tantaman

Wanting Without Willing: A Collection of Primary Sources

Published 2026-02-19

I experienced the cessation of the will while wishing for our newborn daughter to be soothed and stop crying. I saw the self dissolve. It was as if a glass was removed from the one and reality. I could still want but wanting was without will. All the machinations of the self were gone and proven draining and illusory. What have other traditions said about this throughout time?

Meister Eckhart (1260–1328)

Sermon 52, "Blessed Are the Poor in Spirit"

Eckhart's most radical sermon. Poverty of spirit is poverty of will — not the absence of desire but the cessation of the self that authors desire.

In the breaking-through, when I come to be free of will, of myself and of God's will and of all his works and of God himself, then I am above all created things, and I am neither God nor creature, but I am what I was and what I shall remain, now and eternally.

— Sermon 52 (Beati pauperes spiritu), trans. in Walshe & McGinn, The Complete Mystical Works of Meister Eckhart (Crossroad, 2009)

The cessation of will discards not only self but also conventional understandings of God:

Hence, the cessation of will discards self and conventional understanding, for we no longer cling to anything, even to conventional understandings of God. For the ground of being is the trajectory of Eckhart's mysticism.

— Commentary in Gelassenheit in Meister Eckhart, Hermitary

On Detachment (Abgeschiedenheit)

True detachment is nothing else than for the spirit to stand as immovable against whatever may chance to it of joy and sorrow, honour, shame and disgrace, as a mountain of lead stands before a little breath of wind.

— On Detachment (Von Abgeschiedenheit), trans. in Walshe & McGinn (2009), p. 566–567

I find no other virtue better than a pure detachment from all things, because all other virtues have some regard for created things, but detachment is free from all created things.

— On Detachment, same edition

Detachment is receptive of nothing but God.

— On Detachment, DW V, p. 404; Walshe & McGinn (2009), p. 567

On the Will and Self-Abandonment

Make a start with yourself, and abandon yourself. Truly, if you do not begin by getting away from yourself, wherever you run to, you will find obstacles and trouble wherever it may be.

— Talks of Instruction (Reden der Unterweisung), in Walshe & McGinn (2009)

People who seek peace in external things — be it in places or ways of life or people or activities or solitude or poverty or degradation — however great such a thing may be or whatever it may be, still it is all nothing and gives no peace.

— Talks of Instruction, same edition

Whoever wishes to come after me, let him deny himself. … Take a look at yourself, and wherever you find yourself, deny yourself. That is best of all.

— Talks of Instruction, citing Matthew 16:24

Sermon 86: Martha and Mary

After the breaking-through, the active life is not abandoned but transfigured. Martha, not Mary, is the more advanced:

What will Martha's labors look like after the breaking-through? It will look like nothing less than the same as the active stage in external appearance — but with a subtle difference.

— Sermon 86, commentary in Hermitary

Living Without a Why

If anyone were to ask a truthful man who works out of his own ground: "Why are you performing your works?" and if he were to give a straight answer, he would say nothing else than: "I work, therefore I work."

— Sermon 86, in Walshe & McGinn (2009)

And from Eckhart's lineage, the aphorism of Angelus Silesius (1624–1677):

The rose is without why, it blooms because it blooms.

— Cherubinischer Wandersmann (The Cherubinic Wanderer), I.289

Works and Their Ground

With releasement of will, all works can be holy, even sleeping and eating. Take good heed. We ought to do everything we can to be good; it does not matter so much what we may do, or what kinds of works ours may be. What matters is the ground on which the works are built.

— Talks of Instruction, in Walshe & McGinn (2009)

Keep in mind: to be full of things is to be empty of God, while to be empty of things is to be full of God.

— On Detachment, trans. in Blakney, Meister Eckhart: A Modern Translation (Harper & Row, 1941), p. 85

The Eye of God

The eye in which I see God is the same eye in which God sees me; my eye and God's eye are one eye and one seeing, one knowing and one loving.

