Showing results for "Inayat Khan" in Religion & Spirituality

Hazrat Inayat Khan (1882-1927) was a distinguished musician, a prolific writer, and a great advocate of Sufi mysticism. I first learned about Khan from a long quote on “abstract sound” that was included in Julian P. Johnson’s famous book, The Path of the Masters (1939). It focused on listening to the inner sound as a spiritual practice and underlined how such was efficacious for uplifting one’s consciousness to higher regions. The following excerpt is from Khan’s 1923 work, The Mysticism of Sound.

Before manifestation, what existed? Zat, the truly existing, the only being. In what form? In no form. As what? As nothing. The only definition that words can give is as the absolute. In the Sufi terms this existence is termed Ahadiat, a consciousness arose out of the absolute, the consciousness of existence.

In this remarkable dialogue between Hidayat Inayat-Khan and Deepak Chopra, M.D., the wisdom of the Sufis is appraised. Hidayat defines the word Sufi as "wisdom and purity". He explains that "any person whose heart is attuned to the Divine presence is a Sufi, because Sufism means purifying oneself and one's mind from preconceived ideas".