Hazrat Inayat on the life of thought

God is omniscient, omnipotent, all-pervading and the only Being. This suggests to us that the absolute is living Being; that there is no such thing as death; that there is no such thing as an end; that every thing, every being, every particle, has a continuity, because life is continuous.

End or death is only a change; therefore, every thought that has once crossed the mind, every feeling that has once passed through the heart, every word that is once spoken and perhaps never thought about any longer, every action, once done and forgotten, is given a life; and it continues to live. It is just like a traveller who is journeying, and on his way has some seeds in his hands and throws them on the ground. When the plants grow in that place, he never sees them; he just threw the seeds, and they are there. The earth has taken them, and the water has reared them, and the sun and the air have helped them to grow.

This life is an accommodation; and in it everything, as thought or word or action or feeling, once given birth, is taken care of, is raised and brought to fruitfulness. One would hardly think that it could be so. One thinks something is spoken and gone, or done and finished with; or it was felt and now it is no longer there. But it is only a change, and it is the change of which we are conscious. We know of something; and then it is no longer before us, and we think it is gone, but it is there still. It remains, and it pursues its course; for it is life, and in everything, there is a life. And life lives; and as all is life, there is no death.

No doubt birth and death, beginning and end, are the names of the different aspects of this mechanical working of the whole universe. It is a kind of automatic working that gives us an idea of something beginning and something ending. When you ring a bell the action takes only a moment, but the resonance lasts. It lasts to our knowledge only as long as it is audible; and then it passes on farther and is no longer audible to us; but it exists somewhere, it goes on.

If a pebble thrown into the sea puts the water into action, one hardly stops to think to what extent this vibration acts upon the sea. What one can see is the little waves and circles that the pebble produces before one. One sees only these. But the vibration which it has produced in the sea reaches much further than man can ever imagine. What we call space is a much finer world. If we call it sea, it is a sea with the finest fluid. If we call it land, it is a land which is incomparably more fertile than the land we know. It takes in everything and it brings it up; it rears it and it allows it to grow, that which our eyes do not see and our ears do not hear.

Does this thought not make us responsible for every movement we make, for every thought that we think, for every feeling that passes through our mind or heart? For there is not one moment of our life wasted, if we only know how to utilize our action here, how to direct our thought, how to express it in words, how to further it with our movement, how to feel it, so that it may make its own atmosphere. What responsibility! The responsibility that every man has is greater than a king’s responsibility. It seems as if every man has a kingdom of his own for which he is responsible; and a kingdom which is in no way smaller than any kingdom known to us, but incomparably larger than the kingdoms of the earth. This teaches us to be thoughtful and conscientious and to feel our responsibility at every move we make. But every man does not feel this; he is unaware of himself, he is unaware of the secret of life. He goes on like a drunken man walking in a city. He does not know what he is doing, either for himself, or against himself.

How can a thought live? In what way does it live? Has it a body to live, has it a mind, has it a breath? Yes. The first thing we should know is that a breath that comes directly from the source seeks a body, an accommodation in which to function. A thought is like a body. The breath that runs from the source, as a ray of the spirit that may be likened to the sun, makes the thought an entity.

from The Message series, vol. II, Cosmic Language, chap vi

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