The finitude of that succession does not entail that anything within it actually exists. Hence the series must come to an end with One whose causal efficacy rests in His very Self, whose acting is independent of anything else—even though, were He to become the cause of one thing after having been the cause of another, He would do so solely through Himself and without need of any external aid. Accordingly, at the very moment a contingent being comes into existence, He is its full and sufficient cause, and a full cause cannot exist apart from its freshly produced effect. It is therefore impossible for any originated thing to have possessed a complete cause from pre-eternity.

The cosmos, moreover, is never without events, and no event has a complete cause extending back into eternity; it follows that the universe itself lacks an eternal, complete cause. For the existence of what necessitates something without the presence of what it necessitates is impossible. Pre-eternity is not a bounded instant; it is the beginningless duration of the past—time never preceded by non-existence, ever continuous.

If, then, the completeness of causation for any event—or for that which entails events—cannot be eternal, neither the events themselves nor what entails them can be eternal. The discussion has been expanded elsewhere; our aim here is simply to draw attention to the doctrinal root of those proponents of the creed of absolute unity who claim to have attained “realization,” boasting that they have surpassed all nations, even the prophets themselves—figures such as Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Sabʿīn, and their ilk.