Bowl of Saki for January 13

Do not limit God to your virtue. God is beyond your virtues, O pious ones!

Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan


Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan

Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net

There is no such thing as impossible. All is possible. Impossible is made by the limitation of our capacity of understanding. Those, blinded by the law of nature’s working, by the law of consequences which they have known through their few years life on earth, begin to say, ‘This is possible and that is impossible.’ If they were to rise beyond limitations, their souls would see nothing but possible. And when the soul has risen high enough to see all possibility, that soul certainly has caught a glimpse of God.

Many have been resentful towards God for having sent them misery in their lives, but misery is always part of life’s experience. Some may become very angry and say, ‘This is not just’, or ‘This is not right, for how could God who is just and good allow unjust things to happen?’ But our sight is very limited, and our conception of right and wrong and good and evil is only our own, and not according to God’s plan. It is true that as long as we see it as such, it is so for us and for those who look at it from our point of view; but when it comes to God the whole dimension is changed, the whole point of view is changed.

It is for this reason that the wise in all ages, instead of trying to judge the action of God, have so to speak put aside their sense of justice for the time being; and they have tried to learn one thing only, and that was resignation to the will of God.

The Being of God is recognized by God’s attributes. Therefore people speak of God as the just God. They see all power, all goodness in God; but when the situation is changed, when they see God as injustice, they begin to think that God is powerless, and to judge the action of God. But one must look at this from a different point of view. Human beings are limited, imperfect, and yet we try to judge the perfect Being, or Its perfect action, from our own imperfect standpoint. In order to judge, our vision must become as wide as the universe; then we might have a slight glimpse of the justice, which is perfect in itself.


Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis

Virtues can only be of two natures — those conceived by God and those conceived by humanity. Virtue as conceived by God is nothing but Love, although it may be said to have the seed of all virtues. Passing through the mind-mesh it appears under all guises and activities and these are given names by humanity; and especially those we like to call virtues, but all really arise from one activity and one essence. Until God is perceived as All-Embracing and as All-Qualities, the virtue we ascribe to God is nothing but the virtue we ourselves admire, raised to an ideal, which ideal is not God even in its highest aspect, so long as it is attached to name.