The Twenty Nine Pages - An Introduction To Ibn ' Arabi's Metaphysics

THE
TWENTY-NINE

PAGES

An Introduction to
[bn ‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Unity

BESHARA PUBLICATIONS

For the study and an understanding
of esoteric knowledge as expressed most
completely by Ibn ‘Arabi, it is necessary to
become acquainted with some of the
terminology which he uses in his exposition
of the way of the mystic in his esoteric
advance.

TIE
TWENTY-NINE
PAGES

An Introduction to
Ibn ‘Arabi’s Metaphysics of Unity

Extracts from
The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Din Ibnul Arabi
by A. E. Affifi

BESHARA PUBLICATIONS

Edited extracts from
The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Din Ibnul Arabi
by ALE. Affifi
© Cambridge University Press 1938

This edition published by Beshara Publications
c/o Chisholme House
Roberton, nr Hawick
Roxburgh TD9 7PH
Scotland
1998

ISBN 0 904975 20 7

Printed in Great Britain

INTRODUCTION

Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, one of the greatest mystics of all time,
was born in Murcia in 1165 of an ancient Arab family. His
intellectual ability and spiritual aptitude were apparent from
an early age, and he studied assiduously under many teachers
in Andalusia and the Maghrib. After extensive travels in the
Islamic world, he died at Damascus in 1240. He left more
than 400 writings, in which the primordial principle of the
Absolute Unity of Existence is expressed with unique clarity
and fullness. To many he is known simply as al-Shaykh al-
Akbar — ‘the Greatest Teacher’.

The text of this book consists of edited highlights from A.E.
Affifi’s The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Din Ibnul Arabi,
originally published by Cambridge University Press in 1938.
The extracts presented here as a continuous text were first
put together more than twenty years ago by Bulent Rauf,
Consultant to the Beshara Trust until his death in 1987. His
intention was to provide a complete introductory guide to
the language and thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, particularly those
aspects of his doctrine which refer to the Unity of Being and
the Perfectability of Man. It should be noted that Affifi’s
original work was in some respects not favourable to Ibn
‘Arabi’s point of view, though the author understood well
enough what he was disagreeing with. Indeed, Affifi has
done a great service by providing the raw material for what
is perhaps the most lucid and thorough introduction to Ibn
‘Arabi’s metaphysics of perfection.

Long known simply as the Twenty-Nine Pages from the for-
mat of its original printing, this text has been a foundation
for study at the Beshara School of Intensive Esoteric Education
for many years, where it has been read prior to Ibn ‘Arabi’s
own more demanding works such as the Fusiis al-Hikam. The
clarity of the exposition and depth of meaning make it an
invaluable reference work for all students of mysticism and
the spiritual life, whatever their background. The only

agreement required from the reader is to the premise that
Reality is One. This accepted, Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine is shown,
like all expressions of the highest wisdom, to be universal in
its implications, and immediate in its address.

The Twenty-Nine Pages has been reprinted at least seven times
for the use of the School, with minor editorial changes. This
edition has been divided into sections to provide a better
sense of the structure of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought and to allow
easier reference for the student. At the Beshara School it is
always studied in groups, forming the focus for intensive
discussion and acting as a mirror for the students’ questions
concerning their relationship with Reality. This is the first
edition to be made available to the public, in the sincere hope
that many will benefit from its grand yet essentially simple
message.

CONTENTS

Being

The One & the Many
Immanence & Transcendence
Causality

The Divine Names

The A ‘yan al-thabita

The Self-Revelations of the One
The Reality of Realities

The Perfect Man

Sainthood

Knowledge

The Heart

The Soul

Khayal

Fana’ & Baga’

Beliefs

Good & Evil

Love & Beauty

Index of Names & Arabic Terms

BEING

Ibn ‘Arabi’s premise is the bird’s-eye view — looking down
upon a pyramid from above its apex, rather than viewing
the pyramid from its base and looking up towards its apex.
The apex of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought is the point which is the
‘Absolute Being’.

Ibn ‘Arabi uses the term ‘Absolute Being’ (al-wujiid al-mutlaq)
or ‘Entire Being’ (al-wujiid al-kulli) to denote the Reality which
is the essence of all that exists.

Reality is ultimately One, and Being (existence as a concept)
is identical with the One Existing Reality which is the source
of all that has existence. It follows that Absolute Existence,
which cannot be anything but a ‘universal concept’, and
‘Absolute Reality’ (al-haqq al-mutlaq) are identical.