— Sermon 12, trans. in Davies, Meister Eckhart: Selected Writings (Penguin, 1994)

Gelassenheit (Releasement)

Gelassenheit carries a double meaning: verlassen (to abandon, to leave behind) and überlassen (to defer, to give over to).

Initially, releasement for Eckhart signifies a notion of will, a not-willing, which detaches or cuts off the individual from the worldly will.

— Bret Davis, in Heidegger's Gesamtausgabe, Vol. 77, translator's introduction (2007), p. xxvii–xxviii

Genuine mysticism begins in detachment and releasement, and culminates in ecstatic communion, but then returns as enlightened activity — activity informed by a dynamic nothingness rather than an artificially static tolerance for living.

— Commentary in Hermitary, Gelassenheit in Meister Eckhart

Simone Weil (1909–1943)

Gravity and Grace (La pesanteur et la grâce, 1947)

On Gravity, Grace, and the Self

All the natural movements of the soul are controlled by laws analogous to those of physical gravity. Grace is the only exception.

— Gravity and Grace, trans. Crawford & von der Ruhr (Routledge, 2002), opening passage

Grace fills empty spaces, but it can only enter where there is a void to receive it, and it is grace itself which makes this void. The imagination is continually at work filling up all the fissures through which grace might pass.

— Gravity and Grace, same edition

The self is only the shadow which sin and error cast by stopping the light of God.

— Gravity and Grace, same edition

Décréation (Decreation)

God consented through love to cease to be everything so that we might be something; we must consent through love to cease to be anything so that God may become everything again. It is therefore a question of abolishing the self within us.

— Gravity and Grace, introduction by Gustave Thibon

Decreation defined:

To make something created pass into the uncreated.

— Gravity and Grace, same edition

Will and Attention

The will is only useful for servile tasks; it controls the right use of natural virtues. But the divine seed comes from elsewhere.

— Gravity and Grace, introduction by Thibon

We have to try to cure our faults by attention and not by will. The will only controls a few movements of a few muscles, and these movements are associated with the idea of the change of position of nearby objects.

— Gravity and Grace, same edition

Attention alone, that attention which is so full that the 'I' disappears, is required of me. I have to deprive all that I call 'I' of the light of my attention and turn it onto that which cannot be conceived.

— Gravity and Grace, pp. 171–172

Attention, taken to its highest degree, is the same thing as prayer. It presupposes faith and love. Absolutely unmixed attention is prayer.

— Simone Weil, anthologized in Simone Weil: An Anthology, ed. Siân Miles (Penguin, 2005)

On Moral Action Without the Self

Through well-directed attention we do only those righteous actions which we cannot stop ourselves from doing.

— Gravity and Grace, same edition

It is only effort without desire — not attached to an object — which infallibly contains a reward.

— Gravity and Grace, same edition

On Renunciation

To give up our imaginary position as the center, to renounce it, not only intellectually but in the imaginative part of our soul, that means to awaken to what is real and eternal, to see the true light and hear the true silence.

— Waiting for God (Attente de Dieu, 1950), trans. Craufurd (Putnam, 1951)

To remit debts is to renounce our own personality. It means renouncing everything that goes to make up our ego, without any exception. It means knowing that in the ego there is nothing whatever, no psychological element, that external circumstances could not do away with. It means accepting that truth. It means being happy that things should be so.

— Gravity and Grace, same edition

Bhagavad Gita

Chapter 2: Nishkama Karma (Desireless Action)

Verse 2.47

You have a right to perform your prescribed duties, but you are not entitled to the fruits of your actions. Never consider yourself to be the cause of the results of your activities, nor be attached to inaction.

— Bhagavad Gita 2.47, trans. Swami Mukundananda

The four instructions contained in this verse: (1) Do your duty, but do not concern yourself with the results. (2) The fruits of your actions are not for your enjoyment. (3) Even while working, give up the pride of doership (kartritwābhimān). (4) Do not be attached to inaction.

— Commentary, Bhagavad Gita: The Song of God, Swami Mukundananda

Verse 2.48

Fixed in yoga, do thy work, O Winner of wealth, abandoning attachment, with an even mind in success and failure, for evenness of mind is called yoga.

