In the first instalment of this series explaining the ways in which the human relates to God, Hazrat Inayat Khan speaks of five stages, the first of which is the idealisation of God. Here he continues with the second stage, that of recognition.

Recognizing God:

This is the second step; it is called Tariqat. At this stage the believer in God thinks of Him not only as in heaven, where all praise, worship, honor, and respect are due to Him, but he recognizes that God is on earth also. If you take a man called John, and you ask him the name of each part of him, he can give a certain name for each, for every part of his body has a name. But which is John? Which part of his being is John? How shall I recognize John? If I recognize him from his head, why not call his head John instead of ‘head?’ If I recognize him from his hand, then why do we not call his hand John? Why call it ‘hand?’ If I recognize him from his body, why not call his body John, instead of ‘body?’ But if the body is John, and the body dies, then where is John? There where the dead body is, is John there? No, surely John is different from his body, yet at the same time he represents himself with his body. It is his inner self that is really John, yet it is not his inner self that he shows to our external eyes, which are limited; it is his limited self, which we call John, that he shows us. John is behind his limited self. Our eyes are only the vehicle for seeing, but we can see something beyond our eyes; and the ones who see thus are the seers.

If we study this more carefully we come to realize that God is the Creator, and that therefore He must have something to create from. When a sculptor sets to work he has something in his mind before he starts; he has to have a piece of wood or stone to work on. Every worker has a certain thing besides himself to create from. So we may ask: was there anything besides this world for God to make it from? Where did God get the things to make the universe from? If he created it out of something already made, then this substance out of which He made the universe must have been made by some other god, or perhaps by thousands of gods, and even then we may not have come to the end! But this cannot be. The whole of creation derives from one Being whose wisdom is unlimited; one Being whose art is unlimited, whose power is unlimited. He creates of Himself with His own power; therefore the creation and the Creator are not two, just as man and his body are not two. Or rather, they are two but at the same time they are not. When we recognize a man we do not recognize him only from his body but from his spirit as well. If we recognize God, we recognize Him not only in heaven but also on earth. Those who recognize Him see Him in all.

A Hindustani song expresses it thus:

Ah! how desirous I was to see the divine Beloved!
It is not the fault of the Beloved that you do not see;

He is before you!
It is the fault of you who recognize Him not.

Everything, whatever you see is nothing else but
The Presence of God!

But if, you might say, all the worldly is the presence of God, then what is in heaven? I do not say that the body is John; I say that behind the body is John, even though the body too is John. Thus God is in heaven, but His manifestation is also God.

Think of how the followers of all the different religions have fought one another! Some were convinced that there are a thousand or numberless gods, whereas others were convinced that there is but one. To the mind of the Sufi both are right, although both are each other’s opposite in knowledge, One religion wishes to teach that all these infinite varieties are just one God, and to impress the idea that this is God. Those who have learned that there is one God cannot conceive the idea of many gods, so they have fought throughout all their lives, without every recognizing who really is their God. They teach that someday they will actually be taken before Him for judgment, when in fact they are before Him all the time, all day long, all night long! Once one understands this, a great change of outlook will develop; one’s thoughts about God will change so much that one’s entire moral standpoint will change.

To be continued…