condition *) (1)—what they call the natural universal—if it is said to exist in external reality, then what exists there in a qualified and determinate form is absolute in the mind and qualified in external reality. As for anyone who claims that something absolute exists in the mind (2) and remains absolute when actualized in external reality, he is gravely mistaken—an error in which many logicians and philosophers have gone astray.

As for the absolute taken on condition that it remain absolute, it is existence qualified by the negation of every affirmative and negative determination, just as man is conceived in abstraction from every qualification. If you describe it as existent or nonexistent, one or many, in the mind or in external reality, that would be an additional qualification imposed upon the absolute essence taken on condition that it remain absolute.

Likewise, you take existence divested of every affirmative and negative qualification, describing it with neither negative nor affirmative attributes.

This (3), according to the leading authorities of the Bātiniyya, is the Necessary Existent, as held by Abū Yaʿqūb al-Sijistānī, author of al-Aqālīd al-Malakūtiyya (The Keys of Sovereignty), and others like him. Some of these people, however, lack understanding: they deny (4) both contradictories and say, “It is neither existent nor nonexistent.” Others say, “Rather, I refrain from affirming either of the two contradictories: I do not say ‘existent,’ nor do I say ‘nonexistent’” (5), as did Abū Yaʿqūb. This represents the utmost degree of abstraction attained by these proponents of the unity of existence.