and beloved, husband and wife, master and pupil -- so in the East there exists the special regard between the spiritual teacher and his disciple.

It is said that to have learned even one letter of one word from someone demands respect and consideration for him. So a person who walks on the spiritual path recognizes the goal towards which he is traveling, and realizes that the wealth he will obtain is great indeed; he is well aware of the fact that there is no return he can make which is in proportion to what he has received from the teacher. Therefore the chela or mureed on the occult and mystical path is more grateful to his master than a person in any other walk of life can be to any other.

Why is this? It is because he recognizes that there is nothing more precious and worthwhile in life than spiritual wealth and the light of wisdom. Whoever it was that helped him to receive this light and wisdom is surely the archway to heaven, the final goal into which he desires to enter. It is to this archway that he makes his first bow. One finds this expression in Hafiz and Sa'di and in many other Sufi poets of Persia, who call their teacher Mihrab, the arch, the arch of that gate which leads to the shrine of God.

People sometimes say that the Eastern temperament makes their language, actions, and words so exaggerated, and indeed it is their nature to exaggerate, and they have a tendency to overstate things. but there are reasons for this attitude. First there is the respect in which the teacher of spiritual attainment is held, and then there is the fact that the way to attain high spiritual attainment is by crushing the ego.

It crushes the ego to bow one's head before anyone out of respect. The ego wants to say, "Here am I; you may think you are something, but I am something too!" But there is no room for wisdom as long as the ego is there, for the ego closes the door, saying, "Yes, you have your thoughts and I have mine!" So whenever a chela has this attitude towards the teacher he cannot learn anything.

It is not until the ego is crushed that the simple faith and perfect humility and innocence come which you see in the face of your Master, your Savior. It is not only his teaching which attracts us to Jesus Christ, it is his face of innocence. Any artist who tries to paint a picture of him by intuition will portray that simple innocence in the face of the Lord. Not fatherhood but sonship has won the heart of the world, and this is the first thing for a disciple to acquire. And he does this by crushing his ego.

Now there are different ways by which the ego can be crushed. Among the yogis, even today, there is a custom that when the chela comes to the guru his first lesson is to take the beggar's bowl and go from house to house, bringing that which he gathers to the other chelas sitting there. The youngest chela brings the food that he has begged to the others, and he does not even beg for himself. In his heart he is already a monk who has taken up the bowl for others, for those who are meditating and learning the truth. Although the beggar's bowl is in his hand he may perhaps be greater than a king, for he is without greed; he is crushing his ego; he is not thinking about what people will say when they see that he has taken up the beggar's bowl.

One of the kings of Baluchistan went to a murshid with the desire to learn from him. He said, "Will you accept me as one of your pupils? I would so much like to be counted among your humble servants instead of remaining any longer on my throne." The murshid agreed to take him on probation, saying, "Yes, and your first task will be to take the garbage of the house and throw it in a certain place outside the town."

Now every one of the disciples knew that he was a king who had willingly resigned his throne; he was not exiled and he did not have to run away from his kingdom; he had left it voluntarily. They felt sympathy for him, seeing him tried in this way, and they all said to the murshid in the course of time, "Pray do not expect this task of him any more; he has been doing it for such a long time!" But always the murshid's answer was, "He is not yet ready for initiation." To one pupil who argued the matter he said, "Well, you may test him in any way you think good."

So one day, as he was carrying his basket, one of the young men came up beside him and by pushing him upset the contents of the basket on the ground. So the king looked at him and said, "Had I still been king as I was I would have done to you as a king would, but now, of course, I am not that any more, so I must not show my temper." With that he gathered all the refuse together, put it back in the basket and carried it all away.

This was reported to the murshid, but he said, "Did I not tell you he is not yet ready?" However, after some time one of the pupils went to the teacher again and asked him to be kind to the former king and give him another task. But he answered, "Try him again." So he had to go through the same experience. This time the king did not say a word; he only looked at the offender for a moment and again gathered the refuse together, put it back in the basket, and went on his way. However, when this report too was brought to the murshid he again said, "Not ready, not ready!"

