In the conclusion to the previous post, Hazrat Inayat Khan responded to a question by telling the story of the lion who finds a lion cub living among sheep, and takes it to a pool of water to show it its true identity in its reflection.

Question: Is not our Murshid our mirror?

Answer: No. The Murshid stands in the place of the lion in the fable. But the pool of water is necessary.

Question: Though the soul feels apart from the different bodies, does it not feel one with God?

Answer: Not even with God. How could it? A soul that is captive in a false conception, who cannot see a barrier lifted up between itself and its neighbor, how can this soul lift its barrier to God whom it has not known yet? For every soul’s belief in God is a conception after all – because it is taught by a priest, because it is written in scripture, because the parents have said that there is a God. That is all. That soul knows that somewhere there is a God, but it is always liable to change its belief, and unhappily, the farther it advances intellectually, the farther it goes from that belief. A belief that is pure intelligence cannot always hold, will not go far with a person. It is by the understanding of that belief that the purpose of life is fulfilled. It is said in the Gayan, ‘The uncovering of the soul is the discovering of God.’

Question: How does the true self dismiss mind and body in death?

Answer: It is not easy for the true self to dismiss mind and body, when a person cannot dismiss in life his thoughts of depression, sorrow and disappointment. The impressions of happiness and sorrow in the past one holds in one’s own heart – prejudice and hatred, love and devotion, everything that has gone deep in oneself. If that is the case, then even death cannot take them away. If the ego holds its prison around itself, it takes this prison with it, and there is only one way of being delivered from it and that is through self-knowledge.

Question: Does a person immediately after death identify himself with his mental body, or still with the dead corpse?

Answer: The mental body is just as the dead corpse. There is no difference because the one is built on the reflection of the other. For example, one does not see oneself different in the dream when the mind is in a normal condition. If the mind is abnormal, then one can see oneself as a cow, or as a horse, or as anything. But if the mind is normal, one cannot see oneself different from what one knows oneself to be. Therefore, the mental being is the same as one sees oneself in the dream. In the dream, one does not see the loss of the physical body. One is running or eating or enjoying in the dream; one does not realize the absence of the physical body. The same thing is in the hereafter. The hereafter does not depend upon a physical body to experience life fully. The sphere, in itself, is perfect, and life is experienced perfectly.

Question: Is the ego completely destroyed by annihilation?

Answer: The ego, itself, is never destroyed. It is the one thing that lives, and this is the sign of eternal life. In the knowledge of the ego, there is the secret of immortality. When it is said in the Gayan, ‘Death dies, and life lives,’ it is the ego that is life, it is its false conception which is death. The false must fall away someday; the real must always be. So it is with life. The true living being is the ego, it lives; all else that it has borrowed for its use from different planes and spheres, and in which it has become lost, all that is put away. Do we not see this with our own body? Things that do not belong there do not remain in it, in the blood, in the veins, anywhere. The body will not keep them, it will repel them. So it is in every sphere. It does not take what does not belong to it. All that is outside it keeps outside. What belongs on earth is kept on earth, the soul repels it. The destroying of the ego is a word; it is not destroying, it is discovering.

Often people are afraid when reading Buddhist books, where the interpretation of Nirvana is given as annihilation. No one wants to be annihilated, and people are very much afraid when they read ‘annihilation.’ But it is only a matter of words. The same word in Sanskrit is a beautiful word Mukti. The Sufis call it Fana. If we translate it into English, it is annihilation; but when we understand its real meaning, it is ‘going through’ or ‘passing through.’ Passing through what? Passing through the false conception, which is a first necessity, and arriving at the true realization.

To be continued…