In 1926, during what was to be his last visit to the United States, Hazrat Inayat Khan had the opportunity  to speak with the automobile magnate Henry Ford.  Their meeting was reported by A. M. Smith in the “Detroit News” of February 7th of that year.  During their meeting, it emerged that Ford had been interested in the ‘Eastern mystic’ for some time and had been sending a private stenographer to his lectures to record them.  The following is only a portion of the report, but it show clearly that they had much in common.  Perhaps it also demonstrates the spiritual value hidden in attainment, which Hazrat Inayat often emphasised.

“And now,” said Mr. Ford, “let’s compare notes.  I seldom discuss my own religious ideas. I think that every kind of religion is doing good.”

“I think so too,” replied Inayat Khan, “but I think we all need breathing space, time to think about deeper things than–” he hesitated as a smile played on his face.

“Than automobiles,”” Mr. Ford said, with a hearty laugh. “But the power that makes the automobile go is, after all, invisible.  it is so with all things.  I think the real power of human lives is hidden away in the soul, and farther than that.  There are actual entities all about us, entities of force, intelligence–call them electrons if you like. When a man is doing what is right, they swarm to help him.

“The smallest indivisible reality which exists is to my mind, intelligent and is waiting there to be used by human spirits if we reach and call them in.  We rush too much with nervous hands and worried minds.  We are impatient for results.  What we need, and might have, is reinforcement of the soul by the invisible power waiting to be used.”

“That,” said Murshid Khan, “completes the link in my philosophy of the soul.  I think there is One Being, all-embracing, manifesting the primordial intelligence in every atom in this universe. And there is a way to approach this spiritual reality and to become linked with it.”

“And yours is the way of meditation, is it not?” asked Mr. Ford.

“Meditation, yes. Periods of shutting out all of the material objectivity of the world, with emphasis, again and again, on the unity of the soul with the Soul of the universe,” replied Inayat Khan.

“That, to my mind,” said Mr. Ford, “is the heart of personal religion.  I struggled for many years to solve the problem of religion.  But I believe that for mankind, at this stage, religion opens the doors into unity with the real power back of all things.

“But I found, as you have said, that if I quietly withdraw from the nervous anxiety over things, inventions, and the business that drives from every side, there was renewal of strength in the thought of being a part of the great unseen power, call it God, Intelligence, what you will. I do not feel that men can find anything more helpful or satisfying.”

“Except,” said Inayat Khan, “if one realises self-forgetting fully, and unity with the One, there is surely peace and deep joy in such an experience, and the human soul at that moment really becomes creative.

“It is like the artist in the painting of a picture.  It is never, when finished, what he first planned.  Creative inspiration comes as he loses himself in the task. Completely absorbed in his work, completely forgetful of self, sitting out the rest of the world, his finished product is, at the last, a truly creative expression of the self he has completely forgotten.

“And so also with the musician. The true musician always goes into improvisation.  If he is lost in his theme, immediately the theme grows into beauty of harmony of which he had not before dreamed.  Whence comes the harmony he had never before heard? The most beautiful music I ever heard Paderewski* play he improvised one day as I sat alone with him in his studio. The best music has never been reduced to the printed sheet, and cannot be, for it is the immediate creation of the soul that has lost itself in the contemplation of the beauty of harmony.

“That is the best symbolic statement I can make of the real unity of the soul with the Source of all beauty and truth. What the true musician really experiences is possible for all human souls in a wider sense, in contact with the Source of life, power, beauty, truth, peace. But that contact is made only by the forgetting of self. I know of no terms in psychology by which the experience can be stated or explained.  But your musician, artist, poet, knows at least the borderland of that experience.”

There was a moment of silence.

“Murshid Khan,” Mr. Ford said, “I think you are preaching a gospel that men of all faiths can understand.  No matter what form it takes in doctrine, it is the thing Americans need.  We can explain nothing, really, if we try to follow through to the final analysis. But I know there are reservoirs of spiritual strength from which we human beings thoughtlessly cut ourselves off. And I believe it is possible for us to put ourselves in vital touch with them.”

*Ignacy Jan Paderewski (1860-1941) was a Polish concert pianist, composer and statesman.  He served as Poland’s first  Prime Minister when it gained independence at the end of the First World War, but subsequently returned to his life of music, and settled in the United States.