ABSTRACT
In the enumeration found in the Kitab ul Luma of Sarraj, the state of contemplation is followed by that of yaqin or certainty, the state of one who has become firmly rooted in divine contemplation and the process of fana and baqa. Those who have abandoned themselves and their state, whatever it is, to God as their trustee and protector. These, then, forgoing the veil of selfhood, are alone with God alone. Qurb, the sense of God's nearness, is induced by practice of the state of muraqaba or concentration. Jurjani uses the word maqam, not as a transient stage but as a permanent mystical state. There is much evidence in the writings of the Persian mystics of the influence of the Neo-Platonists, whose teachings, including the so-called 'theology of Aristotle', were widely disseminated in the Near East and in Persia.
