From the Jubilee Edition of the Dutch Journal titled Soefi Gedachte
by Murshid Ameen Carp
Hazrat Inayat Khan has talked about ‘the Message’ time and again. What did he mean by it? The explanation to this we find interpreted most clearly in the lectures he gave to the cherags, persons who, after an education, have been ordained to light the candles, read from the holy scriptures or to give a lecture during the Universal Worship services.
Until recently these lectures have not been published, but were included in the newly published last volume of The Complete Works of Hazrat Inayat Khan, 1924-2.
In it we read,
‘In the first place it is our holy task to awaken the spirit of tolerance towards religion, the holy scripture and the devotional ideal of our fellowman in those persons who are near to us and in those persons we can reach. Our next task is to make our fellowman understand the human beings of different nations, races and communities and also the human beings of different social classes’.
‘Hereby we do not want all races and nations to become one and that all classes have to become one, but we want to consider it our holy task to be of service to one another, whatever the religion, nation, race or class of the other person. This we consider as our service to God. We have to create a spirit of solidarity among persons of different races, nations, classes and communities, for the happiness, the well-being and the prosperity of every person depend upon the happiness, well-being and prosperity of all of us’.
‘Besides, the central theme of the Sufi Message is very simple and yet very difficult and that is to awaken human beings to the divinity of the human soul. This has not happened until today, because the time was not yet ripe for it. The main thing the Message has to bring in this time is to be aware of the divine spark within each soul, so that each human being can realize the divine spark within oneself according to his spiritual development. This is the task we have to accomplish’.
In the lecture to the cherags of August 13, 1923 it says,
‘Now you may ask, what is the Message? The Message is this: that the whole humanity is as one single body and all nations and communities and races as the different organs, and the happiness and well-being of them is the happiness and well-being of the whole body. If there is one organ of the body in pain, the whole body has to sustain a share of the strain of it’.
‘That by this Message mankind may begin to think his welfare and his well-being is not in looking after himself, but it is in looking after others, and when in all there will be reciprocity, love and goodness towards another, the better time will come.’
In the lecture of August 20, 1923 Hazrat Inayat Khan says,
‘Remember that the Message, which is being given just now, is the real interpretation of all scriptures, many of which by various versions and translations and for very many reasons, have not remained the same, therefore the receiving and the preserving of the Message, which is now being given and the spreading of it, is like giving the Message of all the Prophets and the teaching of all religions’.
The lecture continues with:
‘…if I have anything more to say, it is for you to have a firm belief in the thought, that it is the Message of God, and that it cannot but spread and nothing in the world will hinder it from spreading and it will be fulfilled as the promise of God’.
In the lecture of September 2, 1923, he goes more deeply into the role of the Movement,
‘Our Movement, therefore, is busy rendering our service to God and humanity in this direction, without any intention of forming an exclusive community, but to unite in this service the people of all different religions. This Movement, in its infancy, is commencing its work, but its culmination will be in a world Movement’.
‘This is not only a church, but this is a school for us to learn, to learn the lesson of tolerance, a lesson for us to learn to adhere to all teachers and to respect all scriptures. A lesson which teaches us that we need not give up our religion, but we must embrace all religions, in order to make the sacredness of religion perfect’.
In the Religious Gatheka number 47, 1923, he adds,
‘If it is a religious movement, it is not a movement to make propaganda for a particular creed. It is a religious movement in this sense that this Movement is meant to bring about peace between the followers of all religions. It is a religious movement in this sense that we all may learn, whatever be our belief of faith, whatever be the faith of our ancestors, that we may learn to respect the religion of another. That eventually by doing so we may rise to that state of understanding, when to our mind comes one religion as the sum total of all religions’.
‘God is one, the Truth is one; how can there be two religions? There is one religion, the only religion’.
‘Yes, we are living in different lands, but under one sky; so, we have many churches, but one God, many scriptures, but one wisdom; many souls, but one spirit, the only spirit of God’.
‘It is to understand this ideal that we have this Movement. And we have several different ways in which we study and in which we practice this idea’.