It is more important to find out the truth about one’s self, than to find out the truth of heaven and hell.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
The awakened souls look about and ask: ‘Who is my enemy?’ While the unawakened souls think that it is their neighbor or their relation who is their enemy, the awakened souls say, ‘It is my self; my ignorant ego is my enemy; and it is the struggle with this enemy that will bring me light and raise me from the denseness of the earth.’
When a person really wants to find the way, it is not very far from them. It depends on the sincerity of the desire to find it whether it is far or not. What is necessary for finding it is not much reading, or discussion or argument, but a practical study of self. One questions one’s own self: what am I? Am I a material body, or a mind, or something behind a mind? Am I myself or my coat? Is this object “me,” or something different? Is this body my cover, or myself?
( from The Supplementary Papers: Chapter 5, Philosophy V – The Knowledge of Truth [ unpublished ] )
What is it then in people which says ‘I’ and identifies itself with what it sees? It is not our head or foot which says ‘I’ nor is it in the brain. It is something that we cannot point out which identifies itself with all these different parts and says ‘I’ and ‘mine’.
There is One Truth, the true knowledge of our being, within and without, which is the essence of all wisdom. Hazrat Ali says, ‘Know thyself, and thou shalt know God.’ … The Sufis recognize the knowledge of self as the essence of all religions; they trace it in every religion, they see the same truth in each, and therefore they regard all as one. Hence they can realize the saying of Jesus; ‘I and my Father are one.’ The difference between creature and Creator remains on their lips, not in their soul. This is what is meant by union with God. It is in reality the dissolving of the false self in the knowledge of the true self, which is divine, eternal, and all pervading. ‘Those who attain union with God, their very self must lose,’ said Amir.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
What are Heaven and Hell? They are the results of action, speech, and thought — they are “results” and not self-dependent. Every Hell and Heaven may be different, and the same condition can be Hell to one and Heaven to another. Therefore we cannot understand them until we understand self — and not nufs but the innermost being.
Sufis willingly surrender Heaven and Hell to God, considering it a joy when Allah is present even in the midst of Hell and a loss when Allah is absent even in the bosom of Paradise.