Cleverness and complexity are not necessarily wisdom.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
People like complexity. They do not want to take only one step; it is more interesting to look forward to millions of steps. Those who are seeking the truth get into a maze, and that maze interests them. They want to go through it a thousand times more. It is just like children whose whole interest is in running about; they do not want to see the door and go in until they are very tired. So it is with grown-up people. They all say that they are seeking truth, but they like the maze. That is why the mystics made the greatest truths a mystery, to be given only to the few who were ready for them, letting the others play because it was the time for them to play.
For spiritual attainment we do not need to pay a tax, it is ours, it is our self, it is discovering our self, finding our self. Yet what one values is what one gets with difficulty. People love complexity so much! They make a thing big and say, ‘This is valuable’. If it is simple they say, ‘It has no value’. That is why the ancient people, knowing human nature, told people when they said they wanted spiritual attainment, ‘Very well; for ten years go around the temple, walk around it a hundred times in the morning and in the evening. Go to the Ganges, take pitchers full of water during twenty or fifty years, then you will get inspiration’. That is what must be done with people who will not be satisfied with a simple explanation of the truth, who want complexity.
We read in the Vadan, ‘Simplicity is the living beauty.’ People today have made life so complex that whatever they seek after, they want to find in complexity. All things in life which have importance, beauty and value are simple; and simplest of all things is the Divine Truth. … The Truth is not a newly invented theory, not a dogma, not an idea; it is Reality itself. At the back of it is the self of humanity; therefore it is simple. But it is not simplicity that we seek, we are longing for complexity. Anything which will confuse we are glad to take interest in. If it is simple, we say, ‘I know it already.’
People love complexity and call it knowledge. A great many societies and institutions in the world which call themselves occult, esoteric and psychic, and by various other names, knowing that everyone is interested in complexity, cover the Truth. Instead of covering the Truth with one cover, they cover it with a thousand covers to make it more interesting. … Therefore, mystics very often appear to be simple because sincerity makes them feel inclined to express the Truth in simple language and in simple ideas. But because people value complexity, they think that what the mystics say is too simple and that it is something which they have always known, that it is nothing new. However, as Solomon said, ‘There is nothing new under the sun.’
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume X – Sufi Mysticism: Part I – Sufi Mysticism, Chapter 2 – The Mystic )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
These qualities [ cleverness and complexity ] come to one from subtlety of mind, from being able to turn thoughts in certain directions and to mold the mind-stuff, so to speak, like a potter molds clay. To do this is still to operate in the sphere of mind. Wisdom, on the other hand, pours down from the spiritual world into the mental sphere as a ray of pure light, brings life and illumination to the mind, and clarifies it all at once, regardless of particular influences and conditions.