Reality (Being) is one and a unity, and Existence is one and a
unity. Reality which is Absolute Being is actually one with
Absolute Existence, though they may be separated in
thought. Absolute Existence is the source of all limited
existences. Ibn ‘Arabi says, “Were it not for the permeation
of God, by means of His form, in all existents, the world
would have no existence; just as were it not for the intelligi-
ble universal realities, no predications (ahkam) of external
objects would be possible.”

The real source of all beings is ‘Absolute Being’: a Reality or
Being whose existence is identical with its Essence — a Being
whose existence is necessary (wajib al-wujidi li dhatihi). This
Essence is at once all the realised and the realisable quiddi-
ties (mahiyyat) in the external world with all their properties
and accidents, and upon this Essence, with its existence and
manifestations, the human mind bases its notions of abstract
existence.

Absolute Being, or Absolute Existence, or Absolute Reality,
which is Entire, Indivisible, Universal and Infinite, is the
Origin of all that follows.

Being becomes existent when particularised either as an in-
ternal mentation at the level of the Absolute Being, or as an
extension of that being in the external manifestation. How-
ever, aS we shall see, extension in this case is an extension
without extension, although for our purposes the extension
into manifestation is better considered as an existent in the
world. Everything that has being may be said to have exist-
ence if manifested in one or other of what he calls ‘awalim
(universes) or maratib (degrees) of being. The word ‘alam
(universe) is often used in esoteric language to denote a
global, unlimited, in-depth system.

As we will see elsewhere, there are considered to be 18,000
universes, though their number is infinite. This universe is
both finite and infinite, immanential and spiritual, temporal
and eternal, and above all, both existent and non-existent. It
both exists in the knowledge of God as permanent and eter-
nal, and in the phenomenal world as temporal and finite.
What applies to the Universe also applies to Man. For in-
stance, the Universe is sometimes called the Big Man, and
Man is sometimes known as the small Universe.

Ibn ‘Arabi uses the term ‘not-being’ to denote either:

1. things that do not exist in any of the universes or degrees
of being — the pure non-existent (al-‘adam al-mahd), about
which nothing further can be said;

2. things that exist in one plane but not in another, under
which we may class:
a. things which exist only as ideas or concepts in a mind
and cannot possibly exist in the external world;

b. things which are possible or even probable existents,
but which do not actually exist in the external world.

The ‘pure not-being’ can never itself be an object of our
thought; other non-existents can and actually are. When we
imagine we know a pure not-being, what we really know is

10

its opposite (its logical contradictory), or the reason for its
non-existence.

By a necessary being is meant a being whose existence is self-
necessitated, i.e. it exists per se: and this is God alone. A
possible (or contingent) being is that for whose existence
there is no essential or necessary reason, i.e. its being or non-
being are equally possible. An impossible being is one whose
non-existence is necessitated by some formal reason. The
philosophers deny the category of the contingent on the
ground that all that exists is either necessary in itself or made
necessary through another being whose existence is neces-
sary in itself (wajib al-wujudi bi l-ghayr). However Ibn ‘Arabi
adds, “But the gnostic (‘drif) admits contingency and knows
its real place and what the contingent means and whence it
is contingent, and the fact that it is essentially identical with
wajib al-wujidi bi l-ghayr.” In fact, he emphatically denies the
existence of the contingent per se, and admits only two cate-
gories: the necessary (as explained above) and the impossible.

THE ONE & THE MANY

According to Ibn ‘Arabi there is only one Reality in exist-
ence. This Reality we view from two different angles, now
calling it Haqq (the Real) when we regard it as the Essence of
all phenomena, and now Khalq (the Immanence), when we
regard it as the manifested phenomena of that Essence. Haqq
and Khalq, Reality and Appearance, the One and the Many,
are only names for two subjective aspects of One Reality: it
is areal unity but an empirical diversity. This Reality is God.
“If you regard Him through Him”, Ibn ‘Arabi says, “then
He regards Himself through Himself, which is the state of
unity; but if you regard Him through yourself then the unity
vanishes”.

The One is everywhere as an Essence, and nowhere as the
Universal Essence which is above and beyond all ‘where’

11

and ‘how’. “Unity has no other meaning than two (or more)
things being actually identical, but conceptually distinguish-
able the one from the other; so in one sense the one is the
other; in another it is not.” “Multiplicity is due to different
points of view, not to an actual division in the One Essence
(‘Ayn).”

