Discourses of Rumi

252 V DISCOURSES OF RUMIsciences you study with such love—in your eyesthey are valuable. But when no one pursues themand no one wants to learn from them, then whowill teach those sciences?Someone said: “Love is the want and need fora certain thing. Hence the need is the root, andthat thing needed is its branch.”These words of yours are also spoken out ofneed. First you had the desire for these words,then they were born. So the need existed first andthen your words were born from it. This meansyour need existed, in the beginning, without anywords. Therefore, love and need are not thebranches of words.Someone said: “But after all, the goal of thatneed was these words, so how can the goal be thebranch?”The branch is always the goal. The tree’s rootsexist for the sake of its branches.