In Book One, Section 83 of Rumi's Masnavi, the verse commentary on the hadith 'Whoever desires to sit with God, let him sit with the people of Sufism' develops the doctrine that genuine proximity to the divine is achieved through the complete annihilation (fana) of the self in the company of realized Sufis. Rumi illustrates this through a chain of transformation metaphors: the envoy loses all memory of his mission and message when overwhelmed by God's majesty; the flood that reaches the sea ceases to be a flood and becomes the sea itself; the seed sown in a field ceases to be a seed and becomes the harvest; bread united with the first human becomes living and aware; wax and wood consumed by fire shed their dark nature and become pure light; and kohl ground into the eye transforms into sight itself. Each image enacts the same principle: contact with a higher reality dissolves the lower form's separate identity and elevates it to participation in that reality. The sitting (julūs...