Behind The Mirror

Parrots are taught to speak without understanding the words. The method is to place a mirror between the parrot and the trainer. The trainer, hidden by the mirror, utters the words, and the parrot, seeing his own reflection in the mirror, fancies another parrot is speaking, and imitates all that is said by the trainer behind the mirror.
So God uses the bodies of prophets and saints as mirrors whereby to instruct men; and men, when they hear the words proceeding from these mirrors, are utterly ignorant that they are really being spoken by "Universal Reason" or the "Word of God" behind the mirror of the saints.

Mevlana Jelaluddin Rumi From: Charles F. Horne, ed., The Sacred Books and Early Literature of the East, Vol. VIII:Medieval Persia, pp. 111-130.