Fanāʾ

Fanāʾ, “passing away” or “annihilation”, is the Sufi term for the extinction of the self’s separate awareness and will in God. The word recalls the Qurʾānic verse that everything on earth passes away, and only the face of the Lord remains. The Sufis use it of a state in which the seeker is no longer aware of themselves, their acts or even their own passing away, but only of God.

Sufi writers describe fanāʾ in degrees: passing away from blameworthy qualities, from the self’s own will, and finally from all awareness of anything but God. Some of the boldest sayings of the early Sufis, such as al-Ḥallāj’s “I am the Truth”, were understood by later Sufis as spoken from this state, by God rather than by the speaker.

Most Sufi teachers insist that fanāʾ is not the end of the path. It is completed by baqāʾ, “subsistence”, in which the seeker returns to the world, living by God rather than by the self, and keeping the law. The relation between fanāʾ and the Buddhist nirvāṇa, the “blowing out”, has often been discussed; the two are compared, but the Sufi passing away is a passing into God.