After describing the limitations of life from which all suffer in the first instalment, Hazrat Inayat Khan now offers the remedy, the raising of the light in each person.

A Persian poet has said, ‘Though I see myself in the greatest and highest and most perfect Being, yet I find myself in poverty, limitation, and distress. The reason for this is just my own ignorance of myself, of my true self. It is the delusion of the limitation of life.’

Whereas so many people are constantly endeavoring to get relief from this limitation which is called poverty, the Sufi strives to overcome the source of the poverty hidden within the life of everyone. The source of this poverty is limitation, and he breaks this limitation by raising his light. In the Bible we are advised to raise that light which so far we have hidden under a bushel. When we raise the light we remove the poverty.

We may ask: But how do we raise the light? What do we see with this light when it has been raised? The answer is that the intelligence is light. When the intelligence experiences life through the medium or vehicle of the body and mind then, no doubt, it remains limited. If we reflect that this body and this mind occupy two different planes, then we will understand that there is more limitation on the one than on the other. For example, if we want to go to a particular street or place with our body, it will take a certain time, but if we go there in our mind we can get there in a moment’s time. That is the difference between the two planes in regard to the accomplishment of things. It may take much time and effort to accomplish something in the physical world, but it takes less time and effort to accomplish it when we work mentally. When the intelligence works through the mind less effort and less time are needed, whereas when it works through the physical body more time and effort are needed. This is because the physical world has more limitations and the mental world has fewer. So when the intelligence can be raised above and beyond the mental world, we gain interest on all planes of existence. There is a greater playground for the intelligence there.

Two of the principal sources of pleasure in the physical world are good food and bodily comfort, yet one single beautiful thought or one charming mental image may provide more pleasure and joy than all the beauty there is in the whole physical world. So we can see that when we raise the intelligence from the physical plane, and then even higher, we will come to a state of realization where we see that life is not really limited at all; that it too is unlimited. It is when our experience is confined to the lower phases of existence that we find that our life is limited. Herein lies the whole tragedy of life.

So if we want to see happy people, full of joy and peace, people who are generous minded, people with a desire to serve, a desire for generosity and charity, we will find them if we look among those who do not have worldly wealth or fame or a great name. We will find them among the people who do not care for the world and its spirit; here we will find those who are kings in themselves. In the East they are called dervishes or faqirs or sanyasins. All these have lifted their intelligence above the sphere of limitation.