Hazrat Inayat Khan: from In an Eastern Rose Garden

for Virtual Universal Worship (October 23, 2005)

“In the Qur’an there is a sura which says, ‘God alone is rich, and all are poor.’ The more we study life, the more we see the truth of this sura.

People may live in palaces endowed with all manner of wealth and comfort, and yet they can still feel, ‘If only I had that, I would never be unhappy again.’ People may have their motorcars, their furs, their wealth of millions, and yet cannot truthfully say they are perfectly happy.

Can the say they have all that they need in life? Is there anyone who can say this? You are more likely to find such a one among the poor than among the wealthy.

This shows that god alone is rich. Whoever has need is poor. Poverty means need. As long as there is need there is poverty. Since man’s life is full of needs, he must be in poverty. He is still in darkness if he does not realize that there is only One who is rich.

Undoubtedly we all of us have our needs through life. How often do we experience disappointment regarding them! How many are disappointed in love, in money, in help, in service! How apt is the heart to be discouraged, disappointed, broken, feeling, ‘O, this is my brother, my only brother, and yet he has not helped me in this hour of need.’ ‘I looked on her as my sister, and yet she has failed me at this crucial time.’

People meet so many disappointments in life. One depends, depends on limited sources, never reflecting that these sources can only sometimes be helpful, and that often they are quite unable to help, however much they may desire to do so.

There remains the one source which is always helpful, and can always help. It is only because man does not see Him, does not realize Him, that he doubts whether there is such a being as God. However religious or pious he is, he always looks to a material agent for help. However religious or pious, he cannot explain God; not even a mystic or philosopher can explain Him.

The ideal of God is the first lesson that must be learnt; and it cannot be learnt by analysis. Therefore the intellectual mind which seeks for an analysis of God is always sure to be disappointed. The philosopher spoke truly when he said, ‘To analyze God is to dethrone God.’ Analysis can never portray even the ideal of God. That is why every messenger, Mohammad, Christ, Moses, Abraham, emphasized the one word: faith.

But one should not think that these seers and holy ones and teachers who had such power and realization, wanted the world to imagine that this faith should be blind. They themselves learned the first lesson that it is no use beginning with the idea that if one analyses God, one will come to believe in Him. Such a one will never believe.

The first step is faith, and not reasoning or intellectual perception. Can one explain why it is that a diamond is worth twenty thousand pounds? Is there any reason for this?

‘Yes,’ a person will say, ‘it is because it is sold in the market for that price. There is no other explanation; it is a precious stone.’ But another may say, ‘Yes, it is a bright stone; no doubt it is better than glass and it is certainly brighter than a crystal; but why twenty thousand pounds?’

The answer is just this, that it is worth twenty thousand pounds because our ideal has made it so. What we call an ideal is only another way of saying that there is no explanation. We have to accept it that twenty thousand pounds is its value. It is the same with every ideal, even with the ideal of God. An ideal is beyond explanation.”