Furthermore, if Adam is like a mirror in which He beholds His holy essence, it follows that what appears in Adam is an image of His essence—not that Adam is His essence, an image of His essence, or like His essence.

If this means that Adam knows Allah, Most High, so that He sees an image of His essence in Adam’s knowledge, then the Lord, Most High, knows Himself. If an image contained in knowledge could be seen, it would be more fitting for Him to behold the knowledge that truly corresponds to Him and subsists in His own essence than the knowledge that subsists in Adam. If, however, what is meant is that Adam himself is an image of Allah, then Adam would not be the mirror; rather, he would be like the image in the mirror.

Furthermore, singling out the Messiah as that light is the position of the Christians, who single him out as Allah or the son of Allah. These proponents of union have combined the Christians’ position with their own doctrine of universal union, attributing to others besides the Messiah something of the same kind as what Christians attribute to the Messiah.

As for Ibn al-Fārid’s words:

“When you view yourself clearly, behold whom you see,
Beyond dispute, in the polished mirror.
Is it someone other than you who appears within it,
Or are you looking at yourself through it as the rays reflect?”

This is a flawed analogy. Someone looking into a mirror sees an image of himself, and thus sees himself through the mirror, not without an intermediary. Their doctrine of the unity of existence is therefore false; and even if its truth were assumed, this analogy would not correspond to it.