In short, real annihilation from anything involves consciousness of its imperfection and absence of desire for it, not merely that a man should say, when he likes a thing, “I am subsistent therein,” or when he dislikes it, that he should say, “I am annihilated therefrom”; for these qualities are characteristic of one who is still seeking. In annihilation there is no love or hate, and in subsistence there is no consciousness of union or separation. Some wrongly imagine that annihilation signifies loss of essence and destruction of personality, and that subsistence indicates the subsistence of God in Man; both these notions are absurd. In India I had a dispute on this subject with a man who claimed to be versed in Koranic exegesis and theology. When I examined his pretensions I found that he knew nothing of annihilation and subsistence, and that he could not distinguish the eternal from the phenomenal. Many ignorant Ṣúfís consider that total annihilation (_faná-yi kulliyyat_) is possible, but this is a manifest error, for annihilation of the different parts of a material substance (_ṭínatí_) can never take place. I ask these ignorant and mistaken men: “What do you mean by this kind of annihilation?” If they answer, “Annihilation of substance” (_faná-yi `ayn_), that is impossible; and if they answer, “Annihilation of attributes,” that is only possible in so far as one attribute may be annihilated through the subsistence of another attribute, both attributes belonging to Man; but it is absurd to suppose that anyone can subsist through the attributes of another individual. The Nestorians of Rúm and the Christians hold that Mary annihilated by self-mortification all the attributes of humanity (_awṣáf-i násútí_) and that the Divine subsistence became attached to her, so that she was made subsistent through the subsistence of God, and that Jesus was the result thereof, and that he was not originally composed of the stuff of humanity, because his subsistence is produced by realization of the subsistence of God; and that, in consequence of this, he and his mother and God are all subsistent through one subsistence, which is eternal and an attribute of God. All this agrees with the doctrine of the anthropomorphistic sects of the Ḥashwiyya, who maintain that the Divine essence is a _locus_ of phenomena (_maḥall-i ḥawádith_) and that the Eternal may have phenomenal attributes. I ask all who proclaim such tenets: “What difference is there between the view that the Eternal is the _locus_ of the phenomenal and the view that the phenomenal is the _locus_ of the Eternal, or between the assertion that the Eternal has phenomenal attributes and the assertion that the phenomenal has eternal attributes?” Such doctrines involve materialism (_dahr_) and destroy the proof of the phenomenal nature of the universe, and compel us to say that both the Creator and His creation are eternal or that both are phenomenal, or that what is created may be commingled with what is