— Bhagavad Gita 2.48, trans. S. Radhakrishnan, The Bhagavadgita (1948)

Verse 2.47 (alternate translation)

To action alone hast thou a right and never at all to its fruits; let not the fruits of action be thy motive; neither let there be in thee any attachment to inaction.

— Bhagavad Gita 2.47, trans. S. Radhakrishnan

Verse 2.49

Work with attachment is far inferior to desireless action. Therefore seek refuge in desireless action with equanimity of mind. Those who work for fruits and rewards are wrecked.

— Bhagavad Gita 2.49, trans. Swami Sivananda

On the Doer and Doership

Even while working, give up the pride of doership. Shree Krishna wants Arjun to give up kartritwābhimān, or the ego of being the doer. He instructs Arjun never to chase after preconceived motives attached to his actions nor consider himself as the cause of the results of his actions.

— Commentary on 2.47, Swami Mukundananda

Nishkama Karma Defined

Action without desire for the fruits of action. According to the Bhagavad Gita, no being can escape karma by refraining from action. Instead, one may practice nishkama karma, or action without desire. If one is not attached to the consequences of his actions, then one will gradually and ultimately free oneself from the bondage of karma.

— Yogapedia / Ananda Sangha, defining nishkama karma

The Attitude of Work

Two persons may be engaged in the same work. One does it for personal enjoyment and fame, and he misses the true end. Another does it without any personal thought or feeling. He achieves the true aim and becomes free. So the attitude to work is most important whatever may be the actual value of the work.

— Commentary on 2.49, Swami Sivananda, The Bhagavad Gita (Divine Life Society)

Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching (c. 6th century BCE)

On Wu Wei (Effortless Action)

Chapter 63

Act, but through nonaction. Be active, but have no activities.

— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 63, trans. Philip J. Ivanhoe, The Daodejing of Laozi (Hackett, 2003)

Chapter 37

The Way never acts yet nothing is left undone.

— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 37, paraphrased in multiple translations

Ursula K. Le Guin's rendering

Over and over Lao Tzu says wei wu wei: Do not do. Doing not-doing. To act without acting. Action by inaction.

— Ursula K. Le Guin, Lao Tzu: Tao Te Ching — A Book About the Way and the Power of the Way (Shambhala, 1997)

Le Guin defines wu wei:

"Doing without doing": uncompetitive, unworried, trustful accomplishment, power that is not force.

— Le Guin, same edition

Chapter 3

Do that which consists in taking no action and order will prevail.

— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 3, trans. D.C. Lau (Penguin, 1963)

Zhuangzi (c. 369–286 BCE): Cook Ding

The Zhuangzi develops Lao Tzu's wu wei through the story of the butcher whose knife never dulls — because he cuts without willing, following the grain of what is already there:

When I first began cutting up oxen, all I could see was the ox itself. After three years I no longer saw the whole ox. And now — now I go at it by spirit and don't look with my eyes. Perception and understanding have come to a stop, and spirit moves where it wants.

— Zhuangzi, Chapter 3 ("The Secret of Caring for Life"), trans. Burton Watson, Chuang Tzu: Basic Writings (Columbia University Press, 1964), p. 47

On Nature and Effortlessness

Human effort is very imprecise and often interferes with the sensational patterns found in nature.

— Alan Watts, commentary on wu wei, The Watercourse Way (Pantheon, 1975)

From the sage's emptiness, stillness arises; from stillness, action. From action, attainment.

— Zhuangzi, paraphrased in multiple anthologies

The softest thing in the world dashes against and overcomes the hardest; that which has no substantial existence enters where there is no crevice. I know hereby what advantage belongs to doing nothing with a purpose.

— Tao Te Ching, Chapter 43, trans. James Legge (1891)

The Cloud of Unknowing (anonymous, c. 1375)

An anonymous English monk's guide to contemplative prayer. The willing mind must be stripped to a "naked intent" — naked meaning emptied of all content, all images, all furniture.

