In humanity’s search for truth, the first lesson and the last is love. There must be no separation, no “I am” and “thou art not”. Until we have arrived at that selfless consciousness, we cannot know life and truth.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
When we look at this subject from a mystic’s point of view, we see that love has two aspects. Love in itself, and the shadow of love fallen on the earth. The former is heavenly, the latter is earthly. The former develops self-abnegation in a person; the latter makes us more selfish than we were before. Virtues such as tolerance, mercy, forgiveness and compassion rise of themselves in the heart which is awakened to love.
The infirmities such as jealousy, hatred and all manner of prejudice begin to spring up when the shadow of love has fallen on the heart of the mortal. The former love raises us to immortality, the latter turns the immortal soul into a mortal being. A poet has said that the first step in love teaches selflessness, if it is not experienced then one has taken a step in the wrong direction, although one calls it love. For we have learned from the moment we were born on earth the words ‘I am’. It is love alone that teaches us to say, ‘Thou art, not I’. For no soul can love and yet affirm its own existence.
What the Sufis call riyazat, a process of achievement, is nothing else than digging constantly in that holy land which is the human heart. Surely in the depth one will find the water of life. However, digging is not enough. Love and devotion, no doubt, help to bring out frequent merits hidden in the soul, as sincerity, thankfulness, gentleness and forgiving qualities, all things which produce an harmonious atmosphere, and all things which bring people in tune with life, the saintly life and the outer life. All those merits come, no doubt, by kindling the fire of love in the heart. But it is possible that in this process of digging we may only reach mud and lose patience. So dismay, discontentment may follow and we may withdraw oourselves from further pursuit.
It is patient pursuit which will bring the water from the depth of the ground; for until one reaches the water of life, one meets with mud in digging. It is not love, but the pretense of love, that imposes the claim of the self. The first and last lesson in love is, ‘I am not — Thou art’ and unless we are moved to that selflessness we do not know justice, right or truth; our self stands above or between us and God.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
From the study of the heart in the body, we can observe that it is the circulation of the blood which is the continuous process of life. The blood touches every part of one’s body and keeps it functioning as a unit. We can tell something about a person if we know the condition of their blood. Heart in the body does not separate part from part but considers the whole as a unit.
Such is the nature of love. It can think only in terms of unities. From one point of view, this is not thinking, but from a deeper aspect it is the only real thinking. What one calls thought — by which one endeavors to know something of the nature of things — is really a process of analysis.
Analysis can only bring knowledge of analyzing; it sees parts but cannot put them together because its nature is to divide. To bring parts together one must be able to efface the nufs of each part. By thinking of them as separate pieces one gives each a nufs, which is the product of human thought.
In fact, the whole world as we consider its existence is nothing but the external projection of this thought-power, and the physical world itself is dependent upon thought-power to some extent. But thought itself disintegrates when there is not feeling behind it. In fact, this occurs at all times, yet not much attention is paid to it.
As mind analyzes, it cannot put parts together; therefore constantly looking at diversity, it can never apprehend Truth. The enlightened mind is not different from the unenlightened mind except that it perceives Unity, yet it is not self-dependent, it is dependent upon heart. In fact it is one with heart.
Now heart expands and contracts, but there is no limit to its expansiveness. Whatever it touches, it regards as itself. It sees no separate self and does not think of others as separate. We often find little infants looking upon each other as the same person, calling each other by their own names. They have not yet gained the habit of analyzing and separating. The spiritual soul passes again into a stage when it can see above all the distinctions and differences which divide, when another does not appear to one as another but as a projection of the Self, the Only Being.
This type of love is wisdom itself. When the bounds of limitation are removed, there is no end to wisdom, to knowledge, to ability. However, the real lover does not place the heart upon such things; one loves and it is this love that makes one live. If there are any gains in it, one does not do it for that reason: one loves because it is one’s nature to love. This shows the presence of heart which marks the spiritual person. No other person is really spiritual, but all — even sinners — possess this potentiality, be it in a smaller or greater degree. Pure thought, real thought, is without any “I” and is the expression of an awakened soul.