When the stream of love flows in its full strength, it purifies all that stands in its way, as the Ganges – according to the teaching of the ancients – purifies all those who plunge into its sacred waters.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
When God’s divine love rises as a wave, it washes away the sins of the whole life in a moment, for law has no power to stand before love: the stream of love sweeps it away.
Forgiveness is a stream of love which washes away all impurities wherever it flows. By keeping this spring of love, which is in the heart, running, we are able to forgive, however great the fault of our fellow beings may seem. Those who cannot forgive close their hearts. The sign of spirituality is that there is nothing you cannot forgive, there is no fault you cannot forget. Do not think that those who have committed a fault yesterday must do the same today, for life is constantly teaching and it is possible in one moment a sinner may turn into a saint.
True happiness is in love, which is the stream that springs from one’s soul. Those who will allow this stream to run continually in all conditions of life, in all situations, however difficult, will have a happiness which truly belongs to them, the source of which is not without, but within. If there is a constant outpouring of love one becomes a divine fountain, for from the depth of the fountain rises the stream and, on its return, it pours upon the fountain, bathing it continually. It is a divine bath, the true bath in the Ganges, the sacred river.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The real Ganges, the real Jordan, the real Red Sea is the human heart and its tributaries. Heart heals body, heart heals mind, heart heals heart, heart heals all that pertains to the self, and heart heals all that pertains to others (that is to say to the phenomenal non-self). Heart takes one above the realm of self and non-self. Heart is the throne of Unity.
All the teaching of Sufism is to bring one to this great realization of Heart. This secret is described in Hazrat Inayat Khan’s text “Nirtan,” but not revealed. It cannot be revealed if by revelation one means making clear some mystery for the head. It will always be a mystery to the mind; it need never be a mystery to the heart.
This realization is the most important thing in life, in the highest sense. It is the eternal life which is possible whenever one lays down the ego and surrenders gladly. Without that surrender there is no plunge into the Ganges, there is no division of the Red Sea or baptism in the Jordan. This supreme Unity is above mind, beyond the mind-mesh. In that realm, Bhakti and Jnana — union through love and through knowledge — become one.