Fana

for Ibn ‘Arabi fana’ is never absolute annihilation… Fana’ and baqa’ are always relative terms… one must always state toward what there is annihilation, and wherein there is survival

Corbin argues, following Ibn ‘Arabi, that fana is irreducibly relational — always annihilation toward a specific referent and always paired with baqa’, survival in divine attributes — making the mystic a medium of divine creative power.

Corbin, Henry, Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, 1969thesis

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in the writings of Bayazid two stages of the mystic way are distinguished: first, the ‘passing away of the self’ (fanā), and second, the ‘unitive life in God’ (baqā)… stress going chiefly to the world-dissolving disciplines of fanā, rapture

Campbell maps fana as the first of two Sufi mystical stages — self-dissolution preceding unitive subsistence in God — and situates it within a comparative framework spanning Islam and Indian non-dualism.

Campbell, Joseph, Occidental Mythology: The Masks of God, Volume III, 1964thesis

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there is no baqa (subsistence in the Divine Ground) without fana (the annihilation of the false self and its fantasies)

Harvey and Baring present fana as the alchemical destruction of the false self that is structurally prerequisite to baqa, framing the dyad as the Sufi ‘science of love’ and a path through suffering to divine rebirth.

Harvey, Andrew; Baring, Anne, The Divine Feminine: Exploring the Feminine Face of God Throughout the World, 1996thesis

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the Angel does not have to cross this fana fi’llah, the test of reabsorption into

Corbin reads the Prophet’s mi’raj to show that theophanic being — embodied by Gabriel — cannot undergo fana fi’llah without self-destruction, thereby demarcating the limit of annihilation even for celestial intelligences.

Corbin, Henry, The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism, 1971supporting

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Baqa (Arabic) Survival. The return of the Sufi mystic to his enhanced and enlarged self after his climactic absorption (‘fana) in God

Armstrong’s glossary defines fana as the climactic absorption in God that precedes baqa, situating the term precisely within the technical vocabulary of Sufi mystical experience.

Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993supporting

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al-Hallaj had cried aloud: ‘I am the Truth!’ According to the Gospels, Jesus had made the same claim

Armstrong contextualizes al-Hallaj’s ecstatic declaration — the extreme expression of fana — as the socially and theologically dangerous consequence of unmediated mystical dissolution, resulting in his crucifixion.

Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993supporting

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the early woman ascetic Rabiah (d. 801) spoke of love, in a way that Christians would have found familiar

Armstrong traces the devotional roots of the Sufi path in Rabiah’s love-mysticism, providing the affective ground from which the annihilationist aspiration of fana would later develop.

Armstrong, Karen, A History of God, 1993aside

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