Imam abu ‘Abd Allah (as) On the Thingness of God

Muhammad ibn Ya‘qub has narrated from Ali ibn Ibrahim, from Muhammad ibn‘Isa from ‘Abd al-Rahman ibn abu Najran who said the following:
“Once I asked (Imam) abu ‘Abd Allah (as) about the Oneness of Allah, ‘Can I think of Him (the creator) as a thing?’ The Imam replied, ‘Yes, but not as a thing that can be well understood and clearly defined within limits. What may become a subject of your thoughts is different from Him. Nothing resembles Him and the thoughts and imaginations cannot reach Him. How could the imaginations reach Him when He is different from what can become the subject of thoughts and is different from whatever can be perceived in one’s thoughts? You can think of Him as a thing that cannot be well understood and clearly defined (under certain limits).”[Al-Kafi,kitab-ul-tawhid,]

That which becomes the object of human thought and is apprehended or perceived by the intellect [عقل] is the essence [ماھيۃ] of a thing which is the answer to the question ‘what is it? [ما ھوا]’, not its existence [وجود] because it is impossible for existence to be imported into the mind and thereby become an object of thought, and since God is the Reality of Existence [حقيقۃ الوجود] therefore He has no essence distinct from His Existence and therefore cannot become the subject of thought; because essences define things that belong to a certain genus [جنس], species [نوع] or and have a certain limit [حد] but Pure Existence [وجود محض] cannot be a genus because a genus is an essence that is dependent upon a differential [فصل] for its subsistence [قوام] or realization [تحقق] in the external reality [حقيقۃ الخارجيۃ] for instance the genus animalia [حيوانيۃ] is rendered subsistent and realized in reality by the differential ‘intellect’ and so the combination of the genus animalia and the intellect together forms the human species [نوع انسان], whereas existence is not dependent upon something else for its subsistence & realization in the external reality in fact it is existence that renders all things subsistent in reality without itself deriving its reality from anything else. Existence cannot be a species because a species is an essence which is a composite [مرکب] of a genus and a differential for example the human species is a composite of the genus animalia and the intellect and every composite is necessary through another [واجب بالغيرہ] and hence contingent [ممکن بالذات]. There can be no similitude [تشبيہ] for God since if a thing is said to be similar to God while being an entity distinct and separate from the Divine so both that entity and God must have a aspect of assimilation [جھت اشتراک], that is the cause of the similarity that exists between them, as well as an aspect of distinction and difference [جھت امتياز], which is the cause of their otherness [غيريت], and this would render the Divine Essence composite of an aspect of difference and an aspect of similarity, which is impossible because God being the Simplest Reality [بسيط الحقيقۃ] cannot be something composite.