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Khan, Hazrat Inayat - Misc. Quote - The feeling of 'I-ness'
Identifier
015780
Type of Spiritual Experience
Background
A description of the experience
Hazrat Inayat Khan
When the soul goes forth in the path of knowledge, it begins to find ‘Yes there is something which feels itself, which feels the inclination to call itself ‘I’’. There is a feeling of I-ness, but at the same time all that the [immortal] soul identifies itself with is not itself. The day when this idea springs up in the heart of man he has begun his journey in the path of truth …. I identify myself with this body, but this is ‘my’ body, only in the sense I may say, this is ‘my table’ or ‘my chair’.
So the body which is saying ‘I’ is in reality separate. It is something which has taken even this body for its use; this body is only an instrument. And he thinks ‘If it is not this body which I can call ‘I’, then what else is there that I can call so?