After exploring the love of truth, the search for truth, its attainment and realisation, Hazrat Inayat Khan concludes by speaking about the expression of truth. The previous post in the series may be found here.

Lastly, there is the question, “What is the expression of truth?” “How can truth be expressed?” The psychology of life is such that every soul expresses what it is impressed with. If a soul is impressed with grief in its surroundings, it will express grief, sorrow, disappointment in action, thought, speech and atmosphere. If a soul is experiencing joy, it will express joy. That shows that the law of life is always action and inaction. Whatever we experience during the day we see at night in our dreams, which shows that our soul may be compared with a gramophone record; it produces whatever is placed upon it. So if the record made is one of illusion and falsity, it will produce only falsity and illusion. There is nothing to be done but take that record away and commence another. 

Again, it is as a person holding a sunglass [i.e. a lens, sometimes called a burning glass] before the sun. It immediately partakes of the heat of the sun. Immediately it responds to the sun and reacts in the same way as the sun. So with human nature. In the Bible it is written, “Where your treasure, there your heart.” If the heart is exposed to the world of illusion, to the impression of things which come and go, then it will always reproduce the same complaints, sorrows and disappointments. One’s life’s real need will never be satisfied by things which cannot be depended upon; such things must always bring disappointment. At any hour of the day one may meet human beings with a thousand complaints. How is this? It is because the heart is constantly exposed to a world of falsehood; one hears falsehood, one expresses the same falsehood, because it is reproduced upon the record of the mind. Therefore such a person does not make others happy, nor can he himself be happy. 

There is also the teaching of Christ, “Seek ye the kingdom of God first, and all things will be added.” What does that mean? It means that we are to focus the heart upon that spiritual ideal which is the perfection of truth; let that reality be reproduced in the heart, so that in its turn it may sing the song of reality. In the terminology of the Sufis, there is what is called shari’at – “the divine moral.” This divine moral cannot be learned or taught; it can only come spontaneously. A person may lay down the principles of this divine moral, saying that “this particular attitude or method of working in life is the right thing, the divine moral.” When the heart is exposed to God, like the sunglass is exposed to the sun, the divine moral comes into it. When the heart partakes of the divine outlook and divine attitude and divine love, then it expresses them externally, as an action in the outer world, as a manner, as a glance.

Some people say Christ was divine, others say he was a man. Both are right and yet both only understand half. Strictly speaking, in the human there is the divine. He is human who has the divine expression. Therefore, if it is right to say Christ was human, it is also right to say Christ is divine. The soul of every human being is divine, could we realize its real nature. The mission of the Sufi, the Sufi Message to the world, is the realization of this principle, the understanding of the divinity of the human soul. Did man realize that although his external is human and limited, his inner being is divine and unlimited, and if man knew how to dive deep within himself, he would find God. For God is not far away, as people of various religions believe; He is closer to us than anyone else. Such a person will realize that God is the one end of a line, and he himself is the other end. One line has two points; one life has two points. The one is man, and the other is God.

God bless you.