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Hazrat Inayat Khan – The Art of Being and Becoming

The man who is not evolved, who is pulling the most evolved down to his level, has a wrong conception of democracy; it is going downwards not going upwards.  Democracy is the result of aristocracy.  When the spirit of aristocracy has evolved sufficiently, it becomes democracy.  Then a person thinks ‘I am the equal of any person in the world; there is no person lower than I’.  But if a person thinks ‘There is no person higher than I’ that is not democracy.

In Burma one finds Buddhists of a very wonderful kind.  They are the only race that for centuries has believed that there is no religion that is not as good as their own.  Imagine today, when the followers of most religions look down upon the followers of another!  These people say ‘Whatever be the religion, Christian or Muslim or Jewish, it is not worse than ours.  Perhaps it is better’.  They all had this same thought, and even today they still hold this belief.  That is something wonderful.

But when a person says ‘Nobody is better than I am’ it is not democracy; it is sinking lower, because it means closing one’s eyes to what is greater, higher and better.  If one cannot appreciate or see it, one cannot rise to it.  One can only rise towards that which one values and that towards which one aspires.