As this year nears its close, a Universal Worship service was offered online, with Cherags from different countries, and drew attendance from around the world. The theme was ‘Beauty is the Secret of Divinity,’ and the scriptures and the sermon by Murshid Nawab are below.

Beloved ones of God,

All of the spiritual traditions point in some direction, not only those we have represented on the altar, that transmit their inspiration received through the grace of a prophetic figure, but all forms of worship point upward each in their own way, towards an ideal.  Sometimes the ideal is personified – we can think of the avatars of Rama and Krishna, and Gautama Buddha as examples – and sometimes the ideal is understood as the realization of a more abstract quality such as peace or truth.  In this context of worship, the ideal is something that we yearn for, but that is rarely glimpsed in our daily life. We might remember the verse from the poem by Robert Browning, which declares that ‘a man’s reach should exceed his grasp, or what’s a heaven for?’  In other words, beyond our life here on earth there should be something perfect to reach for, even if it seems we could never hold on to it.  For convenience we call that perfection ‘Divinity’.  But how to recognize the ideal? Perhaps all are reaching, but for what?  Surely, we have heard that God cannot be seen, so what is it that each seeker is reaching for?  What is the magic that calls us up toward Divinity?

The readings today from the Gayan emphasize beauty.  We hear that ‘beauty is the object that every soul pursues.’ All people have different standards of beauty – remember the story of Leila and Majnun. His companions couldn’t understand his fascination with Leila, for they could tell him the names of many girls who, in their opinion, were more beautiful.  And we know that Majnun’s response was that they needed to borrow his eyes to see the beauty of Leila – no one else saw her the way he did.  In other words, our recognition of beauty will always be our own, but the Gayan tells us that the search for beauty is universal.  That is something that could help us very much in or daily life.  If we could hold tight to that truth, that all are searching for beauty, when we look at another as ‘an other,’ we could perhaps overcome some of the distinctions and differences that divide us.   We may not treasure or even understand the form that the other admires – in their way of life, in their companions, or in their form of worship – but we could recognize that at the back of whatever they are reaching for is their perception of beauty, and we should endeavour to respect that as something sacred.

That is why we find in the Gayan this saying, that natural religion is the religion of beauty.  Perhaps in this context ‘natural’ means religion which has not been immobilized by the constantly accumulating dogmas formed by humans everywhere. The religious impulse, the impulse to worship and to pray, is alive within the human spirit, but there is always a tendency for religious forms to become more and more materialized, and therefore to stiffen.  But the medicine for that stiffness is beauty. Religion comes from beauty, and it is beauty that can restore it when it begins to fade.  And all of the scriptures read today refer in one way or another to beauty.

They do not necessarily speak directly of ‘beauty.’  Sometimes, they speak of love, but love and beauty cannot exist apart, and love is awakened by beauty.  In the verses from the chapter of the Hindu Bhagavad Gita, we hear that if we surrender to the Divine in love, we will find the Lord of Love living in our heart.  And if we go beyond mechanical practice, beyond knowledge and even beyond meditation, and surrender to the Lord in love, there will follow immediate peace.  But we cannot counterfeit love in the hopes of gaining peace; we must really love God, and only the recognition of God’s beauty can awaken love.

The Buddhist scripture appeals directly to the experience of our senses, and speaks of fragrance, telling us that the fragrance of virtue surpasses all the flowers of the world, that the fragrance of virtue is the sweetest. And this resonates with the saying from the Gayan, that every virtue is but an expression of beauty.  Again, beauty leads us to the path of Divinity.

In the Zoroastrian scripture, Zarathustra tells us that if we meditate on Truth, the Lord of Truth will come to us with love and compassion, personified as Armaiti, the Lord’s beautiful daughter.  In the Persia of Zarathustra’s time, Spenta Armaiti was a divine figure of devotion and fertility, representing the abundance of nature. In the presence of her beauty, and with the blessing of her father, the Lord of Truth, all that we ask will be answered, so that the devotee will gain sovereignty and understanding.

The Jewish scripture makes clear that the foundation of our relationship with God is beauty.  David, the psalm singer, says that he only wants to gaze continually on the beauty of the Lord.  That is all that he seeks, just to be with Him in His temple.   And David knows that by this absorption in the Lord, he will be protected. God will hide him in His sacred tent, and he will thereby become unassailable.  The limitations of the earth will not trouble him.

In the Christian scripture, Jesus speaks of the beauty of the Creation, and the unspoken implication is that the beauty of the Creator must be still greater.  And Jesus tells us that we worry unnecessarily, that if God can clothe the flowers of the field with such beauty, flowers of so little significance that they bloom for a day and then are thrown into the fire, He will care for us too, and still better, clothing us presumably with yet more grace and radiance.

In the scripture of Islam, the Koran, we are given a picture of the harmony of the world, the alternation of night and day, the ships that ply the sea, the rain that makes the dry land fertile, and the winds and clouds that follow their appointed courses.  In this way we are invited to see that God has made an infinite harmony, and the thoughtful person will easily see that we also have a place in this creation.  And of course, harmony is the foundation and essence of beauty, for when there is no harmony, there can be no beauty.  We find this put clearly in this saying from the Gayan, that ‘love develops into harmony, and of harmony is born beauty.’

And in this way we come to the saying from the Gayan that brought all these scriptures together: In beauty is the secret of divinity. If we wish to take anything away from this service, it could be simply this: to pay more homage to beauty, to appreciate it wherever we see it, and to offer our thoughts, our speech and our actions to beauty – not only in a formal setting like this one, but even in our daily tasks and our casual encounters with others.  In one lecture Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan said, ‘In order to become spiritual, to attain inspiration, it is not necessary that a person should be very religious or especially good; what is necessary is love of beauty.”

For in loving beauty, we love the Divine.