This instalment concludes this lecture series by Hazrat Inayat Khan on the journey toward the unity of religious ideals. The previous post is here.
The fourth aspect of religion is the idea of God. There will always be fights and discussions about this, as people are wont to say, ‘ The God of our family is one, and the God of your family is another.’ In ancient times there was a dispute between the people who said that the God of Ben Israel was a special God; and so every community and every Church made its God a special God. If there is a special God, it is not only a special God of a community, but a God of every individual. For man has to make his own God before he realizes the real God, but that God which man makes within himself becomes in the end the door by which he enters the shrine of his innermost being, the real God who is in the heart of man. And then one begins to realize that God is not a God of a certain community or people, but that God is the God of the whole Being.
Next we come to the aspect of religion which is not the law or the ceremony or the divine ideal or God, but which is apart from all these four. It is something living in the soul, in the mind, and in the heart of man; its absence keeps man as dead, and its presence gives him life. If there is any religion, it is this. And what is it? The Hindus have called it Dharma, which in the ordinary meaning of the word is duty. But it is something much greater than what we regard as duty in our everyday life. It is life itself. When a person is thoughtful and considerate, when he feels his obligations towards his fellow man, towards his friend, towards his father or mother, or in whatever relation he may stand to others, it is something living, it is like water which gives the sense of living to the soul. It is this living soul which really makes a person alive. And the person who is not conscious of this, this tenderness, this sacredness of life, may be alive, but his soul is in the grave. One does not need to ask a man who is conscious of this what his religion or his belief is, for he is living it; life itself is his religion, and this is the true religion. The man conscious of honor, the man who has a sense of shame, a feeling of sincerity, whose sympathy and devotion are alive, that man is living, that is religious.
This is the religion which has been the religion of the past and will be the religion of the future. All religion taught by Christ or any other of the great ones was intended to awaken in man that sense which is awakened when religion is living. It does not matter then into which building one goes to pray, for every moment of one’s life has become religion – not a religion in which one believes, but a religion which one lives.
What is the message of Sufism? Sufism is the message of digging out that water-like life which has been buried by the impressions of this material life. There is an English phrase: ‘a lost soul.’ But the soul is not lost; the soul is only buried. When it is dug out, then the divine life breaks forth like a spring of water. And the question is, what is digging? What does one dig in oneself? Is it not true, is it not said in the scriptures that God is love? Then where is God to be found? Is He to be found in the seventh heaven or is He to be found in the heart of man? He is to be found in the heart of man, which is his shrine. But if this heart is buried, if it has lost that light, that life, that warmth, what does this heart become? It becomes like a grave. In a popular English song* there is a beautiful line, which says, ‘The light of a whole life dies when love is done.’ That living thing in the heart is love. It may come forth as kindness, as friendship, as sympathy, as tolerance, as forgiveness, but in whatever form this living water rises from the heart, it proves the heart to be a divine spring. And when once this spring is open and is rising, then everything that a man does in action, in word, or in feeling is all religion; that man becomes truly religious.
If there is any new religion to come, it will be this religion, the religion of the heart. After all the suffering that has been brought to humanity by the recent war, man is beginning to open his eyes. And as time passes he will open his eyes and know and understand that true religion lies in opening the heart, in widening the outlook, and in living that religion which is the one religion.
- ‘The Night has a Thousand Eyes; by British poet Francis William Bourdillon (1852-1921)
The night has a thousand eyes,
And the day but one;
Yet the light of the bright world dies
With the dying sun.
The mind has a thousand eyes,
And the heart but one;
Yet the light of a whole life dies,
When love is done.