Most people, including, unfortunately, the majority of students on the Sufi path, do not live in the realisation of Unity, but in duality. In other words, there is a wall between ‘me’ and everything else. We may recite the Invocation (Toward the One… and so on) to indicate our direction of travel, and we may think we grasp the concept of unity, but there is a great gulf between concept and experience. One may read a book about swimming and perfectly understand the principle, but that is not the same as diving into the foaming waves and splashing across the English Channel.

The state of separation makes all sorts of difficulties for us, of course, such as the dreadfully debilitating illness of self-pity and the chronic and almost universal irritation – sometimes to the point of inflammation – we experience toward other people. More fundamental, though, is our separation from God. In one way one might think it should be impossible to feel separate from the Almighty, Who is closer to us than our soul, but the mystery of His creation obliges us to seek Him although He is never absent.

It is said that once someone asked Hazrat Nizamuddin Auliya about the puzzle of apparent duality, and he responded with a useful analogy. Taking a thread, he showed it to the questioner and asked, “What is it?”

The person replied, “Huzoor, it is a thread.”

Then the saint tied a knot in the thread, showed it again and said, “What is it?”

The answer was, “Sir, it is a knot.”

And then Hazrat Nizamddin said, “You see a knot, but it is a thread just the same. The thread has a temporary identity as a knot; the knot is only a condition of the thread; the thread is the necessary essence of which the knot is composed.”

And in the same way, God is the necessary essence of which all of Creation is made – but constrained by its temporary identity, the knot does not have the qualities of the free and flexible thread, and neither do we creatures – usually – show more than the faintest glimpse of the divine qualities of the Creator.

Metaphors have their limits, but if we stay with the image of the knot for a moment, it could be said that each person is made of many knots: the knots in the mind of all the concepts and opinions that we have learned; the knots of emotion and attachment that bind the ego and keep it from roaming in the infinite; and the very tightly bound knots of sensory experience and the physical body. To attain to the state of Unity, then, we must begin to untie the knots in which the divine thread is imprisoned. It can be difficult and tedious, and if we proceed unwisely, there is a great risk of becoming still more self-obsessed, thus making our situation worse. The wise, however, know a secret (which they willingly share with all) : when the knots are washed by the water of love, they miraculously begin to loosen.

It is love alone that can free us from duality, and the more pure from self interest the love is, that much more quickly can it work its miracle. Love in its highest form urges us to give all and ask nothing in return, to forget our self with its burdensome separate identity, and the true lover accepts without question. The Sufi poets do not exaggerate when they speak of the lover placing his head at the feet of the Beloved. Then if we ask ourselves how we can best love, in Vadan Boulas we find : The best way to love is to serve.

Those who learn the lesson of service on the spiritual path are blessed; to serve an ideal lifts us up, and the higher the ideal, the higher we are lifted. By this elevation our ideal becomes still more refined and inspiring, and so we rise until we reach a sphere where the illusory wall of separation fades away and we are granted the vision of Unity. But this ascent begins with sincere service, and that is why one of the Aphorisms of Hazrat Inayat Khan says: Only when man learns to serve and do his duty without the thought of appreciation, only then will he attain.