The Naked Intent

You will seem to know nothing and to feel nothing except a naked intent toward God in the depths of your being. You will feel frustrated, for your mind will be unable to grasp Him, and your heart will not relish the delight of His love. But learn to be at home in this darkness. Return to it as often as you can, letting your spirit cry out to him whom you love.

— The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 3, trans. William Johnston (Doubleday, 1973), and in Carmen Acevedo Butcher, The Cloud of Unknowing: A New Translation (Shambhala, 2009)

The Cloud of Forgetting

If you wish to enter into this cloud, to be at home in it, and to take up the contemplative work of love as I urge you to, there is something else you must do. Just as the cloud of unknowing lies above you, between you and your God, so you must fashion a cloud of forgetting beneath you, between you and every created thing.

— The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 5, trans. Johnston (1973)

Everything Dwelt Upon Becomes an Obstacle

Everything you dwell upon during this work becomes an obstacle to union with God. For if your mind is cluttered with these concerns there is no room for him. Yes, and with all due reverence, I go so far as to say that it is equally useless to think you can nourish your contemplative work by considering God's attributes, his kindness or his dignity. It is far better to let your mind rest in the awareness of him in his naked existence and to love and praise him for what he is in himself.

— The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 5, trans. Johnston (1973)

Nothing Is All

So who labels this "nothing"? That would be the outer self. Our inner self calls this nothing "all," because experiencing this nothing gives us an intuitive sense of all creation, both physical and spiritual, without paying special attention to any one thing.

— The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 68, trans. Butcher (2009)

On God Beyond Knowledge

By love may He be gotten and holden, but never through thought.

— The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 6, trans. Evelyn Underhill (1922)

Against the Proud Intellect

Here is how to understand in brief the nature of this work of contemplation: it is far from any fantasy, false imagining, or strange opinion; for these are produced not by any such devout and humble blind stirring of love, but by a proud, ingenious and fanciful intellect. Such a proud, ingenious intellect must always be overcome and firmly trodden underfoot if the work of contemplation is to be truly undertaken in purity of spirit.

— The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapters 16–22 summary, trans. Butcher (2009)

A Naked Intent Direct unto God

Lift then up thine heart unto God with a meek stirring of love; and mean God that made thee, and bought thee, and that graciously hath called thee to thy degree, and receive none other thought of God. And yet not all these, but if thou list; for it sufficeth enough, a naked intent direct unto God without any other cause than Himself.

— The Cloud of Unknowing, Chapter 7, trans. Evelyn Underhill (1922), from the Middle English original

Jiddu Krishnamurti (1895–1986)

The Observer Is the Observed

Krishnamurti's central insight: the self that observes is not separate from what it observes. The "watcher" is the watched. There is no entity standing apart from experience to control or will it.

I am anger, am I not? Anger is not something separate from me. I am greed, envy, anxiety. I like to think that is something separate over which I have control. But the actual fact is I am all that — even the controller is me.

— "Freedom from the Self," public talk, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

You are not separate from your face, from your name, from your bank account, from your values, from your experience, from your knowledge — you are all that. So, when one realizes this truth, that you are not separate from that which you feel, which you desire, which you want, which you pursue, which you fear, there is no conflict.

— Quoted in Leah Luong, "Jiddu Krishnamurti," The Culturium (2022)

The Self Has No Substance

When you look at that very closely you will see that "me" has no reality — reality means substance — it's just words, things that are dead. And to die to all that, to die to my identities, to my ambitions, to my beliefs, ideologies, to end all that — not through will, not through determination, but seeing the unreality of it. Seeing the truth in the false dissipates the false, ends the false.

— "When the Mind Realises the Observer Is the Observed There Is a Release of Energy," public talk, Krishnamurti Portal

Against Will and Effort

Can that self end? Not by discipline, by control, by suppression or identification with something greater, which is still the movement of the self.

— "Freedom from the Self," public talk, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

That stillness cannot be manufactured. That's what you are all trying to do, to manufacture it through will, through practice, through all kinds of stupid things.

