There are many Sufi poems praising the wine of the Beloved, but in the series of teachings that begins with this post, Hazrat Inayat Khan offers a very deep and thoughtful study of the subject of intoxication.

There are many things in life which are intoxicating, but if we considered the nature of life we would realize that there is nothing more intoxicating than our life itself. We can see the truth of this idea when we think of what we were yesterday and compare it with our condition today. Our unhappiness or happiness, our riches or poverty of yesterday are like a dream to us; it is only today’s condition that counts.

This life of continual rise and fall and of continual changes is like running water, and man identifies himself with this running water, although in reality he does not know what he is. For instance, if a man goes from poverty to riches, and then those riches are taken away from him, he laments; and he laments because he does not remember that before having those riches he was poor, and that from that poverty he came to riches. If one considers what one’s fancies through life have been, one will find that at every stage of development one had a particular fancy; sometimes one longed for certain things, and at other times one did not care for them. If one can look as a spectator at one’s own life, one will find that it was nothing but an intoxication. What at one time gives man great satisfaction and pride, at another time humiliates him; what a person enjoys at one time, troubles him at another time; what at one time he values greatly, at another time he does not value at all.

If a man can observe his actions in everyday life, and if he has an awakened sense of justice and understanding, he will often find himself doing something which he had not intended to do, or saying something that he did not wish to say, or behaving in such a way that he asks himself, ‘Why was I such a fool!’ Sometimes he allows himself to love someone, to admire someone; it may go on for days, for weeks, for months, even years – although years may be very long – and then perhaps he feels that he was wrong, or something more attractive comes along. Then he is on another road and does not know where he is any more, nor whom he loves. In the action and reaction of his life a man sometimes does things on impulse, not considering what he is doing, and at other times he has, so to speak, a spell [i.e. a period] of goodness, and he goes on doing what he thinks is good. At other times a reaction sets in and all his goodness is gone. Then in his business or profession he gets an impulse: he must do this, or he must do that, and he seems to be full of strength and courage; sometimes he perseveres, and sometimes it lasts only a day or two and then he forgets what he was doing and does something else.

This shows that man in his life in the activity of the world is just like a piece of wood, lifted by the waves of the sea when they rise up, and cast down when they subside. That is why the Hindus have called the life of the world Bhavasagara, an ocean, an ever rising ocean. And man is floating on this ocean of worldly activity, not knowing what he is doing, not knowing where he is going. What seems to him of importance is only the moment which he calls the present; the past is a dream, the future is in a mist, and the only thing clear to him is the present

The attachment and love and affection of man are not very different from the attachment of the birds and animals. There is a time when the sparrow looks after its young and brings grains in its beak and puts them into the beak of its young ones, and they anxiously await the coming of their mother. And this goes on until their wings are grown, and once the young ones have known the branches of the tree and they have flown in the forests under the protection of their mother, they never again remember that mother who was so kind to them. There are moments of emotion, there are impulses of love, of attachment, of affection, but there comes a time when these pass; they pale and fade away. And there comes a time when a person thinks that there is something else he desires and something else he would like to love.

To be continued…