The whole of Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics rests on this distinc-
tion and there is not a single point in his system where it is
not introduced in some form or other.

Owing to our finite minds and our inability to grasp the
Whole as a Whole, we regard itasa plurality of beings, as-
cribing to each one characteristics which distinguish it from
the rest. Only a person possessed of the vision of a mystic,
Ibn ‘Arabi would say, can transcend, ina supra-mental state
of intuition, all the multiplicity of forms and ‘see’ the reality
that underlies them. What seem to multiply the One are the
ahkam (predications) which we predicate of external objects
~ the fact that we bring them under categories of colour, size,
shape, and temporal and spatial relations, etc. In itself the
One is simple and indivisible.

To express it in theological language, as Ibn ‘Arabi some-
times does, the One is al-Hagq (the Real or God), the Many
are al-Khalq (created beings, phenomenal world); the One is
the Lord, the Many are the servants; the One isa unity (jam‘),
the Many are a diversity (farq); and so on.

Now we are ina position to understand the apparent para-
doxes in which Ibn ‘Arabi often revels, such as “the creator
is the created”; “Iam He and He is I’; “lam He and not He”;
“Haqq is Khalg and Khalq is Haqq”; “Haqg is not Khalg and
Khalg is not Haqq”; and so on and so on. Explained on this
relative notion of the two aspects of Reality, these paradox-
es are no paradoxes at all. There is a complete reciprocity
between the One and the Many as understood by Ibn ‘Arabi,
and complete mutual dependence. Like two logical correla-
tives, neither has any meaning without the other.

12

The relation between the One and the Many is often ex-
plained by Ibn ‘Arabi by means of metaphors, and the utmost
care should be taken in understanding them correctly.

The metaphor of the ‘mirror’ and ‘images’ is closely allied to
that of the ‘object’ and its ‘shadow’. The One is regarded as
an object whose image is reflected in different mirrors; the
images appearing in different forms and shapes according
to the nature of each mirror (locus). The Many (phenomenal
world) is the mirror-image, the shadow of the Real object
beyond. The whole world is like a shadow play. “We are
sufficiently far”, he says, “from the screen on which the phe-
nomenal objects are reflected to believe that what we see (on
the screen) is all that is real.” To rule out any implication of
duality, he definitely states that the source of the shadow
and the shadow itself are one.

The metaphor of ‘permeation’ and ‘spiritual food’: the Many
permeates the One in the sense in which qualities, colour
say, permeate substances. The One, on the other hand,
permeates the Many as food permeates a body. God is our
sustaining spiritual food because He is our essence. The phe-
nomenal world is also His food because it is through it that
God is endowed with Attributes (ahkam).

Ibn ‘Arabi holds that the spiritual governs and controls the
material everywhere: the One Universal Substance abides in
all and governs all. “The Many are to the One like a vessel
(ind) in which His Essence subsists.” According to Ibn ‘Arabi,
spirit is ‘materia’ to matter. The whole Universe may be One
Universal Spirit possessing even a higher degree of unity
than that of ahuman mind. The ultimate solution of the prob-
lem rests with the supra-mental intuition of the mystic, which
alone perceives the unity as a unity.

Ibn ‘Arabi warns us that should we maintain a distinction
between the Real and the Phenomenal (Haqq and Khalq), thus
explained as Essence and Form, or Reality and Appearance,

13

etc., we should not, even on his doctrine, predicate of one
what is predicable of the other, except in the strict sense of
regarding them as ultimately and essentially One (Haqq). The
One Essence transcends all the forms and whatever
characteristics belong to them.

IMMANENCE & TRANSCENDENCE

We have already seen that the duality of Haqg and Khalq is
not, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, a real duality of beings but a duality
of what we might call differentiating aspects. Differentiat-
ing aspects are identified in his philosophy with what he calls
transcendence and immanence (tanzih and tashbih). In Ibn
‘Arabi’s doctrine of transcendence and immanence, imma-
nence is not understood to mean that God possesses hearing,
or sight, or hands etc., but rather that He is immanent in all
that hears and sees, and this constitutes His immanence
(tashbih). On the other hand, His Essence is not limited to
one being or a group of beings that hear and see, but is man-
ifested in all such beings whatever. In this sense God is
transcendent because He is above all limitation and individ-
ualisation. As a universal substance, He is the Essence of all
that is. Thus Ibn ‘Arabi reduces tanzih and tashbih to abso-
luteness (itlaq) and limitedness (taqyid).

