Verily, one is victorious who has conquered oneself.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Our greatest enemy is our self. All weakness, all ignorance keeps us from the Truth of our being, from all the virtues hidden in us and all perfection hidden in our souls. The first self we realize is the false self. Unless the soul is born again it will not see the realm of heaven. The soul is born into the false self; it is blind. In the True Self the soul opens its eyes. Unless the false self is fought with, the True Self cannot be realized.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: The Will, Human and Divine )
The soul is a bird of paradise, a free dweller in the heavens. Its first prison is the mind, then the body. In these it becomes not only limited, but also captive. The whole endeavor of the Sufis in life is to liberate the soul from its captivity, which they do by conquering both mind and body.
If we have control over our self, we will smile and be patient even if we are exposed to rages a thousand times. We will just wait. We who have spiritual control have great control; but we who have it not can control neither spiritual nor physical events. We cannot control our own children, for we never listen to ourselves first. If we listened to ourselves, not only persons but even objects would listen to us.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: Character and Fate )
There is a poem by the great Persian poet, Iraqi [ Fakr-ud-Din Ibrahim ‘iraqi ], in which he says ‘When I went to the gate of the divine Beloved and knocked at the door, a voice came and said — Who art thou?’ When he had said ‘I am so and so’, the answer came, ‘There is no place for anyone else in this abode. Go back to whence thou hast come’. He turned back and then, after a long time, after having gone through the process of the cross and of crucifixion, he again went there — with the spirit of selflessness. He knocked at the door; the word came, ‘Who art thou? ‘, and he said, ‘Thyself alone, for no one else exists save Thee’. And God said, ‘Enter into this abode for now it belongs to thee’. It is such selflessness, to the extent that the thought of self is not there, it is being dead to the self, which is the recognition of God.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
What is the nature of victory? When one gains something from another, unless in that process one has gained strength, one has gained nothing. The things that one momentarily seizes one cannot keep when one leaves this world; the strength that comes to one either on the battlefield or in controversy or in love or in friendliness or in any situation — if it is really strength — can be taken with one out of this world. This shows that strength is something that can be gained, and a victorious person can gain strength.
Now suppose one is an athlete. It has been found by people we regard as ordinary that well-trained athletes, be they ball players or runners or wrestlers or pugilists, must keep a fairly strict regimen especially in regard to rhythm and self-control. No matter how great their physical prowess, without this rhythm and self-control they cannot consistently and continually win. Their whole life, be it ever so mundane and material, depends upon their self-control.
From this we can see that the nature of deliverance is not apart from the finite existence, that Nirvana and Samsara are of the same essence. And what is the sage? The sage is nothing but that athlete, that pugilist, who has carried that regimen over into the mental sphere from the physical. And what is the saint? The one who has gone still further and carried this discipline into the heart, in other words into the whole of life.