The spiritual path...

"To explain in simple words what the spiritual path is, I would say that it begins by living in communication with oneself, for it is in the innermost self of man that the life of God is to be found. This does not mean that the voice of the inner self does not come to everyone. It always comes, but not everyone hears it. That is why the Sufi, when he starts his efforts on this path, begins by communicating with his true self within. When once he has addressed the soul, then from the soul comes a kind of reproduction, like that which the singer can hear on a record that has been made of his own voice.

"Having done this, when he has listened to what this process reproduces, he has taken the first step in the direction within, and this process will have awakened a kind of echo in his being. Either peace or happiness, light or form, whatever he has wished to produce, is produced as soon as he begins to communicate with himself. When we compare the man who says, 'I cannot help being active, sad or worried, as it is the condition of my mind and soul,' with the one who communicates with himself, it is not long before we, too, begin to realize the value of this communication.

"This is what the Sufis have taught for thousands of years. The path of the Sufi is not to communicate with fairies nor even with God; it is to communicate with one's deepest innermost self, as if one were blowing one's inner spark into a divine fire. But the Sufi does not stop there, he goes still further. He then remains in a state of repose, and that repose can be brought about by a certain way of sitting and breathing and also by a certain attitude of mind. Then he begins to become conscious of that part of his being which is not the physical body, but which is above it. The more he becomes conscious of this, the more he begins to realize the truth of the life hereafter. Then it is no longer a matter of his imagination or of his belief; it is his actual realization of the experience that is independent of physical life. It is in this state that he is capable of experiencing the phenomena of life. The Sufi, therefore, does not dabble in different wonder-workings and phenomena, for once he realizes this, the whole of life becomes a phenomenon and every moment, every experience, brings to him a realization of that life which he has found in his meditation."

Hazrat Inayat Khan
_Sufi Mysticism_, "Repose"