Words are but the shadows of thoughts and feelings.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
Although the elements may be called earth, water, fire, air and ether, this must not be taken literally. Their nature and character, according to the mystics, are different. But, as words are few, one cannot give other names to these elements, although in Sanskrit we have distinctive words for them. ‘Ether’ is not ether in the scientific sense; it is capacity. ‘Water’ is not water as we understand it in everyday language; it is liquidity. ‘Fire’ is understood differently; it means glow or heat, dryness, radiance, all that is living. All of these words suggest something more than is ordinarily meant by them. … Every activity of the outer world is a kind of reaction. In other words, a shadow of the activity which is behind it and which we do not see.
A world of idea is hidden in a word. Think, therefore, how interesting Life must become for those who can see behind every word that is spoken to them its length, breadth, height, and depth. They are engineers of the human mind. They then do not know only what is spoken to them, but they know what is meant by it. By knowing words you do not know the language; what you know is the outside language, the inner language is known by knowing the language of ideas. So the language of ideas cannot be heard by the ears alone, the hearing of the heart must be open for it.
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
The nature of feeling is Light; the nature of thought is the tenor and tuning. Words are means for objectifying these thoughts and feelings in the material world. Thoughts and feelings are therefore materializations and are of the nature of shadow. So are words, only words come in the form of vibrations, which affect the ears and brains and do not appear as sense-objects. Yet for this sphere and for the cosmos, they are of the nature of shadow.