the self and seeking its gratifications. For someone who perceives that the Lord loves, approves of, and wills everything in existence sees no difference between one thing and another, except that some things afford certain people gratification through pleasure they experience, while others cause certain people pain. Whoever has this perception is certain that anyone who distinguishes between one thing and another does so only because of deficient knowledge and witnessing of Allah as the Lord of everything, who wills everything and—according to them—loves everything. The distinction he makes relates only to his own gratification and desires, so he is seeking his own gratification and defending himself. In their view, this is a defect and a fault.

Thus, in their view, everyone who makes distinctions is deficient either in knowledge and witnessing or in purpose and will. Both are defects. This contrasts with someone whose self is annihilated in witnessing Lordship: according to them, he witnesses everything in existence as proceeding through Allah’s will, love, and approval, without distinguishing between one thing and another. He therefore neither regards a good deed as good nor an evil deed as evil, as the author of Manāzil al-Sā’irīn stated.

Hence the statement transmitted from al-Dhabīlī and Abū Yazīd:

“If you see the people of Paradise enjoying its delights and the people of the Fire being tormented in the Fire, and a distinction arises in your heart, you have departed from the reality of reliance upon Allah”—or he said, “from the affirmation of Allah’s oneness which is the foundation of reliance upon Him.”

It is well known that an animate being cannot remain perpetually without this distinction; rather, it is indispensable. Such a being inclines toward necessities such as food and drink. In the state of annihilation, however, a person may be wholly absorbed in that perception. Nevertheless, he must incline toward things he needs and therefore desire them, and recoil from things that harm him and therefore dislike them. This is a distinction rooted in natural disposition, from which no human being is free.