The Art of Being and Becoming

A guide to training the ego, tuning the heart, and developing willpower. The Sufis consider the divine art of creating the human personality to be the fruit of the whole creation. The Art of Being and Becoming gathers Inayat Khan’s teachings on this divine art and gives methods for training the ego, tuning the heart, and developing willpower—all to help one develop and perfect a natural way of being in the world.

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.