Hazrat Inayat Khan now gives a brief summary of the way in which we may become confirmed in our awareness of that which is beyond mortality. The previous post is here.

In reality mortality is our conception, immortality is reality. We make a conception of mortality because we do not know the real life. By the realization of the real life the comparison between real life and mortality makes one know that mortality is non-existent. Therefore it would not be an exaggeration if I said that the work of a Sufi is an unlearning. What he is accustomed to call or recognize as life he then begins to recognize as death. And what he is accustomed to call death he then begins to recognize as life. And therefore life and death both are not for him conditions to which he is subject, but are conditions which he brings about upon himself. A great Persian Sufi, Bedil, says: “By myself I become captive, and by myself I become free.” If I were to interpret it in a simple language I would say that: “By myself I die, and by myself I live.” But why does a Sufi say this? Why does everyone not say it? Because for a Sufi it is a condition which he brings about; for another person it is a condition in which he is helpless.

And now you will ask me in what way this realization is to be brought about? The first thing is that one must learn in every little thing in life the way of unlearning. For the difficulty in my own work I find greatly when a person comes to me and says: “Now so far I have learnt, will you add to my knowledge more?” And in my heart I say: the more you have learnt, the worse it is for me. And if I would like to add to it, it would not be adding, it would be taking away from it in order that I may unburden you from all you have learnt, that you may be able to unlearn first, and that through this unlearning what will come will be the true learning. But one might say: “Then is it all useless for us to learn what we learn in life?” And the answer is: “No, it is all useful, but for what? For that object which you are searching after.”

When you wish to search after the secret of life, the learning which one calls learning, that is the first thing to unlearn. No doubt it is something which is a difficult thing for everyone to understand. And yet when we read the life of Rumi, a great Teacher, and his Teacher, Shams Tabriz, the first lesson he gave to Rumi was that: unlearn all that you have learnt. And now you may ask me is this unlearning forgetting all that one learns? Not at all. It is not necessary. This unlearning is: to be able to say with reason, with logic, the contrary to what one knows. When you are accustomed to say: this is wrong, this is right, this is good, and this is bad, this is great and this is small, and this is higher and this is lower, this is spiritual and this is material, this is up and this is down, and this is before and this is behind, if you can use the opposite words for each with reason and with logic, naturally you have unlearnt what you have once learnt.

It is after this that the realization of Truth begins, because then the mind is not fixed. And it is then that one has become alive, for his soul has become born. It is then that one will become tolerant, and it is then that one will forgive. For he will understand his friend and foe both. He never then has one point of view; he has all points of view. You might say: ‘Is it not dangerous to have all points of view? Then I have not my point of view.’ It is not necessary. You may have one room in the house, or you may have ten rooms in the house; you may use each as you like. As many points of view as one can see so large is his point of view.

But all this is attained by the meditative process, by tuning oneself, by bringing oneself to a proper rhythm, by concentration, contemplation and by meditation, and by realization; by dying and living both at the same time. In order to rise above death one must die first. In order to get above mortality one must know what it is. But this is certain, that if there is a greatest and most important thing that one wishes to accomplish in life it is one, and that one thing is to rise above the conception of death.

To be continued…