Thank you so much. Well, that's a beautiful claim and the most inspiring perspective to hold when we try to unite in Sufism. Of course, we have been accustomed to what is so wonderful to see how you carry on this great tradition of Indian spiritual search alongside that outer accomplishment.

Yes. Well, Sufism is a blanket term. The great Inayat Khan said Sufism was intellectually born in Arabia, devotionally reared in Persia, and spiritually completed in India. Now, what does he mean when he says born intellectually in Persia? He's referring to the Baghdad Civilization. For many centuries, Baghdad, until, of course, the destruction by the Mongols, was a cultural centre that integrated all the traditions of the Middle East and the Mediterranean. So even the older Egyptian tradition is represented in it. Then all these different spiritual Gnosticism and all the different religions of the Middle East, including Zoroastrianism, then, of course, the Greek tradition. Greek Neo-Platonism was an essential element in Arabic Greek philosophy and ultimately became the philosophical background of these different schools and esoteric schools and training facilities and philosophies that flourished in that period. And so, as I say, then, Sufism, in a sense, was a blanket. Over time, it became more specific, but it still always was representative of that enormously rich, let's say, Western tradition of the Mediterranean of the Middle East. In that sense, it arrived in Persia. And then, of course, you got an enormous flourishing of mystical poetry of the Persians. That's why Inayat Khan said that Sufism was devotionally born in Persia. Because of beauty. In Persia, there was the beauty of poetry, which expressed these mystical sentiments as the mystical experience. And so, in that shape of beauty, when you are touched by something of beauty, you forget your external self because you are focused on whatever strikes you as beautiful. It may be nature. Maybe one of the arts. It may be one of the sciences, which will be absorbed and help you look beyond your empirical self.

Then Sufism came to India. There Sufism was enormously enriched by the fact that India had an ages-long tradition of meditation or spiritual contemplation, of contemplative philosophy, of everything to do with the spiritual life that had been there for all to study since Vedic time onwards. So there Sufism is enormously enriched by the tradition present in India. The great traditions of India, the greatest ones anyway, at different schools of Hindu philosophy, yoga, and of course, Buddhism, which, after all, is an outgrowth of the Indian traditions that tend to idealize something which, of course, was spiritual life is wonderful, that is world renunciation. And so, in a sense, the work of Inayat Khan was also emphasizing that Indian spirituality in the shape of Sufism could also be world-embracing to the cultural element. And, you know, there was a great integration of cultures in India anyway. Let me remind you that in the world generally, we have had great cultures, generally great civilizations, great societies, mostly built around some kind of religious ideology, but have always been minorities in every civilization, whether or not they were tolerated. You know, Europe has a terrible record of tolerating minorities. We all know that there was a certain tolerance for minorities in most other societies. But the unique thing about India and it cannot be emphasized enough that there was no question of a dominant society and minorities in India. You had two full-grown civilizations, the Indian one, in the sense of the Hindu tradition with everything it entailed: Buddhism, Jainism and Sikhism. Everything included in the Indian tradition, religious philosophy, philosophical and mystical attitudes were included in enormous riches. And that was the Indian civilization. Then you got the other civilization which was in principle, the Islamic civilization, which was very much again developed throughout the Baghdad tradition than to Persia. So in India, you had the extraordinarily unique element of two of the greatest world civilizations living together for centuries, living together in harmony. Of course, you had all kinds of rulers who fought with one another for territory. But there, the confessional element was never really there. For instance, the famous Maratha revolt was later presented as a national revolt, but later historians projected it backward. They also faltered just above 400 Muslim armies and Muslim authors. There was no confessional difference between these different elements, there were princes of fortune involved and they always fought. But there was that unity between two great civilizations in one large subcontinent. Which, according to me, is the whole tradition of the world. That's unique. Not one major community and one minority, but two living in harmony. And that only broke down where that feeling element of nationalism came in. And then you get nationalism, and you get that idea of one man, one vote, democracy, all these notions who did not belong either to one or the other. That created different disasters because the Indian subcontinent broke up in so many different parts today. Sure. But, you know, we do not yet see what we have seen in Europe, where the great countries, France and Germany, had been enemies for centuries then after the Seventh century they said, "Stop this nonsense, we have to become one." And they did. We are still waiting for that to happen in the subcontinent.

