With this post Hazrat Inayat Khan concludes this portion of his explanation of voices, and takes several questions. The previous post is here.

It seems that people are now beginning to believe in what they call ‘psychometry.’ What is it? It is learning the language that objects speak. Apart from the color or form an object has, there is something in it that speaks to one. Either this belongs to that object, or it belongs to the one who has used it, but it is in that object. Sometimes one may bring an object into the house and the moment one has brought it in, the other objects begin to break. As long as that object is there, then there is always a kind of loss. It can bring disharmony to the house, or an object can bring illness, or it can bring bad luck.

Those who knew the psychological effects that come from objects therefore always avoided getting old objects, however beautiful and precious. They always bought a new object for their use. Of course, one cannot do this with jewels. They have to be old, but most often one finds that jewels have more effect upon a person, on his character, life, affairs and environment, than anything else. One may obtain a pearl that could bring good luck of every kind from the moment the jewel was bought, or it may produce a contrary effect. Very often a person does not think of it, yet the effect is just the same, it is continual. Besides this, what one wears has an effect upon one’s health, on one’s condition of mind, on one’s feeling. If it is a jewel, it may have the voice of thousands of years. As old a jewel as it is, it has so much tradition behind it, and this explains it. Intuitive persons who are sensitive and feeling can easily perceive the vibrations of old stones, and it seems as if they speak to them.

Also, with all one gives to another in the form of food, sweets, drinks, fruits or flowers, one gives one’s thought, one’s feeling, and it has an effect. Among the Sufis in the East, there is a custom of giving to someone either a piece of cloth, a flower, a fruit, or some grains of corn. There is a meaning behind it – it is not what is given in that object, but what is given with it.

How little we know when we say, ‘I believe in what I see.’ If one can see how influence works, how thought and feeling speak, how objects partake of them and give them to one another, how thought and feeling, life and influence, are conveyed by the medium of an object – it is most wonderful.

Question: Can any object be charged with good vibrations when, in itself, it is a bad omen?

Answer: There are certain bitter things which can be made sweet; but at the same time, the bitterness is there. There are eatables in which people put different things in order to take away a certain smell, but the smell is still there.

Question: Can the bad influences attached to places and beings be gotten rid of and turned to good?

Answer: Certainly, since at the depth of all things and beings there is goodness.

Question: Is it in the power of a human being to change the influence of an object?

Answer: The answer to this is given in the first four lines of the Gayan:
‘When a glimpse of Our image is caught in man,
When heaven and earth are sought in man,
Then what is there in the world that is not in man?
If one only explores him, there is a lot in man.’

To be continued…