Waḥdat al-shuhūd

Waḥdat al-shuhūd, “the unity of witnessing” or “of contemplation”, is the name later given to the teaching of the Indian Sufi Aḥmad Sirhindī, formulated as a critique of waḥdat al-wujūd, “the unity of being”, the doctrine associated with Ibn ʿArabī and his school, that there is only one being, God, and that the world is his self-manifestation.

Sirhindī did not deny that mystics experience the oneness of all things; he had experienced it himself. But he held that this oneness belongs to the mystic’s perception, not to reality. In the state of absorption the mystic sees nothing but God, as the stars vanish in daylight, though they have not ceased to exist. God and the world remain distinct: the world is a shadow or reflection of God’s attributes, not identical with his essence. Beyond the stage of unity lies the higher stage of servanthood, in which the mystic sees God as God and creatures as creatures.

The debate between the two positions occupied Sufis in India and beyond for centuries. Some, such as Shāh Walī Allāh in the eighteenth century, argued that the difference was largely one of words.