of God which has brought them into being. The categories of cause and caused, property and being in possession of property, limit and being limited, cannot be either attributed to Him, or denied to Him, or have any likeness to Him. In fact, these categories never possessed such likeness, that He might become greater with the addition of them, or suffer a loss without them. He is beyond being or not-being. And thou must realize that everything to which thou mayest attribute existence, may also be predicated with non-existence as an opposite (dadd) state. But if something has no existence (generally), one cannot attribute to it non-existence (i.e. existence or non-existence cannot be attributed something which does not exist as an idea). This is because existence and non-existence are the opposite of each other. And nothing which has an opposite number (dadd) can be a god. Also know that everything that may be thought in association with something else, and cannot be imagined without such association, is called mudaf ilay-hi, i.e. associated, related to. Such a thing, however, must be a creation (makhluq). God [7] cannot depend on association with anything else (idafat bar na-girad), except this is attributed to Him allegorically, or is logically postulated (az rah-i majaz wa darurat) . For this reason we say that the world and its creator must both be under the "first caused" (ma'lul-i awwal), i.e. ?Aql, because the Nafs-i Kulli, which is the builder of the material world (taqdir-kunanda'i ?alam-i jismani), has