Baqa'
Subsistence in God: after the extinction of the self (fana'), the state of one who remains and is sent back to creatures in service.
Baqa’ is the apparent opposite of fana’: to subsist, to remain. Sufi doctrine joins them as the two moments of one completion: first the extinction of the self before God, then subsistence in God, where man remains fully man but his gestures no longer start from himself.
Al-Junayd and the Baghdad tradition describe this ‘second state’ as the mark of guides: fana’ alone can produce the rapture of the majdhub, absorbed into God; baqa’ is that of the shaykh, sent back to mankind in service. The formula runs through every master’s biography: ‘he was extinguished in God, then returned to creatures.’
That is the meaning this site gives to the function of the murshid: not a man who has ‘realised himself’ and gone back to his own enjoyment, but one who has passed through fana’ and whose subsistence is spent on guiding. On this point, see the guide of the path.