one of them loses awareness of himself and other created beings. They may call this annihilation and overwhelming absorption. Yet this is the disappearance of his awareness of those created beings, not their actual disappearance.

When someone says, “What once was not has vanished, and what has always been remains,” the precise meaning—if he is truthful—is that his witnessing of what once was not has vanished, while his witnessing of what has always been remains. It does not mean that what once was not has itself vanished, for it still exists. Rather, when they no longer witness it, they imagine that it has ceased to exist in reality.

This is how some have fallen into doctrines of union and indwelling. One of them may remember Allah until that remembrance dominates his heart and he becomes completely absorbed in it. Nothing then remains present to his heart’s remembrance and witnessing except Allah, while his remembrance and witnessing of everything besides Him disappear. He thus imagines that all things have vanished and that he himself has vanished, until he imagines that he is Allah and that existence is Allah.

The error of Abū Yazīd and others like him belongs to this category, as when he said, “There is nothing in this robe but Allah.”

This has been discussed at length elsewhere, where it was explained that annihilation is used to refer to three things:

“First”: through worshipping Allah, he ceases to worship anything besides Him; and through loving and obeying Him