Those who can quicken the feeling of another to joy or to gratitude, by that much they add to their own lives.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
We all have our circle of influence, large or small; within our sphere so many souls and minds are involved; with our rise, they rise; with our fall, they fall. The size of our sphere corresponds with the extent of our sympathy, or we may say, with the size of our heart. Our sympathy holds our sphere together. As our heart grows, our sphere grows; as our sympathy is withdrawn or lessened, so our sphere breaks up and scatters. If we harm those who live and move within our sphere, those dependent upon us or upon our affection, we of necessity harm ourselves. Our house or our palace or our cottage, our satisfaction or our disgust in our environment is the creation of our own thought. Acting upon our thoughts, and also part of our own thoughts, are the thoughts of those near to us; others depress us and destroy us, or they encourage and support us in proportion as we repel those around us by our coldness, or attract them by our sympathy.
We each compose the music of our own life. If we injure another, we bring disharmony. When our sphere is disturbed, we are disturbed ourselves, and there is a discord in the melody of our life. If we can quicken the feeling of another to joy or to gratitude, by that much we add to our own life; we become ourselves by that much more alive. Whether conscious of it or not, our thought is affected for the better by the joy or gratitude of another, and our power and vitality increase thereby, and the music of our life grows more in harmony.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The efflux of the heart is Life and Light and Love, which the sentient mind comprehends as different substances, although they are just different attributes of the same cosmic substance. [ This is the All Pervading Life in Space, mentioned in Nayaz, the Healing Prayer, and and also Prana, the Breath Current, the densest, most outward manifestation of God/Godess/Source in the physical world. — Muiz ]. It is Love that quickens the heart or self of another and Love is Life; therefore adding Love is adding Life. It is the same process and comes with the expansion of heart.