In this post about what we achieve by meditation, Hazrat Inayat Khan gives an explanation which, although clear, could be misinterpreted in our present age that glorifies the individual. He explains very simply that the reason why we meditate is not to find a way to Heaven, but to discover the eternal life within. Passing from the stage of ‘yaqeen‘, the perfect belief in the spiritual reality that one hopes some day to recognise, to the stage of ‘iman‘, the unshakeable conviction arising from experience of that reality, no longer aspires to paradise, a person sees that if the presence of God is to be found anywhere it must be found within. In brief, this is the answer to the eternal puzzle, ‘who or what am I?’
Not knowing who we are gives us a fundamental uneasiness in life.
Most people do not know their true nature. If you ask them who they are, they may respond with a name, or a family relationship, or a profession, or a nationality or a religion, or perhaps as the owner of a certain property or title–but these are temporary identities. We are like children at a costume party; for a time we enjoy playing that we are this or that, but then the costume tears, and we lose interest. Not knowing who we are gives us a fundamental uneasiness in life, and it is that uneasiness that drives our fierce pursuit of one thing after another in the external world.
But as Hazrat Inayat says, it does not give us any real comfort to know intellectually that life eternal lies within us, and it is worse than useless to declare, as some do, that ‘I am God.’ As long as such an attitude persists, real understanding is impossible. The mystic is the one who goes in the opposite direction, saying, ‘I am nothing,’ thus making space for the Divine everywhere.
That is why the cultivation of the God ideal has been given to humanity as a path to find perfection. We may long to know ourselves, but we must first learn to forget ourselves. As Hazrat Inayat says in Gayan, Boulas:
It is not by self-realization that man realizes God;
it is by God-realization that man realizes self.