The Limitless Divine Being

Ali ibn Muhammad has narrated from Sahl ibn Ziyad from ibn Mahbub from those he mentioned from abu ‘Abd Allah, recipient of divine supreme covenant, who said the following:
“Once a man said, Allahu Akbar (Allah is greater) in the presence of abu ‘Abd Allah(as). The Imam asked, ‘Allah is greater than whom?’ The man replied, ‘He is greater than everything.’ The Imam said, ‘You have considered Him limited.’ The man asked, ‘Then, how should I say it?’ The Imam replied, ‘Say, Allah is greater than can be described” [Al-Kafi,kitab-ul-tawhid,hadith#312]

The following tradition shed’s some light on the above-mentioned tradition:

Muhammad ibn Yahya has narrated from Ahmad ibn Muhammad ibn ‘Isa from Marwak ibn ‘Ubayd from Jumay’ ibn ‘Umayr who said the following:
“Once (Imam) abu ‘Abd Allah(as), asked me, ‘What is the meaning of Allah is greatest?’ I replied, ‘Allah is the greatest of all things.’ The Imam further asked, ‘Were there other things so Allah could be considered the greatest of them?’ I then asked, ‘What then is the meaning thereof?’ The Imam replied, ‘Allah is by far greater. He is beyond all descriptions” [Al-Kafi,kitab-ul-tawhid,hadith#313]

God as a being Necessary in Itself [واجب بالذات] must be necessary from all aspects [واجب من جميع الجحات] and that which is necessary from all aspects must be infinite because a finite or a limited entity is contrary to the notion of necessity from all aspects; therefore Pure Being exists as an infinite reality that cannot be bounded or restricted by any limit, and being infinite in its reality, Pure Being leaves no room for any other reality or existent, which is evident from the Imam’s words in the second of the above mentioned two traditions ‘Were there other things so Allah could be considered the greatest of them?’; because to acknowledge the existence of another or a plurality of others besides Pure Being [وجود حض] is tantamount to negating the very notion of its infinity and consequently the negation of its being necessary from all aspects. But our sense-perception [ادراك حسى], which is knowledge by acquisition [علم حصولى] and intuition, which is knowledge by presence [علم حضورى], both provide us with irrefutable evidence for the existence of contingent beings such as our souls [نفوس] and the entire cosmos [عالم امكان]; such evidence cannot be ignored neither can it be considered as a figment of our imagination or an illusion, therefore the world and all that it holds is real and has existence; but if the contingent world exists, so it must exist due to its contingency [امكان ذاتى] by virtue of a being that is Necessary in Itself, and that which is Necessary in Itself must be necessary from all aspects including infinity, but an infinite reality such as the Pure Being must not allow the existence of any other, because to grant the existence of another is to check or limit its own infinity as is stated by the Imam (as) in the first tradition ‘You have considered Him limited’; and therefore the contingent world must not exist, but we know for sure that it does and here lies the problem; because on the one hand we have the existence of the entire contingent world which is undeniable and on the other hand we also know that the existence of this contingent realm could only have been necessitated by an infinite reality or Pure Being, whose very infinity must negate the existence of any other, or the existence of that other must necessarily entail the finitude of this Pure Being.

This apparent contradiction is resolved when we see the contingent world not as a negation but as a manifestation [مظهر] of the infinity of the Necessary Being and realize that the infinity of Pure Being would only have been negated had the world been subsistent in itself [قائم بالذات] and essentially-independent [مستقل بالذات] off God in any aspect, in other words the infinity of the divine would only have been negated if the world would have been necessary in essence instead of being essentially-contingent and dependent [مهتاج] upon the divine from all aspects; had the world been essentially-independent even from a single aspect,so that would have been sufficient to render void divine infinity. But the world in its essence is contingent [ممكن بالذات] and destitute [موجود فقير] from all aspects and therefore depends upon the divine for everything. But when it is said that the world is dependent upon the divine so by that we do not mean that the world was something to which dependence is ascribed or predicated as an accidental-attribute [عرض] because such an assertion entails the existence of something or a subject [موضوع] which subsequently suffers from destitution [فقر] and dependence [اهتياج], because that would imply that the subject was independent in its existence. Therefore the contingent world is not something to which destitution and dependence occur but rather it is the very destitution and dependence itself; it is not something that becomes related [مربوط] to its perfect-cause [علت تامه], meaning the divine, but is the very relation itself [رابطه], this is because all that an effect [معلول] is in terms of existence, perfection and completion it is due to its existence granting cause such that whatever existence and perfections a contingent being possesses, it does so by reason of its perfect-cause, that showers it with existence and perfection to the extent of the effect’s capacity to receive. Whatever existence or reality we see around us in the form of contingent-essences [ممكنات], it does not essentially belong to those contingent essences but has been imparted to them by the Pure Being; the Quran beautifully expresses the same notion as “يا أَيُّهَا النّاسُ أَنتُمُ الفُقَراءُ إِلَى اللَّهِ ۖ وَاللَّهُ هُوَ الغَنِيُّ الحَميدُ”, translation “Oh mankind you are destitute before God and God is absolutely independent and all praise-worthy”.

According to Mullah Sadra existents can be classified as either Independent [موجود غَنِيُّ] or Destitute [موجود فقير], and since there can only be one Necessary Being therefore there can only be one Independent-Existent, and He alone is True Being, the Truly Real [موجود حقيقى], because from an Irfani perspective nothing exists apart from The One, as is stated by the Imam (as) ‘Were there other things so Allah could be considered the greatest of them?’.