Issue 21 of the Sufi Journal explores the transformations of love and selfhood that lead toward union with the Beloved. In his discourse Festival, Dr. Javad Nurbakhsh describes the Sufi’s inner celebration as the moment when remembrance dissolves the self into the Divine. Essays on love’s threshold, female sainthood, and the psychology of self continue this meditation on surrender and renewal, while poems and stories echo its themes through devotion, benevolence, and friendship. The Old Wine in New Bottles tale reinterprets Rumi’s Mathnawi through a parable of a scholar and fisherman, revealing that true understanding arises only in humility before the Real.