Exactly. Exactly. And that is what the model has and always insists upon. And you say, well, of course, the way these two great civilizations, the Hindu civilization, the Muslims, if you want to define religiously, but both of them had a story of mysticism and in mysticism, you will always be experience the same true ultimate human fulfilment of Indian spiritual life. Either through methods of Sufism, or the method of one of the Hindu schools, or the methods of Buddhism, the achievement will be the same. The experience of individuality will be the same. You could also see people formulated according to their philosophical or religious concepts, but that's the formulation of something that goes down to a lower level. But as an experience, it is the same.

Yes, the faith has been in India very strongly.

It's hard to do that in a short period. But anyway, the family did in the first place. They came in from Central Asia because, at the time, a charming fellow was ruling there, Timo Lang. So that was not a person they felt comfortable with. So they migrated to India and eventually settled on land in northern India, again in Punjab. And so they, too, had taken with them that idea of mysticism. But then that developed to a great degree in India.

Another thing they had was a shamanistic tradition of incantation. The incantation developed into Indian classical music. Their sense of the magic of mysticism developed into typical Sufism and then became Indian Sufism. So that assimilation to the existing culture of India had been very strong and very fertile. And that continued for many generations. It was a tradition in every generation of the family to want at least one full mystic. Then that mysticism combined with music because it's all very well to live off the land and have the time to cultivate mysticism and all kinds of things. But land ownership, unless you don't have it on a very large scale, is precarious. And it may be the harvest. Maybe you would lose your harvest. You know, you may lose your farmers. All kinds of things may happen which diminish your position as a landholding family. So it was precarious. You had to do something with your culture. You spent some time with culture, but you have to do something to make that culture useful in times of need. So, in that case, there was music. So the ideal occupation of their leisure was, in fact, mysticism. At the same time, music was cultivated and became akin to mysticism because it brought in a lot of aesthetic contemplation. But at the same time, it could be technically used if your land didn't produce enough. Then, of course, there was all this because you had a lot of courts in India. You didn't play music in public. You all just closed circles of music lovers or closed. You had these courts of maharaja where you could potentially perform in private. And so, with Inayat Khan, you get this whole idea that music and mysticism, which has an old tradition of togetherness in the Indian speech in Indian civilization, was the kind of thing he wanted to bring to the floor again because music was the highest form of aesthetic contemplation. And that beauty already kind of raises you out of your eye. If you said your soul food is already distributed along in the beauty of nature and the beauty of art, but to the highest degree in music, because it is the most abstract deal.

For him, the musical contemplation already led up to the meditative life. And that was actually what he did, you know when he came to the West with his two brothers. He didn't come to spread Sufism as his followers have pretended. They came to know the Western world. And of course, then he gave lectures, and he wanted to tell all the Europeans that have brought a lot of benefits to India, but they should also recognize that India has many things of matchless greatness, which Europe has never known.

That's right. But it's just completely spontaneous because, as I said, he and his two brothers went to the West in 1910 to learn about the West. But at the same time, to inform the West that they had a lot of things to do India, but India had some things in itself which were matchless. And to them, the highest kind of cultural expression of Indian life was music. So what happened Inayat Khan gave several lectures on music relating to Indian spiritual life. Once or twice he was invited to speak in the Hindu temple in San Francisco or Los Angeles. I always get confused between the two. There he gave a lecture on music. Whenever he spoke of music, he related it to the Indian traditions. Look at the Hindu gods. They invented the Veena, Saraswati invented the southern Veena, and Krishna had the flute. Music has been divine in India from the earliest time. So he spoke about music and mysticism. Do you know what the reaction of people was? He played this music after all these explanations that people said, well, you know, this music of India, it's interesting. We like it. It's curious, but we don't understand it. But what you said about the mystical spiritual linkage of music, that's interesting as well, can you tell us more about that? And that's where he started quite spontaneously, without any intention of bringing Sufism to the West. He started shifting his explanations of music towards mysticism. And what he did was the typical Indian mysticism, which is completely, as I say, completely merged in that Indian tradition.

Yes, as you wish, of course.

