After concluding his explanation of the impressions that are carried in works of art, Hazrat Inayat Khan now turns his thought to the life of thought.

God is omniscient, omnipotent, all-pervading and the Only Being. This suggests to us that the absolute is living being – the Only Being – and that there is no such thing as death, that there is no such thing as an end, that everything, every being, every particle, has a continuity because life is continuous.

End or death is only a change. Therefore every thought that has once crossed the mind, every feeling that has once passed through the heart, every word that was once spoken and perhaps never thought about any longer, every action, once done and forgotten, is given a life and it continues to live. It is just like a traveler who is journeying and who, on his way, has some seeds in his hands, which he throws on the ground. When the plants grow in that place, he never sees them. He just threw the seeds, and they are there. The earth has taken them, the water has reared them, and the sun and the air have helped them to grow.

This life is an accommodation and in it, everything – thought, word, action and feeling – once given birth, is taken care of, is raised and brought to fruition. One would hardly think that it could be so. One thinks: it is spoken and gone, or done and finished with, or it was felt and now it is no longer there. But it is only a change, and it is the change of which we are conscious. We know of something and then it is no longer before us. We think it is gone, but it is still there. It remains, and it pursues its course, for it is life. In everything, there is life, and life lives. As all is life, there is no death.

No doubt birth and death, beginning and end, are the names of the different aspects of this mechanical working of the whole universe. It is a kind of automatic working that gives us an idea of something beginning and something ending. When we ring a bell the action takes only a moment, but the resonance lasts. It lasts, to our knowledge, as long as it is audible. Then it passes on farther and is no longer audible to us, but it exists. It exists somewhere, it goes on.

To be continued…