Here is the second portion of a lecture given by Hazrat Inayat Khan in Chicago in 1926. The talk begins here, and will be continued in a third post.
And now coming to the idea of the mystic’s conception of the soul. The mystic sees a development of material life from rock to the plant, from plant to animal, and from animal to the human physical body. This is one thing. That is a part. And then there is another thing, and that is the divine spirit, the light, the intelligence, the all-consciousness. One thing makes the earth, the other thing makes the heaven. It is that sun, the divine spirit shining and projecting its rays. Each ray becomes a soul. Therefore, it is not true when a person says that man has come out of a monkey. It is degrading the finest specimen of nature that God has created by calling it an improvement of matter. It is a materialistic, limited conception. The soul comes direct from the divine spirit. It is intelligence itself; it is the consciousness. But not the consciousness which we know, for we never experience the pure existence of our consciousness. What we know of our consciousness is what we are conscious of, and therefore we only know the name of consciousness. But in reality we do not know what consciousness means. There is no difference between pure intelligence and consciousness. We call pure intelligence consciousness when that intelligence is conscious of something. But at the same time, what we are conscious of is something that is before us. We are not that. We are the being who is conscious, not what we are conscious of. But the mistake is that we identify ourselves with what we see, because we do not see ourselves. Therefore, naturally man calls his body himself, because he does not know himself. As he cannot find himself, what he identifies himself with is his body. In reality man is not his body, man is his soul. Body is something man possesses. It is his tool, his instrument with which he experiences life. But body is not himself. Since he identifies himself with his body, naturally he says, “I live, “I die,” “I am happy,” “I am unhappy,” “I have fallen,” “I have risen.” Every condition of his limited and changeable body makes him think, “I am this.” In this way he loses the consciousness of the ever-changing aspect of his own being.
Soul, therefore, is the ray which, in order to experience life, needs this instrument, this vehicle, and that vehicle is the body and mind. Therefore, the other word which we use in our language, spirit, we may just as well call the soul, with its two vehicles, body and mind. Through the body it experiences outward conditions; through the mind it experiences inner conditions of life. Therefore, the soul experiences two spheres, the physical and mental sphere: the mental sphere through the mind, and the physical sphere through the body and the five senses.
Now when we come to the evolution of the world according to the point of view of the mystic, we shall see that it is not man who has come from the plant and animal and rock, but man has taken his body, his physical instrument from the rock, from the animal, from the plant. But he himself has come direct from the spirit and he is directly joined to the spirit. He is, will be, and always is above this instrument which he has borrowed from the earth. In other words, plainly speaking, man is not the product of the earth, but man is the inhabitant of the heavens. It is his body which he has borrowed from the earth. Because he has forgotten his origin, the origin of his soul, he has taken the origin of the earth which is only of his body and not of his soul.
And now we come to the law of gravitation. Many say it is a new theory which was not known to the ancient people. I say that the law of gravitation was explained thousands of years before, even by Buddha. And when we come to read the Qur’an, we find there a sura where it says that, “The soul has come from God and is bound to him.”* What science tells today is that the body of clay, which has come from the earth, is attracted to the earth because of the law of gravitation. Earth attracts earth. But prophets and mystics and seers and sages always knew and taught, “the soul is attracted to the spirit.” In other words, the body is attracted to earth and the soul, by the law of gravitation, to the spirit. When a person is unaware of this, then he only knows of one attraction, the attraction which is of the earth. Then he does not know of the other attraction, which does not help to give release to the soul, because the soul is naturally attracted to the spirit.
Friends, if it were a virtue to be spiritual, I would be the first person to refuse it, if it were only a virtue. But it is the greatest necessity of the soul; you cannot help it. Very often people think, “Is it necessary to be spiritual? What do we gain by it?” You don’t need to gain anything by it, but it is a natural attraction; you cannot help it. Those who are conscious of it begin to look for it. Those who are not conscious of it, they are unconsciously attracted to something which they don’t know.
During my travels of so many years through East and West, have I not met most intelligent people, maybe not at all religious, not interested in spiritual subjects, and at the same time, after a little while I have become familiar with them. What have I found? There is a secret seeking. Outwardly it is out of fashion to think about spirituality, but inwardly they are all the time seeking for it. In France, the schools have erased from the textbooks the name of God and any mention made of religion. Nevertheless, there come scientists who after all scientific research begin to think about these things. They cannot help it. They themselves would like to avoid it, but they cannot help it. When people ask, “In your travellings, how do you find the response in the Western world?” I say, “Whether it is West or East or North or South, there is a seeking in every man.Maybe man does not know it, but every man in the world is my customer. Every man has interest as soon as you tell him about life and its deeper side. No doubt, some are sleeping, some half awake, and some on the point of waking. It is such people, who are on the point of waking, it is they who must be helped.
Those who are half awake, let them awake. They will see. And those who sleep, after sleep is over, they will wake up and look for it. It is cruel to wake up a person and say it. If he does not care for food, let him sleep. When he wakes, he will feel hungry, he will ask for food. That is the time to give him.
To be continued…
*Although this sentence is in accord with many passages of the Qur’an, there is no Sura that corresponds exactly with this wording.