Note

The leader and shaykh of the Sufis stated that those who made claims about union or unification or metempsychosis had apprehended nothing about the knowledge of God. Is union or unification with the Necessary Existent possible? Absolutely not! What value have contingent beings that the Necessary Existent should incarnate in them? God forbid! An emanation from the superabundance of divine munificence may be manifested in contingent beings. Their way [the way of the Sufis' leader and shaykh] has no relation or link with the other one. For since on their way the materialists concentrated solely on materiality and became immersed in it, their ideas grew distant from any idea of the divinity and were dissociated from it. They attached such importance to matter that the regretable way they adopted beheld matter alone and even combined divinity with it.

However, the Sufi verifiers of reality who were followers of the unity of witnessing restricted their view to the Necessary Existent to such an extent that contingent beings ceased to have any value at all. They said: "All is one." Be reasonable! The Necessary Being and contingent beings are as far from each other as the ground is from the Pleiades! I swear by the All-Glorious Creator Who creates matter with all its sorts and in all its forms, that there is no idea more ugly or base or ludicrous than this, which attempts to associate these two ways, thus proving that those who subscribe to it are utterly deranged.

Elucidation

If the globe of the earth is imagined to consist of multicoloured, multifarious fragments of glass, each fragment will receive an emanation (feyz) from the sun relative to its colour, shape, and proportions. This imaginary emanation is neither the sun's essence nor the essence of its light. Also, if the hues of these multicoloured blooms, which are the manifestation (tecellî) of the sun and the depiction of the seven colours in its light, were to speak, each would say: "The sun's like me" or "The sun's mine.'