You want an explanation of the Unity of Existence. In one of the Flashes of the Thirty-First Letter there is a very powerful and elucidating answer to Hadhrat Muhyiddin’s ideas concerning this matter. For now we just say the following:

Teaching this question of the Unity of Existence to people at the present time causes serious harm. Like when metaphors and similes pass from the hands of the learned to those of the common people and knowledge passes from scholars to the ignorant, they are thought to be literally true,¹ so too when elevated truths like the Unity of Existence pass to the heedless and to the common people plunged into causes, they are thought to be Nature, and cause three significant instances of harm.

T h e F i r s t : The way of the Unity of Existence is quite simply denying the universe on account of Almighty God. So when it is adopted by the heedless common people and enters their ideas which are tainted by materialist thought in particular, it takes the form of denying the Godhead on account of the universe and materiality.

T h e S e c o n d : The way of the Unity of Existence rejects the dominicality of anything other than God so vehemently that it denies all other than God and removes duality. Since it does not recognize the independent existence of anything, let alone that of evil-commanding souls, with the predominance of the idea of Nature at this time and pride and egotism inflating the evil-commanding soul and causing the Hereafter and the Creator to be forgotten to a degree, to inculcate the Unity of Existence in people whose evil-commanding souls are small pharaohs and quite simply have the capacity to take their own selves as their objects of worship, so inflates the evil-commanding soul that—I seek refuge with God—it can no longer be contained.

T h e T h i r d : While the All-Glorious One is free and exempt from, pure of and exalted above all change, alteration, division, and being comprehended in time or place, it gives rise to conceptions which are not fitting for His necessary existence, holiness, and being free of all defect, and leads to false teachings. Yes, if one who speaks of the Unity of Existence rises in the mind from the ground to the Pleiades, leaves the universe behind and fixes his gaze on the Sublime Throne, ecstatically reckoning the universe to be non-existent, through the strength of belief, he may see everything to be directly from the Single One of Unity. But for one who stands behind the universe and looks at it, and sees causes before him and looks from the ground, is the possibility of becoming submerged in causes and falling into the swamp of Nature. The one who rises in the mind to the Divine Throne may say like Jalaluddin Rumi: “Listen! The words you hear uttered by everyone, you may hear as uttered by Almighty God, like natural gramophones.” But if you say to the one who cannot rise as high as Jalaluddin, nor see all beings from the ground to the Divine Throne in the form of mirrors: “Listen! You will hear the Divine speech from everything,” just as he will in effect fall from the Throne to the ground, he will also be afflicted by false imaginings contrary to the truth!...

Say: “God [sent it down]”: then leave them to plunge in vain discourse and trifling.² * Glory be to the One Whose Essence is holy above anything similar to It and Whose attributes are free of anything resembling them, and Whose signs testify to His dominicality, may His glory be exalted, for there is no god but He.

S a i d N u r s i

FOOTNOTES

1. Just like the two angels, called the Bull and the Fish in connection with certain metaphors, were supposed by the common people to be a vast bull and enormous fish.

2. Qur’an, 6:91.