Hazrat Inayat Khan often spoke about the need for religion in life, and here he addresses the subject from the point of view of several universal longings, including our search for an ideal.
Religion is a need of the human soul. In all periods and at every stage of the evolution of humanity there has been a religion which people followed, for at every period the need for religion has been felt. The reason is that the soul of man has several deep desires, and these desires are answered by religion.
The first desire is the search for the ideal. There comes a time when man seeks for a more complete justice than he finds among men, and when he seeks for someone on whom he can rely more surely than he can on his friends in the world. There comes a time when man feels a desire to open his heart to a Being who is above human beings and who can understand his heart. Man naturally desires to meet someone who is greater than himself, and when he has sought his ideal in the world of mortality, he is naturally inclined to turn towards someone who is higher than man, since the human soul cannot come up to his ideal. He wants to feel that there is someone who comes to his aid, someone who is near him in his loneliness. He feels the need of asking forgiveness of someone who is above human pettiness, and of seeking refuge under someone stronger than he. And to all these natural human tendencies there is an answer which is given by religion, and that answer is God.
Every living being on earth loves life above all else. The smallest insect, whose life lasts only an instant, tries to escape from any danger in order to live a moment longer. And the desire to live is most developed in man. As intelligence awakens in man, he begins to wonder whether life is merely transitory, and if after this life all is ended. To him the thought that after his short life the world will continue is more terrible than death. And if life had not an intoxicating effect, this thought would kill many people. The man who thinks that after this life there is nothing more, cannot dwell very long on that thought. Dwelling on this thought and meditating upon it gives the same feeling as standing on a great height and looking down. It terrifies a person. The belief that our life will continue after we have gone through death is a most comforting idea for every soul. The man who has not received the reward of his efforts, of his goodness; who has not met in his life with an answer to his sense of justice; who has not found complete satisfaction, and who has not been able to attain his desire in life; his hope is in what will come after. This is what religion promises him.
Thus the desire to live, if not on the earth then in the hereafter, exists in every person. And the one who looks at it with pessimism and argues against the possibility of the hereafter, does so only to establish in his mind a conviction that there is a hereafter. He will not admit it, for he thinks it is intelligent to deny it; but he is not willing to die, he is not willing to deny that there is a continual life.
The mission of devotion, of religion, of spirituality has been to bring to man that conviction which intellectual reasoning denies, but belief and faith alone can give. Is there one person in this world who would like his existence to cease for good? – Not one. But everyone, whether he seems to be doing so or not, is in pursuit of some thread, some link, in order to be sure that there is a life in the hereafter. It is not true that there is no proof of the hereafter; it is only that those who want a proof look for that proof in the wrong direction. How can a proof of immortality be found in mortal existence? The proof of immortality is immortality itself. As life has no experience, it has no proof. If there is a proof, it is life itself. Coming to immortality from the limited conception of mortality is just like awakening from unconsciousness and becoming conscious. Has not every religion tried in its own way, by some means or another, to bring man to the realization that there is a life in the hereafter?
To be continued…