We continue with Hazrat Inayat Khan’s lecture on the Awakening of the Soul, begun here and continued here.
Then the fourth stage of the soul’s awakening is that the soul feels revelation, that everything begins to speak to the soul: the trees, or the plants, or rocks, birds or animals, whoever he meets, before one word is spoken to him, because the soul is wakened to hear. When we compare unawakened with wakened souls, we find that with the eyes they see so much and not further, with the ears they hear so much and not further, with the brain they think so much and not further, with the heart they cannot feel more than they can. After the awakening of the soul a person feels with everyone his condition, his secret, his fears, his doubts, his friendliness, his unfriendliness, everything he begins to feel. Very often loving persons, kindly souls, saintly personalities have a kind of impression from people they meet. It is the same thing in its fulness when the soul is fully wakened. Not only an impression, but the whole condition. It is no exaggeration to say that before the illuminated soul every person is a written letter. It is all written, all clear: what is in his mind, in his heart, what he has gone through, what he is going through and what is waiting for him. It is all clear.
But one might ask, “What is the soul, and how does it become clear? Are we not different people, have we not our own thoughts, and our own feelings? Can we not conceal them? Since we have the power to say nothing, have we not also the power to keep our feelings unexposed?” Yes, we can do it, but very little. In the first place, how much you conceal ideas and thoughts, there comes a time when they jump out from the lips, you cannot hold them back. Yes, for one week, one month, but there comes a time when unconsciously it comes out: if you are unfavourably disposed, or if you have a deep love, or respect, or a thought, or feeling towards someone, you need not say it. It comes out by itself sooner or later. You may control it. Then it takes its time. Your mind cannot assimilate it, it must come out. What does it show? It shows that life is revealing. Every object in life is revealing. It reveals its character and secret. And as we cannot control ourselves or conceal ourselves, so nothing in this world can conceal itself from being revealed. And therefore, life is communicative. It is not only a story of long traditions that sages used to speak with the birds and animals. Once the soul is wakened, then all things begin to reveal themselves. It is not speaking. In silence we speak, because what we speak is not a speech, it is a cover. There is so much hypocrisy in language. Very often words conceal our thoughts. There are very few people who really speak what they really feel. Very often words are only a cover to conceal their thoughts. And at the same time, nothing can be concealed. That story of the Bible when the twelve Apostles learned all languages and began to speak, its interpretation is mostly wrong. They did not speak French, Italian, German and Spanish. It is that they learned the language of every soul. It means that the soul once wakened learns the language of every soul. Every soul has a language peculiar to itself. Even today, I have seen in Russia a person who spoke thirty-six languages. It did not make him spiritual. It is the language of every soul that the wakened soul begins to understand.
Now you might ask me the secret of it. What does this language consist of? Is it a language of words, of thoughts, of feelings? There are two ways of comprehending life: by hearing and by seeing; in other words, by sound and by form. But these two ways belong to the body, to the mind. When it comes to the soul, it does not need sound or form to comprehend. There is a subtler vibration which is only audible to the soul, a subtler form only comprehensible to the soul, a form not to be drawn on the paper, not to be conceived by the mind. Mind is incapable of conceiving that form. Even the heart, the factor of feeling, is incapable of conceiving that vibration which the soul comprehends. And therefore, when people say, “A clairvoyant sees from the aura the condition of the person, from the colours he sees around the person,” well, he is a clairvoyant whose eyes are perhaps a little more ethereal, that he sees auras and talks about it. And the more he talks about it, the less he sees it. For those who see never speak about it, never claim to see it, because they consider and understand the trust from above, a great trust when a person begins to look in the heart of another. If he begins to speak about it to others, then he does not know that trust and deserves a punishment for it. It is the same if a person says, “I communicate with the future.” Mankind is not entitled to make a business of these things, to announce them, to proclaim, to speak about it. It is far from spirituality. It is abusing the word spirituality. The nearer a person has come to truth the less he professes it. The wakening of the soul, therefore, is a marvel in itself, the greatest marvel there is. And the less one makes of it the better it is.
To be continued…