Until the heart is empty, it cannot receive the Knowledge of God.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
When people come to take a lesson on any subject, and bring their own knowledge with them, the teacher has little to teach them, for the doors of their hearts are not open. Their hearts, that should be empty in order to receive knowledge, are occupied by the knowledge that they already had acquired.
It is not solid wood that can become a flute, but the empty reed. It is the perfection of that passiveness in the heart of the Messenger which gives scope for the Message from above; for the Messenger is the reed, the instrument. The difference between the Messenger’s life and the life of the average person is that the latter is full of self. It is the blessed soul whose heart is empty of self, who is filled with the Light of God.
There are many ideas which intoxicate people, many feelings there are which act upon the soul as wine, but there is no stronger wine than the wine of selflessness. It is a might and it is a pride that no worldly rank can give. To become something is a limitation, whatever one may become. Even if one were to be called the ruler of the world, one would still not be emperor of the universe. If one were the master of earth, one would still be the slave of Heaven. It is the person who is no one, who is no one and yet all.
The Sufi, therefore, takes the path of being nothing instead of being something. It is this feeling of nothingness which turns the human heart into an empty cup into which the Wine of Immortality is poured. It is this state of bliss which every truth-seeking soul yearns to attain. It is easy to be a learned person, and it is not very difficult to be wise. It is within one’s reach to become good. And it is not an impossible achievement to be pious or spiritual. But if there is an attainment greater and higher than all these things, it is to be Nothing.
All the great saints and sages, the great ones who have liberated humanity, have been as innocent as children and at the same time wiser, much more so, than the worldly-wise. And what makes it so? What gives them this balance? It is repose with passiveness. When they stand before God, they stand with their heart as an empty cup; when they stand before God to learn, they unlearn all things the world has taught them; when they stand before God, their ego, their self, their life, is no more before them. They do not think of themselves in that moment with any desire to be fulfilled, with any motive to be accomplished, with any expression of their own; but as empty cups, that God may fill their being.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Now the true condition of the heart is this, that it carries nothing. It cannot contain two things, but the Unity it holds in love may be simple or complex, very large or greater than the whole universe. This is the explanation of the teaching of the Upanishads. In the Upanishads, Atman often means the same as heart-essence, and this heart-essence grasps both great and small, but whatever it holds, it holds nothing else.
For that reason Sufis practice heart-concentration, first to restore to the heart its faculty of grasping and then to prepare the heart for grasping that which alone does it good; that is to say, to grasp God, to hold God. All Sufi practices have this object in view.