rest in the Bottom of his Cave, with his Head bow'd down, and his Eyes
shut, and turning himself altogether from all sensible Things and the
Corporeal Faculties, and bending all his Thoughts and Meditations upon
the _necessarily self-existent Being_, without admitting any thing else
besides him; and if any other Object presented itself to his
Imagination, he rejected it with his utmost Force; and exercis'd himself
in this, and persisted in it to that Degree, that sometimes he did
neither eat nor stir for a great many Days together. And whilst he was
thus earnestly taken up in Contemplation, sometimes all manner of Beings
whatsoever would be quite out of his Mind and Thoughts, except his own
Being only.

§ 84. But he found that his own Being was not excluded by his Thoughts,
no not at such times when he was most deeply immers'd in the
Contemplation of the _first, true, necessarily self-existent Being_.
Which concern'd him very much, for he knew that even this was a Mixture
in this simple Vision, and the Admission of an extraneous Object in that
Contemplation. Upon which he endeavour'd to disappear from himself, and
be wholly taken up in the Vision of that _true Being_; till at last he
attain'd it; and then both the Heavens and the Earth, and whatsoever is
between them, and all Spiritual Forms, and Corporeal Faculties; and all
those Powers which are separate from Matter, and are those Beings which
know the _necessarily self-existent Being_, all disappear'd and
vanish'd, and were as if they had never been, and amongst these his own
Being disappear'd too, and there remain'd nothing but this ONE, TRUE,
Perpetually Self-existent Being, who spoke thus in that Saying of his
(which is not a Notion superadded to his Essence.) _To whom now belongs
the Kingdom? To this One, Almighty God_.[22] Which Words of his _Hai Ebn
Yokdhan_ understood, and heard his Voice; nor was his being unacquainted
with Words, and not being able to speak, any Hindrance at all to the