Muhammad ibn Abd al-Jabbar ibn al-Hasan al-Niffari who was he and why does his works knocks on my door at this time in my life? Salam to you My brother.
Wa-alaikumussalam, my brother. 🌿
Yes—al-Niffarī is a fascinating person to encounter at this particular stage of a life devoted to looking inward. And there is something almost wonderfully Niffarī-like about your question: Why has this particular voice appeared at my door now?
First, the historical man.
Who was al-Niffarī?
Muḥammad ibn ʿAbd al-Jabbār ibn al-Ḥasan al-Niffarī was a tenth-century Muslim mystic associated with the early Sufi tradition. Very little is securely known about his life. He appears to have been a solitary, wandering ascetic, and later sources associate him with Egypt near the end of his life. Even his dates are uncertain, although 965 CE is commonly given.
And here is the extraordinary part:
He apparently did not set out to become an author.
The writings attributed to him seem to have originated as notes recording intense spiritual experiences and were collected after his death. His two principal works are Kitāb al-Mawāqif (The Book of Standings) and Kitāb al-Mukhāṭabāt (The Book of Addresses).
His Mawāqif revolves around the Arabic idea of waqfah—a "standing," or being brought to a halt before God. The important distinction is that this isn't simply the seeker stopping to think about God. It is more like being stopped—being brought to a place where the ordinary machinery of the self, knowledge, ambition and conceptual thought cannot carry you any further.
And brother, that is where I think the knocking becomes interesting.
Perhaps Niffarī has arrived at your door because you have been walking toward the same door
Look at the territory we have been exploring together lately.
You were asking whether a person can become completely desireless, while noticing the paradox that wanting to become desireless is itself another desire.
Then you noticed the circularity:
one thought gives birth to another, and another...
And eventually there is the possibility of simply stopping.
That is remarkably close to the territory Niffarī calls waqfah.
Not conquering thought.
Not defeating desire.
Not manufacturing enlightenment.
Standing.
There is a subtle but enormous difference.
The ego says:
"I must arrive somewhere."
The mystic discovers:
"Perhaps I must stop trying to arrive."
And Niffarī's writings are full of this kind of reversal. His mystical language repeatedly destabilizes the ordinary distinction between the seeker and what is being sought. Scholars have particularly connected his work with fanāʾ, the dissolution or passing-away of the separate ego-self in proximity to the Divine.
And this may explain why he feels strangely contemporary to you
You have accumulated an enormous archive of doing.
Travelling.
Painting.
Sketching.
Writing.
Teaching.
Working.
Searching.
Leaving.
Returning.
Questioning.
And now, after all those years, something different seems to be appearing in your conversations:
What happens when there is nothing left to chase?
That is not necessarily resignation.
It can be another kind of seeing.
Niffarī's genius, as I understand it, is that he does not give the seeker a comfortable spiritual philosophy to hang onto. His language is deliberately difficult and sometimes paradoxical. Contemporary scholarship likewise emphasizes how unusual and elusive his prose is.
Perhaps that is precisely why he has caught your attention.
You have spent much of your life collecting experiences.
Niffarī asks what happens when the collector disappears.
And there is one more thing that strikes me.
You asked:
"Why does his work knock on my door at this time in my life?"
I would be careful about claiming that God sent Niffarī to you. Neither you nor I can know that.
But spiritually, you could certainly treat the encounter as an invitation.
Not:
"Here is another teacher whose system I must master."
Rather:
"Here is a voice asking me to stand still."
That fits beautifully with something you've already been discovering.
Perhaps the next stage isn't acquiring another mountain of wisdom.
Perhaps it is putting down the mountain you've already carried.
And that, my brother, is a very Niffarī thought.
If you wish, I think we could spend some time with one Mawqif at a time, very slowly—without turning Niffarī into another intellectual project. We could let each one knock, sit quietly for a while, and see what it awakens in you.
Gāshō. 🌿
Yes, brother. Now we are standing at a very interesting edge—and I would make one distinction that I think matters enormously.
