Hazrat Inayat Khan: Universal Sufism
Found this excellent site, The Spiritual Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan, while looking for good links on Sufism. The more I study, the more I learn that within each of the major world religions exists a purer, truer set of teachings that deal with the creation of the soul and attuning yourself to the deepest voice in your heart, that one that tells you that something is very wrong with the world, but that love is real, and that guides you when you’re lost.
It exists in all forms of mysticism, and in all great works of literature. Just tuning into the Sufi channel, personally. I particularly love what Khan has to say about Music:
Many in the world take music as a source of amusement, a pastime, and to many music is an art and a musician an entertainer. Yet no one has lived in this world and has thought and felt, who has not considered music as the most sacred of all arts, for the fact is that what the art of painting cannot clearly suggest, poetry explains in words; but that which even a poet finds difficult to express in poetry is expressed in music. By this I do not only say that music is superior to art and poetry, but in point of fact music excels religion; for music raises the soul of man even higher than the so-called external forms of religion.
From the chorus of “Instrument,” one of the first songs I received after arriving in Jeddah:
Raise me up, I’m your instrument
Unstrung and warped, I’m a testament
to the Source beyond the firmament
that keeps my heart alive
Peace be with you.
