Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan

The Search for Harmony

This talk was given by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan, president of the International Order of Sufis

The revered Sant Kirpal Singh Maharaj Ji, the revered Fuji Guru, Your Holinesses, Excellencies, and Ladies and Gentlemen:

We have not come here simply to demonstrate a wish for peace but we have also come in order to find a way of overcoming all the obstacle to peace. There are people even today who are living in terror in a condition of oppression terrified by those who have power over them. There are people who are ruling the lives of people and there is tremendous conflict in the lives of people – even in families between husbands and wives or father and children – or in all realms of life. Whereever you look there are conflicts. There are conflicts within the mind of a person too.

What are the obstacles? How can we remove them?

We must understand that everyone is pressing forward; there are conflicts between the interests of human beings. Just like in a crowd, everyone tries to push the other to get forward. Now there has to try to be some kind of composition between the wills of people. And it takes a higher consciousness to accept another person as good as oneself. It is a matter of respect for the dignity of the human person. We have to find a way of composing the different forces that are conflicting in the world. War is not the only scourge that is to be found deeply rooted in the hearts of men. This can only be done by accepting this law which has been promoted by the religious people of all different denominations and which may be expressed in that Hindu word vairagya, detachment.

I think that we have to learn how to be in the world and yet not of the world. We have to learn how to apply the rules of the Sanyasin, but in life. We are now living in a time when these greater values are beginning to break through with tremendous force. This is the meaning of the birth of the new age that we are attending now.

A conference like this wouldn’t have been possible a few years ago. It is the expression of the desires of those selves of humanity as a whole that want to compose together, want to find a way of harmony, want to find a way of understanding. This can only be done by extending tolerance to the intolerant. It is easy to tolerate the tolerant but the great challenge is to be able to tolerate the intolerant, and even with those who oppose you, find a way – a way of dignity – in which you can assert your right and at the same time respect their right. There is a way of doing it, and in the course of the panels we are going to study the different draft resolutions whereby we hope to be able to implement the desire of this steaming mass of humanity which is a small fraction representing perhaps the whole of humanity …

Thank you.