They who depend upon their eyes for sight, their ears for hearing and their mouth for speech, they are still dead.
Hazrat Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Related Material by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan
Compiled by Wahiduddin Richard Shelquist – wahiduddin.net
It is the soul that sees, but we attribute sight and hearing to the eyes and ears. In absence of the soul neither the body nor the mind can see. When a person is dead the eyes are there, but they cannot see; the ears are there, but they cannot hear…. When the eyes are closed, do you think that the soul sees nothing? It sees. When the ears are closed, do you think that the soul hears nothing? It hears.
If we depend on our eyes for sight, and our ears for hearing, and our mouth for speech, we are still dead. But we sometimes experience in life that which we see without eyes, hear without ears, and express without speech. If we have once seen without eyes, does it not show that we can see without eyes? Can we not see in a dream without eyes? Therefore, the faculty of seeing and hearing is in us. But, as we always depend on the physical body, on the physical eyes and ears, we become helpless and subject to death.
The teaching of immortality is to awaken. We must rise above the physical and material conditions if we are to live at all. We must aim at being independent of physical sight and hearing. We know that if we really want to understand a thing, we close our eyes because we can see it better. If we are thinking in this manner, it means that we are listening to some thought coming from some other plane. At such a time we want to cut off and stop outward sound or sight. All the meditations and concentrations of the mystics, as well as their dreams, are their journeys to the inner planes. It is necessary, if the soul has the desire to know the past, the present, and the future, to satisfy its desire by a contemplative life. The more tired and exhausted the mind, the more is meditation needed.
Sages, such as St. Francis, have spoken with rocks, birds, and animals, not as we talk, but by means of an insight into things. And every object expressed itself to them, speaking to them about its past, its present, and its future. … The seers will see all in their consciousness, and wherever they casts their glance, they will see still more clearly. As Saadi says, ‘Each leaf of a tree becomes a book of revelation to the ones who see. And they read the whole of Nature as a book.’
Commentary by Murshid S.A.M. (Sufi Ahmed Murad)
Samuel L. Lewis
Now the nature of the nerve is very wonderful, for every nerve is a conductor of mental energy, which gives it power over all kinds of physical energy. That is what the eye can see, but if there were no skull all brain would be eye. Similarly all brain would be ear, for every part of it can appreciate sound (although not, perhaps, exactly in the same way the specialized organ called the ear does). In fact, sensation and mind cannot be separated, but each sensation is a particularized function of mind. Nevertheless the particularization or specialization is a sacrifice of mind for some purpose; that special purpose is in turn to enhance the general purpose of mind, which is to be a vehicle of Life itself.
Mind sees far beyond eye and hears far beyond ear. It is by this that such sciences as astronomy and geology have been built. But there is still a higher function of mind which enables it to see into things, and learn more than is on the surface only. It can penetrate into things, for what are things? They are the result of interactivity of mind-stuff and matter-stuff. They are the creatures of mind, and unless mind is greater than its own creations, it is failing in its purpose.
[ This “higher function” of mind that Murshid SAM is referring to is called “kashf” in the Sufi terminology, and is usually translated as “insight”. Kashf is developed by various spiritual practices: purification practices, watching the breath; prayer, concentration, meditation and contemplation; the various wazifa/mantra/zikr/fikr practices, and by the practice of darood, which Murshid SAM emphasizes over and over. (See also Pir-o-Murshid’s specific teachings on Kashf-Insight in the Gathas, series I, II, and III.) — Muiz ]