The wise, by studying nature, enter into Unity through its variety, and realize the personality of God by sacrificing their own.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
It may be said that the personality of a human is quite comprehensible, since one’s actions exhibit the person as a single individual, whereas God’s personality has no clear identification of its own. The answer is, that variety covers Unity.
Hidden things are manifested by their opposites, but as God has no opposite God remains hidden. God’s light has no opposite in the range of creation whereby it may be manifested to view.
— Jalaluddin Rumi
The wise by studying nature enter into the unity through its variety, and realize the personality of God by sacrificing their own. ‘The who knows self knows Allah’ (Islamic Saying). ‘The Kingdom of God is within you’ (Bible). ‘Self-knowledge is the real wisdom’ (Vedanta).
Life starts by distinguishing between the two [ Unity and variety ]; life starts us in this way. If we did not distinguish between the two and we arrived at that conception of unity of which I have spoken, we would be missing a great deal in life. It is after distinguishing these that, without becoming congested, we may come to the idea of unity which raises us above it all. For instance, when one says, ‘I will not look at the fault of another’ and closes the eyes, one has missed a great deal. But one who has seen it and risen above it has really closed the eyes; that one is the person who deserves to close the eyes from the other side.
The purpose of our life on earth is to come and see all the distinctions and all the differences, but not to be congested by them and so to be thrown downwards. We should go on rising above them all, at the same time experiencing them all. For instance one may say, ‘I have never thought about anyone who has done me any good, and I have never considered any harm that has ever come to me from anyone; I have always had just that one idea before me and after that idea I kept going’. One may be advanced, one may be spiritual, one may be pious, and yet one has missed a great deal. But one who has received all the good that has come to one with grateful thanks and felt it, and who has also felt the harm done to one and forgiven and pardoned it, that is the one who has seen the world and is going beyond with success.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
It should not be supposed that Allah has not a physical body. All nature, all the physical world, constitutes this body just as all the mental world constitutes the sheath of the Divine Mind. A person cannot so easily see the inside of the body, cognizing the various activities going on in the organs and cells, in the nerves and blood stream. In some mysterious way these constitute a unity, but the unity is fundamental to their existence.
Similarly, all the functions and species of nature are dependent upon a Cosmic Unity, which is reflected in them and is causal to them, but which does not consist of them. To understand this more fully, one must find out God’s Mind in order to understand God’s Body. This can only be done when one’s own mind, and so one’s own personality, is left behind in one’s spiritual unfoldment.