Love has the power to open the door of eternal life.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Mystics of all ages have not been known for their miraculous powers or for the doctrines they have taught, but for the devotion they have shown throughout their lives. The Sufis in the East say to themselves, Ishq Allah Ma’bud Allah, which means ‘God is Love, God is the Beloved’, in other words it is God who is Love, Lover, and Beloved. When we hear the stories of the miraculous powers of mystics, of their great insight into the hidden laws of nature, of the qualities which they manifested through their beautiful personalities, we realize that these have all come from one and the same source, whether one calls it devotion or whether one calls it love..
Love is that state of mind in which the consciousness of the lover is merged in that of the object of their love; it produces in the lover all the attributes of humanity, such as resignation, renunciation, humility, kindness, contentment, patience, virtue, calmness, gentleness, charity, faithfulness, bravery, by which the devotee becomes harmonized with the Absolute. For God’s Beloveds, a path is opened for their heavenly journey: at the end they arrive at oneness with God, and their whole individuality is dissolved in the ocean of eternal bliss where even the conception of God and humanity disappears.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Because love is life — they are not two, they are one. The only force in animal passion is the life-force, and this life-force leads to propagation of species. The transmutation of love from the sphere of procreation to creation is a transmutation of life-force, which may then be directed at will. Yet all our usages of this life-force should be for the greatest satisfaction possible in order that beauty may increase and every deed become a work of art.
When one reaches this stage, one brings paradise to earth and one lives one’s immortality. Immortality, being of the nature of the infinite, is therefore unqualified and knows no self. The true Atman, if the totality can so be called, is life, but life not in the sense that it is generally known. Rather it is Ishk, the Supreme Love which bonds everything in creation and yet is bound by nothing.