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Hazrat Inayat Khan – The Art of Being and Becoming

 There are three courses one may take in life;

• The first is renunciation; this is the way of the saints and sages.  It means following in the ideal and accepting whatever troubles and sorrows and ill treatment may result

•  The second is selfishness, which means being more selfish than the rest of the world

• The third is the greatest and most difficult.  It is having all the responsibilities, all the cares of life, friends and everything, and being as unselfish and as good as possible……….. and yet just selfish enough not to be trampled upon

 ………..The world is the place of tests and trials.  If one did not live in the world one would have no chance of doing good or bad.  Even if one lived a very spiritual life in the wilderness it would do no good to anybody, not even to oneself, for one would not have gone through the tests and trials of the world.  One can neither praise the life of a hermit nor condemn it……….

 ………….To novelists it seems beautiful to describe masters as living in caves of the Himalayas or moving about in the forest somewhere where one cannot go and find them, always keeping aloof and apart so that no one can reach them.  But every soul has a divine spark, and therefore if there is any higher stage of human evolution it is for human beings, not for those outside the human world.  If masters are outside the human world, there is no relation between us and them.

The great spiritual souls have lived in the world, in the midst of the world, and proved to be the greatest masters.  Imagine the life of Abraham, of Moses, of Jesus Christ, of Krishna, and again the life of Muhammed…..

If they had all lived in mountain caves we would not have been benefited by them.  What is the use of those holy ones who never experience from morning till evening the tests and trials of the dense world, where at every move there are a thousand temptations, a thousand problems?

What can those who are outside the world do for us who are exposed to a thousand  difficulties at every moment of our life?  And these difficulties are increasing.  With the evolution of the world life is becoming heavier, more difficult.  No, the mastery, the holiness, the evolution must be shown here on earth. It is very easy to be evolved in the seventh heaven.  But exaltation experienced and imparted to others here on the earth is exaltation which is more worthwhile.