— "In Meditation There Is No Observer or the Observed," public talk, Krishnamurti Portal

When you recognize that every movement of the mind is merely a form of strengthening the self, when you observe it, see it, when you are completely aware of it in action — then you will see that the mind, being utterly still, has no power of creating. Whatever it creates is within the circle of the self.

— "Freedom from the Self," Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

Choiceless Awareness

And out of this choiceless awareness perhaps the door will open and you will know what that dimension is in which there is no conflict and no time.

— Freedom from the Known (Harper & Row, 1969), closing passage

You cannot possibly invite the other. All that you can do is to keep the room in order, which is to be virtuous for itself, not for what it will bring.

— Freedom from the Known, same edition

Attention is not the same thing as concentration. Concentration is exclusion; attention, which is total awareness, excludes nothing.

— Freedom from the Known, p. 31

On Dying to the Known

To be free of all authority, of your own and that of another, is to die to everything of yesterday, so that your mind is always fresh, always young, innocent, full of vigour and passion.

— Freedom from the Known, same edition

Our fear is not of the unknown, but of letting go of the known. It is only when the mind allows the known to fade away that there is complete freedom from the known, and only then is it possible for the new impulse to come into being.

— Choiceless Awareness: A Study Book of the Teachings of J. Krishnamurti (Krishnamurti Foundation, 1991)

While living, can we end something without any cause, without any future — end something? Take for example: will you end all attachment — attachment to your name, attachment to your furniture, attachment to your wife, to your husband, to your garden, attachment to your ideas, prejudices — end all attachments while living? That is what is going to happen when you actually die. So do it now and see what it means. That ending is tremendous, has tremendous quality behind it. There is no attachment to anything. That is freedom, and when there is that kind of freedom death has no fear.

— "Freedom from the Self," public talk, Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

On Love and the End of Self

When there is love, self is not. Self cannot recognize love. You say, "I love," but in the very saying of it, in the very experiencing of it, love is not.

— "Freedom from the Self," Krishnamurti Foundation Trust

It is truth that liberates, not your effort to be free.

— Attributed widely; see Commentaries on Living, Series I (1956)

Truth Is a Pathless Land

I maintain that Truth is a pathless land and you cannot approach it by any path whatsoever, by any religion, by any sect.

— Dissolution speech for the Order of the Star, Ommen, Netherlands, August 3, 1929

Islamic Mysticism (Sufism)

The Qur'an: Surat al-Rahman 55:26–27

The sole Qur'anic verse citing the roots of both fana and baqa together — the seed from which the entire Sufi mystical tradition grows.

All that dwells upon the earth is perishing (fānin), yet still abides (yabqā) the Face of thy Lord, majestic, splendid.

— Qur'an 55:26–27, trans. A.J. Arberry, The Koran Interpreted (Allen & Unwin, 1955)

Fana and Baqa as Doctrine

The Sufi teaching of passing away from worldly reality and being made subsistent in divine reality describes the apex of mystic experience and union with God. As a correlative pair of notions, in which fana logically precedes baqa, it is applied to two levels of meaning: the passing away of human consciousness in the divine and the obliteration of imperfect qualities of the soul by substitution of new, divinely bestowed attributes.

— Gerhard Böwering, "Baqāʾ wa Fanāʾ," Encyclopaedia Iranica (1988)

The transition from existence to non-existence is not a total annihilation, since the Sufi's self is not reduced to pure nothingness. Rather, it is purification of the Sufi's self which is drawn to higher forms of being and ultimately absorbed in God.

— Böwering, same entry

Many Sufis hold that fana alone is a negative state. Through fanā' 'an al-fanā' ("passing away from passing away"), however, the Sufi succeeds in annihilating human attributes and loses all awareness of earthly existence; he then, through the grace of God, is revived. Only after regaining full consciousness does he attain the more sublime state of baqa (subsistence) and finally become ready for the direct vision of God.

— "Fana," Encyclopaedia Britannica

Abu'l-Qasim al-Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910)

Junayd is the architect of the fana/baqa framework as systematic doctrine.

