By Hazrath Inayath Khan
What is necessary just now is to create peace in ourselves that we, ourselves, become examples of love, harmony and peace. That is the only way of saving the world and ourselves.
It is more important to find out the truth about one’s self, than to find out the truth of heaven and hell.
The awakened soul looks about and asks: ‘Who is my enemy?’ While the unawakened soul thinks that it is his neighbor or his relation who is his enemy, the awakened soul says, ‘It is my self; my ignorant ego is my enemy; and it is the struggle with this enemy that will bring me light and raise me from the denseness of the earth.’
When a person really wants to find the way, it is not very far from him. It depends on the sincerity of the desire to find it whether it is far or not. What is necessary for finding it is not much reading, or discussion or argument, but a practical study of self. One questions one’s own self: what am I? Am I a material body, or a mind, or something behind a mind? Am I myself or my coat? Is this object “me,” or something different? Is this body my cover, or myself?
What is it then in man which says ‘I’ and identifies itself with what it sees? It is not our head or foot which says ‘I’ nor is it in the brain. It is something that we cannot point out which identifies itself with all these different parts and says ‘I’ and mine.
There is One Truth, the true knowledge of our being, within and without, which is the essence of all wisdom. Hazrat Ali says, ‘Know thyself, and thou shalt know God.’ … The Sufi recognizes the knowledge of self as the essence of all religions; he traces it in every religion”¦
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