Ibn ‘Arabi emphatically denies anthropomorphism and cor-
porealism, and the Christian doctrine of incarnation (hulil).
To say that Christ is God is true, he says, in the sense that
everything else is God, and to say that Christ is the son of
Mary is also true, but to say that God is Christ the son of
Mary is false, because this would imply that He is Christ
and nothing else. God is you and I and everything else in
the universe. He is all that is perceptible and imperceptible;
material or spiritual. It is infidelity (kufr) to say that He is
you alone or I alone or Christ alone, or to limit Him in any
form whatever, even in a conceptual form. When a man says

14

that he has seen God in a dream with such and such a col-
our, size or form, all that he wishes to say is that God has
revealed Himself to him in one of His infinite forms, for He
reveals Himself in intelligible as well as in concrete forms.
So what the man has really seen is a form of God, not God
Himself.

Ibn ‘Arabi holds that transcendence and immanence are two
fundamental aspects of Reality as we know it. Neither of
them would be sufficient without the other if we want to
give a complete account of Reality. The Haqq of whom tran-
scendence is asserted is the same as the Khalq of whom
immanence is asserted, although (logically) the Creator is
distinguished from the created.

Although Ibn ‘Arabi asserts that everything and all things
are God (the immanent aspect), he takes care not to assert
the converse. God is the Unity behind the multiplicity and
the Reality behind the Appearance (the transcendent aspect).
He says that it is not transcendence as asserted by man which
explains the real nature of God as the Absolute. Even the
most abstract transcendence (conceived by man) is a form of
limitation, because it implies, at least, the existence of an
asserter besides that of God. Further, to assert anything of
anything is to limit it; therefore, the assertion even of abso-
lute transcendence of God is a limitation. The assertion, made
by the intellect, of the transcendence of God is only a con-
venient way of contrasting the two aspects of Reality as we
understand it, but it does not explain its nature.

Tawhid (unification, union) belongs to the Muwahhid (the
Unifier), not to God, since God is above all assertions. No-
one except God Himself knows His real transcendent aspect.
The perfect Sufi, in his ecstatic flight, might have a glimpse
of this unity, not through the intellect but by means of a su-
pra-mental intuition which belongs only to such a state. This
higher form of transcendence is independent of all assertion.
It belongs to the Divine Essence per se and 4 se, and. it is what

15

Ibn ‘Arabi calls the transcendence of the unity (tanzih al-
tawhid). The absolute unity and simplicity of the Divine
Essence is only known to the Divine Essence — there is no
duality of subject and object, knower and known.

God is in everything, yet above all things, which is a descrip-
tion rather than a definition. But even such a definition (ora
description) would contain, Ibn ‘Arabi urges, definitions of
all beings, actual and potential, physical and spiritual, and
since a complete knowledge of everything is an impossibili-
ty for man, a complete definition of God is therefore
impossible.

Ibn ‘Arabi concludes by saying that the so-called attributes
of transcendence (sifat al-tanzih) should be predicated of the
Godhead (al-haqq) not of the Essence, for the Essence, in its
bare abstraction, is attributeless. The attributes of transcend-
ence are summed up in what he calls absoluteness (itlaq), as
contrasted with the limitedness (taqyid) of the phenomenal
world. To the Divine Essence explained above, Ibn ‘Arabi
sometimes applies the pronoun ‘He’, for the Essence alone
is the absolute ghayb (unseen).

In short, Ibn ‘Arabi says that we must distinguish two fun-
damentally different kinds of transcendence:

1. That which belongs to the Divine Essence per se and a se -
the absolute simplicity and unity of the One — the state of
the ahadiyya.

2. Transcendence asserted by the intellect, which must always
be coupled with immanence and which may assume the
following forms:

a. God may be called transcendent in the sense of being
Absolute; or

b. He may be called transcendent in the sense of being a
necessary being, self-begotten, self-caused, etc., in
contradistinction to the contingent, created or caused
beings of the phenomenal world; or

16

c. He may be called transcendent in the sense that He is
unknowable and incommunicable and beyond all proof.

The second kind of transcendence Ibn ‘Arabi condemns if
taken by itself (i.e. without immanence) to be an explana-
tion of the whole truth about Reality. Reality as Ibn ‘Arabi
understands it has both aspects: transcendence and
immanence.

CAUSALITY

“The movement of the creation of the world is an intelligible
one”, Ibn ‘Arabi says. In consideration of this, ‘cause’ and
‘effect’ are mere appellations, two subjective categories.

