Although in Western and Central Asia--where the Persian kings were regarded by their subjects as gods, and where the doctrines of incarnation, anthropomorphism, and metempsychosis are indigenous--the idea of the God-man was neither so unfamiliar nor unnatural as to shock the public conscience very profoundly, Hallāj had formulated that idea in such a way that no mysticism calling itself Mohammedan could tolerate, much less adopt it. To assert that the divine and human natures may be interfused and commingled,[24] would have been to deny the principle of unity on which Islam is based. The subsequent history of Sūfism shows how deification was identified with unification. The antithesis--God, Man--melted away in the pantheistic theory which has been explained above.[25] There is no real existence apart from God. Man is an emanation or a reflexion or a mode of Absolute Being. What he thinks of as individuality is in truth not-being; it cannot be separated or united, for it does not exist. Man _is_ God, yet with a difference. According to Ibn al-ʿArabī,[26] the eternal and the phenomenal are two complementary aspects of the One, each of which is necessary to the other. The creatures are the external manifestation of the Creator, and Man is God’s consciousness (_sirr_) as revealed in creation. But since Man, owing to the limitations of his mind, cannot think all objects of thought simultaneously, and therefore expresses only a part of the divine consciousness, he is not entitled to say _Ana ’l-Haqq_, “I am God.” He is _a_ reality, but not _the_ Reality. We shall see that other Sūfīs--Jalāluddīn Rūmī, for example--in their ecstatic moments, at any rate, ignore this rather subtle distinction. [24] _Hulūl_ was not understood in this sense by Hallāj (Massignon, _op. cit._, p. 199), though the verses quoted on p. 151 readily suggest such an interpretation. Hallāj, I think, would have agreed with Eckhart (who said, “The word _I am_ none can truly speak but God alone”) that the personality in which the Eternal is immanent has itself a part in eternity (Inge, _Christian Mysticism_, p. 149, note). [25] See pp. 79 ff. [26] Massignon, _op. cit._, p. 183. The statement that in realising the nonentity of his individual self the Sūfī realises his essential oneness with God, sums up the Mohammedan theory of deification in terms with which my readers are now familiar. I will endeavour to show what more precise meaning may be assigned to it, partly in my own words and partly by means of illustrative extracts from various authors. Several aspects of _fanā_ have already been distinguished.[27] The highest of these--the passing-away in the divine essence--is fully described by Niffarī, who employs instead of fanā and fānī (self-naughted) the terms _waqfat_, signifying cessation from search, and _wāqif_, _i.e._ one who desists from seeking and passes away in the Object Sought. Here are some of the chief points that occur in the text and commentary.