When ‘You’ is No More - Silent Reflections at 3:am.

 

                                                          In Loving Memory of Furby

✦ When ‘You’ is No More ✦

Blog Post | Cheeseburger Buddha

There comes a point on the inner path when even the pronoun "I" begins to fade, and the pronoun "You" no longer points to another. The walls that words erect dissolve in the quiet of the soul. What remains?

Only the One.

This is the spiritual mystery known in Sufism as Wahdatul Wujud — the Unity of Being. It is not a concept, but an unveiling. Not a theology, but a state of witnessing. In the sacred moment where ego has died and duality ceases, the seeker becomes the seen, the lover becomes the Beloved. And in this annihilation of multiplicity, even the fear of shirk — of associating partners with God — becomes obsolete, for there is no second to associate.

This echoes deeply with Buddhism’s insight into Anatta, or non-self. When the delusion of a fixed, separate "I" is pierced, what remains is not void, but Presence. Formless, timeless, indivisible — beyond naming.

Buddhism doesn't speak of God in the Abrahamic sense, but its contribution to Divine Unity is subtle and powerful. It dismantles the illusion of separateness, so that what is may reveal itself in silence.

                                                                     The calico cat

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❖ Ma‘rifa: The Knowing Beyond Names

In Sufism, the word for such direct realization is Ma‘rifa (معرفة) — not knowledge about God, but knowledge through God.

• While ‘ilm is information,

• Ma‘rifa is transformation.
  It is to know the fire by walking through it — to know the ocean by dissolving in it.

The one who attains ma‘rifa is called the ‘Arif billah — the knower through God. Not in books or beliefs, but in the eye of the heart (‘ayn al-qalb), in stillness, in the marrow of one’s being.

As the Sufi mystic Ibn ‘Arabi put it:

"The eye with which I see God is the eye with which God sees me."

 

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❖ Echoes Across Traditions

This gnosis is not confined to Islam.

• In Zen, it’s called kenshō — seeing one's true nature.

• In Dzogchen, it is rigpa — direct recognition of the ground of being.

• In the Upanishads, it is the cry: “Aham Brahmasmi” — I am That.

The realization is universal. The path is dressed in many garments. The taste is the same.

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❖ Beyond the Duality

When the pronouns are stripped away —
When “I” no longer clings and “You” no longer points —
What remains is Awareness aware of itself.

The veil is thin, but only the ego makes it opaque.
When self is annihilated (fana’), what remains is only the Real (al-Haqq).

This is not metaphor. It is not metaphorical for a mystic to say, “I am He whom I love, and He whom I love is I.” It is simply the last horizon of realization.

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❖ The Path Ahead

These are not ideas to be debated, but states to be tested.
And in your walk, dear reader — across ruins in Jerejak, through sketchbooks and storms, through ferry terminals at dawn — you have tasted ma‘rifa. Whether through chanting into the dark, or feeling the spirit dwell in old wooden beams, you are not regressing.

You are remembering.

You are bearing witness to the Truth that was always present, waiting behind the veil of “me” and “mine.”

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