We recently posted the text of an address by Hazrat Inayat Khan broadcast by radio to the citizens of New York on Christmas Day, 1925. Some days later, he gave the following public lecture in the Lenox Theatre of New York. The coincidence of the New Year with the beginning of his visit to America no doubt lent inspiration to his theme of spiritual awakening. In the opening paragraph, he speaks of the East ‘changing sides,’ by which he means turning from side to side as one may when one starts to rouse from sleep. Because of length, the lecture will be posted in instalments.
Beloved ones of God,
My subject of this evening is the awakening of the world in the new year. By circumstances and by the time that is to come, the East and West, the world’s two poles, are wakening and are coming together. The East is wakening to life’s needs, the West is wakening to life’s purpose. The East is changing its sides and the West is rubbing its eyes: the East is realizing the need of commercial and industrial development and is considering social and political problems. On the other hand, the West is thinking, wondering about occult and mystic science and is trying to waken to religious and spiritual ideals. You may call it involution or evolution, or you may see it as the East going downwards and the West going upwards, but it is a circle, and action only makes a step forward in evolution.
Now taking the circumstances before our view, we see that all such things as the wars and disasters and conflicts between nations and races which the world has experienced recently, all these things have wakened man to think and to pursue the deeper side of life. No doubt, the all prevailing materialism and commercialism as they are today keep man still absorbed in his daily occupations so that he has not sufficient time to attain something his soul craves after. Nevertheless, the people in Europe and in America, whatever be their occupation, more or less are inclined toward the spiritual ideal.
No doubt very often seekers after truth who give their precious time to spiritual things become disappointed before they come to realization when these things are not presented as they ought to be. And when they find that it is not real, what they were seeking after, they think, What is reality? Worldly occupation is not real, and under the cover of something real there is also falsehood. Then where is reality? A person inclined toward wisdom who has become disappointed says, I shall pursue my material life; I am craving for reality, but I give it up. Perhaps someday I shall find myself.
It seems that there are five different kinds of persons who pursue the spiritual path. One kind is the person who is seeking phenomena. He thinks, ‘In order to strengthen my faith in the hereafter, in the soul, in the deeper side of life, I must have some proof.’ He is willing to make any sacrifice or to pay any price for it. But when he seeks a proof that there is something wonderful and something different from what he experiences in everyday life, he meets with people who are clairvoyant or mediumistic or who have some such occupations as to tell the future or fortune, or to see at a distance; he sometimes thinks it is true, and sometimes he is disappointed. But at the same time, nothing of all these things brings him nearer to reality, they keep him on the surface; he remains groping on the surface. Or perhaps his patience becomes exhausted, and he has found nothing.
Today when materialism is prevailing, people think the best way to give belief in the spirit and in the hereafter is to give themselves some proof of the life of the other side, and that they can have this proof by spirit communication. And what has happened is that many have become curious, ten times more curious, and perhaps after one year they are still more curious. And where does curiosity end? It ends in endless ‘communication’; they communicate with a relation, and then with a king, and then with a prophet. There is no end to it. And when there is one proof, there are ten mistakes, and in this way it goes on. Those who are not ready to believe, after having a thousand messages they will not believe in the soul and the hereafter. And mere spirit messages and plays and phenomena, if they could attract a wise and serious person it would be different. But this is not so. It is the sincere seeker who is the first to doubt; and before he comes to the right thing he has perhaps met ten wrong examples and is finished with them.
To be continued…