As Hazrat Inayat Khan now teaches us, every thought, in every place, leaves behind a voice that continues to sound.
The whole of manifestation in all its aspects is a record upon which the voice is reproduced; and that voice is a person’s thought. There is no place in the world, neither desert, forest, mountain nor house nor town nor city, where there is not a voice continually going on – a voice that was once engraved upon it and that since then has continued. No doubt every such voice has its limit. One voice may continue for thousands of years, and another voice for several months, and yet another for some days and another for hours or moments. Everything that is created, intentionally or unintentionally, has a life, it has a birth and so it has a death. Plainly speaking, it has a beginning and an end.
One can experience this by feeling the atmosphere of different places. Sitting upon the rocks of the mountains one often feels the vibrations of the one who has been sitting there before. Sitting in a forest, in a wilderness, one can feel what has been the history of that place. It may be that there was a city and a house and that people lived there, and now it has turned into a wilderness. One begins to feel the history of the whole place; it communicates with one.
Every town has its own particular voice. It is, so to speak, telling out loud who lived in the town and how they lived, what their life was. It tells of their grade of evolution, it tells of their doings, it tells of the results produced by their actions. People perceive the vibrations of haunted houses because the atmosphere is stirred, and therefore, it is often felt distinctly. There is no house, there is no place, that does not have its own voice. The voice has been engraved upon it so that it has become a record, reproducing what has been given to it, consciously or unconsciously.
When Abraham returned from Egypt after his initiation into the mysteries of life, he arrived at Mecca. A stone was set there in memory of the initiation that he had just received from the ancient esoteric school of Egypt. The voice that was put into the stone by the singing soul of Abraham continued and became audible to those who could hear. The prophets and seers have since that time made pilgrimages to this stone of Ka’aba. This continued and is still going on.
A place like Mecca, a desert with nothing of interest – the ground is not fertile, the people not very evolved, no business or industry is flourishing, no science or art developed – it still has had an attraction for millions of people who have gone there for only one purpose, and that was pilgrimage. What was it, and what is it? It is the voice that has been put into the place, into a stone. A stone has been made to speak, and it speaks to those whose ears are open.
Every place where a person sits and thinks for a moment on any subject takes in the thought of man. It takes the record of what has been spoken so that no man can hide his thought or feeling. It is recorded even in the seat where he has been sitting and thinking. Many persons, by sitting in that place, begin to feel it. Sometimes, the moment a person sits on a certain seat, he may feel a thought quite foreign to him, a feeling that does not belong to him, because on that seat that thought was vibrating. As a seat can hold the vibrations of the thought for a much longer time than the life of the person who has thought or has spoken, so an influence remains in every place where one sits, where one lives, where one thinks or feels, rejoices or sorrows. This voice continues for a time incomparably longer than the life of the person who spoke or thought there.
To be continued…