You may possess great religious knowledge and be regarded as an authority on religious matters; you may perform your religious duties punctiliously and with unstinting devotion; yet your religious knowledge and duties do not coincide with your instinctive spiritual desires. If you become aware of this gap, you will wish to close it; and the only means of closing it is by seeking to know God directly.
When you seek to know God directly, you become modest and humble and you prefer poverty to wealth. When you come to know God directly, you realize that this direct knowledge of God satisfies your instinctive spiritual desires. This causes you to become indifferent to your religious knowledge and duties. We may thus distinguish two types of knowledge. There is religious knowledge, which consists of rational theories about God and there is spiritual or intuitive knowledge, which arises from personal encounters with God. As you acquire spiritual knowledge, you discard religious knowledge.
(Junayd)