Attar says: "By reason of the shame and confusion which these birds experienced, their bodies became dust, and their souls were annihilated. When they were entirely purified from all earthly elements, they all received a new life. All that they had done or omitted to do during their earthly existence passed entirely out of mind. The sun of proximity burnt them, that is to say, their former existence was consumed by the sun of the Divine Essence which they had approached, and a ray of this light produced a life which animated them all. At this moment they beheld themselves reflected in the Simurgh.[49] When they stole a glance at Him, He appeared to be the thirty birds themselves; when they looked at themselves, they seemed to be the Simurgh; and when they looked at both together, only one Simurgh appeared. The situation was inexpressible in words. They were all submerged in an ocean of stupefaction, with all faculties of thought suspended. Without moving a tongue, they interrogated the Awful Presence for an explanation of the mystery of apparent identity between the Divinity and his adorers. "Then a voice was heard saying, 'The Majesty of the Simurgh is a sun-resembling mirror; whosoever contemplates Him beholds his own reflection; body and soul see in Him body and soul. As you are thirty birds, you appear in this mirror as thirty birds; if forty or fifty birds came here they would see forty or fifty. Although you have passed through many changes, it is yourselves only whom you have seen throughout. Can the eye of an ant reach the Pleiades? Then how can your inch of inkling attain to Us? "In all the valleys which you have traversed, in all the acts of kindness which you have done to others, it was by Our impulse alone that you were acting. All this while you have been asleep in the Valley of the Essence and the Attributes. You thirty birds have been unconscious hitherto. The name "thirty birds" belongs rather to Us, who are the veritable Simurgh. Find then in Us a glorious self-effacement, in order to find yourselves again in us.' "So they vanished in Him for ever, as the shadow disappears in the sun. While on pilgrimage they conversed; when they had arrived, all converse ceased. There was no longer a guide; there were no longer pilgrims; the road itself had ceased to be." Such is this allegory, or Sufi's "Pilgrim's Progress," which contains nearly five thousand couplets. Attar varies the monotony of the long speeches of the Hoopoe and the other birds by inserting anecdotes, of which the following is one of the most striking:-- STORY OF THE SHEIKH SANAAN.