THE PURPOSE OF LIFE
The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan
Intoduction
PIR-o-MURSHID INAYAT KHAN, founder of the Sufi Order in the West, was born in Baroda, India, on July 5, 1882, into a family of great musicians. As a child, Inayat Khan took a great interest in music and visits to holy men. Due to his deep love of the Indian musical heritage, which had become very decadent, he dedicated his early life to reinstalling the spiritual value of music by traveling and performing in the high classical style. One of the greatest patrons of music, the Nizam of Hyderabad, responded to Inayat Khan's singing by awarding him the greatest musical title in India: Tansen of India.
Inayat Khan had fulfilled his purpose in music and began to look for a spiritual teacher. He found his ideal teacher in the being of Hazrat Abu Hashim Madani, the successor to one of the branches of the Chisti Sufi Order in India. After taking the sacred vow of initiation, he went through a course of training in the four Sufi Schools: Chishti, Naqshbandi, Qadiri, and Shurawardi. Before Abu Hashim Madani died, he called his pupil Inayat Khan to his bedside: "Fare forth into the world, my child, and harmonize the East and the West with the harmony of thy music. Spread the wisdom of Sufism abroad, for to this end art thou gifted by Allah, the most merciful and compassionate." With this blessing he enjoined Inayat Khan to bring the message of Sufism to the West. "Following my decision and the call of God, I left India in 1910 to sojourn in the Western world, strong in the courage of the most blissful command I had received from my Murshid and in the glory of the noble object he had awakened in my soul." Leaving September 13, 1910, he landed in North America, and later traveled to Europe and Russia, sowing the seeds of Sufism.
The Sufi Message does not call a person away from a belief or church; it calls one to live it.
Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
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