among them some would scream, others would lose consciousness, and others would even die; this became a well-known occurrence among certain Sufi shaykhs.

– Whoever regards this as the ultimate goal of the wayfarers has gone grievously astray, and whoever deems it an indispensable stage in the journey to Allah is mistaken.

– In reality, it is no more than a passing condition that overtakes some travelers when the spiritual influx that descends upon their hearts is overpowering while their hearts are too weak to withstand it or to hold together the simultaneous witnessing of the act of worship and the One worshipped, and the like.

Third category: an atheistic, unbelieving fanāʾ—fanāʾ through denying the existence of anything besides Allah. That is, a state in which one imagines that the Creator is the very same as the creature, that the existent is identical with the One who brings it into existence; that there is no Lord and subject, no Creator and created, no worshiper and Worshipped, no Commander and commanded. In their view, all reality is but one single entity, one and the same essence.

– This is the fanāʾ espoused by the heretics who champion the doctrine of the “oneness of existence,” such as Ibn ʿArabī, al-Tilmisānī, Ibn Sabʿīn, al-Qūnawī, and their likes …

– These people are more unbelieving than the Christians in two respects:

First: they declare that the Lord, the Creator, is identical with the subject, the created, whereas the Christians claim that the Lord united with His servant whom He chose after the two had previously been distinct.

Second: they hold that this union of the Lord permeates everything—even dogs, swine, filth, and impurities—whereas the Christians reserve it for the one they revere, namely the Messiah1.

– The very conception of this doctrine is sufficient to dismiss it, for its necessary implication is that Lord and servant are one and the same