The Religion of the Heart
from Religious Gatheka #1 by Hazrat Inayat Khan
If anybody asks you, "What is Sufism? What religion is it?", you may
answer:
"Sufism is the religion of the heart, the religion in
which the most important thing is to seek God in the heart of
mankind."
There are three ways of seeking God in the human heart. The first way is
to recognize God the divine in every person, and to care for every
person with whom we come in contact, in our thought, speech, and action.
Human personality is very delicate. The more living the heart the more
sensitive it is; that which causes sensitivity is the love element in
the heart, and love is God. The person whose heart is not sensitive is
without feeling; his heart is not living, but dead. In that case the
divine spirit is buried in his heart.
A person who is always concerned with his own feelings is so absorbed in
himself that he has no time to think of another. His whole attention is
taken up with his own feelings: he pities himself, worries about his own
pain, and is never open to sympathize with others. He who takes notice
of the feeling of another person with whom he comes in contact practices
the first essential moral of Sufism.
The next way of practicing this religion is to think of the feeling of
the person who is not at the moment before us. One feels for a person
who is present, but one often neglects to feel for someone who is out of
sight. One speaks well of someone to his face, but if one speaks well of
someone when he is absent, that is greater. One sympathizes with the
trouble of someone who is before one at the moment, but it is greater to
sympathize with one who is far away.
The third way of realizing the Sufi principle is to recognize in one's
own feeling the feeling of God, and to realize every impulse that rises
in one's heart as a direction from God. Realizing that love is a divine
spark in one's heart, one blows that spark until a flame may rise to
illuminate the path of one's life.
The symbol of the Sufi
Order, which is a heart with wings, is symbolic of its ideal. The heart
is both earthly and heavenly. The heart is a receptacle on earth of the
divine spirit, and when it
holds
the divine spirit it soars heavenward; the wings picture its rising. The
crescent in the heart symbolizes responsiveness; it is the heart that
responds to the spirit of God that rises. The crescent is a symbol of
responsiveness because it grows fuller by responding more and more to
the sun as it progresses. The light one sees in the crescent is the
light of the sun. It gets more light with increasing response, so it
becomes fuller of the light of the sun. The star in the heart of the
crescent represents the divine spark reflected in the human heart as
love, which helps the crescent toward its fullness.
The Sufi Message is the message of the day. It does not bring theories
or doctrines to add to those already existing, which puzzle the human
mind. What the world needs today is the message of love, harmony, and
beauty, the absence of which is the only tragedy of life. The Sufi
Message does not give a new law. It wakens in humanity the spirit of
brotherhood, with tolerance on the part of each for the religion of the
other, and with forgiveness from each for the fault of the other. It
teaches thoughtfulness and consideration, so as to create and maintain
harmony in life; it teaches service and usefulness, which alone can make
life in the world fruitful and in which lies the satisfaction of every
soul.
