' Principles of good '...

Yes, teach your principles of good, but do not think to limit God within them. The goodness of each man is peculiar to himself.

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


What is man to judge the doings of God from his limited standard of good and bad? He knows not beyond what he knows. He says he knows if he knows one cause, but there is cause after cause, hidden one behind another; and when once the soul perceives the Cause of all causes, he then realizes that all other causes are as illusions. There is one single Cause behind all things.

One sees different desires in different people, yet when one studies them keenly one finds they are all different paths leading to one common goal. When one realizes this one's accusations, complaints, and grudges cease at once. However, there is also a natural tendency in man to find the easiest and quickest path to reach the desired goal, and there is also the tendency to share his pleasure, happiness, or comfort with others, and it is this that prompted the prophets and reformers to help mankind on its journey to the goal. Those that follow in their footsteps, forgetting that moral, drag people by the neck to make them follow them, and this has brought about the degeneration of religions.

Christ said, 'In my Father's house are many mansions.' The Prophet has said, 'Every soul has its peculiar religion.' There is a Sanskrit saying, which perhaps deludes those who do not understand it, but which yet means the same thing: 'As many souls as there are, so many gods are there.'

The God of each is the God of all, but in order to comprehend that God we each have to make our own God. Some of us seek justice, we can seek for God Who is just. Some of us look for beauty, we must find it in the God of beauty. Some of us seek for love, we must find it in the God of mercy and compassion. Some of us wish for strength and power, we must find it in the God Almighty. The seeking of every soul in this world is different, distinct and peculiar to himself, and he can best attain to it by finding the object of his search in God.