Why People go by Superficialities and Attached by Rumors?

The Master Bahaudin was sitting one evening after dinner, surrounded by a large number of newcomers, old and young, all eager to learn. 

A silence fell, and the Master asked for a question.

Someone said:

"What is the greatest difficulty in the learning and the teaching of the Way?"

The Master answered:

"People go by superficialities. They are attracted by preaching, by rumors and reports, and by that which excited them-like bees to the scent of flowers."

The man asked:

"But how else are people to approach wisdom, or bees, flowers?"

The Master answered:

"The human approaches wisdom through report and noise, preaching and reading excitement. After he has approached it, however, he stays near it to demand more of the same: not whatever it can give, which is what it is therefore.

"Bees approach flowers by scent, but they do not, once arrived at the proximity of the bloom, demand merely more and more scent. They adjust to the nectar, which they have to collect.  The is the equivalent of the reality of wisdom, of which the report and imaginings are as it were the scent. 

"So the number of  "real bees" among humanity is very small. Whereas almost all bees are bees, in being able to collect nectar, almost all human beings are not yet human beings in the sene of being attuned to perceive what they were created for.'

Then the Master said:

"Let those who came here, to Qasr al-Arifin, because of reading stand up.'

Many stood.

'Let those,' he continued,' who came to us because of hearing about us also stand up.'

Many more stood.

'Those who are still seated,' he continued,' are those who came because they perceived our presence and authenticity in another, subtle, manner.

'Those who are standing, old and young, include many who only demand more and more of their feelings to be stirred, who desire excitement or calm. Before they can learn what they cannot experience elsewhere, they must require knowledge and not services of attraction.

He then said:

'There are those who are attracted to a teacher because of his repute, and who accordingly travel to see him, to seek even more of the same sensation. When he dies, they visit his grave, again for a similar reason. 

Unless these aspirations are transformed, as it by alchemy, they will not find truth.

'And,' he said, 'there are those who visit a teacher not because they have heard of him as a great living mentor; not because they wish to see his tomb, but because they recognize his inmost Reality. One day everyone will possess this faculty.'

Now Bahaudin the Designer said:

'But in the meantime, the work which will be done eventually through the generation has to be performed in one and the same individual. To become a Moses, you will have to transcend your Pharaoh. The man who is attracted by repute must become, as it were, another man. He must become a man who stays in proximity to wisdom because he has sensed its inmost Reality.

'This is the purpose of this Work before he can learn. Until he has learnt this, he is a mere dervish. A dervish desires; a Sufi perceives.'