The unity of existence
idea · 2 works · 2 mentions · 5 anchored passages
a single essence with multiple attributes · no existence but His existence · no multiple essences in existence · one entity · one single individual real existence · the Really One · waḥdat al-wujūd · لا وجود إلا وجوده · وجود واحد جزئي حقيقي
in the texts
Kitāb al-Zawrāʼ wa-al-taʻlīqāt ʻalayhi
The doctrine that there are not many essences but one essence with many attributes, modes and faces, witnessed as the Really One within the multiplicities.
So there are not in existence multiple essences, but a single essence possessing multiple attributes, as God, exalted be He, has said:
and the witnessing of the Really One within the multiplicities has been made easy for you, with no taint of admixture and no separation;
Hence, if you close your eyes to it and to what appears upon it in the apprehensions of its descent and the stages of its ascent, you will find nothing but a single entity, plain of all distinguishing and otherness — nay, you will not find what you find, since you have found.
Risālat al-Wāridāt
The doctrine that there is only one real existence, God's, and that everything else is a consideration, relation, phase or mode of it rather than a further existent — the treatise's central thesis, asserted in the Sufi formula lā wujūd illā wujūduhu and defended by an argument from the impossibility of distinguishing two existences.
Therefore there is nothing in true, essential existence but one single absolute essence, in which there is no multiplicity except by the multiplicity of its considerations, and in which there is no qualification in any respect whatever;
— Therefore there is nothing there but one single existence, individual and real, in which there is no qualification in any respect whatever;
— Will you not then ascertain from this that what is the existence of the whole, beside whose existence there is no existence and everything other than which is non-existence, is perfection by its own essence, since there is no non-existence in it in any of its aspects;