After his explanation of the importance of symbology, Hazrat Inayat Khan now considers the biblical account of Jacob from the Book of Genesis.

The wrestling with Jacob signified the wrestling of the soul with the ego. The awakened soul looks about and asks: ‘Who is my enemy?’ While the unawakened soul thinks that it is his neighbor or his relation who is his enemy, the awakened soul says, ‘It is my self; my ignorant ego is my enemy; and it is the struggle with this enemy that will bring me light and raise me from the denseness of the earth.’ Night is symbolically the time when the darkness of ignorance causes confusion: one feels sorrow, loneliness, depression; one sees no way out; one is burdened on all sides, chained, there seems no freedom for the soul, for this is the time of night. But when the soul can fight the ego, then it rises above the chains and attachments of this world. As it is said in the Bible, Jacob first left all his belongings; he came away from them. This means that he became indifferent to all which he had once felt attached. The Sufi looks at this from another point of view. He thinks that to leave all one possesses and to go to the forests or mountains is not true detachment. True detachment is in the heart of man. One can be surrounded by beauty, comfort, wealth, position, love, all these things, and yet be detached from them, be no slave to them, and rise above them.

Jacob left everything and went into the solitude, into the silence, where he wished to fight the deluded self, the ego, which blinds man to the truth. And what was the result? Daybreak came, and that man or angel who had fought with Jacob, wished to depart. This means that the ego wanted to leave; there was no ego, no more I. But, with the daybreak, came a new light, a new inspiration, a new revelation. The very ego which Jacob saw as his greatest enemy, in the daylight he recognized as God Himself. He bowed before the One with whom he had wrestled all night, and he asked his blessing. He asked His name, for then he saw, ‘No longer I, but Thou.’ And the name could not be told, for that was the unveiling of the unity of God and man, and in this realization names and forms are lost.