of you will see his Lord until he dies.”

This is particularly the case when it is said, “He became manifest in them and revealed Himself,” for the wording then admits two meanings: either His essence is within them, or they have become like a mirror in which the image of the object being viewed appears. Both are false. Allah’s essence is not within created things, nor are created things seen within His very essence as an object is seen in a mirror. Rather, their manifestation consists in their pointing to Him, bearing witness to Him, and being signs from Him indicating Himself and His attributes—glory and praise be to Him—as Allah’s Book declares.

(The third point)

As for the conjunction of the letters alif and nūn, expressed by “anā” (“I”), and the expression “the reality of prophethood” and “the relational spirit”: are these things included in what Allah’s names designate, such that they fall within what His explicit names and the pronouns referring to Him designate, or are they not included in what His names designate?

If the former is the case, then all created things would be included in what Allah’s names designate, and created things would be part of Allah and an attribute of Him. If the latter is the case, these things are nonexistent and have no existence in themselves. How, then, can they conceivably be existent yet not existent, established yet not established, absent yet not absent? This is a clear division of the alternatives, and one of the ways of exposing the true nature of this deception.

For these things were known to Him but nonexistent; when the khaliyya descended, the things he mentioned appeared. Thus, these manifest, known things, following this descent, became “I,” a reality of prophethood, a relational spirit, an act of an essence, an object of an essence’s action, and the meaning of intermediaries. If all of this is within Allah, then it entails two grave forms of unbelief: all created things being part of Allah