Your own body is farther from you than God is ...

Man is closer to God than the fishes are to the ocean.

Bowl of Saki, by Hazrat Inayat Khan

Commentary by Pir-o-Murshid Inayat Khan:

One day Inayat was praying on the roof of the house, offering his prayers and he
thought to himself that there had not been an answer yet to all the prayers he
had offered to God and he did not know where God was to hear his prayers and he
could not reconcile himself to going on praying to the God whom he knew not. He
went fearlessly to his father and said: "I do not think I will continue my
prayers any longer, for it does not fit in with my reason. I do not know how I
can go on praying to a God I do not know." His father, taken aback, did not
become cross lest he might turn Inayat's beliefs sour by forcing them upon him
without satisfying his reason and he was glad on the other hand to see that,
although it was irreverent on the child's part, yet it was frank, and he knew
that the lad really hungered after Truth and was ready to learn now, what many
could not learn in their whole life.

He said to him: "God is in you and you are in God. As the bubble is in the ocean
and the bubble is a part of the ocean and yet not separate from the ocean. For a
moment it has appeared as a bubble, then it will return to that from which it
has risen. So is the relation between man and God. The Prophet has said that God
is closer to you than the jugular vein, which in reality means that your own
body is farther from you than God is. If this be rightly interpreted, it will
mean that God is the very depth of your own being." This moment to Inayat was
his very great initiation, as if a switch had turned in him, and from that
moment onward his whole life Inayat busied himself, and his whole being became
engaged in witnessing in life what he knew and believed, by this one great
Truth.

The innermost being of man is the real being of God; man is always linked with
God. If he could only realize it, it is by finding harmony in his own soul that
he finds communion with God. All meditation and contemplation are taught with
this purpose: to harmonize one's innermost being with God, so that He is seeing,
hearing, thinking through us, and our being is a ray of His light. In that way
we are even closer to God than the fishes are to the ocean in which they have
their being.

Many think that spiritual attainment can only be achieved by great labor. It is
not so; labor is necessary for material attainment, but for spiritual attainment
what one needs is a seeking soul like that of Moses. Moses falling upon the
ground may be interpreted as the cross, which means, 'I am not; Thou art.' In
order to be, one must pass through a stage of being nothing. In Sufi terms this
is called Fana, when one thinks, 'I am not what I had always thought myself to
be.' This is the true self-denial, which the Hindus called Layam, and the
Buddhists annihilation. It is the annihilation of the false self which gives
rise to the true self; once this is done, from that moment man approaches closer
and closer to God, until he stands face to face with his divine ideal, with
which he can communicate at every moment of his life.