এসো মোরা মাওলাইয়াত কে গড়ে তুলি। We said that in order to know God we must leave aside ourselves or ignore ourselves. But the hadith indicates that in order to know God we must know ourselves. So the question is: Do I have two" selves", that I must ignore one of them and know the other? And if it is so, the next question is: who am I? the first self or the second? Sufis say that in way-faring (suluk) we have a journey in ourselves. We leave ourselves an`d reach ourselves. Shabistari explains this in the form of a question and its answer beautifully in his poetry (12, 58-9): What am I? Give me an explanation of What is the meaning of travel into the "self"? Then he criticizes the philosophers who think that I am soul and that the "self" is the "soul": "You say that the word 'I' in every passage refers to the soul' since you have made intellect your guide, you do not distinguish between your 'self' and its part" So according to him "self" is "existence" and the way of knowledge of it is not philosophy but mysticism: "Go man and know well yourself. The richness of illumination cannot be compared with the swelling of intellect". "I and you are higher than body and spirit since the latters are both parts of my self" So our travel must be from the illusive "self" to the real" self". A journey from the surface to the depth and it is "fana" or "annihilation": "Travel beyond the world of creation and place. Abandon the world and discover yourself in the cosmos of the self" But we must know that discovery of the new "self" is not ceasing of the existence of the previous "self". Ibn Arabi writes: "Most of the Sufis make a ceasing of existence and the ceasing of that ceasing a condition of attaining the knowledge of God, and that is an error and a clear oversight. For the knowledge of God does not presuppose the ceasing of existence or the ceasing of that ceasing. For things have no existence and what does not exist cannot cease to exist. For the ceasing to be implies the positing of existence and that is Polytheism. Then if you know yourself without existence or ceasing to be, then you know God, and if not, then not" (5, 5). So when illusion goes away it is not like losing some real thing. This is like awaking from sleep and awaking from a dream which has not been true. So in our case you leave your unreal self and reach your real self. The Prophet (s) said: "People are asleep and when they die they awake"(8, vol.4, 43). He (s) also said: "Die before you die"(8, vol.66, 317). Ibn Arabi says that it means know yourself before you die. It means that dieing which is losing our illusive "selves" is exactly the same as knowing our real "self". We can explain it by an example: Suppose a person named "Peter" suffers from alienation. He thinks that he is not himself but he is another person (for example John). Then he becomes conscious and finds his real identity and loses his illusive identity. We can not say that his previous identity ceased to be, because he had no two identities. The previous identity had not an existence. It was not a real thing it was an illusion. And here we have not two processes, losing something and finding something else. There is only one process: It is not the case that at first John loses himself then Peter finds himself. And it is not the case that Peter loses John and then finds himself. And it is not also the case that John Knows Peter. If John knows Peter, he is not John. And if he is still John, he does not know Peter. Only Peter knows Peter. The only process is that Peter finds himself. Ibn Arabi uses an example about a person whose name is Mahmud but he thinks he is Muhammad. I have changed these names to Peter and John: To take an example, suppose that you do not know that your name is Peter or your named is Peter (because the name and the named are in reality one.) But [suppose] you think that your name is John, and after sometime you come to know that you are Peter, then your existence goes on, but the name John is cut off from you by your coming to know yourself, that you are Peter and you were John only by ceasing to be yourself. So nothing positive is taken from Peter, nor does John cease to be in Peter, or enter to him or proceed forth from him, nor Peter into John, but as soon as Peter knows himself, that he is Peter and not John, he knows himself by himself not by John for John never existed at all, and how could anything that does not exist be known through it? So then the knower and that which he knows are both one, and he who unites and that with which he unites are one, and seer and seen are one. For the knower is his attribute and the known is his essence and he who unites is his attribute and that with which he unites is his essence, and the attribute and that to which it is attributed are one. And this is the explanation of the saying "He who knows himself knows his Lord"(5, 16). So according to Ibn Arabi our real "self" is our existence which is nothing but God's existence. But we have forgotten our real self" and think we are something else. If this illusion is cut off from us, we will know our real self which is God.