Now the elusiveness of spiritual experience is glimpsed by the Seeker. If he is a creative worker, he enters the stage when inspiration enters him sometimes, but not at other times. If he is subject to ecstatic experience, he will find that the joyous meaningful sense of completeness comes transitorily, and that he cannot control it. The secret protects itself: ‘Concentrate upon spirituality as you will — it will shun you if you are unworthy. Write about it, boast of it, comment upon it — it will decline to benefit you; it will flee. But, if it sees your concentration, it may come to your hand, like a trained bird. Like the peacock, it will not sit in an unworthy place.’
It is only when he is beyond this stage of development that the Sufi can communicate anything of the path to others. If he tries to do so before, ‘it will flee’.