One the last written works of Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan before his death in June 2004, In Search of the Hidden Treasure, is one of the more unique works I have ever read. It reads like a brilliant piece of prose with bits of poetry, although it follows a historical guideline of actual sayings and historical interpretations. It is styled like a conference of Arab, Persian and Central Asian Sufi mystics, with of course, anonymous inquirers, students and skeptics. The conference is cosmic and imaginative, and it transcends time-space as mystics who died decades or centuries ago enter the dicussion. Below is the first chapter/
Assembly
Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan enters a hall filled with those who are inquiring about the Mystic path for the first time, as well as mureeds (novice Mystics) who are familiar with pure ideas and teachings. A sacred silence envelops the ball. Somehjow the group is aware that it is not confined to the hall but is listening to a cosmic dialogue that transcends of space and time.
Pir Vilayat: What if the Mystics met not just beyond space but beyond time, in the sphere of metaphor called "Hurqalya"? ('The World of Dreams')
An Inquirer: Meeting beyond space and time sounds like pure metaphor or wishful thinking
Another Inquirer: Do you have any idea how to actually do this, to reach beyond space and time?
Pir Vilayat: Yes. Imagine that while your body seems to be sitting in this hall, its aura has no boundary and its light hurtles into the starry sky. The walls of the hall are dispersing further and further into the galaxy. Not confined to space, your mind can each into the minds of other beings, whose minds are likewise everywhere. It is dispersed in the galactic reaches, out of real time. So, envision that you are logging into a global conference in cyberspace and time, participating in a series of discussions with many mystics. Perhaps you will ask the same questions that other inquirers and students are asking, or the Mystic elders will answer your unspoken questions by way of intuition. The human mind enjoys wandering in other dimensions where is escapes being forcibly fitted into the simplistic logical patterns of the commonplace thinking of our ancestral civilizations, which pigeonholes human experience into discrete categories.
Just ponder: We can see today stars that no longer exist, that have disintegrated many thousand light-years ago. Furthermore, events in the starry cosmos can only be seen as occuring simultaneously when perceived from a local vantage point.
Inquirer: This is upsetting to me
Pir Vilayat: Yes, it challenges our minds to burst forth beyond the edges of our accustomed worldview. It frees us from the constraints of the commonplace time-space framework.
GOD A-PROJECTION
 Hazrat Inayat Khan, 1882-1927
An Indian pir-o-murshid, Hazrat Anayat Khan, emerges from the early 20th century. In the style of his Indian predeccesors, he is clad in a golden robe adorned with a winged heart. He seems to carry upon his shoulders the ears of thousands of Mureeds from Europe and America from his life-time.
Mureed: O Mursheed (Mystic teacher), you are here! Do you remember me? I was your mureed. You changed my life!
Hazrat Inayat: The mursheed is there for the mureed at all times. That is his reason for compassionate living.
Hazrat Inayat speaking to the assembly: Let me answer your earlier questions: The man who has no imagination to make a God, and is not open to a conception of God (even his own), finds no stepping stone to reach the knowledge that his soul longs for but that his doubts deny. No one who has been unable to make a representation of God in his own mind has ever reached the Living God.
So far there has only been a belief in God. God exists in people<s imagination as an ideal. Believing is the first step. By this process the God within is awakened and made Living. It is in those who are God-conscious that God becomes a reality so that He is no longer an imagination. If there is any sign of God to be seen, it is in the God-conscious. It is in man that the divine perfection can be seen. Man brings to the world a Living God, who without the material host, would remain in the Heavens.
Inquirer: Is it not wishful thinking to imagine God as a great being endowed with a personality?
Hazrat Inayat: People ask, "If all is God, then God cannot be a person," The answer: Though the seed does not show the flower in it, yet the seed culminates in the flower, and therefore the flower already existed in the seed as a hidden secret. A man who is curious about the hidden secret of the seed will attempt to grow and nurture it.
It would be a great mistake to call God a personality, but to deny the personality of God is an even-greater mistake. It is not wrong to make God in one's imagination the God of all beauty, for by that imagination one is drawn nearer and nearer every moment of one's life to a clearer and clearer divine idea whis is the seeking of one<s soul.
Man, in the flowering of his personality, expresses the personality of God.
The gathering can hear the Sufi dervishes at the Mosque in Mecca repeating a hadith, "Manarafa nafsahu faqad arafa rabbahu!" (Whosoever knows himself knows His Lord)
Pir Vilayat chimes in: In order to imagine the Living God, the faithful project what they think Gof to be, ascribing to Her qualities that they observe in their personalities, in those of others, or in perceptual phenomena - qualities that are represented in their minds as perfect. Our mind is equipped with the ability to represent to itself qualities as perfect as it can imagine. The mind calls these qualities "divine attributes"
Hazrat Inayat: God is hidden within His creation. Awaken the God within. It is in man that divinity is awakened, that God is awakened, that God can be seen.
Another Inquirer: To know God must I imagine God^ Is that not also wishful thinking?
Hazrat Inayat: Man can reach God only so far as his imagination allows.
Make God as great and as perfect as your imagination can. By making God great we ourselves arrive at a certain point of greatness; our vision widens, our thoughts deepen, our ideals reach higher. We create a greater vision, a wider horizon, for our own expansion. By way of prayer, praise, by meditation and contemplation, we should therefore imagine God as great as we possibly can, if only to arrive at a glimpse of the naked ideas we try to fathom.
Hazrat 'Ali: God hath cried, "I was a hidden treasure and I longed to be known, so I creatde the world so that it might know Me and enjoy Me.
Pir Vilayat: God is the real treasure of a single mirror being held up. It is Light upon Light, divine waves crashing into even larger divine waves. By awakening the Living God within us, we begin to live unlimited inner lives ourselves. Every man who awakens the Living God within him is doing his part in sustaining the mirror of existence, so that God may live again in another being, so that they too may potentially awaken to the God within, reinforcing the Divine cycle of nature.
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