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