In Farid al-Din Attar's Manteq al-Tayr (The Conference of the Birds), the 'Tale of the Moths Who Sought News of Their Beloved' serves as a profound allegory for the stages of spiritual realization and the ultimate goal of the Sufi path: fana (annihilation). Three moths attempt to understand the nature of a candle, which represents the Divine. The first moth observes the light from afar and reports back, symbolizing superficial or theoretical knowledge. The second moth flies close enough to feel the heat, representing deeper experiential but still incomplete knowledge. The third moth throws itself entirely into the flame, being consumed and losing its individual identity. The elder moth concludes that only the third has truly understood the beloved, illustrating that genuine knowledge of the Divine requires the complete surrender and dissolution of the ego.