Love develops into harmony, and of harmony is born beauty.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Love produces harmony and harmony creates beauty. Therefore the chief motto in life is ‘Love, harmony and beauty’. Love, in all things and beings, the beloved God, in harmony with all in the right understanding, and beautify your life by observing the beauty within and without. By love, harmony and beauty you must turn the whole of life into a single vision of divine glory.
( from The Mysticism of Sound and Music: The Sufi Teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan – Aphorisms, Shambala Dragon Editions, softcover published 1991, ISBN 987-1-57062-231-1. [This is a revised and enlarged republication of Volume II of the original Sufi Message Volumes and may only be available from used book sellers.] )
How the words ‘love,’ ‘harmony,’ and ‘beauty’ delight the heart of everyone who hears them! One may wonder what it can be in these words that is able to exert such a natural power upon the human soul. The answer is that if there is anything in life which appeals to the human soul, it is love and beauty. If one asks, ‘And what besides those?’ then the answer is, ‘There is nothing else.’ Why is this? Because they are the very nature of life. Love is the nature of life, beauty is the outcome of life, harmony is the means by which life accomplishes its purpose, and the lack of it results in destruction.
Our virtues are made of love, and our sins are caused by lack of it. Love turns sins into virtues, and its lack makes virtues meaningless. Christ said when a woman was brought before Him accused of sin, ‘Her sins are forgiven, for she loved much.’ Heaven is made so beautiful with love, and life becomes a hell through the lack of it. Love in reality creates harmony in one’s life on earth and peace in heaven.
It is harmony which makes beauty; beauty in itself has no meaning. An object which is called beautiful at a certain place and time is not beautiful at another place or another time. And so it is with thought, speech and action: that which is called beautiful is only so at a certain time and under certain conditions which make it beautiful. So if one can give a true definition of beauty, it is harmony. Harmony in a combination of colors, harmony in the drawing of a design or a line is called beauty, and a word, a thought, a feeling, an action that creates harmony is productive of beauty.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
If there were an opposite condition to Love, it would not be hate, but chaos. Hate is a force derived from love, concentrated through nufs. Chaos, on the other hand, is the opposite of all love. Allah, through Ishk, destroyed and destroys chaos, and the first sign of the absence of chaos is the music of life expressed in rhythms and harmonies. This is the cause of all vibrations, out of which all worlds were made.
Beauty is the natural result of harmony in that it uplifts the soul. The harmonies, melodies, and rhythms of vibrations and forms are intoxicating. One can see in an instant the inspiration of an artist; one can see that one picture does not inspire and another does inspire the witness. Beauty in form, be it in nature or from human hands, is always compelling and uplifting.