"Although everything is fundamentally made of existence (which in itself is one and undifferentiated), there are still real differences between individual things - differences that can be appreciated and described both sensorially and conceptually, that is linguistically. But how are we to understand the relationship between undifferentiated existence, and linguistic differentiations? How can it be that all things are at the same time ineffably one, and linguistically many? Mulla Sadra answers this question with certainty: differences between things should be considered as functions of the varying intensity with which existence shines through each of them.26 Borrowing a metaphor that was dear also to the Sufis, we could say that the realm of essence is like a slate of glass (though this glass should be imagined at a near-liquid state) varying in colour and thickness at different points. As the light of existence traverses it, individual things appear as the catalogue of detectable modulations in the colour and intensity of the light. Although the boundaries between individual things are somewhat fuzzy, it is possible to appreciate the difference between various modulations of the light, as functions of the varying intensity and colour taken on by the first emanating principle. Yet, all things are at the same time in perfect seamless unity with each other, inasmuch as they are all made of one and the same light, that is, of emanated existence."
Federico Campagna, Technic and Magic
