The knowledge of self is the essential knowledge; it gives knowledge of humanity. In the understanding of the human being lies that understanding of Nature which reveals the law of creation.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
What we need most is the understanding of that religion of religions and that philosophy of philosophies which is self-knowledge. We shall not understand the outer life if we do not understand ourselves. It is the knowledge of the self that gives the knowledge of the world.
One may ask, what should one study? There are two kinds of studies. One kind is by reading the teachings of the great thinkers and keeping them in mind, the study of metaphysics, psychology, and mysticism. And the other kind of study is the study of Life. Every day one has an opportunity for studying; but it should be a correct study. When people travel in a tramcar, in the train, with a newspaper in their hands, they want to read the sensational news which is worth nothing. They should read human nature which is before them, people coming and going. If they would continue to do this, they would begin to read human beings as though they were letters written by the divine pen, which speak of their past and future. They should look deeply at the heavens and at nature and at all the things to be seen in everyday life, and reflect upon them with the desire to understand. This kind of study is much superior, incomparably superior, to the study of books.
( from the Sufi Message Series, Volume VI – The Alchemy of Happiness, Chapter 15: The Deeper Side of Life )
If people go through their whole lives most cleverly judging others, they may go on, but they will find themselves to be more foolish at every step. At the end, they reach the fullness of stupidity. But those who try, test, study and observe themselves, their own attitude in life, their own outlook on life, their own thought, speech, and action, who weigh and measure and teach themselves self-discipline, it is they who are able to understand another better. How rarely one sees souls who concern themselves with themselves through life, in order to know! Mostly, every soul seems to be busily occupied with the lives of others. And what do they know in the end? Nothing. If there is a realm of God to be found anywhere, it is within oneself.
And it is, therefore, in the knowledge of self that there lies the fulfillment of life. The knowledge of self means the knowledge of one’s body, the knowledge of one’s mind, the knowledge of one’s spirit; the knowledge of the spirit’s relation to the body and the relation of the body to the spirit; the knowledge of one’s wants and needs, the knowledge of one’s virtues and faults; knowing what we desire and how to attain it, what to pursue and what to renounce. And when one dives deep into this, one finds before one a world of knowledge which never ends. And it is that knowledge which gives one insight into human nature and brings one to the knowledge of the whole of creation. And in the end one attains to the knowledge of the Divine Being.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
All human beings were made with essentially similar bodies, essentially similar mind-capacities, and essentially similar hearts. To understand one is to understand all. It is not necessary to dissect everybody’s stomach either with the knife or with the analytical faculty of mind to understand nutrition. At best these give but a partial knowledge. The human body is a miniature cosmos and the human mind is a miniature super-cosmos if one only knew it, but until one understands one’s own body and one’s own mind one cannot understand the laws of relations. Yet body and mind are not the self; these are but the outcroppings of self, which lies hidden deep beneath the vehicles with which it is clothed. All creation tends toward humanity, both the creation of the seen worlds including rock, plant, and animal and the creation of the unseen worlds — the elementals, jinns, and angels. All tend toward the human being in the highest expression of God.