Then the same thing was done a third time. This time the king was not only silent, but he gathered up the garbage without even looking at the person who had upset it. And now, when the murshid heard about this, he answered, "Now he is ready. Now the time has come for his initiation."

Sometimes the methods for crushing the ego seem crude to us, and yet this has been the essence of religion all through the ages Jesus Christ said, 'Blessed are the poor in spirit .... Blessed are the meek .... Blessed are the merciful."

What I have just told you shows what is meant by being poor in spirit. A person rich in spirit, high-spirited, would say to anyone who even stared at him when not invited, "How dare you look at me in this way? You are not even allowed to look thus in my presence; how dare you do this to me?" Such a one is rich in spirit; the others are poor in spirit.

Thus different teachers have adopted different ways of crushing the ego. But it was never for their own gratification that teachers made their disciples show humility, to make up as it were for the fact that they themselves had had to undergo the same process before they became teachers. No, such actions would not add to their own honor or greatness; the giving of such orders is nothing to them. If they are great they are great without such training being demanded of their pupils, without the deference implied. Whether a thousand people honor them or not, it does not signify. It gives them no satisfaction to have people bow before them, prostrate themselves before the teacher. Why then do they expect it from their pupils? It is for the pupil's sake; it is to blunt the sharpness of that piercing and stinging ego which disturbs every individual, so that it shall not hurt anyone any more. This becomes a great achievement.

In our everyday life we can see that it is this sharpness of the ego, of "I", of "me", that hurts all the time, whether it be in someone closely related or not; whether it be son or daughter, father, mother, brother, sister, or just a friend. If anything about them hurts us it is just this ego. If one person hurts another it is only because of that person's ego. If we ever experience suffering in this world it is through this ego; sometimes it is the ego of another person, but sometimes it is our own ego too. One may compare it with a thorn which is always pricking: it hurts whoever touches it. The more egoistic a person is the more it hurts. So the teachers of mysticism know they must humiliate this ego, and the various methods they use are to do just this.

There was once a young man who was the son of a famous teacher. This teacher had a number of pupils from all over India. Not only was he a very great teacher himself, but he had trained many other teachers; in fact in nearly every village and town there was by now a teacher who had been one of his disciples. Of course this son of his had received all kinds of attentions.

Now the son when still a boy one day had a dream and in this dream he saw himself visiting all the saints. He dreamt that there was a great gathering of saints and spiritual teachers and masters. He was accompanying his father, but whereas his father was admitted to the gathering he himself was not allowed in.

He felt this as a severe humiliation, so when he woke up next morning he went to his father and said, "I have had a very unhappy vision, for although I went with you to this gathering you were allowed in and I was not!" His father replied, "This is a true message for you. To enter the spiritual path it is not enough for you to be my son; it is necessary for you to become someone's disciple. You have to learn what discipleship means."

But the son kept thinking to himself, "I am the son of a great teacher; from childhood I have learned so many things. I have inherited my father's knowledge. However great any teacher was, yet when he met my father he paid him such respect, such great respect. There cannot be anything better in these teachers than there is in me." So he thought he should stay with his father and said, "Can there be anyone better than you, father, that I should become someone else's disciple?" But his father answered, "No, I am no use for that. You must have some other person who is suitable for this purpose." "Who?" asked the young man. The teacher replied, "That pupil of mine who was a peasant and who is teaching among peasants. Go to him and be initiated by him."

The son was very surprised, for he knew that this teacher was not well educated. He was illiterate; he was not of high birth; he had no special reputation; he was not famous in any way. He was just living in a village in humble guise. For all that, his father sent him there.

So he traveled on foot, not very willingly, till he came to the village where this peasant lived. It so happened that this man was on his way on horseback from his own farm to another, and he saw the young man coming towards him. When the young man came near and bowed before him the teacher looked down on him and said, "Not enough."

Thereupon the young man bowed to his knees. The peasant teacher again said, "Not enough." Then he bowed down to his feet, and still the teacher said, "Not enough." So he bowed down to the horse's knees, but again the teacher said, "Not enough." So the young man bowed once more, this time to the horse's feet, touching the horse's hoof, whereupon the peasant teacher said to him, "You can go back now; you have had your training."

