Do not fear God, but consciously regard God’s pleasure and displeasure.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The religion of the Sufis is the religion of the heart. The principal moral of the Sufis is to consider the heart of others, so that in the pleasure and displeasure of their fellow humans they see the pleasure and displeasure of God. It is so simple, and yet so difficult to practise. This teaching is the central theme of all religions. It is the thing which no one in the world does not know, and yet the practice of it is never enough. What generally happens is that there are three intoxications which cover the tendency for considering the feelings of others and keep us ignorant of that which is our own.
[ (adding to Wahiduddin’s selected excerpt, from the quoted text — Muiz)
The first intoxication is produced by oneself; it is the consideration of one’s own interest which covers the feeling of consideration for another. One is so absorbed in one’s own interests in life that one is intoxicated by them and so does not see the importance of considering the feelings of
others.
The second intoxication is that which comes from another person. If people do not come up to one’s ideal, if they do not act towards one as one wishes, if they do not answer one’s expectation, if they jar upon one’s fine feelings, if they are irritable, disagreeable, or of coarse vibrations, all this causes another intoxication which keeps one from feeling for others and sets one against them.
The third intoxication comes from conditions. There are conditions which offer temptations or which cause anxiety, fear, doubt, or confusion. Then there are conditions which promise profit or benefit, things which one
desires in life, and under these circumstances another intoxication comes as a third cover over the heart. ]
There are four paths or stages that lead a person to spiritual knowledge, from the limited to the Unlimited. The first stage is Shariat. This is where the God-ideal is impressed upon people as authority, as fear of God. This really means conscientiousness, not fear as is usually thought. If we love, we do not wish to displease; love does not force us to act, but it asks us to be conscientious and take care not to cause the least disharmony with the one whose happiness we want. …
This stage of Shariat is that in which we ask ourselves what will please or displease God. We learn our religion from our parents, from our friends. A good action pleases, a bad action displeases, and pride displeases most; we learn everything very easily by seeing what displeases another. How easy it is; and yet we still go to a clergy person or to a priest, to ask what pleases God. And all the time it is just what pleases people that pleases God, and therefore if we please all around us, we please God; if we displease them, we displease God. One who has attained to this stage realizes what reward comes when one pleases the world, and what happens when one does not.
[ Pir-o-Murshid is referring here to a healthy and productive manifestation of “pleasing all around us”, that comes from developing a conscientious empathy and compassion for self and others which opens, expands, and frees the heart and the soul from limitation. He isn’t advising the very unhealthy and psychologically counter-productive manifestation of the obsessive need to please everyone at the expense of one’s own well-being, which arises from a wounding or trauma that blinds a person to their own fundamental, innate and inherent self-worth and goodness. — Muiz ]
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: The Personality of God )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Fear is an emotion which results from the failure of breath to touch the heart plane. This is the natural condition of humanity. In the opposite condition, or that of love, the breath reaches but does not penetrate the heart-plane (Djabrut). However, the light of Intelligence confers upon such a one vision into that sphere so the Divine Will can be perceived. Thus one can, through the practice of Darood or Fikr, discover all that is in harmony or disharmony with God, and in a very practical (not theoretical) manner, perform God’s Will.