Hazrat Inayat Khan...

"My grandfather [Hazrat Inayat Khan] presented the Sufi message as an essential awareness that could be discovered in the essence of all of the major world religions. It is the common thread of mystical realization that units all prophetic dispensations.

"This has been acknowledged in the history of Sufism. The prince Dara Shaku, who was the heir apparent of his father Shah Jihan, the great mogul king, wrote a book called MAJ HAMU AL BAHRAIN, which means "the merging of the two oceans" -- one ocean being Islam, the other being Hinduism. He made a cross-study and comparison and concluded that, in essence, the common realization was the unity of being. They had different terminologies, different systems of practice, but there was an essential unity.

"I believe that essential unity can be discovered in all religious traditions. It is the common thread of the depth of human experience on this planet, which is universal, absolutely universal. It transcends all of the differences of acculturation, of ideology. There is something essential about the human condition in its fullness, and at the essence of the human condition is a relationship with the divine."


Pir Zia Khan
_Religion and Ethics Newsweekly_ (PBS)
November 8, 2002 Episode no. 610