As there is only one Reality, regarded in one aspect as a cause
and in another as an effect, cause and effect are identical and
every cause is an effect of its own effect; a conclusion which
Ibn ‘Arabi says would be pronounced impossible by the
unaided intellect, but which, according to the mystic intui-
tion, is an explanation of what actually is. The question is
understood by the mystic as follows: every cause, on account
of its being both an essence and a form, is both a cause and
an effect, an agent and a patient; and every effect, on account
of its being an essence and a form, is also both a cause and
an effect, or an agent and a patient. And since Reality is One,
now regarded as an essence, now as a form, it follows that It
is both a cause and an effect at the same time, and that every-
thing that is called a cause, on entering into a causal relation
with anything else which is called an effect, is at the same
time an effect of its own effect, on account of that effect be-
ing (by virtue of its essence) a cause. What it all amounts to
is that God, who is the only cause, is immanent in both causes
and effects, so it is immaterial whether we call a particular
cause a cause of a certain effect, or an effect of this effect
(itself being regarded as a cause).

17

According to Ibn “Arabi, all changes in the phenomenal
world, in fact all that he calls creation, is nothing but ‘be-
coming’. He denies that the relation between God and the
universe is a conditional relation on the ground that a con-
dition (shart) does not necessarily entail the existence of the
thing of which it is a condition. For him, the existence of the
universe is necessarily entailed by that of a necessary being.
He argues that to be alive is a condition for being able to
acquire knowledge and to have legs is a condition for being
able to walk, but the existence of life does not necessarily
entail that of knowledge, neither does the existence of legs
necessarily entail walking. We can never say that the condi-
tioned must exist, although we say that if it did, its condition
must exist.

But unlike a condition, a cause, by itself, Ibn ‘Arabi says,
does entail the existence of its own effect. The universe is
regarded by the Ash‘arites and the ancient philosophers as
a necessary consequence of a certain cause. Ibn ‘Arabi agrees
with both, saying that we may say, following the Ash‘arites,
that the divine knowledge of God, or the Essence, according
to the philosophers, is the cause of the universe, if and only
if this does not imply any temporal priority of God to the
universe. It would be meaningless, he says, to talk about a
temporal interval or a gap between the One and the Many,
or God and the Universe, or the Necessary and the Contin-
gent, if necessity and contingency are regarded (as he regards
them) as only two aspects of the One. If we must say that the
universe is caused or created at all, it must not be under-
stood in the sense of the universe originated or created in
time or from nothing. Ibn ‘Arabi does not admit creation ex
nihilo.

The world was never at any time a non-existent and then
became an existent. The universe is eternal, infinite and
everlasting, because it is the outward expression of the eter-
nal, infinite and everlasting One. He says, “The end of the
world is something unrealisable — neither has the world any

18

ultimate goal”. The so-called next world is something forev-
er in the making. What people call this world and the next
world are mere names for the ever new process of creation,
which is a continual process of annihilation and recreation.
There never is an interval in time. We cannot say that any-
thing was not, then (thumma) was. ‘Then’ (thumma) does not
mean an interval of time, but it indicates the logical priority
of the cause to its effect. Ibn Rushd (Averroes), Ibn ‘Arabi’s
contemporary and fellow countryman, explains creation as
“renewed existence every instant in a constantly changing
world, always taking its new form from the preceding”. The
universe as a whole is one big, contingent being. Neither the
universe nor anything in it has an acquired existence in the
sense of being created from nothing. Acquired existence is a
mental fiction. What things acquire are the ahkam (predica-
tions) of external existence.

Everything is an eternal existent in its state of latency (thubit)
and a temporal existent in its manifestation in the external
world (zuhir). He goes on to say that in saying that an object
is created or caused to exist we mean no more than what we
mean when we say that “a man has appeared in our house
today”, which does not imply that he had no previous exist-
ence before coming into our house. He says that God does
not create anything; creation (takwin) — which, according to
him, means the coming into concrete manifestation of an al-
ready existing substance — belongs to the thing itself. “It
comes to being” means that it manifests itself of its own ac-
cord. The only thing that God does in the matter is to will a
thing to be (concretely manifested), and God wills nothing
and commands nothing, the existence of which is not made
necessary by the very nature and laws of things themselves.
Were it not in the nature of a thing to be at the moment of
God’s command, it would never be. Nor even would God
command it to be. So, nothing brings a thing into existence
(i.e. makes its existence manifest) except itself.

