Social Gathekas, Poetry, Part 2

Brotherhood and Sisterhood Activity
From the Desk of the Peshkar
Eastern Hemisphere, West Indies, and Suriname
Maharani de Caluwe-Rombout, Peshkar
Johara Steingrover, Assistant Peshkar

"When the human heart becomes conscious of God, it becomes like the sea: it extends its waves to friend and foe." Gayan, Hazrat Inayat Khan

Dear family,

Can you image that it is possible to compare poets with farmers? It depends upon what one feels, thinks, says, and does. It is the beauty of words and meanings that make them illuminating and live-giving. A Sufi's way to express poetry is by living in Love, Harmony and Beauty.

The next message will be send in September after the summer holidays.

Wishing you a lot of love and light,

Your sisters,
Maharani and Johara

"Truth conceived by the mature soul is expressed as poetry." Gayan, Hazrat Inayat Khan

Social Gathekas, Poetry, Part 2, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Now coming to the question, what wakens the soul to this rhythm which brings about poetry? It is something that touches in the poet that predisposition of the soul which is called love. For with love, harmony comes, beauty comes, rhythm, light and life come. It seems that all that is good and beautiful and worth attaining is centred in that one spark that is hidden in the heart of man. When the heart speaks of its joy, of its sorrow, it is all interesting, it is all appealing. The heart does not tell a lie, it always tells the truth, for by love it becomes sincere and it is through the sincere heart that true love manifests.

One may love in a company where there is always amusements, pastimes, mirth and merriment, and one may live that life for twenty years, but the moment one realizes the movement in the depth of one's heart one feels that the whole twenty years of life was nothing. One moment of life with a living heart is better worthwhile that a hundred years of life with a heart that is dead. Many do we see in this world with fortune and every comfort and all that they need in life yet living a shallow life, with nothing in their lives more unhappy perhaps than one who is starving for days together. He is more to be pitied whose soul is starving than one whose body only is starving. For the one whose body is starving is yet alive, but he whose soul is starved is dead.

Those who have shown great inspiration and who have given to the world precious words of wisdom, they were the farmers who ploughed furrows in the soil of the heart. That is the reason why there are few poets in this world, for the path of the poet is contrary to the path of the worldly man. The real poet, although he exists on this earth, yet dreams of a different world from where he gets his ideas. The true poet is seer at the same time, or else he could not bring the subtle ideas which touch the heart of the reader. The true poet is a lover and admirer of beauty. If his soul was not impressed by beauty he could not bring out beauty in his poetry.