The source of the realization of truth is within us; we ourselves are the object of our realization.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Humanity has differed in all ages because they have called their Deity by different names. There have existed wars, fights and family feuds for ages, everyone dividing themselves merely for the difference of the names they gave to their Deity. People always see just what they see; they cannot see beyond it. With the ideal of their Deity, with the separate names of their Deities, with all the different attitudes of worshipping their Deity, people remain separate from God, for God is Truth and Truth is God.
In past ages people have founded new religions, formed in the name of God; they have built churches, founded in the name of God and Truth; they held their scriptures in esteem and honor, and revered the names of their leaders, of the prophets and seers of the religion to which they belonged. And with all their progress people do not seem to have progressed any further than the religions as known today. Bias and bigotry exist in the followers of different creeds, in their temples and churches, in the houses of their prayers, in their congregations of particular communities. The consequence is that religion and the religious spirit has been enfeebled. This even has reacted upon the minds of others who stay away from religion and yet partake of that tendency towards difference, definition and separation which divides humankind into different sections called nations, races or communities. The reaction culminates into results still worse than the action. All wars, disasters and unhappy experiences that humanity has seen, are the outcome of this spirit of intolerance, division and separation, which naturally comes through lack of wisdom and understanding, and through the ignorance of Truth.
Then the question arises: what is the way to attain the Truth? Can it be attained through study? The answer is that the source of realizing the Truth is within humanity — but humanity is the object of its realization. There are words of Hazrat ‘Ali, saying that the one who knows self truly knows God.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Otherness and ignorance are the same. Sight is in the eye, thought is in the mind, feeling is in the heart. Without sight one could not perceive, without mind one could not conceive, without heart one could not achieve. Success consists of finding the true purpose of body, mind, and heart. It does not consist in dominating anything outside yourself, although this may naturally follow because of the laws of attunement and correspondences. But the supreme satisfaction, the supreme success, the only lasting victory is to find what we are, to know what we are.