Close to forty years ago Pir-o-Murshid Hidayat Inayat-Khan wrote a very touching memoir recounting some aspects of his remarkable, magical family, entitled “Once Upon a Tine – Early Days Stories about my Beloved Father and Mother.” It is now nearly three decades since it was published, and sadly it now seems to be out of print. Therefore the Inner Call will make it available here in instalments, although many of the photos illustrating the text are not available.

Introduction

These few remembrances which I am humbly venturing to put into words are offered herewith in an earnest longing to communicate some aspects of the fairy-tale atmosphere that prevailed in those days, when our Beloved Father was with us.

But it is of course very difficult to evoke such remembrances without repeatedly experiencing an outburst of emotions, especially those which were awakened in our hearts ever since our Father departed from this world at a period in our lives when we were still so very young. 

As the years went by, our childhood intuition revealed more and more to us the tragic importance of what we had really lost by the absence of a Father with such almost luminous magnitude: a Father whose loving guidance, experienced in our young years, was always based on that high God Ideal which was the soul force of his constantly inspiring example.

Ever since those early days of once upon a time, the memory of such a precious example awakened each day an untarnishable longing to hear our Father’s voice silently saying, “Your Abba’s loving presence is always here, hidden in your lonely hearts.”

Hidayat Inayat-Khan
Fazal Manzil
Suresnes