Index to Volumes 1 - 13 : The Sufi Message

Sufi Hazrat Inayat Khan (Baroda 1882-Delhi 1927) provides a beautiful guidebook for your inner path. It contains neither prescriptions nor do's and don'ts. You may be provided with an insight and understanding which may be as a welcome in the circle of Sufi friends, or as a silent companion on your further way.

This final volume offers a multiple entry-gate to volumes I-XIII of The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

This is the very first time a thorough, detailed index of these volumes has been compiled. It contains more than three thousand main entries with over fourteen thousand individual references. Both subjects and names have been included. The subjects are given in contextual phrases for words with many entries, such as 'Sod', 'heart' and 'soul', so as to facilitate location of a more specific reference. Titles of books and chapter headings and sub-headings are also included.

The index is an indispensable tool for any student of the Sufi Message. This is due not only to the large quantity of material in thirteen volumes, but also to the content. Although in a sense Hazrat Inayat Khan's work is very systematic, the subject matter covered cannot really be deduced from the chapter-headings alone since 'everything relates to everything'. This general statement in terms of mystical philosophy is an essential characteristic.

The implication is that even with this Index the reader cannot be assured of tracing the totality of the teaching on a given subject. Each student may create his or her own index formed by feeling and intuition, and a more refined knowledge of the philosophy and methods of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

The present volume is the first of a series including all the works intended for publication of Hazrat Inayat Khan (Baroda 1882-New Delhi 1927), the great Sufi mystic who came to the Western world in 1910 and lectured and taught there until his passing away in 1927. A new edition of this series, which was published for the International Headquarters of the Sufi Movement in the West in the '60s, is now made available in the Indian subcontinent and the Middle East. In this way Hazrat Inayat Khan's inspired and universal vision of the Sufi Message returns to his own beloved country, where it originated and where interest in it is growing.

This book and other volumes of this series have not been written down by the author. They contain his lectures, discourses and other teachings as taken down in shorthand and other handwriting. When preparing for publication great care was taken, not only to avoid distortion of their intent and meaning, but also to leave intact, as far as possible, the flow of mystical inspiration and poetical expression which add so much to their spell, and without which a significant part of his message would be lost. Although speaking in a tongue foreign to him, he moulded it into a perfect vehicle for his thought, at times somewhat ungrammatical and unusual, but always as clear and precise as his often difficult and abstruse subjects would allow.

It goes without saying that neither in the present nor in the previous edition anything has been altered which would involve even the slightest deviation from the author's intention and no attempt has been made to transform his highly personal and colorful language into idiomatically unimpeachable English. Already so much is necessarily lost by the transfer of the spoken word to the printed page that every effort has been made, as it should, to preserve the Master's melodious phrasing, the radiance of his personality, and the subtle sense of humour which never left him.

Hazrat Inayat Khan's teaching was nearly all given during the years 1918-1926. it covers a great many subjects, several of which were grouped in series of lectures and taken up again some years later. Certain subjects may cover nearly the same ground as others; stories and examples which abound in most of his works are met again elsewhere; and much of what he taught one finds repeated in several places. This was intentional, as repetition belonged to Hazrat Inayat Khan's method of teaching; it is for the student to become aware of the subtle differences in each context. For these and other reasons it would be difficult to follow a rigid system in publishing Hazrat Inayat Khan's works; a chronological grouping of his lectures would be very unsatisfactory, and a stringent classification according to subject-matter hardly feasible.

The complete series contains fourteen volumes. The last volume is the Index. This edition is the first one to present an index to the Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan.

Each volume is complete in it, and therefore may be read without any necessity to study following or previous ones. However, one may get a spiritual and mental appetite to continue reading. One will find that a meditative way of reading will convey not only the words but also the spiritual power emanating from them, tuning mind, heart and soul to the pitch which is one's own.

This General Index of The Sufi Message of Hazrat lnayat Khan has been prepared, at the suggestion of the publisher, for inclusion in the historic Indian edition of 1988-90. The rust twelve volumes of the series were originally published from 1960 to 1967, and the thirteenth volume was added in 1982. None of tl.ese volumes contained an index, but the difficulty of locating material in so many volumes has led to several informal indices over the years; for example, serveral lists of chapter headings have appeared in various countries. This is, however, the erst attempt at making an inclusive and detailed index.

Naturally, such a large undertaking could not be done in a reasonable lime by one person, and so a team of indexers worked through the various volumes (see Acknowledgements). No doubt this results in some inconsistency, since no two people would ever index a book the same way. However, all the indexers worked with the same general instructions, and certain key words, such as God, message, and soul, were noted especially. Whenever possible, a contextual phrase is given for words with multiple entries. Chapter titles and sub-headings are included, but are indexed like any other entry; thus, for example, "The Gift of Eloquence" will be found under "Eloquence, gift of', and "The Religion of the Heart" will be found under both "Religion" and "Heart". It should be noted that some of the material in the Volumes, particularly Volume V, is not the actual writing of Hazrat Inayat Khan, but a presentation of his teachings by his followers Sherifa Good enough and Mary Zohra Williams. However, since these are included in the Volumes, they are included in the Index as well.

The intention has been to make the index inclusive, so when there was doubt about an entry our inclination was to put it in. There must remain many errors of omission and some of commission, but 0lU hope is that this index will prove useful to the many readers throughout the World who find inspiration and guidance in the teachings of Hazrat Inayat Khan.