First: It testifies to the weakness of the heart of the one who is annihilated, for he has proven unable to keep together the witnessing of the Worshipped One and the act of worship, the Commander and the command. He imagines that if he beholds the worship and the command he will be distracted from the Worshipped and the Commander; indeed, even the mere mention of worship and remembrance strikes him as a diversion from the Worshipped One who is being remembered.
Second: It can carry its possessor to a condition resembling that of the deranged or the drunk. From him then pour forth the so-called “ecstatic utterances,” both verbal and practical, that run counter to the Sacred Law—utterances which he himself, as well as others, know to be erroneous. Examples include some of them saying in that state: “subḥānī, subḥānī—glory be to me, glory be to me…,” “anā Allāh—I am God…,” “mā fī al-jubbati illā Allāh—there is nothing in this cloak but God…,” “ansibu khaymatī ʿalā Jahannam—I shall pitch my tent over Hell…,” and other such delirious claims and outbursts.
Third: This sort of fanāʾ never befell the perfectly sincere servants of Allah. It was not experienced by the messengers, nor by the prophets, nor by the truthful saints (ṣiddīqūn) and martyrs.
Take the Messenger of Allah ﷺ: on the Night of the Ascension he beheld of Allah’s certain signs what no other human being has ever seen, yet even in that state he remained in complete equilibrium, outwardly and inwardly. Concerning his outward faculties Allah says, “The eye did not swerve, nor did it transgress” (Q 53:17), and regarding his inward faculties, “The heart did not lie about what it saw” (Q 53:11).
Likewise the rightly-guided caliphs—Abu Bakr, ʿUmar, ʿUthmān, and ʿAlī (may Allah be pleased with them), the best of humanity after the prophets and the leaders of Allah’s friends—were never visited by such a fanāʾ. The same is true of all the other Companions: despite their lofty rank and perfected states, nothing of this fanāʾ ever occurred to them.
This phenomenon only arose in the era of the Successors, and among certain worshipers and ascetics it took place such that