Second Important Matter
Question: The Unity of Existence is considered by many people to be the most elevated station, but there was no explicit sign of it among the Companions and foremost the four Rightly‑Guided Caliphs, who were at the level of the greatest sainthood, or among the Imams of the Prophet’s Family and foremost the five People of the Cloak, or the great interpreters of the law and the generation following the Companions and foremost the founders of the four schools of law. So did those who lived later advance further than them? Did they find a better highway on which to proceed?
The Answer: Allah forbid! Nobody at all has the ability to advance further than those purified ones who were the stars and heirs closest to the Sun of Prophethood; the highway is indeed theirs.
As for the Unity of Existence, it is a way and a state, but it is deficient. However, because it is illuminating and pleasurable, most of those who have reached that degree on their spiritual journeyings have not wanted to leave it; they have remained there and supposed it to be the ultimate degree.
If the spirit of the person who takes this way is divested of materiality and intermediaries and he has rent the veil of causes, and is immersed in a state of witnessing, then an experiential – not pertaining to knowledge – unity of existence that arises not from the Unity of Existence but from the Unity of Witnessing, may obtain for him a certain attainment, a spiritual station. He may even reach the degree of denying the universe for Allah’s sake. But if he is submerged in causes and preoccupied with materiality, for him, the Unity of Existence may mean going so far as denying Allah the Most High on account of the universe.
Yes, the great highway is the highway of the Companions, and those that followed them, and the Purified Ones. Their universal rule was, the reality of things is constant. In accordance with the sense of There is nothing that resembles Him, Allah the Most High has absolutely nothing that resembles Him. He is utterly beyond being comprehended in place or class and being divided into parts. His relation with beings is creativity. Beings are not imaginings or fancies as those who followed the way of the Unity of Existence said. Visible things too are Allah the Most High’s works. Everything is not “Him,” everything is “from Him.” For events cannot be pre‑eternal. We shall make this matter easier to understand with two comparisons:
The First: For example, there is a king. Through his name of Just Judge he has a Ministry of Justice which shows the manifestation of that name. Another of his names is Khalifa, and the Shaikh al‑Islam’s Office and learned institution are the manifestations of that name. He has also the name of Commander-in-Chief, through which all the offices of the army perform their actions; the army is the manifestation of that name.
Now, if someone were to appear and say: “The king is only the Just Judge, he has no office or ministry other than that of justice,” then the attributes and states of the religious scholars in the Shaikh al‑Islam’s Office would have to be applied – not actually but theoretically – to the officials of the Ministry of Justice; a secondary and shadowy Shaikh al-Islam’s Office would have an imaginary existence within the actual Ministry of Justice. Again in hypothetical fashion, the dealings and states of the Army Office would be ascribed to the officials of the Judiciary, an unreal Army Office would be imagined there, and so on. In this situation, the king’s true name is the name of Just Judge and his true sovereignty is his sovereignty in the Ministry of Justice. His names like Khalifa, Commander‑in-Chief, and Sultan are not actual but hypothetical. However, the nature of kingship and reality of sovereignty demand all the names in actuality. And actual names require and necessitate actual offices.
Thus, the sovereignty of divinity necessitates in actuality numerous sacred names like All‑Merciful, Provider, Bestower, Creator, Doer, Munificent, and Compassionate. And those true and actual names require actual mirrors. Now, since the followers of the Unity of Existence say: There is no existent but He, they downgrade the reality of beings to the level of imagination. Allah the Most High’s names Necessary Existent, Existent, One, and Single have true manifestations and spheres of application. For sure, if their mirrors and spheres of application were not real and were imaginary and non‑existent, it would not harm them. And perhaps if there were no colour of existence in the mirror of true existence, they would be purer and more brilliant, but the manifestations of such names as Merciful, Provider, Subduer, Compeller, and Creator would not be real, they would be hypothetical. However, those names are realities like the name of Existent, they cannot be shadows; they are essential, not secondary.
Thus, the Companions and great interpreters of the law and Imams of the Family of the Prophet said: The real essences of things exist in reality; Allah the Most High has a manifestation through all His names in actuality. Through His creativity, all things have an accidental existence. For sure, in relation to the Necessarily Existent’s existence their existence is an extremely weak and unstable shadow, but it is not imagination, it is not fancy. Allah the Most High gives existence through His name Creator and He continues that existence.
Second Comparison: For example, on the four walls of this house are four full‑length mirrors. However much the house is depicted together with the other three mirrors in all the mirrors, each holds the things in itself in accordance with its own make-up and colour; it reflects a similitude of the house that is particular to itself.
Now, two men enter the house. One of them looks at one of the mirrors and says: “Everything is within it.” When he hears of the other mirrors and the images in them, he applies what he hears to a tiny corner of the one mirror whose contents are shadows twice over, and whose reality has shrunk and has changed. He also says: “I see it thus, in which case reality is thus.”
The other man says to him, “Yes, you see it like that and what you see is true. But in actuality and reality the true form of reality is not like that. There are other mirrors besides the one you looked at; they are not the shadow of shadows and as tiny as you saw.”
Thus, each of the divine names requires a different mirror. And, since Merciful and Provider, for example, are real and fundamental, they require beings worthy of them who are needy for sustenance and compassion. Just as All‑Merciful requires real beings with spirits needy for sustenance in a real world, so too, All-Compassionate requires a paradise which is thus real. To maintain that only the names Existent, Necessarily Existent, and Single One of Unity are real and that the other names are mere shadows within them, is a sort of injustice towards those other names.
It is due to this mystery that the great highway is surely the highway of the Companions, the Purified Ones, the Imams of the Prophet’s family, and the great interpreters of the law and founders of the four schools of law, who possessed greater sainthood and were directly the first class of the Qur’an’s students.
Glory be unto You! We have no knowledge save that which You have taught us; indeed, You are All‑Knowing, All-Wise.
O our Sustainer! Do not cause our hearts to swerve now that You have guided us, and bestow mercy on us from You; for You are the Bestower of Gifts.
Allah! Grant blessings to the one whom You sent as a Mercy to all the worlds, and to all his Family and Companions.