That was all! No exercises, no sacred word to learn, nothing to study, no training course. He had learned the lesson he had to learn; it was for this that his father had sent him. It was for this lesson that he had come; it was a lesson which his father could not give him. So now he was admitted to the circle of the mystics.

Discipleship (2)

In discipleship one has to consider the idea of sympathy. The great Lord of yoga, Mahadevi, warned against initiating or welcoming an insincere, ungrateful, or doubting pupil into the mystical cult. This was his advice to every mystic. Why was this? What concern is it of the mystic whether a pupil is grateful or not, sincere or not, as surely he has to be good to everyone? The idea is that unless a person is sincere he is not ready to benefit, and the teacher will not do him any good. He must have sincerity and faith and sympathy. How true is the saying, "He who speaks evil of another knows him not; he who speaks well of another knows him better'! This illustrates the fact that sympathy is the only thing that discloses the secret of all things.

For example, if you are fond of a certain composer's work you will enjoy hearing one of his compositions far more than will a person who is prejudiced against this composer. Having closed his heart to this music he will never enjoy it. So, too, if you are fond of a certain poet you will remember everything that the poet has to say. Even if his words do not say it his spirit does, and so you understand what the poet wanted to convey to you. He may have failed to express it, but you will still read it in his words, for your heart is united to the heart of the poet.

This being true, how then can an enemy know an enemy? He can never get to know him, for he will say that his enemy is full of evil. It is only a friend who can know, not an enemy. It is love that builds a bridge during the interchange of feelings and thoughts; hatred cannot do this. In fact even the least doubt prevents it.

Thus a person who is thinking, "Let me see, what can mysticism teach me? What can this cult show me that I do not already know?", would be wasting his time. Far better that he should spend his time on something in which he has faith, otherwise he will only be creating a wall before himself, and, whether he wishes to explore this teaching or not, how then can he find out anything about it? This path is not for those who are only curious about it. They would never succeed with it.

Nor is it for those who are always changing their mind, wondering whether they will go on walking along this path, asking themselves if it is the right path or is it a wrong path. Such people might go four steps forward, and then come across something which frightens them. and so they run back ten steps! Then, perhaps, they may go forward again, but next time something like this happens they go back twenty steps. Their journey would last thousands of years, and even then they would not be arriving.

No one without confidence in himself can ever have confidence in another. One cannot have faith in another if one has none in oneself. The faith taught by Jesus Christ as well as by those religious teachers who laid great emphasis on it is not necessarily faith in a particular church or creed or scripture or religion or clergy. It is faith in oneself. He who has faith in himself can have faith in others.

For a person to have a simple faith does not mean that he has no sense. Such a person may be the most sensible of all, while one who thinks that he is too clever to trust anybody, who will not be taken in by anyone and is proud of his cleverness, may really be the most foolish. He prides himself on his skepticism, which makes him doubt every person he meets, thinking that he is so clever. But when such cleverness prevents one from having any peace of mind and makes one always restless, going from one belief to another, one would much rather be without the cleverness.

Faith is the light that kindles the same substance in another person's heart. By trusting another person one also creates in his heart the same attribute which is within oneself: trust. What peace it brings to have faith and trust!

Consider two such people as these: one gives a jewel to a friend, asking him, "Please keep it for me", and then thinks no more about it. Another asks his friend the same thing, but as soon as he has left he keeps on putting his hand in his pocket, wondering what his friend will do with his jewel. Then when he gets home his mind is still in his friend's house, in fact he may be so uneasy that he even goes hack to his friend on some excuse, though when he gets there he does not like to ask his friend to return the jewel. Better for him not to have entrusted his friend with his property, if it only means loss of peace of mind or the humiliation of his friend.

How can such a person learn occult or mystical knowledge and tread the path of spirituality if he has this attitude of mind? Having no sense of trust or of confidence in himself, how can he expect to succeed on the path? The first thing to learn then is to have confidence in oneself.

Another thing to remember about entering this path is that if a person is only attracted by the word "mysticism", or by any psychical cult, he is only interested in the name and does not know what he really wishes to discover. So he asks himself; "What is this path like?", as if it were a kind of delicious dish or drink; to be tasted before wanting anymore, just to see what it is like!

