The plain truth is too simple for the seekers after complexity, who are looking for things they cannot understand.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Humanity likes complexity. People 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 grown-up people. 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.
What holds people back? It is their love of complexity. Life makes for them a puzzle, and like children they enjoy the puzzle. Truth is too simple for them; they attach importance to what they cannot understand. If they are told that there is a sacred mountain a thousand miles away they will walk to it. In the ancient days the people were told that if they walked in a circle round the temple a hundred times they would gain much, and they went and felt they had made a pilgrimage. Such is human nature. We long for Truth, we search for Truth, and yet we want to escape from Truth. Humanity wants mystery. We want something that can be put into words. So long as seekers have that desire they will remain in a puzzle, but for the one who wishes to come out, the door is open. The heart is the abode of God. Christ said, ‘Seek ye first the realm of heaven, and all these things shall be added unto you’…. We have accustomed ourselves to think of things that are far from Truth. Even in religion as well as in everyday life we are continually denying truth, and so we wander far away because we become accustomed to everything but Truth.
People are seeking for phenomena, they want wonder-working, communication with ghosts or spirits, they are looking for something complex, and yet the simplest thing and the most valuable thing in life is to find one’s true self.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The emotional stir of things and the intoxication of the outer life are the great detriments. One who has become accustomed to them grows to love complexities. Now heart is not complex although heart may be considered as “involved”. That is to say, one cannot by simple analysis find heart. Heart is simple but not analyzable. One cannot express the greater in terms of the smaller and still understand the greater. The human being is an aggregate of cells, let us say. Yet we can study physical cells forever and never discover the human. This shows there is something missing in analysis.
That there is something missing in analysis every little child knows — as well as a loving mother and a kind father, often quite involuntarily — for it is the very nature of life that causes them to feel this something. This is Ishk, the great life-force of the Universe which is tendered to everyone through Divine Guidance.