' When Love is Awakened '...

'God is love'; when love is awakened in the heart, God is awakened there.

Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan
Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

Life's light is love; and when the heart is empty of love, a man is living and yet not living; from a spiritual point of view he is dead. When the heart is asleep, he is as though dead in this life, for one can only love through the heart.

But love does not mean give and take. That is only a trade; it's selfishness. To give sixpence and receive a shilling is not love. Love is when one loves for the sake of love, when one cannot help but love, cannot do anything but love. Then one is not forced to love; there is no virtue in that.

One does not love because another does. It is simply there. It cannot be helped. It is the only thing that makes a person alive. If a person loves one and hates another, what can he know of love?

Can you love one person fully if at the same time you cannot bestow a kind glance on some other person?

Can you say you love one person fully when you cannot bear him to be loved by someone else as well? Can you hate a person when love is sprinkled like water in your heart? Love is like the water of the Ganges. It is itself a purification. As the Bible says, 'God is love'. When love is awakened in the heart, God is awakened there. When a man has journeyed, he reaches the goal as soon as his heart has reached love.

The Sufi says, 'The Kaba, the divine place, paradise, is the heart of the human being'. That is why he has respect for every heart. Every heart is his Kaba, his shrine. The human heart is the place toward which he bows, for in this heart is God.

Some object to Christ being called divine; but if divinity is not sought in man, then in what shall we seek God? Can divinity be found in the tree, in the plant, in the stone? Yes indeed, God is in all; but at the same time, it is in man that divinity is awakened, that God is awakened, that God can be seen.