What may be said in summary here is that although reason is...

What may be said in summary here is that although reason is concerned with concepts and the function of reason is not to recognize the truth of the objective existence or origin of any objective thing, let alone the divine exalted existence, but the positive and negative judgments of reason, when they are self-evident or may lead to self-evidence, are undeniable and through concepts may be applied to objective things. The assumption of the error of such judgments involves contradiction.

In other words, although the function of reason is not knowledge of the origins of existence, with the above-mentioned qualifications, there can be no doubt about the validity of judgments about phenomena.

As for the issue of the unity of existence, it must be said that the denial of existence of things other than God and the absolute denial of multiplicity not only imply the denial of the validity of the judgments of reason, but also involve the denial of the validity of knowledge by presence belonging to the active and passive aspects of the soul.

In this way, how can we hold that witnessings and unveilings have any validity, regarding the fact that the best evidence for their validity is their being present to consciousness? So, the unity of existence, on this interpretation, is not acceptable at all.

However, we may consider an acceptable interpretation which is propounded in transcendent philosophy2 from which it is obtained that the existence of creatures in relation to God, the Exalted, is a relative and dependent existence, and to be precise it may be said that they are the very relation and dependence, and they have no independence of their own.

That which is discovered by the gnostic is this very denial of the independence of other things [than God], which they call the denial of their real existence. Here the question may be posed in another form: Can we consider the judgment of reason prior to intuition and unveiling? In reply, it should be said that pure knowledge by presence is in truth the discovery of reality itself. Thus, it is irrefutable.

However, knowledge by presence is usually accompanied by a subjective interpretation in such a way that any distinction between them requires great care. These subjective interpretations which involve conceptual knowledge, are fallible. What are rejected by rational proofs are incorrect subjective interpretations of observations and knowledge by pretence, not the objects of knowledge by presence themselves.