In Section 17 of Jami's Baharestan, the saying of Abu Bakr al-Wasiti articulates a central Sufi paradox of nearness (قرب) and distance (بعد) from the Divine. To claim 'I am near' is to affirm a separate ego standing apart from God, and this very assertion betrays distance. Conversely, the one who confesses 'I am far' — through the annihilation of his own self (fana, نیستی) — dissolves the illusion of a separate self and is thereby concealed within His existence. The passage teaches that true proximity is attained not by boasting of closeness but by the effacement of the self, so that spatial language of near and far is inverted in the mystical station of union.