Hazrat Inayat Khan

When the soul is awakened, it is as if that person were to wake up in the middle of the night among hundreds and thousands of people who were fast asleep. He is sitting or standing among them, hearing about their sorrows and miseries and their conditions, hundreds of them moving about in their sleep, in their dreams, not awakened to his condition although he is near them. They know little about him, as each one is absorbed in his own trouble. This awakened soul, standing among them all, will listen to everyone, will recognize all that they think and feel; but his language no one understands; his thoughts he cannot explain to anyone; his feelings he cannot expect anyone to feel. He feels lonely, but no doubt in this loneliness there is also the sense of perfection, for perfection is always lonely. Imagine living in a world where nobody speaks our language. Yet he knows the world’s language. The experience of the matured soul is like the experience of the man who watched a play performed on the stage at night, and in the morning he saw the same stage again in the sun and saw that all the palaces and gardens and the actors’ costumes were unreal. Daily Meditation of January 9, by Hazrat Inayat Khan