The Dabistan

253

form of mind, qualities he is a living thing, but,
with respect to reason, a dead thing. In the fourth
stage, under the form of mind, qualities, and rea-
son, he is a living thing. In the first stage, he is
entirely in the sleep of ignorance, darkness, and
stupidity, as

" Darkness upon darkness-----"

In this stage he awakes from the first sleep; in the
second stage, from the second; in the third, from
the third sleep; in the fourth stage, from the last
sleep; and in this awaking of the heart he be-
comes thoroughly and entirely awake, and ac-
. quires perfect possession of himself, and knows
positively that all he had known in the three pre-
ceeding stages was not so: because truth, having
been but imaginary, was falsehood; and that heaven
and earth, as they had been understood before,
were not so. Further, in this stage, earth will not
be that earth, and heaven not that heaven, which
men knew before. This is the meaning of the
words:

" On the day when the earth shall be changed into something else
*' than the earth, as well as the heaven, and when all that shall be mani-
•' fested by the power of God, the only one, the Almighty."1

And when they arrived at that station and pos-
sessed positively the form of mind, qualities, and
reason of an individual, certainly they knew by

1 Koran.