Spiritual Dimensions of Psychology, Revised Edition

Hazrat Inayat Khan’s complete teachings on the mystery and potential of the human mind.
This revised edition contains the most comprehensive collection of Hazrat Inayat Khan’s teachings on the mind and its potential; it includes three new chapters and more additional material, all from original sources. Within this volume, Inayat Khan explores the purification and training of the psyche, its use as a tool in spiritual growth, and the teachings of the mystics on meditation, contemplation, intuition, visionary dreams, inspiration, and revelation.

“For the Sufi, the mind is a world of its own: a palace of mutually reflecting mirrors, in which imagination emerges creatively out of the divine mind—or sometimes runs riot.”
—From the introduction by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan.

Hazrat Inayat Kahn, founder of the Sufi order in the West, was born in India in 1882. A master of classical Indian music by the age of twenty, he relinquished a brilliant career to devote himself to the spiritual path. In 1920, acting upon the guidance of his teacher, he became one of the first teachers of the Sufi tradition in the West. For a decade and a half he travelled throughout Europe and the US giving lectures and guiding an ever-growing group of seekers. In 1926, he returned to India where he died the following year.

Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916 -2004) was the eldest son of Sufi Murshid Hazrat Inayat Khan and Ora Ray Baker. As his father’s successor, Pir Vilayat served as head of the Sufi Order International for fifty years. Born in London, England, Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan was educated at the Sorbonne, Oxford, and L’École Normale de Musique de Paris. During World War II he served in the British Royal Navy on a minesweeper and participated in the invasion at Normandy. His sister, Noor-un-nisa Inayat Khan served in the French Resistance as a radio operator and was executed at Dachau. After the war, Pir Vilayat pursued his spiritual training by studying with masters of many different religious traditions throughout India and the Middle East. While honoring the initiatic tradition of his Sufi predecessors, Pir Vilayat continually adapted traditional Eastern spiritual practices in keeping with the evolution of Western consciousness, psychology, and science. He initiated and participated in many international and interfaith conferences promoting understanding and world peace.