Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan (1916–2004) was a British Sufi mystic of the Niẓāmī branch of the Chishtī tariqa order. He was the leader of the Sufi Order International, which was founded by his father, the Sufi mystic Ḥazrat Vilayat Khan.
Born in London, Vilayat Inayat Khan was just 11 when his father passed away. Khan graduated from Sorbonne University in Paris in 1940 after completing studies in both psychology and philosophy. He pursued postgraduate studies at Oxford University along with studying cello and composition at the École Normale de Musique de Paris.
After rigorous training on meditation under various Sufi masters in the Middle East and India, Vilayat Inayat Khan re-established the Sufi Order International in the United States during the 1960s and led it until his death.
Over the decades, Vilayat Inayat Khan became an internationally recognized spiritual teacher—he gave frequent public lectures and participated in religious congresses, interfaith dialogues, meditation camps, and New Age expositions. His son, Pir Zia Inayat Khan (b.1971,) currently leads the Inayati Order, as Sufi Order International is called since 2016.
Vilayat Inayat Khan’s notable writings include Toward the One (1974) and Awakening: A Sufi Experience (1999.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Meditation consists in conducting consciousness beyond the point where it is the consciousness of a finite body or a finite mind, transferring the focus from level to level without losing its continuity or form.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
We first have to find the way of freedom from involvement before we can introduce freedom in involvement.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
…In dream consciousness…we make things happen by wishing them, because we are not only the observer of what we experience but also the creator. In our creativity we prolong the magic action of the Creator of All in the overflow of His imagination, which is all that reality is, or ever will be.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Topics: Dreams
The adept may reach one of those rare moments that spell illumination — aware of the light of the consciousness that illumines our consciousness as the sun dawns on the sleeping earth and bathes it in effulgence.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
The key to growth is the introduction of higher dimensions of consciousness into our awareness.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Topics: Growth, Awareness
The essential part of our being can only survive if the transient part dissolves. Death is a condition of survival. That which has been gained must be eternalized, and can only be eternalized by being transmuted, by passing through death they must return
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Topics: Dying, Death
It is not good enough for things to be planned – they still have to be done; for the intention to become a reality, energy has to be launched into operation.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
One must be aware that one is continually being tested in what one wishes most in order to make clear whether one’s heart is on earth or in heaven.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Topics: Challenges
Meditation consists in conducting consciousness beyond the point where it is the consciousness of a finite body or a finite mind, transferring the focus from level to level without losing its continuity or form.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
A perfect human being: Man in search of his ideal of perfection. Nothing less.
—Pir Vilayat Inayat Khan
Topics: Ideals, Idealism
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