There is a phrase in English that indicates something is very easy to do: it is child’s play.  In this case play means something simple, uncomplicated, and done for our own amusement–quite the opposite of ‘work’ which is difficult, laborious, and often imposed by duty or necessity.  It might surprise us, therefore when we read in Hazrat Inayat Khan’s lecture about the freedom of the soul, begun here and concluded here, that the way to free the soul from its captivity is through play.  The main secret, the Master tells us, is to die before death: “But is it really dying?” he asks. “No, it is playing death.”

But how do we do that?  Hazrat Inayat may be referring to an actor playing his or her part upon the stage of life, or he could also mean a musician playing an instrument, perhaps in an orchestra, for these are both metaphors he has used elsewhere.  And it is not difficult to recognise that often we all play roles in life, parts which we perhaps have not chosen but which are thrust upon us by circumstances–like an actor obliged to say words he has not written. But what can it mean to ‘play death’?  To fall down and give up?  There is the amusing story of the simpleton who thought he was dead, told by Hazrat Inayat Khan here, which among other things makes clear to us that we cannot simply lie down and disconnect ourselves from the world, for the world will not leave us alone; it will come and kick us out of our ‘grave’ anyway.

To play a part, an actor requires a balance of involvement and detachment.  The actor must learn the dialogue to be spoken and enter into the personality of the character–but only so far.  A certain portion of the ‘actor’ must remain on duty, so to speak, detached enough from the longing and turmoil of the role to be able to tune the character to the changing flow of events on stage. And it is precisely this detachment which is the key to ‘playing death.’  We play life, saying ‘I do, I think, I speak,’ but to play death only means to remind ourselves that the voice repeating these words will someday become silent and the character will leave the stage–in other words, to play that we are playing, just as an adult will obligingly play with a child when invited to a doll’s tea-party. When this awareness of our detachment grows, our understanding of life begins to change.

Sometimes, when people hear that one of the ‘wings’ of the flying heart symbol represents indifference, there is a feeling of confusion or even alarm–should we become indifferent to those around us?  To our loved ones?  But that is not at all the idea; in this case it means indifference to our claims of ‘me’, detachment from our own ego, by which we play death before death and find the freedom which is the longing of every soul.