 For Mulla Sadra, existence is ontologically prior, a unified reality graded in degrees of intensity and an elusive reality that cannot be fully grasped. Any attempt to conceptualise existence falsifies it through reification that determines an essence grasped in the mind (Mulla Sadra 1964: 6). A reified, fixed and immutable concept cannot capture the nature of existence, which is dynamic and in flux. Ultimately, essences are privative and, citing Ibn al-‘Arabi, they ‘have never smelt the fragrance of being’. They are merely posited in the mind as modes of making sense and of determining reality as ‘beings of reason’. Unpacking this metaphysical package, one can discern three distinct doctrines of existence that draw upon his intellectual influences, which include Avicennan philosophy, the intuitive philosophy of the ishraqi school associated with Suhrawardi, and the Sufi metaphysics of being of Ibn al-‘Arabi.