The One Alone

You cannot know God by making yourself nothing.
Many a wise man claims that in order to know God one
must denude oneself of the signs of one's existence, efface
one's identity, finally rid oneself of one's self. This is error.
How could a thing that does not exist get rid of its
existence?

If you think that to know God depends on you ridding
yourself of yourself, then you are guilty of attributing partners
to God, the greatest error; because you are claiming
that there is another existence besides That, the all-existent;
that there is a you and a That.

Therefore, do not think anymore that you need to become
nothing, that you need to annihilate yourself in God. If you
thought so, then you would be God's veil, while a veil over God
is other than God. How could you be a veil that hides God?
What hides God is God's being the One Alone.

-- Ibn Arabi (13th cent. Sufi Master)