The healing power of the holy spirit: quotations

Main sources:
The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan Vol XI, Part 1 chapters X to XIII, pages 53-69
ibid Vol IV Part 1 section vii – viii, p 38-42
Pir Vilayat meditation, Attuning to the Condition of the Holy Spirit

I. Sun, rays, life, light
Signs/qualities of the spirit
Spirit and matter

If we define spirit it cannot be spirit; the spirit that can be defined cannot be spirit. The best definition of spirit is ‘that which is not matter’ …Spirit means something that our senses cannot perceive. XI.Pt1 XI.1

1. Spirit and sun
[The fourth meaning of] Spirit is the source and the goal of all things; something towards which all are bound, to which all will return. It is that spirit which, in religion, is called God. … it is like the sun, the center of all life, the divine spark within us. …Then what is the sun? The sun is all. The part of the sun that we recognize as the sun is the centre of it; but the sun is, in reality, as large as its light reaches. The real sun is light itself.

The waves are an action of the sea; the rays are a manifestation of the sun; the souls are a phenomenon of the spirit. They are and they are not. They are because we see them, and they are not because there is only one being.

XI.XVIII. 2

The luminous body can be perceived by analogy: when a person looks at a bright light, and half closes their eyes so that their eye-lashes are interposed between the eye and the source of the light, there is an appearance of many lines of light radiating from the source of light, which appear to return to the source as the eyelids are opened.

Ibn Arabi: Corbin p170-1

Uncreated and created
Burkhardt: Uncreated Essence: undifferentiated light; (Ruh al-Quddus, Holy Spirit)
(Nur ‘Aql, all-pervading intelligence)
Created spirit: defined ray of light, (Angel Spirit, Gibrael)

2. Spirit: On its own level of existence, the spirit brings together all the attributes of God into a unified, created whole. Then the attributes of spirit are differentiated and projected into the visible world through the body. Neither body nor spirit can achieve its full perfection without the other. In the last analysis, the body is merely the manifestation of the invisible qualities of the spirit within the visible.

Sachiko Murata, The Tao of Islam p38

3. Qualities and attributes of spirit
Life:
HIK: All that lives is spirit; all that dies is matter
The spirit is living, the spirit is life itself; it only depends upon matter for its experience and not for its life; for the spirit itself is life.

XI.XII.2

What we call living is the matter which has absorbed spirit; and what we call life is that which is moving and acting through that which we call spirit…life passes away from matter and yet remains; life cannot be destroyed.

XI.Pt1.XII.2

Pir Vilayat: ‘Quickening’
The inherent qualities of spirit include luminosity, life, intelligence, desire, power, and the rest of the divine attributes.

Murata

Breath

Intelligence : The best definition [of spirit] is pure intelligence.

HIK

Light : Spirit is ‘light in fusion’; body is ‘light solidified’

Ibn Arabi

Love: Love in itself is an essence, the essence; it is the sign of spirit. All that a person touches with love will be given light and life. Lack of love causes all death and decay.

XI.Pt1.XI.

4. Spirit and Matter – Life

The body is merely the manifestation of the invisible qualities of the spirit within the visible.

[As water and ice: spirit and matter] Matter is a passing state of spirit…In reality matter comes from spirit; matter in its true nature is spirit. Matter is an action of spirit which has materialized and has become intelligible to our senses of perception, and has thus become a reality to our senses, hiding the spirit under it.

XI.Pt1.XI.1

Spirit and matter are not two things; they are one, seen by us as two.

XI.Pt1.XIII.1

The Divine Being (Haqqi) is in each form the Spirit (Ruh) which governs that form: the creatural (Khalq) is the form governed by that Spirit.

Corbin

The difference between spirit and matter is that when the divine intelligence is pouring out directly it is spirit, and when it is radiating through a dense medium it is matter. Thus in both spirit and matter there is divine intelligence.

Volume VIIIa_2_1

(water, ice; spirit, matter)…Matter is a passing state of spirit…matter comes from spirit; matter in its true nature is spirit

No matter can exist without spirit; spirit is its existence and spirit is its life.

XI.XIII.1

It is through vibration, through motion, that spirit turns into matter.

What we call living is the matter which has absorbed spirit; and what we call life is that which is moving and acting through that which we call spirit…life passes away from matter and yet remains; life cannot be destroyed.

XI.Pt1.XII.2

5. Vacuum – capacity – matter

The difference between the nature of vacuum and the nature of substance is that the vacuum is knowing. Therefore the prophets have called it the Omniscient God, not in the sense of a person who is knowing but of the Whole Being, the All-knowing Being. Man is so limited; he is limited because his knowledge is limited… What makes one part of substance knowing and keeps another part without this faculty of knowing is the vacuum in one object and the denseness of another.

XI.XI p61

When the spirit is acting in a process towards manifestation then it needs capacity [Note: other modern words for ‘capacity’ might be ‘instrument’ or ‘vehicle’]. Through that capacity it experiences life in a limited way, but in its true nature it is self-sufficient. It stands in no need of any experience, it is itself all experience, all knowledge, nothing is wanting in it.

HIK XI Ch XI

That which stands between vacuum [the Omniscient God] and substance is capacity. When we look at the sky we feel that it is a vacuum, it seems to be nothing, but in reality it is not nothing, it is capacity. Vacuum is all-knowing, but it is capacity which enables vacuum to know. And as the sky is a capacity for the vacuum to be all knowing, so every being and every thing is a capacity, greater or lesser, which supplies a body or a vehicle for pure intelligence to work through.

What is absorbed from space has the effect upon that which absorbs it of opening it up and of forming a vacuum.

XI. Pt1.XIII.1

The mystic holds, as in the past all prophets, saints, and sages have known, that it is spirit which through a gradual action has become denser and has materialized itself into what we call matter or substance. Through this substance it gradually unfolds itself, for it cannot rest in it. It is caught in this denseness, gradually making its way out through a process taking thousands of years, until in man it develops itself as intelligence.

Practice

Ya Nur – Ya Quddus (The Sun which is the Source, the Light of divine Intelligence – the most Holy, the most Pure, the Holy Spirit