4 ideas
Rabia runs through Basra carrying a torch in one hand and water in the other, saying she means to burn paradise and drown hell. With both reward and punishment removed, people would have to worship God for His own sake rather than from greed or fear. The anecdote argues that devotion driven by incentive is really self-interest.
King Ibrahim ibn Adham hears footsteps on his roof at night and finds a man who says he is looking for a lost camel. When the king says that is absurd, the man answers that seeking God while lying on a royal bed is just as absurd.
Fana is the state in which the ego is so fully erased that only God remains as the speaker. On this view, al-Hallaj's 'I am the Truth' and Bayazid's 'Glory be to me' are not blasphemous boasts. They are what is left when there is no longer a separate 'I' to make a claim, and Hallaj's execution shows what that erasure cost in public.
Each saint's teaching comes only after an account of how he or she lived: repentance, poverty, trials, miracles. The sayings get their authority from the conduct that came before them, not from argument.