With this post we come to the conclusion of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s insightful teaching about consciousness. For the previous instalment in the series, please see this post.
The question is sometimes asked: what is cosmic consciousness, what is the nature of that state? It is a state which cannot be very well explained in words, and if an explanation can be given, it is only by saying that when we see, we do not hear, and when we hear fully, we do not see. In this way, every sense is doing its work fully when only that sense is doing work. When we are seeing something, if somebody is speaking to us, we do not see fully. I have seen a child most interested in music who closed his eyes; then alone he could enjoy hearing fully, but to hear music while drinking lemonade and eating ice cream is something different. But the condition of meditation is different from that, it is not limited to a rule. When meditating, at that time every sense is evenly balanced. In meditation, every sense is wakened and yet every sense is asleep. To be closed from outside and yet to be wakened evenly, that experience is something which cannot be said in words; it must be experienced.
As to meditation, meditation practice is prescribed individually; the method for one may not be good for another. But at the same time there is a Japanese symbol, a kind of toy, three monkeys, one holding his eyes, the other his ears and the other his mouth. This is the keynote to meditation, the key to inner expansion. But in everyday life we can see that image ethically, from a moral point of view, and that is: hear no evil, see no evil and say no evil. And if you can take that vow, it can do a great deal, and can take one very far on the way, if these three things are practised in every-day life: never speak against anyone, never hear about anyone, against anyone, and never see any evil. If we close our eyes without closing our ears and without closing our lips, we cannot accomplish anything.
The question comes, does the development of the inner consciousness tend to personal isolation, to separation from the world? We are in the world, and therefore, however much we might try to run away to spiritual spheres, again we are thrown on the earth. We are bound here as long as we have this earthly body. And so the best thing is to do the process in another way, to have inner expansion of consciousness; at that time no doubt one must go within, close oneself to the outer world, but at the same time one must strive to practise the outer expansion of consciousness.
In this way there is balance. Those who only evolve spiritually become one-sided; they expand the inner consciousness and outwardly not. Then they become unbalanced. Maybe spiritually they have extraordinary powers, but they have no balance. For this reason many people think of a spiritual person as somebody who has something wrong with his brain. If that is the condition of the world, we should be most conscientious, in order not to give the world a wrong impression. If we have a profession, if we are in business, in industry, to do it fully, proving to the world to be as practical as everybody else can be, most economical, regular in every way, systematic, persevering, enthusiastic. All these qualities we must show and at the same time evolve spiritually; but that must give the proof.