A fine music tradition in ruins.. - Page 3

'Progress is life, Standing still is death'.



'All things are good but all things are not good for every person, nor right at all times'.



'The right and wrong of every person is according to his understandings.'



'There are some questions which can be answered , and others which should wait for an answer until those who ask them are able to understand.'



'ALL men are not alike. The tendencies of every people differ. Their habits are not the same.'



'WHAT is good for one may be very bad for another. For one it may be very good to be a nun or sit all day in a church or a mosque, but for another may need to go to the cafe and learn the meanings of the experiences gained there.'



'FOR everything there is a time, so there comes a time for the unfoldment of the soul - but the period of that development depends upon the speed of the progress man makes through life.'



'EVERY object has its particular value to every individual , and as a person evolves through life so the value of things become different.'



'THE secret of life is balance, and the absence of balance is life's destruction.'



'THOSE who believe in God, they are on earth and God is in heaven. Those who love God, He is before them.'



'WHAT is called sympathy, kindness, mercy, goodness, pity, compassion, gentleness, humanity, appreciation, gratefulness, service, -- in reality it is love.'



'EVERY kind of power lies in this one thing which we call by simple name - love.'



'LOVE is the only power that has created or that can create.'



'ALL life comes from one source which is the very life of all things, and not only life but intelligence also; that is what religion calls: GOD. Whatever we call it, it is the same. The difference is only in the name.'



'THERE is no God, the Eternal, the only Being; none exists same He.'



'PEOPLE who say ' you are God, I am God', in this way their insolence becomes greater and greater.'



' IT is easy to claim, ' I am God'; but it is bringing the highest ideal of God down to the lowest plane. It is as if the bubble were to say: ' I am the Sea.'



'ONE person in praying feels he is fulfilling a certain duty which he considers to be one among the other duties of life. He does not know to whom he is praying; he thinks it is to some God... Praying, to him, is something that he must do.. in order to fall in with the custom of the family or the community.. he acts like everybody else. His prayer is mechanical, and if it has any effect it is very little.'



'WHEN one is praying in a room, he is not alone, he is there with God, then to him God is not in the highest, heaven, but close to him, before him, in him.....all names and forms disappear before Him. Then every word of, prayer, he utters is a living word....'



'MAN often thinks that, as God is the knower of the heart, there can be no need of any recital or gesture in prayer: but that it would surely be sufficient if he were to sit in the silence and think of God. But this is not so; it is according to the extent of a man's consciousness of prayer that his prayer reaches God.'



'MAN asks another question as to why God, who knows already what he wants and what is the need of his life, should require to be asked at all. For answer to this we have the words of Christ ' Ask and ye shall receive, knock and it shall be opened unto you'. In another words, this means that though God knows your need , it has to become clear and definite to yourself by prayer.'



'THE question whether God has time to give attention to our prayer is answered by the mystics, who says that it is through the medium of man himself that God hears his prayers.'



' THE ignorant believer, by his claim of BELIEF, causes a revolt in an intelligent person, thereby turning him into an unbeliever. Parents think nowadays that by giving the children the belief that has been held in the family, they make them narrow, yet at the same time have no substitute, no belief and it is very difficult to believe later on.



'IF anybody asks what Sufism is, what kind of RELIGION is it, the answer is that Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in which the thing of primary importance is to seek God in the heart of mankind.'



'THERE are many prophecies and several beliefs concerning world RELIGION, but what is most needed is to understand what religion means. The present religion, the coming religion, or the past religion, is for those who divide the truth, which is one, in to many.'



'IT is something living in the soul, in the mind, and in the heart of a man- it is absence keeps man as dead, and its presence gives him life. If there is any RELIGION, it is this.'

from The Way of Illumination
by Hazrat Inayat Khan

1) There is one God, the Eternal, the Only Being; none else exists save God.

2) There is one Master, the Guiding Spirit of all souls, who constantly leads all followers towards the light.

3) There is one Holy Book, the sacred manuscript of nature, which truly enlightens all readers.

4) There is one Religion, the unswerving progress in the right direction towards the ideal, which fulfils the life's purpose of every soul.

5) There is one Law, the law of Reciprocity, which can be observed by a selfless conscience together with a sense of awakened justice.

6) There is one human Brotherhood, the Brotherhood and Sisterhood which unites the children of earth indiscriminately in the Fatherhood of God.

7) There is one Moral Principle, the love which springs forth from self-denial, and blooms in deeds of beneficence.

8) There is one Object of Praise, the beauty which uplifts the heart of its worshipper through all aspects from the seen to the unseen.

9) There is one Truth, the true knowledge of our being within and without which is the essence of all wisdom.

10) There is one Path, the annihilation of the false ego in the real, which raises the mortal to immortality and in which resides all perfection.

The objectives of the Sufi path:

1) To realize and spread the knowledge of unity, the religion of love and wisdom, so that the bias of faiths and beliefs may of itself fall away, the human heart may overflow with love, and all hatred caused by distinctions and differences may be rooted out.

2) To discover the light and power latent in man, the secret of all religion, the power of mysticism, and the essence of philosophy, without interfering with customs or belief.

3) To help to bring the world's two opposite poles, East and West, closer together by the interchange of thought and ideals, that the Universal Brotherhood may form of itself, and man may see with man beyond the narrow national and racial boundaries.