We have been exploring the teaching of Hazrat Inayat Khan on what might be called the laws of life; the most recent post on the subject may be found here.  After examining the law of reciprocity and the law of beneficence, today we begin to consider what the master called the law of renunciation.  This text also summarises very clearly what is meant by the first two laws.

Life In God

“In Him we live, and move, and have our being.” This teaching of the Bible describes the nature of God: that God is the ocean, the waves of which are all its activities, small or great. The Qur’an says in support of this that not a single atom moves, groups, or scatters without the command of God. Rumi explains it still more plainly: “Air, earth, water and fire are God’s servants; to us they seem lifeless, but to God living.” In those who are conscious of this knowledge, and to the extent of their realization of this truth, there arises the spirit of renunciation which may be called the spirit of God.

He who wants anything becomes smaller that the thing he wants; he who gives away anything is greater than the thing he gives. Therefore, to a mystic each act of renunciation becomes a step towards perfection.

Forced renunciation, whether forced by morality, religion, law, convention, or formality, is not necessarily renunciation. The real spirit of renunciation is willingness; and willing renunciation comes when one has risen above the thing one renounces. The value of each thing in life–wealth, power, position, possession–is according to the evolution of man. There is a time in his life when toys are his treasures, and there is a time when he puts them aside; there is a time in his life when copper coins are everything to him, and there is another time when he can give away gold coins; there is a time in his life when he values a cottage, and there is a time when he gives up a palace.

Things have no value; their value is as man makes it; and at every step in his evolution he changes their value. Certainly there is no gain in leaving home, friends, and all affairs of life, and going to the forest and living the life of an ascetic; and yet who has the right to blame those who do so? How can the worldly man judge and understand the point of view of the one who renounces? Perhaps that which seems of the greatest value to the worldly man is nothing to the one who has renounced.

The Sufi makes no restrictions and has no principles of renunciation, nor does he teach renunciation. He believes that to sacrifice anything in life which one does not wish to sacrifice is of no use, but that renunciation is a natural thing, and grows in one with one’s evolution. A child which cries for its toy at one stage of its childhood, comes to an age when it is quite willing to give away the toy it once cried for.

There are three stages of morals. The first stage is the moral of reciprocity. This moral is natural to the one who sees the difference between himself and another, who recognizes every man as such and such.

The second stage is the law of beneficence, where man, recognizing himself as an entity separate from others and recognizing others as distinct entities themselves, yet sees a cord of connection running through himself and all, and finds himself as a dome in which rises an echo of good and evil; and in order to have a good echo he gives good for good and good for evil.

But the third stage is the moral of renunciation, where the difference of ‘mine’ and ‘thine’ and the distinction of ‘I’ and ‘you’ fade away in the realization of the one Life that is within and without, beneath and beyond; and that is the meaning of the verse in the Bible, “In Him we live, and move, and have our being.”