We continue with the lecture given by Hazrat Inayat Khan at the beginning of the year 1926, as he started his long journey through the United States. Continuing from the first portion of the talk found here, Hazrat Inayat is describing the ways in which different people respond to the call to spiritual awakening.

And there is another kind of person. This kind is wanting a certain knowledge, a knowledge which he does not find in the ordinary learning such as is given in colleges and universities. He has finished the learning of grammar and all these books concerned with knowledge and learning. Now he wants another learning of an intellectual type; that in the moon there is a shrine; and on the top of the Himalayas in a remote place there is a deserted sacred centre; that there are planet influences over the world; and that a thousand years before mankind had a different sense and after another thousand years mankind will get still another sense, the features will change and mankind will become quite different. Then he believes more in this book than in a living person; and that which tickles his curiosity, he is pleased with it. He must have something to think about which is not everyday knowledge.

And, friends, there is a third person: for him the letter counts; for him what is first is the law. He wants to know about different religions, dogmas and principles, and fixed virtues and sins, and what is right and wrong as it is written in the record; and that belief is older than the other, and that great teacher is not so great as another teacher; and the other teacher is different from still another teacher. He proves it by their lives, he sees their differences from what history tells him or he sees it from one book or another book. This is something he considers spiritual knowledge. Besides that, the meaning of different symbols, as to which perhaps if ten wise men were asked, each wise man would give a different answer. These things interest him; he considers that spiritual knowledge. Out of this, what he can find is nothing but the difference between aspects of wisdom, which is one and the same. You will find this person very often to be learned and well versed, knowing all the differences that exist between different religions. This knowledge we will call the classical knowledge of spiritual things.

There is a fourth person, and he has no interest in all those things. He says, I only see the need of the world and I am waiting, waiting for an extraordinary event to occur. Either he is looking to the sky, that from there should drop something from space which not everybody had seen, or he is expecting that something will happen so that everybody would be shaken and everyone would kneel down and would begin to pray. But these things never happen. Jesus Christ came and spoke to a few fishermen and has gone. Muhammad fought and was driven out of his country and lived. Moses taught and gave the law, but they did not know of him. Nevertheless, what they have given has reached the world directly or indirectly. Some think that the world must be changed in a moment. It is a great ideal but it is a question if it comes true. They are waiting and will wait.

And then there is a fifth person who really thinks rightly on the spiritual subject: that what is the need of the world and of every individual is that the spirit may waken to reality, that the latent inspiration and power may manifest, that man may find eternal life within himself, that every possibility of expanding one’s sympathy and love may be attained. It is by this ideal, if individuals will proceed in the spiritual path, that they will fulfill the words of Christ,“Seek ye first the kingdom of God and all these things shall be added unto thee.”

Now to tell you: how does one pursue the right spiritual course? In the first place we must find out physically what are the possibilities of experiencing the inner life as closely as one experiences the outer life. There comes the spiritual culture, that these very eyes that only can see things of matter are then able to see beyond. There is a quite different sensation, a liberation. There is one experience one makes with the physical body, which one calls sensation. But that experience which is made by the senses and yet which penetrates and reaches further than the ordinary senses and touches deeper than the average sensation is that experience which allows one to attain the first step in the spiritual path. Never think that these two eyes can only see what they see. No, they are capable of seeing further than what they see if one were to explore the truth of life. Besides that, the physical organs, such as the head and the body—one thinks that the head is for thinking and the body for working, but one does not see the other possibilities in the physical body. The body is so constructed that the study of ordinary anatomy is not sufficient to understand it. There are nervous centres which are finer than what material instruments can examine and feel. There are finer fluids. There is a finer life which can be experienced, there is a joy, there is a peace, there is a greater knowledge which can be obtained by the help of some particular organs situated in different places of the human frame. And that shows that just as much capable is man of acting outwardly with the organs of the body, so much is he capable of using his physical frame to make intuitions and inspirations clear to himself.

One knows from a scientific point of view that the brain registers thought forms, impressions; that is what comes from without. But man does not know that there are centres in which intuition is born, instinct is born, not in the human being alone, but also in the lower creation. What teaches fishes to swim without sinking, and birds to fly? It is instinct. And where does it come from? From what in mankind we call intuition and which in the lower creation is instinct. The source of instinct and intuition both is to be found within and not without. And the body which is made as capable as it is of working outwardly, so capable it is to perceive intuition. And when that sense is overlooked, naturally one lives but a half life and a certain part in man becomes blunted. When he no more can feel intuition, he no more can believe that he has something like intuition. Therefore, the real source of knowledge is stopped because his intuitive faculty does not work. Then he finds knowledge outside in books, in discussions. But no words can give that knowledge that one’s self can teach, but only can teach when intuition is awakened. The great gurus and teachers of humanity, the knowledge they have given is little, but their work is to waken the knowledge that the real teacher from within may teach.

To be continued…