Knowledge without Love is lifeless.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The loveless heart may have all the religion and all the knowledge, yet it is dead. As the Bible says, “God is Love.” God is in the heart of each person, and the heart of each person is the highest heaven. When that heart is closed by the absence of Love, then God is closed. When this heart is open, God is open, and one is alive from that time.
( from Enquirers’ Gathekas: Paper 22 – The Ideals and Aim of the Sufi Movement [unpublished] )
When the heart is not empty, in other words, when there is no scope in the heart, there is no place for Love. Rumi, the great poet of Persia, explains this idea more clearly. He says the pains and sorrows the soul experiences through life are like holes made in a reed flute, and it is by making these holes that a player makes the flute out of a reed. This means that the heart of humanity is first a reed and the sufferings and pains it goes through make it a flute which can then be used by God as the instrument for the music that God constantly wishes to produce. But as every reed is not a flute, so every heart is not God’s instrument. As the reed can be made into a flute, so the human heart can be turned into an instrument, and can be offered to the God of Love. It is the human heart which becomes the harp of the angels. It is the human heart which is known as the lute of Orpheus. It was on the model of the heart of humanity that the first instrument of music was made, and no earthly instrument can produce that music which the heart produces, raising the mortal soul to Immortality. … It is the knowledge of the head and the love of the heart that together fully express the Divine Message. … It is by keen observation that we acquire knowledge. Knowledge without Love is lifeless.
In love abides all knowledge. It is humankind’s love and interest in things that in time reveals their secret, and then we know how to develop, control, and utilize them. No one can know anybody, however much we may profess to know, except the lover, because in the absence of Love the inner eyes are blind. Only the outer eyes are open, which are merely the spectacles of the inner eyes. If the sight is not keen, of what use are the spectacles? It is for this reason that we admire all those whom we love, and are blind to the good qualities of those whom we do not love. It is not always that these deserve our neglect, but our eyes, without Love, cannot see their goodness. Those whom we love may have bad points too, but as Love sees beauty, so we see that alone in them. Intelligence itself in its next step towards manifestation is Love. When the Light of Love has been lit, the heart becomes transparent, so that the intelligence of the soul can see through it. But until the heart is kindled by the flame of Love, the intelligence, which is constantly yearning to experience life on the surface, is groping in the dark.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
This lifeless knowledge is the knowledge of the lower worlds, which is subject to death. For every time we forget, that is the death of this false knowledge, and every time we become indifferent, some of this ego-coined knowledge loses its false, elemental life. When one masters these elemental thoughts, when one realizes that principles can be understood only by union with these principles and that union connotes nothing but Love, then one sees the real relation between head and heart, and the real process of the highest learning and the highest wisdom.