With this post we conclude the clear and very inspired lecture given by Hazrat Inayat Khan on January 3rd, 1926, in New York City. The lecture begins with this post, and continues here.

Now coming to another aspect and that is the faculties of mind. The mind has five faculties: memory, thinking, judging, feeling and reasoning. Feeling is the most important faculty. Therefore that part of mind is called the heart. Thinking comes on the surface and that part is called mind. Heart and mind is one and the same thing. It is the surface of the heart which is mind and the depths of the mind which is heart. When a person says, I feel in mind a great affection, it is in the heart. When he says, I think very highly of someone, it is his mind.

A great mystic of Hyderabad said in his poetry that the whole cosmos can become as a bubble in the heart of man if it is sufficiently enlarged. If there is such a possibility that the heart can become like an ocean in which the universe may seem to be a bubble, how great and how mysterious is man himself. His pursuit after little mysteries is in vain. Man is a mystery himself, and such a great mystery if he can explore his mind, dive deep into his own heart and see its phenomena. Then the whole life becomes a phenomenon. Every moment he would see nothing but phenomena. No other wonder in the world would surprise him, for this wonder in himself is much greater.

And then there is a moral world which is greater still and which is to be explored within ourself also. If one knew what a bitter feeling makes and what an affectionate feeling makes, how they separates and expand and penetrate through the space and what they bring about, one would marvel in life. You see so many living beings, people moving about with their eyes open, and yet their heart is closed to this truth. There is a psychological action which is caused by every person in the whole cosmos. Every little thought and feeling arising in a person’s heart, before it is materialized and manifests on the surface, has its action in the inner world. Whether it is joy or sorrow or harmony or disharmony in the inner world, it all acts upon those who know and do not know. A person may feel and not say, or he may say and it may not be heard, or he may do something and it may not be seen and yet what is done has its effect, whether it is a wrong or right or good or bad effect. And though man thinks that it is his individual action or thought or feeling, it can have an effect upon the whole cosmos. One never thinks about it, and yet it is so. A person may do something in the North Pole, and he may go to the South Pole there it is waiting for him. With all the thieves and criminals and treachery and deceit in this world, can you say with open eyes that anyone can get away with anything that was not his right, that did not belong to him? Perhaps on the surface. But then there is a government, an inner government, and that government has officials everywhere who will catch a person wherever he goes. Every grain of food we eat and every drop we drink, every breath of fresh air we take, all has its tax which we shall have to pay. That is the moral phenomenon which so few think about. We live in this world intoxicated by what we do and want to do and that intoxicates us so much that we do not see further. But there is much to be seen which is worthwhile.

And then we come to the spiritual aspect of our being to be explored. And that aspect is connected with our source and with our goal. Call it God or call it spirit or call it our real self or the absolute, it is one and the same. And by knowing that relation we can know and understand many things. We can understand why we come here and why we go back and what there is to fulfill in this world and where lies our real happiness and peace. We can understand the meaning of truth which words can never explain, and the relation with and the difference that kept us distant from God.

If man explores the faculties which can be explored in his body and in his mind and their moral effect and influence, if he can realize this he can attain to that spiritual bliss which connects him by one thread with God and which keeps him connected while on earth with the heavens, and which makes him an entity which is connected with the whole cosmos. It is with this realization that man lives a fuller life. We need not live the life of a wonder worker or of an empty, curious man. What is needed today for us is to live a fuller life by discovering inspiration. If that is our occupation, it is a part of our occupation in life we ought to think we have come here to accomplish.

God bless you and Happy New Year.