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Petama Counsellor September Rich and Poor - 2 from: Hazrat Inayat Khan: 'Vision of God and Human Being - Wealth' |
Human desire remains much greater and vaster and wider than every object that can be desired, and since the one who desires does not know his own value, nor the value of the objects sought by him, he remains in a state of poverty. This poverty degrades his life; the degradation of all human life proceeds from this one thing. A Persian poet has said, ‘Though I see myself in the greatest and highest and most perfect Being, yet I find myself in poverty, limitation, and distress. The reason for this is just my own ignorance of myself, of my true self. It is the delusion of the limitation of life.' Whereas so many people are constantly endeavoring to get relief from this limitation which is called poverty, the Sufi strives to overcome the source of the poverty hidden within the life of everyone. The source of this poverty is limitation, and he breaks this limitation by raising his light. In the Bible we are advised to raise that light which so far we have hidden under a bushel. When we raise the light we remove the poverty. We may ask: But how do we raise the light? What do we see with this light when it has been raised? The answer is that intelligence is light. Raise the intelligence, and when intelligence experiences life through the medium or instrument of the body and mind then, no doubt, it remains limited. If we reflect that this body and this mind occupy two different planes, then we will understand that there is more limitation on the one than on the other. For example, if we want to go to a particular street or place with our body it will take a certain time, but if we go there in our mind we can get there in a moment's time. That is the difference between the two planes in regard to the accomplishment of things. It may take much time and effort to accomplish something in the physical world, but it takes less time and effort to accomplish it when we work mentally. When intelligence works through the mind less effort and less time are needed, whereas when it works through the physical body more time and effort are needed. This is because the physical world has more limitations and the mental world has fewer. So when intelligence can be raised above and beyond the mental world, we gain interest on all planes of existence. There is a greater playground for intelligence there.
(Maheboob Khan, Hazrat Inayat Khan‘s brother, has composed music to a row of aphorisms of Hazrat Inayat Khan in the middle of last century, as this ‚How Shall I Thank Thee‘. Mohammed Ali Khan, Hazrat Inayat Khan’s cousin, has sung this song around the year 1956 in a concert in Zürich – here you can listen to it) (these E-book are free of all charge - use their treasures well!) |
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