Well, of course, I should also mention one more person since you said you wanted to talk about family. He's the maternal grandfather, integrated patriarch of the family, who pulled the family from the Punjab and to Baroda. And he was a great musician as well. He sought to connect the Hindustani and the Carnatic forms of music. He went to Karnataka and was very successful in Mysore and these places. And so he adopted many habits and traditions of the south, and so for him the lineal tradition became very important. And for Inayat Khan, being his maternal grandson, was also influenced by him. Now, that was the person that I think there might be a picture of him among the photographs. Now, in addition, you asked about Noor and she was, of course, Inayat Khan's daughter. She was an extraordinarily gifted person in her own right and very versatile. However, there was something in her which, at the same time, if you look at the tragic fate of hers in the world, there's something in her early life which kind of prefigures that in a sense. When Inayat Khan suddenly died, she was just 13 years old. And then, of course, the mother completely collapsed. She was no longer able to function, and she, as a 13-year-old girl, had to sacrifice her young life for the sake of her siblings, all of them younger, so she had to take care of them. There you find that element of self-sacrifice. Then another thing is that you know, in that kind of discussing religion, which, of course, the Sufi used to do, is to have followers you to discuss then Christianity among all was called the religion of divine self-sacrifice.

So France, of course, was a Christian country and so had all the religious elements of self-sacrifice. Then she was involved in sacrificing a young girl's life for the sake of her siblings. Then, of course, in Sufism, you have that idea of Nafs, the selves which have to be transcended. In the early days, there was something called Nafs Kushi, which meant that the ego must be, so to speak, or done away with. So Nafs Kushi, that crushing of the ego was something you see in this young girl's life. And then, she published a book of Buddhist jataka tales. Those stories are about the main leader's sacrifice for his people. So with all that emphasis on self-sacrifice, it is understandable that her whole life was prefigured. She was a beautiful girl. She was very dainty, highly intelligent, deeply sensitive, and very pleasant. If you would've met her, you wouldn't have forgotten her.

It's a really incredible story. And usually, first, she was wounded and informed England. They said, "Oh, you are in danger. Your network has already been arrested. Now you come back. We will send a plane and pick you up." She said, "No, I will not go before my replacement comes." Then she apparently found some kind of solution for this. Or then they said, "No, you have to come now." The second time she agreed and by the time the planes came she was betrayed.

Yeah, yeah.

Yes. Why develop that personality in the first place? To understand how to communicate with your fellow man. That's a very important tenet, a very important aspect of personality is to communicate and sacrifice for the other et cetera. But at the same time, also to have something to outgrow. You always need some further goal to reach. But to realize your soul's potential you also have to first complete your ground floor, physically complete your first floor of the mind and the heart. And in that sense as well, you see, the heart is the depths of the mind. The mind is the surface of the heart. But both the intellectual element and also the emotional element of the mind are developed through the mind and come in action through the body. So you create your own personality, complete with its emotions. The heart has its autonomy, so to speak, its faculty of loving, its sense of beauty, of sense, of the inner realities of life. And your heart already looks in two directions. It looks to the mind and the body at the same time. It looks to the story of the human being, the soul and the soul is essential for the fulfilment of the next stage. Yeah.

That's right, yes. Yeah, the sense of beauty as such already rages on beyond the narrowness of one's external self, because you can really reach out to it. And by the very joy of reaching out to that rich, extremely beautiful world, the personality is expanded and enriched.

Yes, please.

Well, of course, Inayat Khan always says, "You need to do the simple things to come to the very profound ones." His teaching is often almost playfully light in what it says to reach something profound. So instead of personality, he first looks to create a sense of humanity in yourself. That's the basic thing. You create a sense of humanity and develop the human qualities of personality. How do you develop those? Whatever you do in life, try to develop a love of beauty in whatever sense. Contemplate something which you can experience as something beautiful. That will stabilize and develop your sense of beauty and expand the sense of who you are. So the love of beauty is the very first thing. And everybody has some kind of taste. As a human being, having something you grasp intuitively can relate to and find really beautiful. At whatever stage of development the person is, something will be there, which appears to be beautiful. Cultivate that, along with your concerns and your material interest. So as I said, that relationship of the mind and heart is the second floor in the house of the Sufi. Every soul has to be an apsara in Indra's court. And don't think that your soul can be a bystander. You have to dance as well. You have to dance as an apsara in the court of Indra to have that sense of beauty, of divine reality.

