Hazrat Inayat Khan now begins to explain the individuality that we experience from our life on earth. The previous post in the series is here.
The soul which has already brought with it from the angelic heavens a luminous body, and from the sphere of the jinn a body full of impressions, functions in the end in the human body which the physical plane offers it; and it settles for some time in this abode. This completes what we understand by the word individuality. These three planes, which are the principal planes of existence, are called in the terms of Vedanta, Bhu-Loka, Deva-Loka, Svar-Loka, meaning three worlds: Bhu-Loka the physical world, Deva-Loka the world of the jinns, and Svar-Loka the world of the angels. The human being therefore has all three beings in him, the angel, the jinn, and man. What man acquires on the earth is the experience gained by the means of his senses, an experience which he himself goes through; and it is this experience which man collects in that accommodation within himself which he calls the heart. The surface of the heart, which is the collection of his knowledge, he calls the mind. This word comes from the Sanskrit manas, mind, and from this word ‘man’ has come.
Man shows the signs of the angelic heavens and the sphere of the jinn by his tendencies; his tendency towards light, truth, love and righteousness; his love of God; his seeking for the truth of life. This all shows the angel in him.
In his longing for beauty, in his attraction towards art, in his love for music, in his appreciation of poetry, in his tendency to produce, to create, to express, he shows signs of the sphere of the jinn. And the impressions which constitute his being, which he has brought as a heritage from the sphere of the jinn, which have been imparted to him by the souls on their way back towards the goal, he shows as something peculiar and different from what his family possess.
No doubt it often happens that a child possesses qualities of his ancestors which were perhaps missing in his parents, or even two or three generations back; however, this is another heritage, a heritage which is known to us as such. I might express this by saying that a soul borrows a property from the spheres of the jinn, and a more concrete property from the physical world; and as it borrows this property, together with this transaction it takes upon itself the taxation and the obligations as well as the responsibilities which are attached to the property. Very often the property is not in proper repair, and damage has been done to it, and it falls to his lot to repair it; and if there be a mortgage on that property that becomes his due. Together with the property he becomes the owner of the records and the contracts of the property which he owns. In this is to be found the secret of what is called karma.
What makes the soul know of its own existence? Something, with which it adorns itself, something which it adopts, possesses, owns and uses. For instance, what makes a king know that he is a king? His palace, his kingly environment, people standing before him in attendance; if all that were absent the soul would be no king. Therefore the king is a palace, and it is the consciousness of the environment which makes the soul feel, ‘I am so and so.’ What it adorns itself with makes it say, ‘I am this or that.’ Otherwise by origin it is something nameless, formless.
On the earth-plane the personality develops out of the individuality. The soul is an individual from the moment it is born upon the earth in the worldly sense of the word; but it becomes a person as it grows. For personality is the development of individuality, and in personality, which is formed by character-building, is born that spirit which is the rebirth of the soul. The first birth is the birth of man; the second birth is the birth of God.
To be continued…