,” and so on.

For He grants His servant these things after loving him, whereas, according to them, He is one and the same before and after that love. According to them, He is also these bodily parts: the servant’s belly, private parts, hair, and everything else. They recognize neither plurality nor multiplicity in existence, yet they affirm ranks, forms of disclosure, and manifestations. If they regard these as existent, they contradict their own doctrine. If they regard them as subsisting in nonexistence—as Ibn ʿArabī says—or identify them with particular entities while holding that the Absolute is the Real, then they have based this on the view that the nonexistent is a thing, and on the view that universals subsist in external reality in addition to particular entities.

The first is the view of a group of the Muʿtazila, and it is Ibn ʿArabī’s view. The second is the view of a group of philosophers, and it is the view of al-Qūnawī, Ibn ʿArabī’s companion. Both views are false according to people of sound reason. Hence al-Tilimsānī was more astute than either of them: he affirmed nothing beyond existence itself. As it has been said:

The sea is nothing but the waves—nothing else,
Though the multitude of waves divides it.

Yet these misguided philosophers and Muʿtazila did not say that the existence of the creation is the existence of the Creator. These heretics, however, said that the two are identical. Thus, in one respect, they came to advocate indwelling, because existence is within every entity—or the reverse—and, in another respect, union, because the two are united. The essence of their doctrine is the oneness of existence.