uncreated, and that what is uncreated may descend into what is created. If, as they cannot help admitting, the creation is phenomenal, then their Creator also must be phenomenal, because the _locus_ of a thing is like its substance; if the _locus_ (_maḥall_) is phenomenal, it follows that the contents of the _locus_ (_ḥáll_) are phenomenal too. In fine, when one thing is linked and united and commingled with another, both things are in principle as one. Accordingly, our subsistence and annihilation are attributes of ourselves, and resemble each other in respect of their being our attributes. Annihilation is the annihilation of one attribute through the subsistence of another attribute. One may speak, however, of an annihilation that is independent of subsistence, and also of a subsistence that is independent of annihilation: in that case annihilation means “annihilation of all remembrance of other”, and subsistence means “subsistence of the remembrance of God” (_baqá-yi dhikr-i ḥaqq_). Whoever is annihilated from his own will subsists in the will of God, because thy will is perishable and the will of God is everlasting: when thou standest by thine own will thou standest by annihilation, but when thou art absolutely controlled by the will of God thou standest by subsistence. Similarly, the power of fire transmutes to its own quality anything that falls into it, and surely the power of God’s will is greater than that of fire; but fire affects only the quality of iron without changing its substance, for iron can never become fire. SECTION.