The title of this book, Big Tales, refers to my 518 page compilation of all the stories in the 12 volumes of The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan.  I compiled Big Tales (not to be confused with the title of this book) in the late-1960s in San Francisco after my murshid told me about his murshid, Hazrat Inayat Khan, who initiated him in 1923 in San Francisco.

Until the mid-1970s, Big Tales was never more than a thick typescript. From that ream of stories, I produced a condensed, privately printed collection, which I divided into three parts: Tales, Part 1, People; Tales, Part 2, Teaching Tales; and Tales, Part 3, Personal Experiences of Hazrat Inayat Khan. From that collection, the abridged 1980 and 2005 (Omega Press, New Lebanon, New York) editions of Tales/Told by Hazrat Inayat Khan were produced.

The following template appears at the bottom of each story in this book: Big Tales, page 10. 1, 99, The Inner Life. This signifies that the story is early (page 10) in Big Tales, as well as early in The Sufi Message of Hazrat Inayat Khan; actually, in volume 1 on page 99, and from the book in volume 1 entitled: The Inner Life.

The first three parts of this book are the original collection which never saw the light of day in this form, and what's also new here in Part 4 are the unabridged, never before published, rest of the stories from Big Tales.

Mansur Johnson

Tucson, Arizona, USA

November, 2015