Wisdom can only be learned gradually, and every soul is not ready to receive or to understand the complexity of the purpose of Life.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Humans 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. Their 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 adults. 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.
Truth is simple. But for the very reason that it is simple, people will not take it; because our life on earth is such that for everything we value, we have to pay a great price and one wonders, if truth is the most precious of all things, then how can truth be attained simply? It is this illusion that makes everyone deny simple truth and seek for complexity. Tell people about something that makes their heads whirl round and round and round. Even if they do not understand it, they are most pleased to think, ‘It is something substantial. It is something solid. For, it is an idea we cannot understand, it must be something lofty.’ But something which every soul knows, proving what is Divine in every soul, and which it cannot help but know, that appears to be too cheap, for the soul already knows it. There are two things: knowing and being. It is easy to know Truth, but most difficult to be Truth. It is not in knowing truth that Life’s purpose is accomplished; Life’s purpose is accomplished in being Truth.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad) Samuel L. Lewis
By “soul” here, really “mind” is meant. Mind learns by a series of steps and stages, while heart learns at a single glance. Thus while some teach evolution and others revolution, while some teach gradual progress and others propound suddenness, there is Truth in both. In the case of gradual progress soul is identified with mind, in the case of suddenness of realization with heart. Actually soul is neither mind nor heart, but in speaking of wisdom we refer to those vehicles. Wisdom is Life itself reflected in the individual being.