In July of 1926 Hazrat Inayat Khan spoke to a small group of students about the way in which a Murshid works with mureeds, and he made it clear that what is given in words is often much less than what is given in silent teaching, the controlling of the impulse to speak so that the teaching shines through the teacher’s spirit upon the spirit of the student.

The person on whom it is directed is inspired wonderfully… It is so illuminating sometimes, that the pupil begins to speak the same things that the teacher says. If it were orally given, it might be taken in his notebook, and kept for ten years and not understood, But in silent teaching, the student begins to speak about it, it comes to the pupil as an intuition. He begins to see it, to know it, it becomes as his own thought. It is simply a reflection of the teacher’s spirit fallen on the heart of the pupil. It is a most wonderful phenomenon. My experience shows me this phenomenon every day in many, many different forms, and it is so wonderful to watch it. It is as if my words are coming from my mureed’s lips. I exactly hear my words coming from there, the same ideas, the same teaching, that I thought that is a wonder. And yet it is not a wonder, it is the proof of oneness of the whole being.