Recent posts—of the desire of Hazrat Inayat Khan to see a Universelle constructed for the Message, and the announcement from Ecuador of the Nur Lomas Alto project—have brought forward the idea of building. The following post, taken from a longer lecture, gives the master’s thoughts about the philosophical foundations of architecture. Near the end of the extract he refers to ‘hotel life,’ a term that deserves some explanation. Hazrat Inayat Khan grew up in a large Indian home, filled with extended family, a constant stream of visitors, and numerous servants, so that it was more similar to a small village than to the single family homes that are common in the West. When he journeyed to America and Europe, he saw that more and more aspects of daily life, such as social dining and entertainment, and special events such as weddings, were taking place outside the home, and, perhaps because his own travels often forced him to stay in hotels, he called this life-style ‘hotel life.’

            The idea of building a home did not develop only with the creation of the human race; it had already begun with the first manifestation. And if we look into life and its laws with keen insight, we shall see that the whole of creation is built on this one principle: that of making a home for every word, for every thought, for every sound, for every idea, and for every color. No color, sound, or thought could be recognized, no feeling could be distinguished, if they did not have a home to live in. For instance it is the breath which manifests as the voice, and it is the voice which manifests as a word; but in order to manifest as the voice the breath must have the mouth as its home; and for the voice to manifest as a word, as a sound, all that the mouth contains is necessary. That again is a home; it is a home conveniently made for the voice to turn into a word.         

People cannot understand how sacred the idea of house-building really is.

            Then the voice, the word, needs a home in order to become audible; and that home is the ear. If something of what the ear should contain is missing, then the sound is not fully audible. The breath must have lungs and tubes through which it can manifest; they are its home. The blood must have channels through which it can circulate for the same reason, and in the same way the mind is the home of thought, the heart is the home of feeling, and the soul is the home of the divine light, the divine Spirit.     

            From the moment that the soul begins its journey and passes through the different spheres, turning into an individual, the entire phenomenon of this process consists in making a home. First the soul makes a home of that body which is taken from the angelic spheres, and by taking that body it becomes an angel. A being, a life which had no name and no distinctive features, obtained them when it gathers round itself a cover and takes that cover as its home.          

            In the same way in the sphere of the jinn the soul gathers round itself a home that gives it an accommodation; and that home is its being. It is the same with the human body. The soul has gathered round itself another home, and it is of this home in which the soul lives that man says, ‘It is I’. The Hindus have called this home an Akasha, which means accommodation. Thus accommodation is not only a need but it is indispensable; nothing can be born, composed, constructed, or molded without its accommodation. The Sufis have called this accommodation the temple: there is a temple of breath, a temple of sound, a temple of hearing, a temple of seeing; and there is a temple of God’s spirit which is the body. And each part of the body is again a temple which accommodates a thought, a feeling, a faculty, or a sense.

            When we look at it in this light, we see that when man made a home for himself to live in, it was the second step. The first step was that which he made himself; the next step was that he made a home to live in. He takes his second step because the four walls and the roof, all that is in front of him and around him, form his personality, his character.

Today, when there is so much hotel life everywhere and home life is much less known, when the home is so little appreciated, people cannot understand how sacred the idea of house-building really is. Besides, the uniformity of these times takes away a great deal of the beauty of the home. We change the world into a prison when we begin to lose our conception of a home: then we think in terms of pigeon-holes, where a thousand or more pigeons can be put in and locked up in the evening.