In a recent post, Hazrat Inayat Khan gave a brief but clear insight into the source of inspiration, which, he tells us, arises out of an interaction between the Divine and the individual. For the sake of convenience we could call this the interaction between the inner and the outer, inasmuch as we understand individuality by our involvement in the outer, physical world of distinctions and differences, and we begin to recognise unity or perfection when we draw away from the senses and turn inward.
Although the outer and the inner seem diametrically opposed, in the mystical view they are two ends of a single continuum, and the fact that we are able to travel from one end to the other is a proof that they are not separate. What is more, the Spirit of Guidance is active in all of this trajectory, and we give it different names depending on where we stand along the line at a particular moment.
When consciousness is absorbed in the physical, then guidance comes as instinct; by instinct organisms seek good conditions and sustenance, for example, and try to avoid their enemies. When the mind begins to develop, guidance may come as intuition; a person may ‘know’ something for no logical reason, and once, when Hazrat Inayat Khan saw dogs hunting by scent, he said that in fact they were following their intuition.
When the heart, or the center of deep feeling, begins to open, then the Spirit of Guidance has the opportunity of providing inspiration. To ‘inspire’ means to breathe into, and that gives us the image of the Divine breathing into the tender, responsive chamber of the heart and making it vibrate with life. Both Rumi and Hafiz used the metaphor of the heart as a flute being played by the breath of God. The language of inspiration is beauty, and that is why the same voice from within is heard in different ways: by a musician as the magic of rhythm and tone, by a painter as the enchantment of line and colour; a dancer will feel the beauty as life-filled movement; a sculptor will see it in the glory of shapes and spaces. It is the characteristics of the individual, or their ‘gifts’, that help to shape the voice of inspiration.
Revelation, as the name tells us, means that the Truth is directly revealed, a disclosure possible only because the illusion of separation has been cast aside and forgotten.
In order to follow this journey, the Sufi teaches various stages of work: purification, concentration, contemplation and meditation. To discuss these in detail would require a much longer post, but they do correspond to some extent to the levels of guidance. In other words, for physical instinct to work as it should, we must learn to lead a pure life; as we develop our awareness of the mind world, the power of concentration is necessary; as we begin to experience the mystery of the heart, the reverie of contemplation is called for; and to come to the threshold of revelation, we must disappear completely in our practice of meditation.
In this way, the entire continuum becomes activated. It is not that the Sufi wishes to live perpetually in heaven; the gift of creation is the possibility of knowing the entire spectrum of consciousness, and therefore being at liberty to choose what is appropriate for the moment.