To love is one thing, to understand is another. The one who loves is a devotee, but the one who understands is a friend.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
It is sometimes asked why, if God is All-Pervading, there is need of the special manifestation of a messenger such as Krishna, Buddha, or Jesus. The answer is given in the words of the Bhagavad-Gita where Shri Krishna says, ‘When Dharma is hindered, then I am born.’ This means that a manifestation, which the people recognize as a savior or messenger, always comes when the necessity arises. … In all ages and to all peoples the message of God has been sent. And that message has been kept by those who received it in the form of a scripture, and the name and honor of the messenger have been held high by those who have followed that particular message. No matter at what time in the history of the world the message came, one thing is sure: that it has always penetrated the heart of humanity and left its impression and its influence, ever multiplying and spreading, proving it to be the message of God. … Since it is the message of God, whenever it comes it is from the same source. When it came a thousand years ago it was God’s message; when it came a hundred years ago it was God’s message; and if it came today it would be also God’s message.
How ignorant humans have been through all the ages! And they show their ignorance even today, for whenever the message has come, we have fought and disputed and argued. We have held fast to one prophet and ignored the others, because although we knew our religion we did not know the message. We have taken the book as our religion without recognizing the message. If that were not the general tendency, then how could Jesus Christ with His most spiritual message have been crucified? There had been prophecies, and besides prophecies the Master himself was the evidence of his message, as the saying has it: ‘What you are, speaks louder than what you say.’ And how thickly veiled our eyes must be by the religion, the faith, the belief we hold, for us to accept only one messenger and to reject the message given by other prophets, not knowing that the message is one and the same!
It is one thing to love and another thing to understand. Those who love the messengers are devotees; but those who know the messengers are their friends. There is a tendency in the human race which has appeared in all ages: it leads us to accept every expression of the message which has been given us, to be won by it, blessed by it, and yet to fail to recognize who the messenger is. The followers of each form of the message profess devotion to their Lord and Master, by whatever name that messenger had in the past, but they do not necessarily know the Master. What they know is the name and the life of the Master that has come down to them in history or tradition; but beyond that they know very little about the Master. If the same one came in another form, in a garb adapted to another age, would they know or accept that one? No, they would not even recognize that one, because it was not the message but the form that they accepted in the past; a certain name or character; a part but not the whole.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
This is the difference between Ishk and Ilm. The devotee is intoxicated by the love and light of God and longs for nothing else but to be bathed in the Universal Spirit; that one is a devotee, and sometimes a saint. But there is another stage: to be bathed in this ocean, to drink of the cosmic wine and not be drunk. This is an ultimate stage of sobriety, the fruit of which is Ilm — the supreme knowledge or universal intelligence, possession of which makes one a sage. The devotees, possessing Ishk, become nothing in the sight of God as they are non-existing in the Existent. But the sages, possessing Ilm, are as God in the sight of nothing — they are Existent in the non-existent. Fanā’ [ Arabic ( فناء ) the effacement, passing away, or annihilation of the false self within the Real — Muiz ] describes the devotee in Ishk, and Baqā’ [ Arabic ( بقاء ) literally subsistence, permanency; where one is in a permanent state of life with God, through God, in God, and for God — Muiz ] describes the sage with Ilm.