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    Githas

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    Wali van der Zwan
    - The document describes Hazrat Inayat Khan's transformation from a young musician arriving in the US in 1910 to a spiritual teacher departing London for Paris in 1920. During his "London years" from 1914-1920, which were difficult due to World War I, he focused on studying Western minds and establishing the foundations for spreading his message of love, harmony, and beauty. - To systematically teach his growing number of students ("mureeds"), called the "Sufi Order," he began offering classes and dictating a series of instruction papers known as the Githas to ensure all students received the same teachings. He also created a system of 12 initiations corresponding to different levels of spiritual training and study materials

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    Githas

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    Wali van der Zwan
    158 views3 pages
    - The document describes Hazrat Inayat Khan's transformation from a young musician arriving in the US in 1910 to a spiritual teacher departing London for Paris in 1920. During his "London years" from 1914-1920, which were difficult due to World War I, he focused on studying Western minds and establishing the foundations for spreading his message of love, harmony, and beauty. - To systematically teach his growing number of students ("mureeds"), called the "Sufi Order," he began offering classes and dictating a series of instruction papers known as the Githas to ensure all students received the same teachings. He also created a system of 12 initiations corresponding to different levels of spiritual training and study materials

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    - The document describes Hazrat Inayat Khan's transformation from a young musician arriving in the US in 1910 to a spiritual teacher departing London for Paris in 1920. During his "London years" from 1914-1920, which were difficult due to World War I, he focused on studying Western minds and establishing the foundations for spreading his message of love, harmony, and beauty. - To systematically teach his growing number of students ("mureeds"), called the "Sufi Order," he began offering classes and dictating a series of instruction papers known as the Githas to ensure all students received the same teachings. He also created a system of 12 initiations corresponding to different levels of spiritual training and study materials

    Copyright:

    © All Rights Reserved
    Download as PDF, TXT or read online from Scribd
    Download as pdf or txt
    158 views3 pages

    Githas

    Uploaded by

    Wali van der Zwan
    - The document describes Hazrat Inayat Khan's transformation from a young musician arriving in the US in 1910 to a spiritual teacher departing London for Paris in 1920. During his "London years" from 1914-1920, which were difficult due to World War I, he focused on studying Western minds and establishing the foundations for spreading his message of love, harmony, and beauty. - To systematically teach his growing number of students ("mureeds"), called the "Sufi Order," he began offering classes and dictating a series of instruction papers known as the Githas to ensure all students received the same teachings. He also created a system of 12 initiations corresponding to different levels of spiritual training and study materials

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    The Githas of Hazrat Inayat Khan

    Looking at pictures of Inayat Khan in the early 1910’s, one sees a young Indian man,
    just having arrived in the USA. Later portraits show the metamorphosis Inayat
    Khan went through in a mere decade. Seven years later, we see the typical peaceful
    and serene inward look, as if giving darshan to the world. With forty, he is an old
    man with grey hair.

    1910 (age 28) 1917 (age 35) 1925 (age 43)


    The middle picture is taken in his ‘London years’ (1914 – 1920). Hazrat Inayat
    Khan was stranded in England with the first world war raging on. As he says in his
    autobiography, ‘The war had paralyzed people… it was like trying to cultivate a
    desert… The Sufi Order had a difficult time from the beginning of its work.’1 Typical
    for the Indian Sufi master, he never lost sight of his goal and mission, and kept his
    unshakeable faith and optimism, trusting his inner guidance.
    As for the outer world, the spreading of what was to become the Message of Love,
    Harmony and Beauty, ‘the seed was not yet sown, all the time was given to the till-
    ing of the ground.’ This was true for his mission; it was also true for Inayat Khan
    himself. The first thing he had to do was to ‘study the Western mind, the mentality
    of the Occidental people, their attitude towards life, religion and God.’ As he de-
    clared, he was learning more than teaching and he would spend many nights in
    prayer and meditation.
    Just as in the northern hemisphere nature goes underground after the summer to
    gain strength for new growth the next spring, and as a caterpillar cocoons in order
    to transform into a butterfly, Inayat Khan used the London years to become a spir-
    itual teacher, in order to be able to tune people instead of instruments.
    He came to London as a musician, he left London for Paris in 1920 as a Murshid. 2