Returning to his non-existence, which actually is his only true existence, the mystic "is as he was, when he was before he was" — or has reached his goal of "returning to the beginning" — "being the way he was at the moment he was not as yet."

— Junayd, quoted in Böwering, "Baqāʾ wa Fanāʾ," Encyclopaedia Iranica (1988), drawing on Kalābāḏī and Anṣārī

Al-Kharraz (d. c. 899)

The first to develop fana and baqa as formal technical terms:

Kharraz defined fanā' as "the annihilation of consciousness of manhood" and baqā' as "the subsistence in the contemplation of Godhead." Hujwiri interprets the term "manhood" here as agency in one's actions — thus fanā' is the destruction of the illusion that one's actions are one's own.

— Summarized in A.H. Wilcox, "The Dual Mystical Concepts of Fanā' and Baqā' in Early Sūfism," cited in Reading the Doctrine of Fana and Baqa in the Mathnawi of Jalal al-Din Rumi (academic thesis), pp. 110–111

Annihilation as Negation of the Unreal

When travelers reach the perfection of their own capacity, created in God's image, they experience nothing but the negation of egocentric, separative reality and the affirmation of God-centered, unitive reality. Annihilation is the negation of something that never truly was.

— William C. Chittick, Sufism: A Beginner's Guide (Oneworld, 2000), pp. 43–44

Al-Ghazali (1058–1111)

Ihya Ulum al-Din (The Revival of the Religious Sciences)

On the meaning of nafs (self/ego):

It has two meanings. First, it means the powers of anger and sexual appetite in a human being — and this is the usage mostly found among the Sufis, who take "nafs" as the comprehensive word for all the evil attributes of a person. That is why they say: One must certainly do battle with the ego and break it (la budda min mujahadat al-nafs wa kasriha).

— Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 21 (On the Elucidation of the Marvels of the Heart), trans. in "Jihad al-Nafs" selections, Masarrat al-Quloob

On the three states of the self:

If the soul assumes calmness under command and has removed from itself the disturbance caused by the onslaught of passion, it is called "the satisfied soul" (al-nafs al-mutma'inna). When it does not achieve calmness, yet sets itself against the love of passions and objects to it, it is called "the self-accusing soul" (al-nafs al-lawwama). If it gives up all protest and surrenders itself in total obedience to the call of passions and Satan, it is named "the soul that enjoins evil" (al-nafs al-ammara bi al-su').

— Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 21, same source

The metaphor of the body as a besieged city:

Know that the body is like a town and the intellect of the mature human being is like a king ruling that town. All the forces of the external and internal senses he can muster are like his soldiers and his aides. The ego that enjoins evil — lust and anger — is like an enemy that challenges him in his kingdom and strives to slaughter his people.

— Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din, Book 21, same source

On the spiritual life:

The spiritual life in Islam begins with riyadat al-nafs, the inner warfare against the ego. Distracted and polluted by worldliness, the lower self has a tendency to drag the human creature down into arrogance and vice.

— T.J. Winter (Abdal Hakim Murad), introduction to Al-Ghazali on Disciplining the Soul and Breaking the Two Desires: Books XXII and XXIII of the Ihya Ulum al-Din (Islamic Texts Society, 1995)

Mansur al-Hallaj (858–922)

Executed in Baghdad for the utterance ana'l-Haq — "I am the Truth" (i.e., "I am God"):

Al-Hallaj's supporters see his life and work as the realization of fanā: by killing his individual self, his limited personality, he ultimately unified with the unlimited self of God.

— Summarized in multiple sources; see Massignon, The Passion of al-Hallaj (Princeton, 1982)

Rumi's defense of Hallaj:

"I am the Truth" on the lips of Mansur was the light; "I am God" on the lips of Pharaoh was a lie. When the Shaykh said "I am God" and carried it through, he throttled all the blind. When a man's "I" is negated from existence, then what remains?

