In the recently posted talk on the Sufi way of worship, Hazrat Inayat Khan attempts to prepare the congregation for the ceremony they are about to experience. It would appear that for many of them, this was their first view of the Universal Worship, and, judging from the care Hazrat Inayat takes in addressing various concerns, he felt a certain doubt or hesitation in their minds. Most likely, therefore, they were not convinced students of Sufism, but members of the general public.

Nearly a century later, we cannot know how the congregation responded; perhaps some found inspiration in the ceremony, and others did not. The work of offering the wisdom and beauty of the Message to the world is a little like the task that parents face when they begin to feed solid food to an infant. Some children happily accept whatever they are given, and others remain highly suspicious of the slightest change in diet—regardless of the benefits the exasperated parents know they would receive from it. But good nutrition is necessary for growth—both physically and spiritually. As Hazrat Inayat says, In spite of the different opinions of all the different people in the world, it is an undeniable fact that humanity needs religion greatly.

Notwithstanding the form of the Universal Worship ceremony, which certainly conveys a great deal of wisdom in a symbolical form, the student on the Sufi path might be intrigued by this statement from Hazrat Inayat : But with all its forms the Sufi ideal has also the formless ideal of worship. What would that be? What can we understand by the ‘formless ideal of worship’?

We might begin by asking a more fundamental question, ‘what is worship’? The origin of the word is, ‘to recognise worth,’ and so, to worship is to offer reverence and adoration to what we value, or in other words, to our highest ideal. Throughout history, the wise have given different forms of worship that were appropriate to the people and culture of the time, but if we carry the divine ideal not as a concept but as a living reality present within us, then all that we do will be worship. Our actions, even the most mundane, will be done in the remembrance of the divine and will be worship. So will our speech, and even our thought–the effect of such a deep devotion is really indescribable. In the end, even our breath becomes devotion, and after that, there is no more a worshipper. Only the Object of Worship remains.