My Master said to him: "So why do you deny, O King, that the light manifesting from this jewel is the utmost of what you reach and attain to its knowledge, and the goal of what you seek, indicate, and intend,

since there is no reaching to the knowledge of the jewel upon what it is, and no path to perceiving it and knowing its modality (kayfiyyah) and its quiddity (mahiyyah)?"

The King said: "I do not deny it, and it is not precluded that the matter is upon what you have mentioned and explained. But inform me, is there a distinction between the jewel and its light by which the luminousness (al-nuriyyah) is distinguished from the essentiality (al-jawhariyyah)?"

My Master said to him: "Distinction is only between two separate types and two differing shapes. As for the light, when it is manifest from an illuminator, then it is not permissible. And speech only expands for us in the like of this meaning, but as for what we are mentioning, language restricts us, our thoughts are confined, our understandings do not expand, and our intellects do not reach a distinction that we find between the light and the essence. And the most that we find in this meaning, we say: 'The light is from the jewel,' and we do not say that the jewel is from the light, and [that] the jewel is the root of the light, and that it is its cause and its path."