Insight into life is the real Religion, which alone can help humanity to understand Life.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Say to yourself, ‘My ideal, my religion, my desire is to please my Lord before whom I bow my head. So when I am before anyone, I am before my Lord, my God. I must take care always to be considerate and thoughtful, lest I hurt my God.’ That is the real Religion. If you take care not to hurt a loved one, a friend, but do not mind hurting a servant, or wicked or foolish person, that will not be real religion. Love will recognize the ideal of Love, the Divine Ideal, in every heart, and will refrain from using words which will make others unhappy; words expressing pride, thoughtless words, sarcastic words, any word which will disturb their peace of mind, or hurt their sensibilities.
Good deeds, kindness, forgiveness, tolerance, acts of love, none of these are ever lost, and some day they will return to us. Even if the recipients appear ungrateful or heedless, it is all the same. There is no need to be disappointed even if they prove to be unworthy of our kindness and our love. When we realize that all Life is One Life, we discover that it is to that Life that we give our love and kindness and mercy. Then it is bound to return to us, if not today, perhaps next week. If not next week, perhaps next year. If not here, then somewhere where we never expected it could possibly come. ‘Thou shalt find it after many days.’
Though there may still be time to awaken to a true understanding of these things, it is often too late by the time that sufferings, troubles, and misery have come to the individual or to the multitude. If those have so far failed to understand the trials before they actually came, perhaps they will never understand. When there is some little pain or they feel bad in themselves, they may think they have some illness. But if they do not think about it, if they take no notice of it, something worse may come. And so it has been with the world. The worst evil that has ever been should show us that it is now time to awaken and understand that it is not a study of national or social problems, not a study of religious questions that will bring an everlasting Peace; but it is the insight into Life which is the real Religion and which alone can help us to understand life.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: The Desire of Nations )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Religion is not belief; religion is that which links us to God. [ ‘religion’: from the Latin ‘religare’ to bind, ie to bind one back to one’s Source. In this sense it is similar to the Sanskrit ‘yoga’, from ‘yog’ to yoke, join, attach, harness. — Muiz ] And what is Life? It is an aspect of God; it is the aspect that enables Unity to appear as diversity, which develops harmonies out of Universal Sound, which patterns mind-stuff and matter-stuff in molds of Beauty.
Insight is different from perception in that perception deals with variety, and insight takes one toward Unity. It is the apprehension and comprehension of Unity which leads to the understanding of Life. This is a process of the heart, not of the head.