The meaning of this legend has often been misunderstood; it has been said that the goat, the life, should be sacrificed. The meaning is much greater. Abraham is the spiritual teacher, the father. We still call the priest father; he who shows the way to God is the father of the spirit. Ismail is the pupil, the child to whom the Murshid show this way to sacrifice: the sacrifice of the self, of the individuality. This is the greater sacrifice, the annihilation of the self. By shaghal and amal and other practices the self is made to disappear, it is lost. When the self is gone from before us then all other selves can come, then illumination comes; then, when the individual self disappears, the spiritual self appears. Only the illusion is lost; the self is not lost, but the beginning is annihilation. This is all the secret of mysticism, all that the prophets and mystics have taught.