We continue with the series of teachings on mysticism by Hazrat Inayat Khan. Having prepared the theme of repose in the previous post, he now shows what the fruits of repose might be.
It often amused me to see in New York, where one easily becomes exhausted by the noises of trains and trams and elevators and factories, that at that time when a person has a little time to sit in a train or tube, he is looking at newspapers; all that action is not enough. If not in the body, then there must be action in the brain. What is it? It is nervousness, a common disease which has almost become normal health–if everybody suffers from the same disease, then this disease may be called normal. What is called self-control, self-discipline, only comes from the practice of repose, which is helpful not only on the spiritual path, but also in one’s practical life, to be helpful and considerate.
The spiritual path begins by living in communication with oneself.
The mystic therefore takes this method of repose, and by this he tries to prepare himself to tread the spiritual path. The spiritual path is, as I have said, not an outward path; it is an inward path one has to tread, and therefore the laws and the journeying through the spiritual path are quite contrary to the laws and journey through the outer path. To explain in plain words what the spiritual path is, I should say, “It begins by living in communication with oneself.” Because it is the innermost self of man in which is to be found the life of God. This does not mean that the voice of the inner self does not come to everyone. It always comes, but not every person does hear it. Therefore to begin one’s effort in this path, the Sufi begins to communicate with and address his self within; and when once he has addressed the soul, then from the soul comes a kind of reproduction, such as the singer could hear of his song on a disc which has been produced from his voice.
Having done this, he has taken the first step in the direction within, when he has listened to what this process reproduces and this process has wakened a kind of echo in his being, either peace or happiness, light or form; whatever he has wished to produce, it is produced as soon as he has begun to communicate with himself. Now you can compare the man who says, ‘I cannot help being active, being sad, being worried, as it is the condition of my mind and soul,’ with the worker who communes with himself, and it is not long before the self begins to realize the value of it.
This is what the Sufis have taught for thousands of years. The path of the Sufi is not to commune with fairies and God; it is to commune with one’s deepest, innermost self, as if one blows one’s inner spark to a divine fire. But he does not stop there, he goes still further. He then remains in a state of repose, and that repose could be brought about by a certain way of sitting and breathing and by a certain attitude of mind. Then he begins to become conscious of some part of his being which is not the physical body but above it. The more he becomes conscious of this, the more he begins to realize the truth, which is a sure truth of the life hereafter. Then there are no longer his imaginations, nor his belief; it is his actual realization of the experience which is independent of physical life; and it is in this state that one is capable of experiencing the phenomena of life. The Sufi therefore does not dabble with different wonder-workings and phenomena. Once he realizes this, his whole life is a phenomenon. Every moment, every experience brings to him a realization of that life he has found in his meditation.