To the mystic, therefore, action is most important. During my travels from place to place, when I have come in contact with different people and have had the opportunity of staying with them, I have met some who had perhaps never in their lives read a book on theology or studied mysticism, their whole life having been spent in work, business, and industry; and yet I felt a spiritual advancement made naturally by their right actions in life. They had come to a state of purity which perhaps someone else might find by means of study or meditation.

Hazrat Inayat Khan, The Heart of Sufism by H. J. Witteveen, editor