The point here is that his words, “He loses awareness of the One remembered,” are the words of an ignorant person. This is not praiseworthy at all. Rather, what is praiseworthy is to become so absorbed in the One remembered that one loses awareness of remembrance—not to lose awareness of the One remembered amid remembrance’s overwhelming force. Unless, of course, he means that he lost awareness of the One remembered, beheld the created being and perceived it as the Creator, and perceived existence as one, or something similar among these corrupt perceptions. This is the spiritual perception of the heretics, not that of those who affirm Allah’s oneness. By my life, anyone who experiences this heretical perception will indeed regard the prayers of those who know Allah as unbelief.

The cosmos calls to you: “Do you not hear me?
Who joined my scattered parts, and who dispersed me?
Look upon me and take heed:
Within me is only the existence of Him who brought me into being.”

These are among the sayings of these heretics. Their sayings are contradictory unbelief, invalid both in reason and in religion. For if the cosmos contains only the existence of Him who brought it into being, then that existence would itself be the cosmos that calls, the addressee being called, the scattered parts that are joined together and dispersed, and the addressee who is told, “Look.”

It would then follow that this necessary, eternal, beginningless existence had brought itself into being, dispersed itself, and joined itself together. This combines two contradictories: that which exists necessarily in itself cannot be produced or made. One and the same thing cannot be both creator and created, beginningless and brought into being, necessary in itself and necessary through another. This combines two contradictories.