II

There is One Master, the Guiding Spirit of all Souls, Who constantly

leads His followers towards the light.

The Sufi understands that although God is the source of all knowledge,

inspiration, and guidance, yet man is the medium through which God

chooses to impart His knowledge to the world. He imparts it through

one who is a man in the eyes of the world, but God in his

consciousness. It is the mature soul that draws blessings from the

heavens, and God speaks through that soul. Although the tongue of God

is busy speaking through all things, yet in order to speak to the deaf

ears of many among us, it is necessary for Him to speak through the

lips of man. He has done this all through the history of man, every

great teacher of the past having been this Guiding Spirit living the

life of God in human guise. In other words, their human guise

consists of various coats worn by the same person, who appeared to be

different in each. Shiva, Buddha, Rama, Krishna on the one side,

Abraham, Moses, Jesus, Mohammed on the other; and many more, known or

unknown to history, always one and the same person.

Those who saw the person and knew Him recognized Him in whatever form

or guise; those who could only see the coat went astray. To the Sufi

therefore there is only one Teacher, however differently He may be

named at different periods of history, and He comes constantly to

awaken humanity from the slumber of this life of illusion, and to

guide man onwards towards divine perfection. As the Sufi progresses in

this view he recognizes his Master, not only in the holy ones, but in

the wise, in the foolish, in the saint and in the sinner, and has

never allowed the Master who is One alone, and the only One who can be

and who ever will be, to disappear from his sight.

The Persian word for Master is Murshid. The Sufi recognizes the

Murshid in all beings of the world, and is ready to learn from young

and old, educated and uneducated, rich and poor, without questioning

from whom he learns. Then he begins to see the light of Risalat, the

torch of truth which shines before him in every being and thing in the

universe. Thus he sees Rasul, his Divine Message Bearer, a living

identity before him. Thus the Sufi sees the vision of God, the

worshipped deity, in His immanence, manifest in nature, and life now

becomes for him a perfect revelation both within and without.

It is often for no other reason than clinging to the personality of

their particular teacher, claiming for him superiority over other

teachers, and degrading a teacher held in the same esteem by others,

that people have separated themselves from one another, and caused

most of the wars and factions and contentions which history records

among the children of God.

What the Spirit of Guidance is, can be further explained as follows:

as in man there is a faculty for art, music, poetry and

science, so in him is the faculty or spirit of guidance; it is better

to call it spirit because it is the supreme faculty from which all the

others originate. As we see that in every person there is some

artistic faculty, but not everyone is an artist, as everyone can hum a

tune but only one in a thousand is a musician, so every person

possesses this faculty in some form and to a limited degree; but the

spirit of guidance is found among few indeed of the human race.

A Sanskrit poet says, 'Jewels are stones, but cannot be found

everywhere; the sandal tree is a tree, but does not grow in

every forest; as there are many elephants, but only one king elephant,

so there are human beings all over the world, but the real human being

is rarely to be found.'

When we arise above faculty and consider the spirit of guidance, we

shall find that it is consummated in the Bodhisatva, the

ritual teacher or divine messenger. There is a saying that the

reformer is the child of civilization, but the prophet is

its father. This spirit has always existed, and must always exist; and

in this way from time to time the message of God has

been given.