    11
    Unless otherwise stated, all quotes of Inayat Khan are from the Biography of Pir-O-Murshid Inayat
    Khan. East-West Publications, 1979, p. 139 – 152.
    2
    Biographer Elisabeth de Jong-Keesing calls this period ‘From musician to Murshid’. Inayat Khan, a
    biography. East-West Publications, 1974, p. 137. After the London years, Inayat Khan stopped giving
    public concerts.
    Part of tilling the ground and preparing it for the seeds of the Message of Love,
    Harmony and Beauty was the publication of Sufi, a quarterly magazine that ran
    from 1915 – 1920.1 In this magazine Inayat Khan formulated the then current
    Seven Sufi Teachings and the five Objects of the Order. A publishing company took
    care of the first publications of Inayat Khan’s lectures and the ‘Sufi Order’ was es-
    tablished in England as an organizational vehicle.2 Later, this organization found a
    place as the esoteric school under the wings of the newly founded Sufi Movement
    with its headquarters in Geneva.
    In these London years, which also featured a Sunday morning prayer meeting, a
    ritual that later evolved into the Universal Worship, Hazrat Inayat Khan started
    classes for his mureeds, and began his weekly five minutes interviews with assign-
    ments for them. The Order was a ‘quite helpless infant’, but the foundations were
    laid for what later grew into a full-grown didactic system of training, supported by
    levels of initiation.
    In these years, he also dictated a series of instruction papers, now known as the
    Githas. As these papers play an important role in his didactic system, let us look
    more closely at Inayat Khan’s approach in teaching his students.
    In India, Inayat Khan was trained by Sayyid Abu Hashim Madani in the classical
    Indian Sufi tradition by living with his teacher. As traveling teacher, he could not
    adapt this style of teaching, nor could he expect his students to travel with him,
    Indian style. On top of that, only very few of his western students were able to at-
    tune to the Indian style of teaching that worked with assimilation and silence, ra-
    ther than with lectures and instructions. Besides, ‘900 out of a thousand seekers
    came to argue, 99 to meditate, and, at best, one to make God a reality.’ 3
    The solution Inayat Khan found was offering classes, thus creating an inner school
    of esoteric training, ‘simplifying mysticism through a logical and scientific train-
    ing.’4
    At first, he asked his mureeds to write down the lectures. He later changed his ap-
    proach and started dictating his instructions, so he would be sure all would receive
    the same teachings.5 The classes were announced in Sufi:
    NEW COURSE OF STUDY IN SUFISM
    The Sufi Order is beginning a new course of study, commencing from Octo-
    ber the first. The year will be divided into three terms. Candidates will be
    admitted only at the commencement of each term, viz., October, January, and
    April. The course will consist of classes in Psychology, Occultism, Concentra-
    tion, Healing, Comparative Religions, Metaphysics, Character Building, Nat-
    ural Science, the Science of Life, and Eloquence. In addition to these there
    will be special esoteric classes for initiates only.6

    1
    Published by Nekbakht Foundation, 1920.
    2
    For more on this, see Donald A. Sharif Graham in Pirzade Zia Inayat Khan: A Pearl in Wine. Omega
    Publications, 2001, p. 137 – 139.
    3
    Keesing, p. 154.
    4
    The Sufi, April 1916. Nekbakht Foundation, 2020, p. 121.
    5
    At the Summer Schools in France, he specifically asked his mureeds not to write down his lectures,
    and instructed scribes to notate his lectures in shorthand.
    6
    Sufi, May 1917, p. 3. Nekbakht Foundation, 2020, p. 189.
    He may have overestimated the capacity of his students, for he later dictated an-
    other set of teachings in France to prepare them for the London papers and named
    them Gathas. The London instructions were labeled as Githas. Some of the collec-
    tive interviews for his most advanced students became the Sangathas and the
    Sangithas.
    Parallel to these instruction papers, he created a series of initiations from one to
    twelve for the Study Circle (1 – 3, the Gathas), Advanced Circle (4 – 6, the Githas),
    Inner Circle (7 – 9, the Sangathas), and Higher Circle (10 – 11, the Sangithas), with
    the 12th initiation for the Pir-o-Murshid, the leader of the Sufi Movement.
    Classical Sufism knows the phenomenon of Sufi handbooks, written by advanced
    travelers on the path and containing a wealth of information and experience,
    spiced and peppered with quotes from other mystics, but the system of levels of
    initiations with corresponding study material was a novelty in the Sufi tradition, 1
    just as Inayat’s opening for different denominations was new and revolutionary
    within the Sufi tradition, where the doorway to Sufism always is located within
    Islam.2
    The system of initiation enabled Inayat Khan to initiate candidates at the very be-
    ginning of the spiritual path, whereas initiation in the East would happen only after
    training and having reached a certain level of spiritual maturity and stability. East-
    ern initiation corresponds with the ninth initiation in Inayat Khan’s system, which
    makes the student a ‘Sufi’.
    Besides being too optimistic about his London students to fully master the Githas
    and the practices the papers offered, he also overestimated their progress, as he
    expected to upgrade his students every year, thus going through the curriculum in
    a decade towards the tenth and eleventh initiation of sheikh or khalif and murshid.
    He only initiated four women as murshida and no man qualified for this highest
    initiation.
    Inayat Khan walked this earth a century ago. We now live in a different era. Not all
    Sufi Orders that came forth from Inayat Khan still adhere to the initiation system
    with its different grades. Some, like the Sufi Ruhaniat International, focus mostly
    on the first, the ninth, the tenth and the eleventh initiation, with sometimes the
    seventh used as a stimulus. Also instruction papers such as the Githas are no longer
    exclusively linked to the initiation grade of the student and have become more
    widely available to the public, initiated or not.

    November 2021,
    Wali van der Zwan

    1
    Most likely, Inayat Khan came up with this ‘initiation ladder’ through the influence of his Theosophic
    oriented mureeds, such as Murshida Sophia Saintsbury-Green, who had been a student and friend of
    Anne Besant, the successor of the Theosophy founder Madame Blavatsky.
    2
    As Inayat Khan said, a Christian, a Jew or a Buddhist asks for Sufi initiation to deepen his or her Chris-
    tianity, Judaism or Buddhism. See also Keesing, note 10 to chapter VIII, p. 282.

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