 In themselves the known things are nonexistent (like ideas that have no existence outside our minds), but when God issues the “engendering command” (al-amr al-takwînî)—the word “Be!” (kun)—they enter into being (kawn). Ibn ‘Arabî calls the thingness of the things in the divine knowledge “the thingness of fixity” (shay’iyyat al-thubût), because the things in themselves never change. Despite appearances, the engendering command does not remove them from their fixity, for nothing becomes manifest but Being, though delimited and defined by the thingness of the things. The common example is light: When it shines through a piece of colored glass, it appears as colored, but light alone is manifest.