So the first thing is that sense of beauty. The second thing that is extremely important is developing a sense of gratitude. Being grateful allows you to appreciate other people. Instead of being critical, it allows you to see the good in people. So look at beauty. Look at and develop gratitude. Then there is, of course, controlling one's impulses. And that's what Inayat calls turning a man into a gentleman. He says, "Gentleness is the principal thing in the art of personality because that gentleness teaches you consideration for another person. The goal should be never to hurt anybody. Any word, expression, or behavior of yours shouldn't hurt your fellow men. Not even those closest to you. Certainly, those who are further away. Don't hurt people. Then, of course, don't try to impose your opinion on another person even at the cost of your own."

Yes, absolutely. The points Inayat makes may hold for only certain contexts and he may make points that contradict them in other situations. He does say a person needs to stand up and defend his relationships, and indeed, one has to stand for those things.

Yes, exactly. No doubt. You're absolutely right in saying that there are different contexts in which these matters can be discussed. Another thing he brings up is what the Sufis call Kibiriya and it means vanity. And that he said, "Well, of course, it's something that you would like to overcome." But at the same time, it's something you will never overcome because it's a part of the human ego. Every human being has that sense of vanity in it. So it is not a thing you can root out or change. However, you can develop that. That ego is also related to the soul. It's related to divine spark, as in the human being. So you have to accommodate to allow that kind of energy to develop into something which is beyond pure ego satisfaction. So that's quite a subtle question, but it is something which he finds very important.

Exactly. Exactly. You can never say that you have conquered ego, but you just have to be aware of it and try to have that quality deepened and refined and further developed in the sense of divine fulfillment. That's what he says about it. Well, then, of course, another thing and there again, you see how strongly this is focused on the development of the human personality, the breeding of the single human being. And that's why I think it's worse nowadays with all these things generally, we tend to be very lax in many different societies, especially in the West. One other aspect which you need is self-respect, is dignity. It is something you have to maintain. You have a certain dignity. You certainly need certain self-respect. But again, don't use that against others; use it to harmonize with others. Don't use it to set yourself apart from others. So to Inayat, again, that was a crucial aspect of life, and then he says, what is nobleness of character? The nobleness of character is the wide outlook of a human being, the brightness, and the depth of outlook. And it will be no surprise coming in this whole series of ideas of how the human personality developed, that he says, "Manners and qualities are essential." How do you deal with others properly, which he considers are extremely important in developing your own personality. Then thoughtfulness and consideration and a certain economy in expression, to have a measured mode of expression, he says, is also a form of modesty and at the same time a way in which whatever you express becomes all the more effective.

That's right. Exactly.

Exactly. That's his point. Yes.

Oh, that's wonderful. That's wonderfully expressed indeed. Yes, it's the same idea.

Yes. We can now talk about something that we would call objectivity. Inayat calls it an awakened sense of justice because that's part of the human personality driving a sense of justice and the way you qualify things. Justice means unselfishness, taking away your judgment because you're always going to be able to be kind of prejudiced about something that you don't agree to, be prejudiced about an opinion which you don't like, et cetera. So try to gain a sense of justice through unselfishness and practice it upon yourself. Practice it upon yourself to reach what we in model terms called objectivity. Be objective in your dealings with yourself in the first place.

Exactly. Exactly. That ability to be objective about yourself, to be thoroughly just in your dealings. For that, you have to take back yourself a bit. Generally, people are unable to remove their emotions from a situation and, as a result, are very subjective. So, that whole idea of being objective is not there. So being objective is something that is very important according to Inayat Khan.

He goes so far that he says this makes the art of personality a reality because the secret of the soul is unfolding. So the secret of the soul's unfolding: to have that sense of what he calls that sense of justice.

And, of course, sooner or later, inevitably, you'll come to music. Inayat Khan says, "The art of personality is like the art of music, and it is all ear training and voice sculpture." He says ,"To become refined is to become musical." Outward refinement is meaningless if an impulse towards beauty does not prompt it. But if it's an inner impulse to its beauty, then what is expressed in the form of beauty, of musical sense, is a certain refinement which any human being has to cultivate himself in relation to everybody else.

