At the conclusion of the previous post, Hazrat Inayat Khan mentioned the first of three ways of trusting in the path of initiation.

The second way of trusting is to trust and to continue to do so until the person is proved unworthy of trust. Those who trust in this way are better suited than the first, for if their trust makes their sight keen they will have every prospect of development, provided that intelligence guides them all the way.

But the third way of trusting a person is to have an absolute trust, and to continue until it be proved true. This is the trust of devotees. It is these mureeds who make the Murshid. It is such worshippers who made God. ‘By faith, a tongue is produced from the rock, and it speaks to us as God, but when faith is lacking, even God, the Eternal Being, is as dead as a rock.’ The word of the Murshid is as useless to the doubting mind as a remedy to the unbelieving patient.

To become an initiate in the Sufi Order therefore implies a willingness to agree with its teachings and objects; a willingness to cease to attach importance to the differences of the world’s various faiths, and to see in all the Masters only one embodiment of the divine Spirit, and thirdly it implies that one is not already following another course of spiritual training. In such a case, why go to another kind of teacher as well? It would be like traveling in two boats, one foot in each. When each boat goes its own way, although they meet in the end at the same goal, yet the traveler will sink in the sea. No one could seek guidance under two teachers except out of lack of patience with the one or lack of confidence in the other, making him still cling to the first.

The objects one should have in taking initiation under the Murshid are: to realize the self within and without; to know and communicate with God, whom alone the world worships; to kindle the fire of divine love, which alone has any value; to be able the read nature’s manuscript and to be able to see in the world unseen; to learn how to control oneself; to light the torch of the soul and to kindle the fire of the heart; to journey through this positive existence and arrive in this life at the goal at which every soul is bound in the end to arrive. It is better to arrive in the light than to be only transported through the dark. ‘Who is blind here will be blind in the hereafter.’

Therefore, one does not take initiation for the sake of curiosity to see what is going on in a ‘secret’ Order. Such a one will certainly not be able to see what he wishes to, for only the eye of sincerity can see. The eye of curiosity has the cataract of doubt, and is blind already. Neither does one take initiation for the sake of gaining some material advantage in one’s occupation. Initiation is not a scientist’s process, or an engineer’s invention, or a business enterprise; it is not something that can be stolen, nor anything to be bought. It is revelation, which has new offspring at every moment, which can never be stolen by a thief. The only process for gaining it is righteousness, and when its light is covered under a bushel, even the Jam of mystery stolen from Jamshed* will serve no better than an earthen bowl.

To be continued…

*In the mythology of ancient Persia, Jamshed was the greatest king, and was said to have a gold-ringed cup or ‘jam’ that contained the elixir of life, on the surface of which he could see all that was happening in the world.