- Junayd said: All this and what is like it is of the science of signs in the vanishing of the searching for the sign.*° Here there are meanings of passing away ( fan2’) in the vanishing of passing away from passing away. His [Abu Yazid’s} saying “I came upon the domain of nothingness until I arrived from nothing in nothing through nothing” signifies the first descent into the reality of passing away and the disappearance (d4ih26) of everything seen and unseen. In the first occurrence of passing away is the obliteration of the vestiges (4th2r) of all things.
His saying “nothing through nothing” indicates the disappearance of all other than him, and his own disappearance from disappearance. “Nothing in nothing” means that nothing is perceived or found to exist. The traces have been effaced, the names have been cut off, the beholdings have vanished, and things have been swallowed up from view. Nothing can be found to exist, nothing is perceived as lacking, there is no name by which anything can be known. All that has disappeared along with the disappearance from it.
This is what some Sufis (qawm) call passing away (fanz ’). Then passing away vanishes from passing away and is lost in its passing away, and this is the perdition which was in nothing through it and through it in nothing. This is the reality of the nonexistence (faqd) of everything and the nonex- istence of the self after that, and the nonexistence of nonexistence in non- existence, and the becoming dust in obliteration, and the disappearance from disappearance. This is something that has no duration nor any ascer- tainable moment.