Islam. 75deeply into the unconscious mind and experience what seems
like a presence in the depths of their being. Sufis learned to
concentrate their mental powers while breathing deeply and
rhythmically; they fasted, kept night vigils and chanted as a
mantra the Divine Names attributed to God in the Quran.
Sometimes this induced a wild, unrestrained ecstasy, and
such mystics became known as "drunken Sufis." One of the
earliest of these was Abu Yazid al-Bistami (d. 874), who
wooed Allah like a lover. But he also learned the discipline of
fanah (annihilation): by gradually peeling away the layers of
egotism (which, all spiritual writers agree, holds us back from
the experience of the divine), Al-Bistami found an enhanced
self in the ground of his own being that was nothing other
than Allah himself, who told al-Bistami: "I am through Thee;
there is no god but Thou." This potentially shocking reword-
ing of the shahadah expresses a profound truth, which has
been discovered by mystics in many different faith traditions.
The shahadah proclaimed that there was no God, no reality
but Allah, so it must be true that once self is finally cancelled
out in a perfect act of islam, all human beings are potentially
divine. Husain al-Mansur (d. 922), also known as al-Hallaj,
the Wool-Carder, is said to have made a similar claim, crying:
"Ana al-Haqq!"("I am the Truth!" or "I am the Real!"), though
some scholars have suggested that this should read: "I see the
Truth!"
Hallaj was executed by the ulama for claiming that it was
possible to make a valid hajj in spirit, while staying at home.
His death shows the hostility that was developing between
the Sufis and the ulama. Junayd of Baghdad (d. 910), the first
of the so-called "sober Sufis," withdrew from this type of ex-
tremism. He thought that the intoxication experienced by al-
Bistami was merely a phase which the mystic must transcend
in order to achieve an enhanced sense of self and a more
complete self-possession. When a Sufi first heard the divine
call, he or she became aware of their painful separation from