In the final portion of this series, Hazrat Inayat Khan addresses the most crucial question regarding intoxication, and the one which is most difficult to answer – how to experience sobriety? The previous post is here.
Do we not sometimes see in our everyday life a person who says, ‘I am ill, I am sorry for myself, I am miserable, I am wretched’? Put him in a palace and surround him with doctors and nurses, he will still be wretched. And another person who may be in great suffering and pain, but yet says, ‘No, I am well, I am happy, everything is all right’, that person has a right attitude. Does it not show us that we are, that we become, the wine we drink? The man who is drunk with the wine of success knows no failure; and if circumstances make him fail nine times, the tenth time he will succeed. The one who has drunk the wine of failure may be given all the possibility of success, but he has drunk the wine of failure; he cannot succeed.
There is, however, a subtle feeling which every soul has, a feeling which cannot be explained in words; a feeling which makes a man more comfortable in his armchair at home than when perhaps ten thousand people stand before him paying him homage. A person may be loaded with wealth, but the moment when he sets aside all his pearls and jewels, and sits down alone and takes a rest, that is the time when he breathes freely. And what does this teach us? It teaches us that man may have everything in the world which has the greatest value in his eyes, but there will yet remain something for him to seek. When he has that then he is happy.
One does not want to have a person, however beloved he may be, around one all the time; one sometimes wants to have a moment away from even the dearest person in the world. However proud a man is in his thought, and his thoughts may be great, deep, and good, yet the greatest joy is in the moment when he is not thinking. One may have the finest feelings of love, tenderness, and goodness; but there are moments when there are no feelings, and these moments are the most exalting.
This shows that the whole of life is interesting because it is all intoxicating; but what is really desired by the soul is one thing only, and that is a glimpse of soberness. What is this glimpse of soberness and how does one experience this glimpse of soberness which is the continual longing of the soul? One experiences it by means of meditation, by means of concentration. But if it is a natural thing, why has one to make an effort for it? The reason is that one enjoys this intoxication so much that afterwards one becomes addicted to drink. And that is the condition of every soul in this world; every soul becomes addicted to the wine of life. At the same time there comes a moment, if not in the early part of life, then later, if not when a person is happy, then when he is unhappy, when he begins to look for that soberness which is the continual longing of his soul. The Sufi culture therefore is a culture designed in order to experience that soberness.
It is no doubt very difficult to explain how this soberness is attained; yet after having explained this subject of intoxication it is less difficult. For it is really as simple as saying that the way to give up drink is to keep the drink away and to remain without drink for a time. There are three principal wines, three principal intoxications: the intoxication of one’s self, the intoxication of one’s occupation, and the third intoxication which is what the senses feel every moment; and these three wines cannot all be taken away at once. It would be just like taking away his life’s sustenance from a person who lives on wine. But one can set a person a certain time and see that during that time he keeps sober and only takes two wines, not three; and that he next tries to take only one, not two. And as a person advances in meditative life he may arrive at that stage where the three wines on which he lives may all be withheld and yet he still feels that he can live; and so he will become convinced that he can exist without these three intoxications. Verily, this conviction of existing independently of these three wines, which bring man the realization of eternal life, is the essence of the divine message and of all religions.