Description
The Message in Our Time
The Life and Teachings of the Sufi Master Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
This is a spiritual biography of Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan (1882–1927), who came to the West as a representative of the musical traditions of his native India. He brought with him a message of love, harmony, and beauty that was both the quintessence of Sufi teaching and a revolutionary approach to the harmonizing of Western and Eastern spirituality.
Written by Inayat Khan’s son, The Message in Our Time is the story of how one can attain the very pinnacles of spiritual consciousness even as one lives in the midst of the material world. From Inayat Khan’s birth in 1882 to his death in 1927, the events of his life—his birth in India, the emergence of a precocious spiritual understanding, his long period of development, the climactic journey to the West—embody his teachings, initiating the reader into the Sufi way in action. The narrative evokes the shock Inayat Khan felt on first encountering the commercialism of the West and traces the development of his teachings there, applying Sufi knowledge and practices to meeting the problems of everyday life.
Inayat Khan’s descriptions of his states of meditation as he awakened from ordinary consciousness are fully reported here and give an inspiring clue to the planes the soul passes through on its way toward incarnation on earth.
A story told with depth, precision, and clarity, The Message in Our Time is a book of spiritual discipline, insight, and renewed perspective. For those interested in Sufism, Eastern spirituality, or simply religious and human greatness, it is a classic biography that illumines rather than teaches, embodies rather than recounts, and is the message itself rather than the messenger.
