The Scented Garden

96 Ecstasy overcometh Individuality. XXIV THE BLASPHEMER Hast thou never thought, O Habib of the athletic body, that when thou wrigglest thy velvet buttocks with immense vigour, and bitest hard with thy po- dex-muscle upon the member of El Qahar, that thou hast no remembrance of any circumstance connected with my personality or thine, but art completely absorbed by the act ? It causes me to remember an antient folly and blasphemy spoken to me — Allah purify mine ears ! — by a certain Sufi, who, being excessively drunk, had lost control over his tongue. For he said that in a certain holy meditation both Allah and himself were destroyed, and that nought re- mained, but only the consciousness of bliss.1 This is contrary to reason, for how can bliss exist, ex- cept as the quality of some person or sensible thing ? Nevertheless, these experiments which I have performed upon thy podex, solely with a view to investigating these statements,2 make for a similar conclusion. It is excessively annoying to the pious that any analogy in Nature to their follies should seem to supply a base for these wild and irrational theories. It is the call of the Muezzin ; but I must purify myself, for during these reflections thy podex hath been active upon the member of thine happy El Qahar.3