Let us continue with the words of Niyazi Misri:

“Allah has openly shown me that besides Him, nothing has neither an external nor an internal existence. It is only assumed to exist. He has let it be known to me that the gnostic cannot directly observe the One unveiled, unless he has totally annihilated his existence.

Allah says;

“On that day some faces will look to their Rabb with joy”

If he doesn’t annihilate his existence he will not be paying the due of the trust he has taken aboard, the trust that Allah offered to the heavens and the earth and which they trembled and hesitated to accept, the trust of “existence” that only mankind has taken. He will never be freed of treachery and will not be likable to Allah based on the verse, “Allah does not like the treacherous.”

How can the veil be lifted from his eyes and how can he see Allah when he takes ownership of the trust of existence, which belongs only to Allah! Whereas the faqr (poor) means one who is absent of existence, one who does not associate existence to anything other than Allah. For when the veil of a supposed existence is lifted from things the One is seen and this seeing is never lost! If you were to ask, “If the observable existence belongs only to Allah then who are the gnostic? Who is it that looks at and sees Him?” To this my answer will be: existence is one but its layers are many! At one level it appears as the lover at another the beloved; at one level it is the rose, at another the nightingale…”

In the Al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya Muhyiddin Ibn al-‘Arabi writes:

“The Rabb is the One (the ultimate Reality), the servant is the One;

Oh if I only knew who is the amenable one?

If I say it is the servant, he is dead!

If I say it is the Rabb; 

How can the Rabb be amenable?”

The servant is the One! The Rabb is the One! That which is referenced with the word servant and that which is referenced with the word Rabb are one and the same. So, from whence does this “amenability” is born?

That which we refer to as the One exists fully in every iota, that is, with its Absolute Essence (dhat), which encapsulates infinite meanings, some of which we know as the Ninety-nine Names, and their manifestations, which we call the Dimension of Acts (af’al). In short, every iota is nothing other than the existence of the One.

This being the case, whatever object we perceive and name, whether it is animate or inanimate, from the micro level to the macro levels of life, all of it is the existence of the One. There is nothing that exists independent of the One.

So, once we understand this, that the entire existence is a dance of manifestation of the divine names and their compositions, what’s next?

The next step is to understand that our own existence, or what we believe to be our own, is an illusion.

That is, if a person is a unique composition of divine meanings and qualities then how can we talk of a “person” separate and independent of Allah?

Since the person’s being is comprised of the divine names which are one and the same as the divine, one who reaches this level of awareness and comprehension can no longer be in a state of duality, they will observe the One in everyone and everything. 

They will know that wherever and whenever the One is mentioned that it refers to their quintessential reality. More than knowing, they will feel and experience this. As a consequence of this observation they will be driven to prove their reality.

So, what is this quintessential reality?