“In the market, in the cloister--only God I saw. In the valley and on the mountain--only God I saw. Him I have seen beside me oft in tribulation; In favour and in fortune--only God I saw. In prayer and fasting, in praise and contemplation, In the religion of the Prophet--only God I saw. Neither soul nor body, accident nor substance, Qualities nor causes--only God I saw. I oped mine eyes and by the light of His face around me In all the eye discovered--only God I saw. Like a candle I was melting in His fire: Amidst the flames outflashing--only God I saw. Myself with mine own eyes I saw most clearly, But when I looked with God’s eyes--only God I saw. I passed away into nothingness, I vanished, And lo, I was the All-living--only God I saw.” The whole of Sūfism rests on the belief that when the individual self is lost, the Universal Self is found, or, in religious language, that ecstasy affords the only means by which the soul can directly communicate and become united with God. Asceticism, purification, love, gnosis, saintship--all the leading ideas of Sūfism--are developed from this cardinal principle. Among the metaphorical terms commonly employed by the Sūfīs as, more or less, equivalent to ‘ecstasy’ are _fanā_ (passing-away), _wajd_ (feeling), _samāʿ_ (hearing), _dhawq_ (taste), _shirb_ (drinking), _ghaybat_ (absence from self), _jadhbat_ (attraction), _sukr_ (intoxication), and _hāl_ (emotion). It would be tedious and not, I think, specially instructive to examine in detail the definitions of those terms and of many others akin to them which occur in Sūfī text-books. We are not brought appreciably nearer to understanding the nature of ecstasy when it is described as “a divine mystery which God communicates to true believers who behold Him with the eye of certainty,” or as “a flame which moves in the ground of the soul and is produced by love-desire.” The Mohammedan theory of ecstasy, however, can hardly be discussed without reference to two of the above-mentioned technical expressions, namely, _fanā_ and _samāʿ_. As I have remarked in the Introduction (pp. 17-19), the term _fanā_ includes different stages, aspects, and meanings. These may be summarised as follows: 1. A moral transformation of the soul through the extinction of all its passions and desires. 2. A mental abstraction or passing-away of the mind from all objects of perception, thoughts, actions, and feelings through its concentration upon the thought of God. Here the thought of God signifies contemplation of the divine attributes. 3. The cessation of all conscious thought. The highest stage of _fanā_ is reached when even the consciousness of having attained _fanā_ disappears. This is what the Sūfīs call ‘the passing-away of passing-away’ (_fanā al-fanā_). The mystic is now rapt in contemplation of the divine essence.