No, this path is a lifelong work. There is nothing more serious that one can enter upon. One cannot attain something when one does not know what one is aiming at and is altogether undecided. How can one walk in the spirit without knowing whither one is traveling? A person who does not know his destination may think that he is walking on the mystical path, but he is not. If you should ask him about it perhaps he might say that he wants to travel this path in order to become good; but he could learn how to be good without using the mystical path at all. The mystical path does not teach any spiritual goodness; it is only our love of goodness that will make us good. People do not have to be mystics to be good; not all good people are mystics.

Another person may wonder whether he ought to realize what spiritually is before he can become spiritual. He may think that he has to disconnect himself from matter; he may think that spirit is the exalted substance, and matter only the lower. Again, another person may tell you that he is taking up the spiritual path because he wants to be able to communicate with spirits and ghosts. Yet another may say that he wants to see things and hear voices that other people cannot hear, and to discern fairies or angels or spirits or other invisible beings which other people cannot see. But if this is the motive for coming to the mystical or spiritual path then it is not for them. Discipleship is not needed for that.

So many people want to dabble in these matters, but when they come into contact with others of like mind there they are just waiting to be fooled by them. The world is full of all sorts of people, but few of them are ready for the path of discipleship. Real discipleship has just the same implication as lies in the word "baptism." It is a real baptism in itself, not just a ceremonial, something external.

Spiritually means to be our natural selves, neither exalted nor pious nor good, nothing but to be just our natural self. A person may say, "I have no natural self", and the more we look at ourselves the more we think this, yet it is the lack of realizing our natural self that accounts for our depressions, our disappointments, our weaknesses, and everything that is undesirable in us. We are only conscious of our false self and do not know our real self. The idea is to disclose that self which is our real self, our natural self; and we do this by uncovering the different planes of mortal being which hide the self. All the yoga practices, their meditations and concentrations, are aimed at uncovering this real self.

'Well then," people will ask, "how does one attain this?" The answer is: you would never understand even if you studied all your life. To take an example, supposing you were to study a textbook of music which contains everything from theory to counterpoint, and suppose you read a thousand such books, would you be able to sing well or play the piano? No, you have to train your ear; you must know which note is which, you must recognize the chords. It is just the same with life itself. It is not a matter of reading; it is a matter of realizing. One must live the life.

You may ask: does meditation help? The answer is yes; it does; it helps a great deal. If you also study at the same time it will add to your realization, so it is not that study is useless, it is only that it is of no use without practicing meditation. Meditation is like practicing music. By playing the piano your ear becomes trained in the intervals and the notes; then by further study and reading you become a master of music.

It is just the same with the music of life, which is called mysticism. Although it can be studied it is of no use unless there is practice also. What is more, if a person asks, "Suppose I play and practice with a book, can I become a great singer?", he would have to be told that he needs a teacher to show him how to use his voice, how to make music. If you have a teacher you can accomplish in ten years what you could never learn alone, by yourself, in a hundred years. That is the purpose for which the guru is intended.

More than this, the presence of the guru is an example to the pupil. Nothing can help study or meditation as much as the mere presence, the contact, the association with the teacher. By this means the pupil understands how the teacher would act under various circumstances. It is true that sympathy itself is a very great thing, for by it the pupil intuitively knows what the answer is to this or that problem. Apart from the teacher, truth cannot be spoken of in words, so if the real, essential truth cannot be expressed in words or in writing, how otherwise could you learn it? It must be learned through contact. And how can you learn it through contact? Well, you see this in your daily life. If your sensitiveness is great and delicate you can tell whether a person is pleased or displeased without his speaking a word. You can tell whether he is favorably or unfavorably inclined to you, and when this is so there is an exchange of thoughts between yourself and the othe.

More than this, there is an exchange of spiritual vibrations. Just by study or practice you cannot realize this truth, this feeling, this peace, this joy which is beyond words, which belongs to being your self, your natural self. In the East this is called Tawajjeh, which means presence, contact, association with. It is in this way that you learn what cannot be learned in any other way. Thus the disciples of Jesus Christ learned by his presence what no study or practice would ever have taught them. And in Mohammed's time his disciples Ali and Abu Bakr gained very great benefit from his presence.