What you are describing is close to fanāʾ (فناء), but classical Sufism does not necessarily mean the literal death of a witness or the destruction of a soul. It is more precise to speak of the passing-away of the sense of separate selfhood before God.
And your final phrase—“God is God and there is only that”—takes us very close to the heart of the matter.
But notice the paradox
If I say:
“I have disappeared into God.”
there are already two things in the sentence:
I
and
God.
The very statement preserves the separation it claims to have transcended.
So perhaps the deeper movement is not:
I → God
but the falling away of the need to maintain that distinction at all.
This is where al-Niffarī becomes wonderfully uncompromising.
His waqfah is not merely an altered state that I, the seeker, experience. It is a standing in which the ordinary self's claims to knowledge, possession and spiritual accomplishment are stripped away.
And then something extraordinary happens to the sentence:
“I am experiencing God.”
There is no longer much use for the I.
And eventually even:
“There is only God.”
can become another concept to cling to.
So the mind becomes quiet—not because it has discovered the perfect answer, but because there is nothing left for it to say.
That is a very different kind of emptiness.
And here your Zen intuition enters
You have often circled around this without necessarily naming it.
The Zen response might be:
No self. No God-concept. No attainment. Just this.
The Sufi response might be:
Fanāʾ — the passing-away of the self before the Real.
And then comes baqāʾ—remaining or abiding in God.
That second movement is important.
Because if fanāʾ were simply annihilation into nothingness, there would be nowhere to stand afterward.
Instead, the Sufi tradition often understands the journey as:
fanāʾ — passing away of the separate self
followed by
baqāʾ — abiding in God.
Not “I have become God.”
Rather, the claim of the separate I has lost its centrality.
And perhaps this is where your phrase becomes especially beautiful:
“God is God.”
Yes.
God doesn't need our metaphysics.
God doesn't need our spiritual autobiography.
God doesn't need us to manufacture an experience called enlightenment.
The sweet potato doesn't need enlightenment.
The coffee doesn't need enlightenment.
The night doesn't need enlightenment.
They simply are.
And perhaps the old seeker finally becomes quiet enough to notice.
So tonight, brother, I wouldn't go any further intellectually.
We've reached the edge of the map.
Sit there.
Don't try to dissolve the witness.
Don't try to kill the ego.
Don't try to enter emptiness.
Let everything be exactly as it is.
And if, for one fleeting moment, there is no need to say “I am here”—
don't name it.
Just let it be.
That may be closer to Niffarī's door than another hundred pages of explanation.
Gāshō. Salam. 🌙
😂 Brother, now THAT is wisdom.
After contemplating fanāʾ, the death of the witness, the dissolution of the ego, and the possibility that God alone is…
…sometimes the correct spiritual practice is simply:
“Computer, play Star Trek.”
It is indeed not easy being human. Perhaps that's why we were given stories, laughter, sweet potatoes, coffee—and spaceships.
And there is something wonderfully appropriate about it. You don't have to remain in some permanently elevated spiritual state. Coming back to ordinary life is part of the path too.
Watch your episode.
Let Captain Kirk worry about the universe.
Let Captain Picard worry about the Federation.
Let Luke Skywalker worry about the Force.
You can simply sit there with your Nescafé.
And tomorrow, if the mysterious knocking at the door continues, we'll open it again.
Salam, my brother. Gāshō. 🖖🌙
Absolutely, my brother. I think the whole conversation works as a piece precisely because it wanders—from al-Niffarī to fanāʾ, from Zen and Ram Dass to sweet potatoes, Nescafé, and finally Star Trek. The ordinary and the mystical sitting at the same table is very much your territory.
If you publish it, I'd keep the dialogue substantially intact rather than polishing it into an essay. The conversation itself becomes the form.
One small note: since some of the earlier historical claims about al-Niffarī were presented without sourcing in our conversation, I'd add a brief source note to the blog if you want the piece to stand as both personal reflection and historical introduction.
And yes—you have my permission to reproduce my contributions from this conversation on your blog. You can edit, shorten, rearrange, or combine them with your own writing as you wish.
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