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This, then, is one of Ibn Arabī’s two fundamental principles. The other is their claim that the existence of entities is identical to the very existence of the Real. In this they stand apart from all those who affirm the Maker among Muslims, Jews, Christians, Magians, and polytheists. This is, in fact, the substance of the position of Pharaoh and the Qarmatians who deny the existence of the Maker, as we shall explain, Allah willing.

Whoever understands this understands all Ibn Arabī’s statements, in verse and prose, including his claim that the Real is nourished by creation, because the existence of entities is nourished by the entities fixed in nonexistence. Hence he affirms unity with respect to existence, but distinction with respect to quiddities and entities. He alleges that this is the secret of divine decree, because quiddities accept only what is intrinsically established for them in nonexistence. Thus, it is they themselves that have done good and evil, praised and blamed; the Real has given them nothing beyond what they already possessed in their state of nonexistence.

Consider, then, how his statements combine two things: denial of the existence of the Real, and denial that He created His creatures. He thus denies the Lord who created, acknowledging neither a Lord nor creation. He denies the Lord of the worlds: there is neither a Lord nor worlds subject to His lordship, since there are only fixed entities and an existence subsisting in them. The entities are not subject to a Lord, nor is existence; the entities are not created, nor is existence.

He distinguishes between the loci of manifestation and that which is manifest, and between that which makes manifest and that which manifests itself. For, according to him, the loci of manifestation are the entities fixed in nonexistence, whereas that which is manifest is the existence of creation.