He says: Since Pharaoh, occupying the seat of absolute authority, was the man of the age—the caliph by the sword, even if in ordinary legal parlance he was a tyrant—he therefore declared, “I am your Lord Most High.” In other words, although everyone is a “lord” in some relative sense, I am the loftiest of them by virtue of the outward power that has been granted to me over you.

He continues: When the magicians recognised the truth of Pharaoh’s claim, they did not repudiate it; they acknowledged it and said to him, “You only decide in this present worldly life, so pass whatever judgment you wish—for sovereignty belongs to you.”

Thus, Pharaoh’s statement, “I am your Lord Most High,” stands confirmed, even though Pharaoh himself is ʿayn al-ḥaqq (the very Reality).

He likewise pronounced the people of the Calf correct in worshipping the calf and alleged that Moses was content with it. He says: Because Moses understood the matter more deeply than Aaron—knowing that God had decreed that we worship none but Him, and whatever God decrees inevitably occurs—his reproach fell upon Aaron for denouncing the act and for his lack of breadth. For the gnostic is the one who sees the Real in everything; indeed, who beholds Him as the very essence of every thing.

Among these mystics is a faction that does not affirm the subsistence of fixed entities in non-existence. Instead they say: there is no existence but the existence of the Real. Yet they distinguish between the Absolute and the particular, saying: He is the Absolute Existence that permeates the designated existents, just as animality inheres in every animal and humanity in every human being. This is what is called the “natural universal.”