— Jalal al-Din Rumi, cited in multiple commentaries on the Masnavi; see also Sasan Habibvand, Through the Eyes of Rumi (2024)

Ibn Arabi (1165–1240)

Kernel of the Kernel (Lubb al-Lubb)

The first presence is a station of God in which "no qualification or name is possible. Whatever word is used to explain this station is inadequate, because at this Presence the Ipseity of God is in Complete Transcendence from everything, because He has not yet descended into the Circle of Names and Qualities. All the Names and Qualities are buried in annihilation in the Ipseity of God."

— Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel (Lubb al-Lubb), Chapter 3, trans. Ismail Hakki Bursevi, Beshara Publications

It is essential to know that as there is no end to the Ipseity of God or to His qualification, consequently the Universes have no end or number, because the Universes are the places of manifestation for the Names and Qualities. As that which manifests is endless, so the places of manifestation must be endless. Consequently, the Qur'anic sentence: "He is at every moment in a different configuration" (Q 55:29) means equally that there is no end to the revelation of God.

— Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel, Chapter 3, same edition

On fana as purification, not destruction:

There is no passing away (fanā') except from such and such, as there also is no subsisting (baqā') except through such and such and with this and that.

— Ibn Arabi, cited in Böwering, "Baqāʾ wa Fanāʾ," Encyclopaedia Iranica (1988)

Jalal al-Din Rumi (1207–1273)

The Masnavi (Masnavi-ye Ma'navi)

On fana and baqa — what life looks like after the glass shatters:

After the experience of fana, one doesn't leave the world, but integrates fana into the world of baqa, becoming the vessel of God, yet living one's life, but without craving the idols it presents.

— Paraphrased from Rumi, in Networkologies commentary on the Masnavi, drawing on Chittick, Sufism (2000)

They began as stones, they were shattered by the brilliance of the divine light, and now they have been resurrected as precious jewels.

— Rumi, cited in Chittick, Sufism, pp. 43–44

On dying before death:

Die before you die: there is no other way to freedom.

— Rumi, widely attributed; see Masnavi, various translations

On the ego and love:

Let your ego burn in the fire of love. From its ashes, the real you will emerge.

— Rumi, widely anthologized

The self is a shadow. Step into the light, and it disappears.

— Rumi, widely anthologized

Sobriety After Intoxication

The Sufi tradition names two higher stages: "intoxication" (fana) and "sobriety after intoxication" (baqa) — the return to ordinary life after ecstatic dissolution, but now the ordinary has been transfigured.

The terms annihilation and subsistence are derived from the Koranic passage: "Everything upon the earth is undergoing annihilation, but there subsists the face of your Lord, Possessor of Majesty and Generous Giving" (55:26–27). When travelers reach the perfection of their own capacity, created in God's image, they experience nothing but the negation of egocentric, separative reality and the affirmation of God-centered, unitive reality.

— Chittick, Sufism, pp. 43–44

Fana as Understood by Early Sufis

Fana was interpreted as a recognition of the will of God, or the abandonment of being conscious of one's self, replacing this with contemplation on God alone.

— Summary of al-Hujwiri's account, in "Fana (Sufism)," Wikipedia, drawing on Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub

In simpler terms, fana to them was the abandonment of one's individual self and replacing it solely with the contemplation of Allah and only recognizing His Will.

— "Road to Sufism — Baqaa and Fana," Medium

One may speak of an annihilation that is independent of annihilation: in that case annihilation (fana) means "annihilation of all remembrance of other" and subsistence (baqa) means "subsistence of the remembrance of God."

— Al-Hujwiri, Kashf al-Mahjub, cited in "Road to Sufism," Medium

Hazrat Ali (d. 661)

When Hazrat Ali heard the Hadith "At that time God was in a state such that there was nothing with Him," he added: "Even at this moment He is still so."

— Cited in Ibn Arabi, Kernel of the Kernel, Chapter 3, Beshara translation

Key Texts for Further Reading

Meister Eckhart

Simone Weil

Bhagavad Gita

Lao Tzu

The Cloud of Unknowing

Jiddu Krishnamurti

Islamic Mysticism (Sufism)