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Forum February The Secret of the Spirit (1) from: Hazrat Inayat Khan - Path of Initiation |
There are four different explanations of the word 'spirit'. One meaning is essence. Spirit of camphor means the essence of camphor. The second meaning of spirit is what is understood by those who call the soul spirit when it has left the body on earth and has passed to the other side. The third meaning of spirit is that of the soul and mind working together. It is used in this sense when one says that a man seems to be in low spirits; this means that both his mind and soul are depressed, although one may not always define it in this way. And the fourth meaning of spirit is the soul of all souls, the source and goal of all things and all beings, from which all comes and to which all returns. The first meaning of the word spirit is, as I have said, essence. The essence of flowers is honey, the essence of milk is butter, the essence of grapes is wine, and the essence of learning is wisdom. Therefore wisdom is as sweet as honey, as nourishing as butter, and as exalting as wine. To rise above things in life one must try to get to the essence. In other words, there is one way of listening to a musician and that is to consider the form, the technique; and the other way is to grasp the feeling, the sense that the music suggests. So it is with life; we can look at life in one way and see it in different forms and make a rigid conception of it, or we can see it so that we get the suggestion of its essence. For instance a person may come to us and express a thousand false feelings. And then we go over it in our mind and realize it was all false because it could not reasonably be true; this is one way. The other way is to see immediately that it is false from first to last, without going into details. This is quite sufficient, and because we have immediately seen it we have saved our mind a great deal of trouble. Sometimes a person says to another, 'You say you are my friend; all right, I am going to find out what you are like, how you work.' That is one way of looking at it. But the other way is to look only once at that person and, by that one glance, to know what he is worth; that is all. If one can do this it will make one brave, venturesome, and will bring one nearer to the essence. It will impart generosity and liberality; otherwise one remains narrow and small and confused and in this way thousands and millions of souls are buffeted along on the sea of life, not knowing where they are going, because they are not sure of themselves. If a person says, 'I don't know you, but perhaps I will know you some day,' that person will never know anyone, for all his life he will be unsure. As to the second meaning of the word spirit, this mechanism of the physical body, which works from morning till evening without winding like a machine, and which stands up to all the turmoil of life, encounters all difficulties, and endures everything that comes to it, one day falls flat; it is just like when the steam or electricity, or whatever it was that kept the machine going, suddenly gives out. A physician says that the man's heart failed, or his blood pressure was too high, or something like that as an explanation of death. It means that a person who was active and sensitive is no longer active nor sensitive. That which was most important in him has left. So much the physician can tell you; but what was there he does not know. From the point of view of a mystic, however, what has left the body is the person. This body was not the person. This body was a garb which covered that person; and when this garb is cast off that visible person becomes invisible. Not he himself but only the garb has been thrown away. He is what he already was. If death comes it is the removing of the garb. A question arises: how does this take place; how does it happen? And the answer is that there is a magnetic action between the person and the garb. It is the strength of the physical body which holds the spirit, and it is the strength of the spirit which holds the body. The physical body holds on to the spirit because it only lives by the life of the spirit, and without the spirit it is dead. And as every being, however small, struggles for life, this physical body tries to hold on to the spirit; and it does so to the last, as someone who is on the point of losing his gold might hold it tightly in his hand until his hand is paralysed, and he can no longer hold it and so lets it drop. It does not mean he does not want it; it only means he cannot hold it any longer. And so it is with the spirit: as long as the spirit is interested in the physical body it holds it, permeates it, and embraces it. But as soon as it feels that it does not want it any more, that it no longer has any use for the body, it drops it. Without modesty beauty is dead, for modesty is the spirit of beauty. Hazrat Inayat Khan: Gayan - Chalas |
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