We have followed the Sūfī in his quest of Reality to a point where language fails. His progress will seldom be so smooth and unbroken as it appears in these pages. The proverbial headache after intoxication supplies a parallel to the periods of intense aridity and acute suffering that sometimes fill the interval between lower and higher states of ecstasy. Descriptions of this experience--the Dark Night of the Soul, as it is called by Christian authors--may be found in almost any biography of Mohammedan saints. Thus Jāmī relates in his _Nafahāt al-Uns_ that a certain dervish, a disciple of the famous Shihābuddīn Suhrawardī, “Was endowed with a great ecstasy in the contemplation of Unity and in the station of passing-away (_fanā_). One day he began to weep and lament. On being asked by the Sheykh Shihābuddīn what ailed him, he answered, ‘Lo, I am debarred by plurality from the vision of Unity. I am rejected, and my former state--I cannot find it!’ The Sheykh remarked that this was the prelude to the station of ‘abiding’ (_baqā_), and that his present state was higher and more sublime than the one which he was in before.” Does personality survive in the ultimate union with God? If personality means a conscious existence distinct, though not separate, from God, the majority of advanced Moslem mystics say “No!” As the rain-drop absorbed in the ocean is not annihilated but ceases to exist individually, so the disembodied soul becomes indistinguishable from the universal Deity. It is true that when Sūfī writers translate mystical union into terms of love and marriage, they do not, indeed they cannot, expunge the notion of personality, but such metaphorical phrases are not necessarily inconsistent with a pantheism which excludes all difference. To be united, here and now, with the World-Soul is the utmost imaginable bliss for souls that love each other on earth. “Happy the moment when we are seated in the Palace, thou and I, With two forms and with two figures but with one soul, thou and I. The colours of the grove and the voice of the birds will bestow immortality At the time when we come into the garden, thou and I. The stars of heaven will come to gaze upon us; We shall show them the Moon itself, thou and I. Thou and I, individuals no more, shall be mingled in ecstasy, Joyful and secure from foolish babble, thou and I. All the bright-plumed birds of heaven will devour their hearts with envy In the place where we shall laugh in such a fashion, thou and I. This is the greatest wonder, that thou and I, sitting here in the same nook, Are at this moment both in ʿIrāq and Khorāsān, thou and I.” (Jalāluddīn Rūmī.)