OK, so you know this wonderful Sufi joke, *schniff*. A guy goes to a master and says proudly, ‘I have realized the truth—I am nothing.’ And the master replies, ‘Look who is saying he is nothing!’Here, *shirtpull* you have the entire problem of ideology.But, but how? You see, the guy thinks he has reached ultimate humility. But the very form of the statement—I am nothing—already presupposes a subject who enjoys saying it.‘I am nothing! Look how wonderfully nothing I am!’This *schniff* is the purest form of narcissism.Because you see *adjusts turban* the subject is already a kind of nothing—a gap, an emptiness in the symbolic order of creation. The mistake of the student is to treat this nothingness as an achievement. Mein Gott, you were nothing from the beginning! There is nothing to achieve!This is how the inner side of shirk, you know, that thing we call ideology and so on and so forth *beard stroke*, functions today. Nobody says ‘I believe in ideology.’ They say, ‘I am just being realistic,’ or ‘I am just doing my job.’ The ego survives precisely in the gesture of renouncing the ego. This guy, the student—and my God, he is really perverse, really—doesn’t just say he is nothing. He enjoys it. He is saying ‘I enjoy being the one who knows he is nothing.’ The master, he knows this trick of selfhood, you know. He is not saying the man is still too much of a self.He is saying something *schniff* much more terrifying.The subject is nothing already—and the problem is that we try to turn this nothingness into a positive identity.This is why I am always suspicious of spiritual humility. The moment someone tells me he has transcended the ego, or the old Hallajian narcissism, you know the one I am talking about—I am God, God is me, I am nothing and truth and so on—I think: my God, has this guy read Ghazali?