Hazrat Inayat Khan
Hazrat Inayat Khan
Inayat Khanwas the founder of The Sufi Order in the West in 1914and teacher of Universal Sufism. He initially came to the West as a Northern Indian classical musician, having received the honorific "Tansen" from the Nizam of Hyderabad, but he soon turned to the introduction and transmission of Sufi thought and practice. Later, in 1923, the Sufi Order of the London period was dissolved into a new organization, formed under Swiss law, called the "International Sufi Movement". His message...
ProfessionClergyman
Date of Birth5 July 1882
winning self stupidity
Very often in everyday life one sees that by losing one's temper with someone who has already lost his, one does not gain anything but only sets out upon the path of stupidity. He who has enough self-control to stand firm at the moment when the other person is in a temper, wins in the end. It is not he who has spoken a hundred words aloud who has won; it is he who has perhaps spoken only one word.
mean self soul
To be resigned means to find satisfaction in self-denial (Self-denial is the denial of one's lower self).
self half poverty
Self-pity is the worst poverty. When a person says, 'I am...' with pity, before he has said anything more he has diminished himself to half of what he is; and what is said further, diminishes him totally; nothing more of him is left afterwards.
struggle self true-power
True power is not in trying to gain power; true power is in becoming power. But how to become power? It requires an attempt to make a definite change in oneself, and that change is a kind of struggle with one's false self.
self care consciousness
Once you have given up your limited self willingly to the Unlimited, you will rejoice so much in that consciousness that you will not care to be small again.
heart thinking self
The heart becomes wide by forgetting self, but narrow by thinking of the self and 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.
crush self ego
In Sufi terms the crushing of the ego is called Nafs Kushi. And how do we crush it? We crush it by sometimes taking ourselves to task. When the self says, 'O no, I must not be treated like this,' then we say, 'What does it matter?' When the self says, 'He ought to have done this, she ought to have said that,' we say, 'What does it matter, either this way or that way? Every person is what he is; you cannot change him, but you can change yourself.' That is the crushing. ... It is only in this way that we can crush our ego.
men selfishness blind
Selfishness keeps man blind through life.
dark night soul
There can be no rebirth without a dark night of the soul, a total annihilation of all that you believed in and thought that you were.
depth rhythm
To attain peace, what one has to do is to seek that rhythm which is in the depth of our being.
music heart reality
I played the vina until my heart turned into the same instrument. Then I offered this instrument to the Divine Musician, the only muscian existing. Since then I have become His flute, and when He chooses He plays His music. The people give me credit for this music which, in reality, is not due to me, but to the Musician who plays his own instrument.
spiritual nature order
A soul who is not close to nature is far away from what is called spirituality. In order to be spiritual one must communicate, and especially one must communicate with nature; one must feel nature.
names life-is form
All names and forms are the garbs and covers under which the one life is hidden.
wise views judging
While people judge others from their own moral standpoint, the wise person looks also at the point of view of another.