In the post beginning our series on the subject of discipleship, Hazrat Inayat Khan refers briefly to the mundane character education has acquired in the West.  To gain some idea of the Master’s experience of education, here is a passage from Pages in the Life of a Sufi, the recollections of Pir-o-Murshid Musharaff Khan, the youngest brother of Hazrat Inayat, in which he tells something of his musical education.

The study of music is a very different matter in the East where the connection of teacher and pupil is a much more intimate one than in the West, owing largely to the fact that the ancient music of India has never been written down. The pupil, on first being accepted, brings to his master an offering of fruit and flowers. The master in his turn offers the pupil something sweet to eat. The pupil brings also with him a cord, wound loosely round his wrist, and this the teacher binds tight. Incense is lit and its fragrance, signifying prayer, gives a mystical tone to the little ceremony. The offering of the fruit and flowers and of the sweetmeat and the tightening of the thread on the wrist are the outward signs of the gratitude of the pupil, and of the link of loyalty that is now from the beginning made between the pupil and the teacher.

Since the music is not written down, it is learned note by note in the presence of the teacher.  And so a pupil will remain with the same teacher till he has learned all he can from him.  Also the teacher teaches his own compositions; that is to say, his own individual conceptions and interpretations of the ancient ragas and themes.  Thus the whole study becomes intimate, a thing of friendship and sympathetic understanding and attachment. It can therefore be seen that the teacher of music may easily develop into a guru; that is to say, the teacher and guide in life.

My first teacher of music, my first guru, was my elder uncle, the elder son of Moula Bakhsh, Murtaza Khan.  He had himself been my father’s pupil as a boy, and I still remember the day when my father presented me as a pupil to him.  I was eleven years old, and I remember it was on a Thursday. My father waited, listening, until he heard my uncle practising, and then we went together to his room.  My father had brought flowers and sweets and incense, and bowing low before my uncle he offered these, placing them near his feet as he presented me.

“Master, here is a pupil, if you will be pleased to accept him,” he said as he bowed low.  This was my initiation into the holy realm of music. My uncle made no reply, and my father withdrew.  My uncle, taken unawares, was touched to the heart by the action and words and respectful manner of his old master. We are, you must remember, a sensitive race.  You must remember our lives are passed so close to nature, and you must remember our intense but happy climate.

I stood there full of wonder and expectation. Wondering, I watched how my uncle’s hand shook as he took a sweet between his fingers, and offered it to my lips.  I saw the tears in his eyes, and I felt his emotion and affection.

First he sang a scale, and I sang each note of it after him. I can see the picture of him now as I think of him, wide-shouldered and powerful, with a ringing voice, a kind of king to me, the son of Maula Bakhsh and my mother’s brother.

After the scale was over he sang a song invoking Sharda, goddess of music. Then he sang a hymn to the prophet Mohammed. The place became holy to me. With other teachers I have had since, I felt shy and self-conscious. To sing even before my own father was usually an ordeal. But these lessons with my uncle remain always the happiest and most beautiful moments of my life.  With him I felt no fear of any kind, only interest and pleasure and the warmth of well-being. He taught me the traditional songs of our family.  “I entrust them to you. You must be mindful on what occasions it is permitted to sing them,” he told me.  “These songs may only be sung before other singers and to musicians at their gatherings. They are songs to be sung to artists.”