Yes, exactly. Ear training and voice cultivation. How do you perceive the other person? How do you express yourself as a person?

Exactly. To this, he says, never throw truth on a person's head like a stone. You need to be attuned to the person in order to make them understand what is true. That was very important to Inayat Khan. The last and most principal block of the art of personality is a friendly attitude. Then you find again and again and so many of his lectures. Your attitude towards others. What is the spiritual development of your mind, heart, and soul? What does all that mean? That development also allows you to have a relationship with your fellow man. When you see that divine impulse in you, you can't help but see it in the hearts of your fellow human beings as well. This divine spark, this divine impulse, manifests itself in every living being. We call it the divine spark in the inner being of men. And therefore, for every person you meet, have a friendly attitude. This gives rise to a tendency to understand where the other person is coming from. Inayat Khan also talked about the ideas of dharma and adharma. The consciousness of one's obligations towards others. This is dharma; adharma is the opposite of this. Not doing your duty towards your fellow human beings. This was something he talked about a lot.

Yes. Yes.

Exactly. Establish that connection even with people who are difficult. Remember that there must be some part of theirs that you can communicate with. And that is service to human beings as well.

The gentleness of character, that's very important to him. But at the same time, trying to train yourself in the first place to look, what beauty can you identify in your surroundings, in your settlement, something you can relate to. So that's a way to start sympathizing with everyone. The ultimate fulfilment ritual already starts with looking at developing a sense of beauty in oneself. Maybe it was always easy to start with fellow fellowmen. The practice starts with some sense of duty anywhere, which will expand once that sense of beauty is there. That's the very first thing he says. That is the art of being able to love beauty. This search for beauty will expand fellow men as well and allow a person to see the good in people.

Also never be too intimidated when you fall to fate. Failing is natural for you. Don't be too dramatic about it. You've got to get up and go on. Of course, acknowledge your mistakes and learn from them, but with that learning, you can go on again and leave the memories of the failure behind you.

Yes, exactly. That's very important indeed. And relating to that to one thing, you develop your values not only in spiritual life but even in business life, even in life. He says, for instance, that the real mystic should have just as good qualifications for business, industry, and social and political life as materially-minded men. The mystic should be a wonderful scientist, influential statesman, and inspired artist. And then he says, I don't like it when people tell me you are a mystic. I thought you would not take notice of this or that kind of reality. Why should I not take notice of it? I take notice of every little detail, although it does not occupy my mind so much. Then again, he says that those who evolve spiritually only become one-sided. They expand only the inner consciousness and not the outward one. They may become imbalanced, maybe spiritually, they have extraordinary powers. But if they had no balance, what is it? If that is the understanding of the world, we should be most conscientious in order not to give the world the wrong impression. And that's the point which makes, if we have a profession, if we are a business or an industry, we should do it fully, proving to the world that you can be as practical as everybody else and also economical, regular in every way systematic, persevering and enthusiastic. All these qualities we must show. And at the same time, evolve spiritually. But it is these qualities that govern give us the proof of our spirituality.

Here's another one of his passages. I sometimes meet a businessman who lives only in business, but through their business, through that single-minded development of what they wanted to achieve, they achieved in their own way something which mystics spent years trying to achieve, and they were on their way. You see, when you merge your sense of self with the object that you wanted to achieve, you become that object, so to speak. And that's fulfillment within itself. It tells of another businessman who acquired a large estate. Inayat stayed with him and then went for a walk in the evening to that estate. And Inayat asked him, how far does this estate extend? Then this man said to him, "Would you like to know? Well, all this which you see here. But also that adjoining sea which you can see from here and the sky and everything else. That's all mine." That man was a businessman, but he was a mystic.

If you're scared of something, then that's good.

Well, I'm supposed to be 93.

You are especially right about boyishness.

Thank you so much for your very cordial and encouraging words. And I view you as the younger generation and it is very heartwarming to see you carry the Indian practice of marrying your outer life with your inner consciousness. You are doing this in a way that is accessible for everyone. And that is something extremely wonderful to see.