Hazrat Inayat Khan here concludes his explanation of how the evolution of divinity in the human being leads to the recognition of the Deity, and also gives a brief teaching on the necessity – and the risk – of what he calls ‘religious democracy.’
Man is that which he is conscious of. Man’s grade of evolution depends upon the pitch he has attained; it is a certain pitch which makes him conscious of a certain phase of life. A person standing upon the earth cannot enjoy the purity of the air which exists at the top of the mountain; in order to enjoy it he must be there. That is why an insincere claim has no effect. A man who is standing upon the earth and is talking about the air is talking nonsense. It will have no effect, because he does not know what is in the air; he must rise to where the air is and then he must get the experience and talk from there of what he is experiencing. Then it will have an effect, because then his word is sincere. It is not by theory that a person can trace his origin; he can only do so by practice. It is not only knowing a thing but living it and being it, and this is not easy; but there is no need to separate Christ from other men for the very reason that one man is so far above the other. There is such a great gulf between the evolution of one soul and that of another that if one were to say that one man is standing on the earth and another is in the sky, it would be quite right.
There is, however, no doubt that the aristocratic form of religion has also been misused. This happens when the religious authority turns religion into a means, an instrument, to keep the people under a certain law for worldly purposes. Then naturally that aristocracy breaks down and there comes a time of democracy. And it is necessary that religious democracy should come, because it is in religious democracy that fulfillment of the religious ideal lies.
Religious democracy means that no one should ever think that he is human while someone else is divine, and that God is in heaven, unattainable, imperceptible, and far away from his soul. He must realize that divinity is in his soul, that God is within him, that he is linked with God and that God is linked with him, that his soul can expand because he is not different from God nor is God different from him. Only, the danger of democracy is that when it comes too soon, before a person is ripe, then it brings disaster, for man’s natural progress is to follow his highest ideal, but when he is blinded by the spirit of democracy he becomes so agitated that he wishes to break that ideal. In this way he works to his own disadvantage. He comes down instead of going up, and so it has been in all ages and with all nations and races.
The ideal must be held before us that the main purpose of life is to ennoble our soul, and that religion means to observe, to appreciate, to recognize, to respect, and to heed the ennobled soul; to learn not with the thought of following, but with the ideal of becoming that which our soul recognizes as lofty and beautiful; realizing the possibility of touching that point which is attracting our soul as the light of the port attracts those who travel on the sea, giving us hope, inviting us, and telling us that the port is there.