And the erudite scholar Sheikh Salman Ahmad said in the Commentary on the Diwan of al-Makrun: 'Verily, things in and of themselves possess no intrinsic existence. Rather, their existence consists merely of radiating beams [ashi'ah] issuing from the light of the True, Ultimate Existence, which is entirely exalted and purified above the taints of non-existence.'

And one of the scholars said: 'The pure, faithful soul is a luminous entity [kutlah nuraniyyah] that traverses the West and the East in a single moment, whereas the dense physical reality remains tightly bound beneath the shadow of the subtle reality. The body is merely an aggregated mass composed of multiple discrete components.'

[149] And Imam al-Sadiq—His glory is mighty—said in the Book of the Seven [Kitab al-Haft]: 'When Allah intends to fashion a physical body destined to be inhabited by a pure soul, He grants the man the success to consume wholesome fruits and pleasant, sweet food, so that the fluid of desire originates from it, and the sperm-drop aggregates within his loins. Then, when the man copulates with his wife and conception occurs,