Every passion, every emotion has its effect upon our minds, and every change of mind, however slight, has its effect upon our bodies.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Different conditions and the changes that take place in the world have their effect upon the mind, and the different conditions of the mind have their effect upon the body. As bodily illness makes us irritable, confused and exhausted in mind, so different conditions of the mind cause health or illness in the body. The link between the body and the mind is the breath, a link through which the influences of the body and the mind are exchanged and work upon one another.
Every passion, every emotion has its effect upon our minds; and every change of mind, however slight, has its effect upon our bodies… One person is perhaps striving all day to earn their own bread so that they may live in a comfortable manner. Another is always worrying about how to maintain themselves and their children. Another is thinking, ‘What can I do to save my fellow humans from their troubles?’ If we compare these people, in order to see who is the greatest, we see that the one is greatest whose ideal is greatest.
When we consider that great heroes of the past and present, those whom we admire and to whom we look with hope for right guidance, we shall find that what has made them great has been the greatness of their ideal. The lower the ideal, the less the efforts. The higher the ideal, the greater the Life. If we use all our intelligence and strength and wisdom to accomplish some little thing, it is only a waste of Life. To consider what great things one can accomplish, to seek to do those things which will be most useful and valuable to others, that is the ideal Life. … Come to the mystics, then, and sit with them when you are tired of all these other remedies that you have employed in vain; come and take a glass of wine with them. The mystic wine is the inner absorption, which removes all the worries and anxieties and troubles and cares of the physical and mental plane. All these are now done away with forever. It is the mystics who are at rest. It is they who experience that happiness which others do not experience. It is they who teach the way to attain that Peace and Happiness which are the original heritage of humanity’s soul.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VII – In an Eastern Rose Garden: The Mystery of Breath )
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Now passions and emotions come from two sources — the breath and the ego. The breath is as the mother, for when the breath is spiritualized there can be no emotion unless indifference be regarded as such. But according to the elements dominant in the breath and according to the state of thought or feeling, there are emotions. And without the thought of self, there would be no passions or emotions for all arise from the attempt of the nufs “to be something”.
Every emotion has its seat in some organ of the body, and under their stress either the fluid of these organs is thrown into the blood or the blood enters the organs. So the natural rhythm is affected and the body suffers accordingly. But the mind also suffers, for every activity of any organ enervates the nerves, the mental magnetism is drawn in that direction, and so thought as a whole is affected and perhaps impeded.
Likewise every thought, by drawing more nervous energy and mental magnetism, by attracting more blood and by directing the will-power, naturally takes the forces away from other parts of the body and mind. Thus, in deep thinking, physical exercise may be impossible, while one engaged in athletic pursuits is generally unable to carry on simultaneously intellectual tasks.