Section

As for al-Tilimsānī and those like him, he makes no distinction between essence and existence, nor between the absolute and the determinate. Rather, in his view, nothing exists other than Him, nor is anything distinct from Him in any respect. Created beings are merely parts and portions of Him, like the sea’s waves within the sea, or the parts of a house within the house. Among their verses are:

“I have no doubt that the sea is one … though waves and foam make it many.
Do not be deceived by the forms you behold … for the One, the Lord, pervades the many in His very being.”

And also:

“The sea is nothing but the waves, nothing else … though the multitude of its forms divides it.”

There is no doubt that this view is more sophisticated in its disbelief and heresy. For distinguishing between existence and essence and treating the nonexistent as something, or distinguishing in external reality between the absolute and the determinate and treating the absolute as something beyond the determinate entities in the mind, are two weak and false positions.

Those who have examined the matter closely know that whoever posits two things in these entities existing in external reality:

(one) their existence.