Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan continues to unfold his vision of divine love. The previous post is here.

When love is true it takes away selfishness, for this is the only solution to wipe off the ego. The English phrase ‘to fall in love’ conveys the idea of the true nature of love. It is a fall indeed from the pedestal of the ego to the ground of nothingness, but at the same time it is this fall which leads to a rise, for as low as the lover falls so high he rises in the end. The lover falls in love as a seed is thrown in the ground. Both appear to be destroyed, but both in time spring up and flourish and bear fruit for the ever-hungry world.

Man’s greatest enemy in the world is his ego, the thought of self. This is the germ from which springs all evil in man. Even the virtues of the egoist turn into sin, and his small sins into great crimes. All religions and philosophies teach man to crush it, and there is nothing that can crush it better than love. The growth of love is the decay of the ego. Love in its perfection entirely frees the lover from all selfishness, for love may be called in other words annihilation. ‘Whoever enters the school of lovers, the first lesson he learns is not to be.’

Unity is impossible without love, for it is love only which can unite. Each expression of love signifies the attainment of union as its object, and two things cannot unite unless one of them becomes nothing. No one knows this secret of life except the lover. Iraqi says in his verse, ‘When I, without having loved, went to Kaba and knocked at the gate, a voice came: ‘What didst thou accomplish in thy home that thou hast come forth?’ And when I went, having lost myself in love, and knocked at the gate of Kaba, a voice said: ‘Come, Come, O Iraqi, thou art ours.”

If there is anything that works against the vanity of the ego, it is love. The nature of love is to surrender; there is no one in the world who does not surrender. The world of variety, which has divided life into limited parts, naturally causes every lesser one to surrender to the greater. And, again, for every greater one there is another still greater, in relation to whom he is smaller, and for every smaller one there is another still smaller, in relation to whom he is greater. And as every soul is by its nature compelled to surrender to perfection in all its grades, the only thing that matters is whether it be a willing surrender or an unwilling surrender. The former comes by love, the latter is made through helplessness, which makes life wretched. It moves the Sufi when he reads in the Quran that the perfect Being asked the imperfect souls, the children of Adam, ‘Who is thy Lord?’ They, conscious of their imperfections, said humbly, ‘Thou art our Lord.’ Surrender is a curse when, with coldness and helplessness, one is forced to surrender. But the same becomes the greatest joy when it is made with love and all willingness.

Love is the practice of the moral of Suluk, the way of beneficence. The lover’s pleasure is in the pleasure of the beloved. The lover is satisfied when the beloved is fed. The lover is vain when the beloved is adorned. ‘Who in life blesses the one who curses him? Who in life admires the one who hates him? Who in life proves faithful to the one who is faithless? No other than a lover.’ And in the end the lover’s self is lost from his vision and only the beloved’s image, the desired vision, is before him for ever.

Love is the essence of all religion, mysticism, and philosophy, and for the one who has learnt this love fulfills the purpose of religion, ethics, and philosophy, and the lover is raised above all diversities of faiths and beliefs.

To be continued…