Post Three — Fanā: When God Is God

Fanā — When God Is God

We have arrived at the edge of the conversation.

First there was the waqfah — the stopping.

Then came the questioning of the witness.

Now we encounter the Sufi idea of fanā.

The word is often translated as "annihilation" or "passing away," but the word can easily be misunderstood.

It is not a celebration of physical death.

It is the disappearance of the separate self as the centre of experience.

The "I" that says:

"I am seeking God."

"I am witnessing God."

"I am experiencing God."

"I am becoming enlightened."

That "I" begins to lose its authority.

And perhaps this is the great paradox.

The seeker wants to reach God, but the final obstacle may be the seeker himself.

The witness wants to witness Reality, but the final separation may be the witness.

The ego wants to become desireless, but even the desire to become desireless is still a movement of the ego.

And so the circle closes.

Or perhaps it opens.

I once described this in our conversation as "the death of the witness."

Not the death of a person.

The death of the distance between the one who sees and what is seen.

In that sense, fanā is not about becoming something extraordinary.

It may be precisely the opposite.

The extraordinary identity we have constructed around ourselves simply falls away.

There is no longer a spiritual superhero standing outside existence saying, "I have arrived."

There is only what is.

And here I find myself returning to the phrase that emerged naturally from our conversation:

God is God.

And there is only that.

No additional achievement.

No spiritual trophy.

No final identity.

No witness standing apart and claiming ownership of the experience.

Just God.

Of course, the moment I write those words, the mind wants to explain them.

What does "God" mean?

What is "only"?

What happened to the self?

What about consciousness?

What about anatta?

What about Vedanta?

What about Zen?

And there we go again.

The mind begins building another house around the mystery.

Perhaps the wisest response is simply to stop.

The waqfah again.

Stop.

No conclusion.

No possession.

No final answer.

Perhaps fanā is not something we can successfully describe because the one who would describe it is precisely what is being relinquished.

And perhaps, at the very edge of all our explanations, there is nothing left to say.

God is God.

And that is enough.

WallahuAlam.