good stuff.!
merle
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:
Man likes complexity. He does not want to take only one
step; it is more interesting to look forward to millions
of steps. The one who is seeking the truth gets into a
maze, and that maze interests him. He wants to go through
it a thousand times more. It is just like children. Their
whole interest is in running about; they do not want to
see the door and go in until they are very tired. So it is
with grown-up people. They all say that they are seeking
truth, but they like the maze. That is why the mystics
made the greatest truths a mystery, to be given only to
the few who were ready for them, letting the others play
because it was the time for them to play.
For spiritual attainment we do not need to pay a tax, it
is ours, it is our self, it is discovering our self,
finding our self. Yet what one values is what one gets
with difficulty. Man loves complexity so much! He makes a
thing big and says, 'This is valuable'. If it is simple he
says, 'It has no value'. That is why the ancient people,
knowing human nature, told a person when he said he wanted
spiritual attainment, 'Very well; for ten years go around
the temple, walk around it a hundred times in the morning
and in the evening. Go to the Ganges, take pitchers full
of water during twenty or fifty years, then you will get
inspiration'. That is what must be done with people who
will not be satisfied with a simple explanation of the
truth, who want complexity.
We read in the Vadan, 'Simplicity is the living beauty.'
Man today has made life so complex that whatever he seeks
after, he wants to find in complexity. All things in life
which have importance, beauty and value are simple; and
simplest of all things is the divine truth. ... The truth
is not a newly invented theory, not a dogma, not an idea;
it is reality itself. At the back of it is the self of
man; therefore it is simple. But it is not simplicity that
man seeks, he is longing for complexity. Anything which
will confuse he is glad to take interest in. If it is
simple, he says, 'I know it already.'
Man loves complexity and calls it knowledge. A great many
societies and institutions in the world which call
themselves occult, esoteric and psychic, and by various
other names, knowing that everyone is interested in
complexity, cover the truth. Instead of covering the truth
with one cover, they cover it with a thousand covers to
make it more interesting. ... Therefore, a mystic very
often appears to be simple because sincerity makes him
feel inclined to express the truth in simple language and
in simple ideas. But because people value complexity, they
think that what he says is too simple and that it is
something which they have always known, that it is nothing
new. However, as Solomon said, 'There is nothing new under
the sun.'
