Let yourself abandon your ‘you’ and let me abandon my ‘me’ so that we may meet in ‘nothingness’, and be!
According to one narration:
What begins at the ‘point’ ends at the ‘alif[1]’.
That is, everything begins at the point of ‘Oneness’ (Ahadiyyah) and ends at the ‘alif of ‘Unity’ (Wahidiyyah). The whole of existence is only one reflection, referred in Sufism as the ‘One Theophany’ or the Divine Self-disclosure of Allah (Tajalli Wahid).
According to another narration:
What begins at the ‘point’ ends at the ‘sīn[2]’.
Where sīn indicates ‘human’ in Arabic, and the point is the ‘One’ (Ahad).
The Quran begins with the letter ‘bā’[3] of the ‘basmalah[4]’, or to be more precise, the point beneath the bā. When this point is extended it becomes an alif!
Just like when one wants to draw a line, one begins at a ‘point’ which then becomes the source, from which the line extends. The ‘bāʾ’ of the ‘basmalah’ is the source point of all of the characters in the Quran. The point never changes. Every character is a series of points that come together and seem like lines. In their essence, they are repetitions of the same point!
Hadhrat Ali says: “I am the point beneath the bāʾ”, perhaps to mean, “I am none, yet I am all… I am the ‘alif”.
The last chapter of the Quran is called Nâs, which means humans. As mentioned, the letter sīn is representative of a single human. Hence, the chapter ‘Yasīn’ means ‘O humans’ (or ‘O mankind’).
Eventually what we have is a semi-circle, going from the ‘point’ to ‘man’, and the journey of man back to the point.
Uniting with Allah, in essence, comes about, in man, with the knowledge of the ‘point’.
Will the knowledge of the point make mankind (nâs) obsolete?
Since, in terms of their actual reality, humans do not have an independent existence; it makes no sense to talk about losing something that doesn’t exist in the first place.
It was mentioned above that He manifested as creation, the ‘meanings’ He wanted to observe.
We were told these meanings were 99 in total, albeit this figure is only in reference to the ‘samples’ and not the whole. Just as our 5 senses give us some insight into the innumerable qualities of the brain, the 99 Names give us an idea about the infinite meanings encompassed by the One (Ahad). Evidently, an infinite and unrestricted being will possess infinite and unrestricted meanings.
[1] Alif (ا) is the first letter of the Arabic alphabet, and represents unity depicted by its single stroke.
[2] Sīn (س) is the 12th letter of the Arabic alphabet. As a word ‘sīn’ is synonymous with ‘man’ or ‘human.’
[3] ‘Bā’ (ب) is the second letter of the Arabic alphabet, and the first letter of the Quran. It holds a symbolic value in Hadhrat Ali’s acclaimed saying “I am the point beneath the bā”, the point referring to individual experience being the result of their intrinsic reality.
[4] The Basmalah is an Arabic noun used to refer to the Quranic phrase “b-ismi-Allah-er-Rahman-er-Rahim” found in the beginning of every chapter of the Quran, which literally means “In the name of Allah who is Rahman and Rahim.”