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| Excrepts from KASHF-AL MAHJUB The oldest persian treatise on Sufism |
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| by
Ali B. Uthman Al-Jullabi Al Hujwary (Popularly known as Hazrat Data Gunj Baksh) |
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| Translated by Reynold A. Nicholson |
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| Discourse on Subsistence (baqa) and (fana) Annihilation |
| Annihilation of Essence is a Christian Dogma |
| The Nestorians of Rum and the Christians hold that Mary annihilated by self-mortification all the attributes of humanity (awsaf-e-nasuti) and that the Divine subsistence became attached to her, so that she was made subsistent through the subsistence of God, and Jesus was the result thereof, and that he was not originally composed of the stuff of humanity, because his subsistence is produced by realization of the subsistence of God; and consequently, he and his mother and God are all subsistent through one subsistence, which is eternal and an attribute of God. Ali Hujwary has strongly condemned such views held by anthropomorphist sects of the Hashwiyya, who maintain that the Divine essence is a locus of phenomena (mahall-e-hawadith) and that the Eternal may have phenomenal attributes. |
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| Annihilation is of Attributes and not of Essence
Some wrongly imagine that annihilation signifies loss of essence and destruction of personality, and that subsistence indicates the subsistence of God in Man; both these notions are absurd. Many ignorant Sufis cannot distinguish the Eternal from the phenomenal and consider that total annihilation (fana-yi-kulliyat) is possible but this is a manifest error, for annihilation of the different parts of a material substance (tinati) can never take place. |
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| Annihilation and Subsistence may be independent of each other. Annihilation is the annihilation of one attribute through the subsistence of another attribute. However, one may speak of an annihilation that is independent of subsistence, and a subsistence that is independent of annihilation. In such a case annihilation means �annihilation of all remembrance of other�, and subsistence means �subsistence of the remembrance of God�. (baqa-e-dihkr-e-haqq). When one follows one�s own will, i.e. by negating or challenging Divine Law, he stands by annihilation because human will is perishable. When one follows God�s will, i.e. by following Divine Law and sacrificing personal will, he stands by subsistence because Divine will is Eternal. |
| Ali Hujwary would advise you to let yourself completely controlled by Divine Will. |
| Annihilation of Annihilation |
| Ali Hujwary himself in the end hath declared, �annihilation comes to a man through vision of the Majesty of God and through the revelation of Divine omnipotence to his heart, so that in the overwhelming sense of His Majesty this world and next world are obliterated from his mind, and �states� and �stations� appear contemptible in the sight of his aspiring thought, and what is shown to him of miraculous grace vanishes into nothing: |
| He becomes dead to reason and passion alike, dead even to annihilation itself; and in that annihilation of annihilation his tongue proclaims God, and his mind and body are humble and abased, as in the beginning when Adam�s posterity were drawn forth from his loins without admixture of evil and took the pledge of servantship to God. (Qur'an, 7: 171) |