wishes to be a true adept like us must accept (1) that contradictories can be combined and that one and the same body can be in two places simultaneously.”

These various groups have been discussed at length elsewhere. Such people proliferate under regimes steeped in ignorance (2), and most of them incline toward Shiism, as was the case with Ibn ʿArabī, Ibn Sabʿīn, and others like them. There was consequently a need to expose their true nature and explain their affairs in a manner that would distinguish truth from falsehood. They claim to be the finest people on earth and maintain that others do not grasp the true import of their allusions. When Allah enabled me to lay bare to them the true nature of their doctrine, and I wrote works on the subject through which they recognized that this was a precise exposition of their position, its falsehood became evident to them through plain reason, authentic transmitted evidence, and mystical unveiling that accords with reality. Some of their scholars (3) and distinguished figures consequently renounced it. These men then began demonstrating the contradictions of that doctrine to people and bringing them back to the truth (4).

One of the roots of their misguidance (5) was their belief that absolute existence is found in external reality, either as the absolute without condition (6), (* or as the absolute subject to a condition. As for the absolute without