But then there comes a time when the external presence is not needed any more. After having traveled along this inner path the inner presence of the master, the teacher, will inspire. Then you learn from your teacher that which words cannot teach and study will not bring and even practices cannot further. This is what the path of discipleship is.

There are four different paths to follow:

abstinence or Hatha Yoga,
devotion or Bhakti Yoga,
learning from life's experiences or Raja Yoga,
and the fourth one, Mantra Yoga, which means attaining spirituality through wisdom.

The Sufi does not give preference to any particular path. Take whatever suits your temperament best. However, in my own experience I have found it better to take one path as a special one for oneself, but to use also the other three. Thus you lack nothing. If the Bhakti Yoga suits you specially you should also get to understand something about Hatha Yoga, and about the others too if you can. By understanding these others also you gain great strength and perfection.

The Sufis have never given out any special doctrines; they only consider moral conceptions, so they never ask their mureeds to accept any doctrines. The Sufi does this because he considers that his sole work is to blow upon a little spark or flame in order to make it develop into a large flame; and then this flame will show you the path. The Sufi does not interfere and say, "This is the doctrine you must accept, because I believe this or that", for instance about the life after death, the continuity of life. The Sufi master does not concern himself with the laws of nature and assert that this or that doctrine is the truth, or that this or that speculation is the truth. All he says is, "Find it out for yourself." He says, "My work is only to tell you in what way the faculty of revelation can be awakened. Do this practice, and this faculty will be awakened; you will then see for yourself. Then, whatever you see for yourself, you will believe."

But you might say, "Well, then why do we have lessons? If there are no tenets, what are lessons for?" The answer is that it is like learning the alphabet, which is one stage. When a person can read a book, that is another stage. He needs books to practice reading: it does not matter what book you take up to read, you can practice reading with it, you do not have to take it as being an inspired scripture. Similarly the exercises which are given in the form of lessons or instructions are just lines of thought to follow until you get accustomed to these different lines of thought when inquiring into metaphysical and spiritual subjects. But you do not have to accept them as rigid tenets or doctrines or principles, and then make out that Sufism is limited to them!

Therefore I do not restrict my pupils or my friends to the exercises. They are only exercises. After these, life itself is the scripture to read; it is the only real scripture. You must get to understand it, and what you do not understand at the first reading you must read again and try to understand it then.

Raja Yoga is the best one for life in the Western world. This is because life in the West is so full of responsibilities and there is so little time to devote to solitude and practices. You have to practice wisdom and deep thought in all your affairs from morning till night; in this way you make your life into a teaching for yourself. Therefore whatever your work or business or profession, let that be your mode of progress, so that you advance through your every duty. At the same time, if you will only devote ten or twenty minutes to a practice it will prepare you for something better, and it will also help you in your work. Thus Raja Yoga, the yoga of life's experiences, is certainly the best for Western life, but if a person prefers a life of retirement, let him take it.

Why does one need yoga? Because, in the first place, Western education does not interfere with it. The church has still less influence. Necessary though discipline, reverence, and respect are, they are sometimes allowed to lapse, and then life becomes empty, drab, lacking something. Dharma is the one thing needed for the spiritual path, as both Shiva and Buddha pointed out. One should acquire the tendency to respect and to revere, and this comes from worship. This one thing that is needed is developed through devotion; that is why it is better, if possible, to add a little of the color of beauty to the Raja Yoga, and thus beautify your life. But whichever of these paths you choose, a teacher is needed. It is his blessing, his guidance, that helps; it is the contact with him that is important.

A real teacher is only an instrument of God. It is his presence, what he wishes for you, that helps; not the words he speaks. When I asked my teacher what is the sign of a real guru he replied, "It is not his form, it is not his appearance, it is not what he says; it is his atmosphere, it is what his presence conveys to you, it is what his atmosphere tells you.'

There is an English saying: actions speak louder than words, or: what you are speaks louder than what you say.

Vol. 12, The Vision of God and Man

Wealth

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