In this final instalment of the series, Hazrat Inayat Khan shows how the love of beauty leads to the fulfilment of life. The previous post may be found here.
In the Hindu language there are two attitudes mentioned by the philosophers, namely, 1. hamsadi; 2. suhradi. The former attitude is that of a bird of paradise, a mythical bird of the Hindus called Hamsa. If you put milk mixed with water before Hamsa, it will drink the milk and leave the water behind. The suhradi attitude is that of the people. It is the tendency of looking to find where there is any dirty spot and then wanting to sit in it. Such is the tendency of man. One person is always looking for what may be wrong in people, and is delighted to hear something wrong about them, and is very interested in discussing their faults and hearing of their being disgraced or insulted in some way. Such persons are always wanting to see the evil around them, in whatever form it may be.
This pleasure grows until the whole life becomes a burden, for the presence of evil produces its bad impression, and bad thoughts collect around him, for they are reproduced just as a gramophone record produces sounds. Such a person becomes the gramophone record for the evil he collects; he utters it, he retains the bad feelings within; he spreads them abroad wheresoever he goes. Nobody likes him, nor does he like anyone either; the time will come when he cannot even like himself.
Another kind of character is he who overlooks all that does not seem to be harmonious; he looks only for good in every person, and finds some good even in the worst person in the world. This person seeks for good, wishes to see it wherever he can find it, and in this way constantly gathers good impressions. And what is “good?” Good is beauty. What is beauty? Beauty is God. What is virtue? Virtue is beauty. What is beauty is also virtue.
One does not have to learn in a book or a scripture or from some other person what is good and what is bad. We can learn from our own sense of art. The greater one’s sense of art, the more it will show what is right and what is wrong, what is good and what is bad. As soon as the senses begin to develop and understand what it is that takes away beauty and what it is that imparts beauty, then such a one gathers beauty as one gathers flowers. Such persons welcome others with beauty, they express beauty, they impart it to others. Others love them. They love others. They live and move and have their being in love, just as it is said in the Bible, “They live and move and have their being in God.” So a person who lives and moves and has his being in love will certainly also live and move and have his being in God. This may be called “the divine art,” for which a person may study and strive.
But besides this there is the art which every person must look for and develop in his own nature. The Message of Sufism to the Western world has this as its chief object, to awaken the spirit of the world from this thought of antagonism and mutual hatred, and to bring about the feeling of human brotherhood; so that all humanity may meet with one another, whatever be their nation, race, or religion, in one place, in one center, namely, the thought of God. And in order to rise to this ideal, and in order to tune our soul to this pitch, so necessary from beginning to end, it is necessary to seek the path of beauty, and to recognize in beauty the Being of God.
God bless you.