The ZAhir

As qouted from The Zahir by Paulo Coelho "According to the writer Jorge Luis Borges, the idea of the Zahir comes from Islamic tradition and is thought to have arisen at some point in the eighteenth century. ZAhir, in Arabic, means visible, present, incapable of going unnoticed. It is something which, once, we have come into contact with them or it, gradually occupies our every thought, until we can think of nothing else. This can be considered either a state of holiness or of madness.