Here are two short excerpts from a longer lecture by Hazrat Inayat Khan which has been published in volume VI of the Message series with the title, ‘Purity in Life.’           

Purity of life is the central theme of all the religions which have been given through the ages to humanity, for purity is not only a religious idea but it is the outcome of the nature of life itself, and one sees it in some form or other in every living creature. It is the tendency of all animals and birds to cleanse their coats or feathers, and to find a clean place in which to live or sit; and in the human being this tendency is even more pronounced. Even a man who has not risen above the material life shows this faculty in physical cleanliness, but behind this there is something else hidden, something which is the secret of the whole creation and the reason why the world was made.

            Purity is the process through which the life-rhythm manifests, the rhythm of that indwelling spirit which has worked through the ages in mineral and plant, in animal and man, for its effort, through all these experiences, is to arrive at that realization where it finds itself pure, pure in essence and pure from all that could affect its original condition. The entire process of creation and of spiritual unfoldment shows that the spirit which is life itself, and which represents the divine in life, has wrapped itself in numberless folds, and in that way has, so to speak, descended from heaven to earth.

            This process is called involution, and that which follows is known as evolution, or the unwrapping of the divine essence from the folds of enshrouding matter. The sense of this need to free the spirit from that which clogs and binds it is called purity, in whatever part of life it is felt. It is in this sense that we may understand the saying ‘cleanliness is next to godliness’. In the Arabic language the word for purity is saf, from which root the name Sufi is derived. Some of the early orders of Sufis were called the Brothers or the Knights of Purity, and this did not allude to physical purity but to the unfoldment of the spirit towards its original condition, the ‘pure being’ of the metaphysician, or the ‘pure reason’ of the philosopher. The word sophia or pure wisdom has the same derivation.

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            There are two ways of becoming pure in mind and body. The one way is to live so that the divine nature in us may shine out and illuminate our path, and so that everything we do and refrain from doing may result in a pure life. The other way is very simple and yet very difficult: it is to observe a child, to envy its innocence, simplicity, and purity, and to grow like a child, following first the example of a child of nine years, then of eight years, then of seven, and so on. As one goes further one comes to take even an infant as one’s example. It was this secret which was taught by the pictures of the Holy Mother with the infant Christ. Also the symbolical meaning of the wise men of the East, coming to pay homage to the infant Christ, is that to learn the truth we must unlearn all that we have learnt.

            To bring back that higher stage of innocence which existed in the Garden of Eden we do not need to lose intellect–we need to rise above it. As long as man is beneath his intellect, he is the slave of his intellect, but when he is above it he is its master. Man is greater than the angels; therefore the world can be a higher place than the Garden of Eden, if only man has mastery over his intellect, if only he can rise above it instead of sinking beneath it.

            When the soul is evolved it feels by way of itself. In other words it becomes conscious of its purity, of its majesty, of its eternal life, of its bliss, of its inspiration and of its power. Such is the original mind of man and such its natural condition. It is not sin that is original but purity, the original purity of God Himself. But as the mind grows and is fed by the life in the world, unnatural things are added to it, and for the moment these additions seem desirable, useful, or beautiful; they build another kind of mind which is sometimes called the ego or the false self. They make man clever, learned, brilliant, and many other things. But above and beyond all is the man of whom it can be said that he is pure-minded.