It is more important to know the truth about one’s self than to try to find out the truth of heaven and hell.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
It is more important to find out the truth about oneself than to find out the truth about heaven and hell, or about many other things which are of less importance and are apart from oneself. However, everyone’s pursuit is according to their state of evolution, and so each soul is in pursuit of something but it does not know where it leads. The first sign of realization is tolerance towards others. There are the words of Christ: ‘In the house of my father are many mansions’ and those of the Prophet: ‘Each soul has its own religion’ This means that according to our evolution so we each know the truth and the more we know, the more we find there is to learn.
In order to attain Ttruth one must make one’s own life truthful. This is life in its moral aspect. The more truthful one is in one’s every day life the more one practices this moral despite its great difficulty, the more one approaches the only religion which there is. … Truth is the very self of humanity. Truth is the Divine element within. Truth is every soul’s seeking. Therefore as soon as the clouds of illusion are scattered, that which we now begin to see, is nothing but the Truth which has been there all the time. We find that the Truth was never absent; it was only covered by clouds of illusion. By changing our own natures, by making ourselves more truthful, we disperse the clouds of falsehood within and without, and begin to see life as it really is both inwardly and outwardly. From this time onwards, the meaning of religion becomes clear. …
When we really want to find the way, it is not very far from us. It depends on the sincerity of the desire to find it whether it is far or not. What is necessary for finding it is not much reading, or discussion or argument, but a practical study of self. One questions one’s own self: what am I? Am I a material body, or a mind, or something behind a mind? Am I myself or my coat? Is this object “me,” or something different? Is this body my cover, or myself?
( from Supplementary Papers, Philosophy V: The Knowledge of Truth [ unpublished] )
There is One Truth, the true knowledge of our being, within and without, which is the essence of all wisdom. Hazrat Ali says, ‘Know thyself, and thou shalt know God.’ … The Sufis recognize the knowledge of self as the essence of all religions; and trace it in every religion, seeing the same truth in each, and therefore they regard all as One. Hence they can realize the saying of Jesus; ‘I and my Father are One.’ The difference between creature and Creator remains on their lips, not in their souls. This is what is meant by union with God. It is in reality the dissolving of the false self in the Knowledge of the True Self, which is Divine, Eternal, and All Pervading. ‘Who attaineth union with God, their very self must lose,’ said Amir.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Heaven and hell are themselves the results of deeds. In the Bible the form of earth was conceived before sun and moon. Sun and moon represent higher and lower aspects of heaven, and the dark of the moon corresponds to hell. In finding the Self, the true Self which is God, we rise above both heaven and self.
From another point of view, considered metaphysically, the reality of existence is above the mind-mesh, is beyond Malakut, and heaven and hell are phases of the life in Malakut. Until we get beyond Malakut we do not touch the world of Principle.