Explanation vs. perception: how intellectual comprehension gets it wrong

Ibn Arabi taught through what was apparently love-poetry, and people became bitterly hostile towards him. This behavior of theirs was due to their inability to understand the projection which he was using, not to the reality of their imaginings. But their suppositions about him and his work were firmly believed by them to represent the truth, to be factual in nature. In his case, he was able to teach them further by providing a commentary which satisfied them and caused them to hail him as a great mystic. But in so doing, since they had not arrived at this understanding through inward and personal perception, they were cut off from the benefits of the material’s actual use within themselves. They were only intellectually and emotionally satisfied. Their perception of him was limited to a reassurance that his ideas did not conflict with their own ingrained beliefs.

It is this mentality of what is in fact a superficial assessment which causes the poverty of potential understanding in people who seek only explanation and not perceptions.

Idries Shah, Learning How to Learn: Psychology and Spirituality in the Sufi Way