Only, by turning into wine, the grape loses its individuality, and yet not its life. The self-same grape lives as wine, and the longer it lives the better the wine becomes. For a Sufi, therefore, the true sacrament is the turning of one's own grape-like personality, which has a limited time to live, into wine, that nothing of one's self may be lost but, on the contrary, amplified, even perfected. This is the essence of all philosophy and the secret of mysticism.