The Simplest Reality

Ali ibn Ibrahim has narrated from Muhammad ibn ‘Isa ibn ‘Ubayd from Hammad from Hariz from Muhammad ibn Muslim from abu Ja’far (as), who has said the following :
”انه واحد صمد احدى المعنى ليس بمعنى كثيرة مختلفة, قال قلت جعلت فداك يزعم قوم من اهل العراق انه يسمع بغيرالذى يبصر و يبصربغيرالذى يسمع, قال فقال كذبو و الحدو و شبهوا تعالى الله عن ذلك انه سميع بصير يسمع بما يبصر و يبصر بما يسمع“
translation : “He, Allah, is One, the Self-sufficient. He is One and only One without any multiplicity in different meaning.The narrator has said that I further inquired, ‘May Allah keep my soul in your service, certain people in Iraq think, that Allah hears with something different from what He sees with, and He sees with something different from what He hears with.’ The Imam replied, ‘They have said a lie and have (deviated from the truth) become atheists for considering Allah similar to other things. Allah, the Most High, indeed is above all things. He is All-hearing and All-seeing. He hears with what He sees, and sees with what He hears” [Al-Kafi,kitab-ul-tawhid,hadith#292]

God is the Simplest Reality [بسيط الحقيقة] ; without parts and divisions [اجزاء] ; without plurality or multiplicity [كثرت]; for He is One in all respects [واحد من جميع الجهات] ; a True Unity [وحدت حق] ; but to assert that, that with which He hears is different from that with which He sees, and that with which He sees is other than that with which He hears, is to affirm what is negated concerning His Essence [ذات], thereby leading to a manifest absurdity ; Exalted is His Being, in which there is neither the composition [مركب] of Essence and Attributes [صفات], nor a distinction between one divine quality and another ; therefore if He is said to see with something other than that with which He hears and to hear with something other than that with which He sees, so this implies a plurality of aspects within the The One such that The One is subsistent by virtue of the said plurality, but the principle [مبداء] of plurality or multiplicity is The One or Unity, such that plurality becomes subsistent through The One, but this is impossible since a thing cannot grant subsistence [قوام] to that by which the thing itself subsists, therefore assuming The One being subsistent through a plurality, that plurality cannot itself be subsistent through The One.

Now the aspect [جهت] with which He sees will either be distinct from His Essence or identical to it [عين ذات] ; if it is distinct from the Essence, so this renders God a composite of His Essence and this aspect, which is impossible since the Simplest Reality cannot be something composite ; and if the aspect is identical to the Essence such that the aspect is the Essence, and the aspect is limited [محدود] in so far as it only pertains to seeing but not hearing, so this renders the Essence limited ; but that which is limited falls under the influence of the one imposing the limit [حد], and hence cannot be Necessary in Itself [واجب بالذات]. According to both Mullah Sadra and Avicenna there can be no duality [اثنيت] or plurality in God since multiplicity and composition implies, dependence [احتياج], contingency [امكان] and being necessary through another [واجب بالغير], therefore there is no plurality of aspects within the Divine ; in truth there is just a single aspect which is identical to the Essence, and He sees and hears with the same aspect, meaning His Essence, as Mullah Sadra quotes Avicenna in one of his works “His Might [قدرة] is His Life [حيات], and His Life is His Might ; He is Alive [حى] in the aspect in which He is All-Mighty [قادر], and is All-Mighty in the aspect in which He is Alive”[Mazahir-ul-Ilahiyah,mazhar#4,page#83] ; Avicenna’s words are simply an echo of the above-mentioned Imamic statement “He hears with what He sees, and sees with what He hears”.

The conceptual multiplicity [كثرت ظهنى] of divine attributes does not necessitate an actual plurality [كثرت خارجى] of these attributes in concrete existence [وجود خارج], and does not lead to a plurality of aspects [كثرت جهات] in the Essence, since it is possible for a multiplicity of aspects or meanings to be intellectually-abstracted [عقلى انتزاع] from a single existence [وجود], without this necessarily implying an actual plurality in that existence ; therefore a plurality of attributes having distinct or different meanings [معنى] may be abstracted from the Necessary Being, without this leading to any actual or real composition or multiplicity in His Essence.