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Excerpts and thoughts on:

• Music •

by Hazrat Inayat Khan

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Music, the word we use in our everyday language, is nothing less than the picture of our Beloved. [...]

Our Beloved is that which is our source and our goal ; [...]

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What do we see as the principal expression of life in the beauty visible before us?

It is movement. In line, in colour, in the changes of the seasons, in the rising and falling of the waves, in the wind, in the storm, in all the beauty of nature there is constant movement.

It is movement which has caused day and night; [...] and this movement has given us the comprehension of what we call time. Otherwise there would be no time, for actually there is only eternity;

and this teaches us that all we love and admire, observe and comprehend, is the life hidden behind it and this life is our being.

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Movement as the expression of life, of beauty; movement as the painter of time.

It is through music that I experience the strongest connection to the dimension of time, that ever-eternal moment of presence that keeps moving into many pasts and futures.

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It is owing to our limitation that we cannot see the whole being of God; but all that we love in colour, line, form or personality belongs to the real beauty, the Beloved of all. And when we trace what attracts us in this beauty which we see in all forms, we shall find that it is the movement of beauty; in other words the music.

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I used to be more reluctant to use the word God in my language, but I have come to embrace it as a way to try and make sense of our existence in this form. A way to name and personify the collective consciousness that we're all a part of, the spiritual connection to that which is the sum of all things that exist.

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All forms of nature, for instance the flowers, are perfectly formed and coloured; the planets and stars, the earth, all give the idea of harmony, of music. The whole of nature is breathing; not only the living creatures but all nature; and it is only our tendency to compare that which seems living with what to us is not so living which makes us forget that all things and beings are living one perfect life. And the sign of life given by this living beauty is music.

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Nature. Breathing. Music.

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