The following account of one seeker’s first meeting with Hazrat Inayat Khan is taken from ‘Memories of a Sufi Sage’ by Sirkar van Stolk. Sirkar subsequently became one of the Master’s secretaries, accompanying him in his travels, and later was instrumental in establishing the Sufi work in South Africa. This first meeting came at the end of 1922.

The impression made upon me as Hazrat Inayat Khan entered the room was so powerful that I shall never forget it. “A teacher of great spiritual stature,” was how a friend had described this distinguished Indian philosopher, and I had made the journey from Switzerland to Holland especially in order to hear his lecture. But I had not realised, until my arrival in Holland, that I was to meet him personally. My friend had arranged it all in advance; the meeting was to take place at the house of a family living in the Frederik Hendriklaan in The Hague, and I had looked forward to it through the hours beforehand with eager impatience.

I did not know then of the profound significance which the encounter was to hold for me. One hears people talk of men who “changed their lives”; the phrase means little until the same thing has happened to oneself. I only knew, as the introductions were made on that special day — the turning point in my youthful search for “Truth” — that I was in the presence of a great soul.

Still in his early forties, light skinned and extraordinarily good-looking, Hazrat Inayat Khan was dressed in a simple black cassock. He was bearded, and wore his dark hair rather long. But the most impressive thing about him was the dignity and serenity of his bearing, and the marvellously vital brown eyes from which radiated an expression of tremendous love and power.

This was surely no stranger, in spite of the feeling which I had, that he lived at a spiritual level quite above that of the average human being. There was in him a quality of translucence: something shone through him. Yet, at the same time, he was most human. Here, I felt, was someone who saw right through me, and to whom I was also not a stranger; someone so conscious of my inner being — as he was with everyone he met — and so familiar with the problems troubling me, that I felt impelled to open up to him and speak about these problems. In a manner most unreserved for a first meeting, I found myself talking about my beliefs, my ideals, my inner life generally. And Hazrat Inayat Khan listened with great patience and understanding and offered me advice which I knew to be right.