Hazrat Inayat Khan spoke extensively about art, as for example in this series of posts, and here he links that theme to the development of personality.
IT IS as important to think about the development of personality as it is to think about spirituality. A poet from Delhi says, ‘If God had created man to offer Him prayers there are many angels to do this. Man was created to become human.’
Many think that nature is greater than art. I say: art perfects nature. Someone proudly told me, ‘ I was brought up by my parents just like a plant.’ And I said, ‘It is a great pity.’ When people say one should let children alone, let them go their own way, this means that although they live in the world which is itself a work of art they do not give their children any education in that art, which is needed for living in this world. By this I do not mean that one should not be natural. One should develop naturally, for if one remains undeveloped one loses a great deal. Even if one were a spiritual person, if the personality was not developed one would be missing a great deal in life. The personality must be developed. Parents think very little about this nowadays; they think that these are old-fashioned ideas; to be new-fashioned is to overlook all these things. But I say that it is not so at all; it is just the fashion to think about it in this way.
Individuality is one thing and personality is another. A soul is born an individual, but without a personality. Personality is built after one is born. What the soul has brought along is hands and legs and face, but not personality; this is made here on earth.
Very often people have taken the ascetic path and have gone where they could keep away from the world. Because they did not care for the personality, for the self, they kept themselves aloof from the crowd. In this way they are free to be as they wish to be; if they want to be like a tree or a plant or a rock, they may. But at the same time, when it comes to personality it is a different thing. You can either have a manner or not have it; you can either have an ideal or not have one; you can either have principles or be without them; you can either be conventional or not. All these things have their place; manner, conventionally, principle, ideal, all have their value in life. And the person who goes about without considering any of these things is just like a wild horse let loose in the city, running here and there, frightening everybody and causing a lot of harm. That is what an untrained personality is. Real culture is a matter of personality, not mathematics or history or grammar. All these different studies are practical studies, but the real study is how to develop personality. If you are a businessman, a lawyer, a professional man, an industrialist, a politician, whatever you occupation in life, you are forced, expected, to have a personality in every walk of life. It is the personality of the salesman which sells, not always the goods. In the case of a doctor, it is his personality which can heal and cure a person much sooner than medicine can.
There are four different grades of evolution, and these differ according to the four different kinds of personality. A person is either born in it or a person evolves through it. The first grade is called ammara in Sufi terms, and it denotes a person who is coarse and crude, thoughtless and ill mannered. And ill manner is connected with ill luck, and so whenever there is thoughtlessness there is failure connected with it; whenever there is blindness there is always a disaster. This is the first kind of person.
To be continued…