Peace be upon you, esteemed teacher. I hope you are well. In theoretical mysticism and many other mystical traditions, the world, all beings, and everything else are interpreted and understood through a monistic lens. In other words, these traditions hold that reality as a whole is non-dual or non-plural, and adopt a monistic view of the unity of existence, though with certain differences among them. From this perspective, multiplicity is absorbed into unity and has little or no distinct, independent reality. The many are understood through a unitive lens, and the relationship between God and creation is likened to that between the self and its mental forms. My question is: in the inner teachings of the Ahl al-Bayt (peace be upon them) and the Noble Quran, what place do multiplicity and the many hold, and what kind of existence and reality do they possess? Is there an ontological distinction between God and creation? If so, according to the teachings of the Ahl al-Bayt and the Quran, how many kinds of existence are there among created beings and the many? Put another way, apart from God, how many categories of beings possess an existential reality—that is, how many kinds of genuinely existing, independent beings are there?
َّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ
What Place Do Multiplicity and the Many Hold in the Teachings of the Ahl al-Bayt and the Quran?
The essence and first answer at a glance (60-word summary)
The status of created beings is distinct from that of the Creator. Created beings share in having existence, whereas the Creator brings existence into being and shares nothing with any created being; He is beyond description. To imagine the Creator in human terms is a mark of ignorance. Allah, the All-Powerful, brought existence into being and granted existence to all beings.
Answer by Master Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat)
Teacher and researcher in the intellectual tradition of wisdom and the Ahl al-Bayt | Soroush Bamdadān Cultural CenterThe status of beings is distinct from that of the One who brings them into being. Beings share in having existence, but the One who brings them into being is the source of existence and shares nothing with any being. The source of existence is above and beyond existence itself; no finite existence can describe Him. He is beyond description, whether in terms of existence or non-existence.
Our inability to comprehend what lies beyond existence gives us no reason to confine the Creator within existence or to claim that He possesses existence. We speak of the Creator as existing only to avoid bewilderment and the suspension of all relation to Him—nothing more. For our understanding cannot reach beyond existence, and we take existence to be the ultimate end, even though He has set every end in place and is above and beyond every end, every limit, and every last thing.
To imagine the Creator—the creator of humankind—in human terms reveals the ignorance that dominates those who describe Him in this way. Conceptual forms are products of scholarly thought and reasoning; the Creator is exalted above such reductions. All these ignorant efforts arise from imagining the Creator as one being among others, whereas Allah, the All-Powerful, brought existence itself into being and gave beings their being: existence through His will, and beings through His decree.
The opposite of existence is non-existence, but the Self-Sufficient Creator has no opposite. «ً فَرَبُّنَا تَبَارَكَ وَ تَعَالَى لَا شِبْهَ لَهُ وَ لَا ضِدَّ وَ لَا نِدَّ وَ لَا كَيْفَ وَ لَا نِهَايَة»