One Existence, Many Mirrors: Shāh Ismāʿīl Shahīd on the Oneness of Being (Waḥdat al-Wujūd) ʿAbaqāt

Many people take it to mean that the Creator and the creation are one. He calls that popular reading an error, and the longest part of his Arabic work ʿAbaqāt, its first Pointer on "the ranks that arise from the descent of real existence", builds a better one premise by premise. This film follows that argument step by step, quoting the pages of Manāẓir Aḥsan Gīlānī's Urdu translation on screen. We follow him through: the realities that are distinct before they exist; the carpenter, the wood and the chair, and the qayyūm that holds a thing up in being; the one outspread existence (al-wujūd al-munbasiṭ) under every name the Sufis gave it; the face of God and His veil of light; the rainbow, the sea and its waves, one lamp behind many glasses; why defect belongs to the shadows and never to the light; the Essence (Lāhūt); the span-wide mirror that holds a pillar, a galloping horse and a red rose without changing; the mind that imagines a donkey and never becomes one; many mirrors around one object; the sage who builds a whole kingdom in his imagination; why none of this makes the world an illusion; how Ibn ʿArabī, the Mujaddid Aḥmad Sirhindī and Shāh Walī Allāh each saw one face of the same truth; whether the famous dispute between waḥdat al-wujūd and waḥdat al-shuhūd is largely verbal; and the overpowering love that makes anything appear at all. Chapters 0:00 One Existence, Many Mirrors 0:39 Pointer one 1:12 Before anything exists 1:48 The wood and the chair 2:24 One sustainer for all 3:03 The face and the veil 3:36 One light, many colours 4:10 Where does evil come from? 4:45 The sea and the waves 5:15 A mirror a span wide 5:43 The mind and the donkey 6:17 One face, many mirrors 6:48 The sage's kingdom 7:31 Not an illusion 8:06 Three great masters 8:47 A quarrel over words? 9:23 Why anything appears 9:56 Neither, nor Sources quoted • Shāh Ismāʿīl Shahīd, ʿAbaqāt, Urdu translation by Manāẓir Aḥsan Gīlānī (Idāra-e Islāmiyāt, Lahore), Pointer 1 (Tanazzulāt), pp. 19–163 — page images shown from pp. 19, 37, 40, 45, 52, 54, 59, 60, 62, 65, 66, 72, 78, 88, 90, 91, 138 • Qurʾān 2:115, cited in ʿAbaqāt p. 88 • Hadith "all good is in Your hands, and evil is not to You" (Muslim), cited p. 53; the hadith of the veil of light, cited p. 40 • "I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be known" — a saying famous among the Sufis, cited p. 138 • ʿAbd al-Raḥmān Jāmī, as quoted pp. 78 and 138; Ṣadr al-Dīn Qūnawī, as quoted p. 91 #WahdatAlWujud #OnenessOfBeing #Tasawwuf #Sufism #ShahIsmailShaheed #Abaqat #ShahWaliullah #IbnArabi #Mujaddid #IslamicPhilosophy