19

He explains ‘causality’ in terms of two triads which corre-
spond to one another, the one expressing one aspect of reality
(God); the other, the other aspect (the phenomenal world).
The first triad stands for God as a trinity of Essence, Will,
and Word; the second stands for the phenomenal world, also
a trinity, of essences characterised by obedience and hearing.

In this sense and this sense only does Ibn ‘Arabi regard the
universe as created or caused, just as it is in this sense that
he calls it eternal. But there remains one fundamental point,
which is that he denies the eternity of the world in one defi-
nite sense: that is in the sense that it is co-eternal with God
in the form in which we know it. What is co-eternal with
God, or what is God Himself, is the essence of the world, not
the form. He says, “God predestines things in eternity but
does not bring them into existence (i.e. in eternity), or what
is the sense in calling Him a creator if the created things are
co-eternal with Him?” In this sense, he calls the universe
hadith (originated) and contingent and not-being, and he adds
that it always is and always will be.

It is idle, he concludes, to ask when the world was created.
‘When’ refers to time, and time has always been regarded as
a product of the phenomenal world itself. There is no tem-
poral succession between creator and created, but there is a
logical order of ‘before’ and ‘after’, not in time. Ibn ‘Arabi
adds that the relation between God and the universe is anal-
ogous to that of yesterday and today. “We cannot say that
yesterday precedes today in time, since it is time itself. The
non-existence of the world was never at any time.”

20

THE DIVINE NAMES

Ibn ‘Arabi calls the Divine Names the causes of the universe.
He regards the Divine Names as lines of force. As names of
the Godhead, they demand by their very nature their logical
correlatives, which can only be found in an outward expres-
sion or manifestation in the external world. The Knower, for
example, demands something known; the Creator something
created; and so on. Besides this, Ibn ‘Arabi speaks of them
as being instrumental causes (like tools) which God uses in
all the creative activities in the world. Our knowledge of the
Divine Names, he says, and of their hierarchical order — their
classification into principal and subordinate — is the clue to
our knowledge of the categories manifested in the spiritual
and the physical worlds. In everything, no matter how com-
plex it is, every ‘aspect’ (wajh) and every ‘reality’ (haqiqa)
corresponds and owes its very existence to a Divine Name,
which is to this ‘aspect’ or ‘reality’ like a prototype. This is
just repeating, in a different way, what he says about the
phenomenal world being the attributes with which God is
described. “God was, while the world was not, and He was
named by all the Divine Names.”

The Divine Essence is the One Universal Substance, identi-
fied with Absolute Reality. A Divine Name is the Divine
Essence in one or other of its infinite aspects: a determinate
‘form’ of the Divine Essence. An Attribute is a Divine Name
manifested in the external world; it is what Ibn ‘Arabi calls
a ‘theatre of manifestation’ for the Divine Substance to man-
ifest itself in different degrees (maratib). In its absolute
indeterminateness, the Divine Essence is a ‘thing in itself’. It
is indivisible, independent and unchanging. It is not a sub-
stance, but the One Substance which, in itself, embraces all
substances, so-called material and non-material. What are
fleeting, divisible and changeable are the ‘accidents’, the
‘forms’, the manifestations. The Attributes, according to him,
have no meaning apart from the Divine Essence.

21

As forms and particularisations of the Divine Essence, the
Divine Names are a multiplicity, each possessing unique
characteristics by virtue of which it is distinguishable from
the others, but essentially they are identical with the One
Essence, and with one another.

Reality, which is ultimately one and indivisible in Ibn
‘Arabi's doctrine, seems to be regarded from three different
points of view in relation to our knowledge:

1. Reality as we know it, i.e. Reality as manifested in the ex-
ternal world. As such, it is subject to the limitations of our
senses and intellects. We know it as a multiplicity of ex-
istents, and we assert of it relations of al] kinds, causal or
otherwise. This he calls the Phenomenal World, ‘Appear-
ance’ and ‘Not-Being’, etc. But though an apparent
multiplicity, the Phenomenal World is an essential unity,
each part of which is the Whole and capable of manifest-
ing all the realities of the Whole.

2. Reality such as we do not directly know or perceive, ex-
cept by mystical intuition, but whose existence we logically
infer (following our reason).

Of this, he maintains, we predicate attributes characteristic
only of a Necessary Being, and Ibn ‘Arabi chooses to call it
God in a theistic sense — God as ‘created in our beliefs’. This
is only a fictitious and a subjective God and our conception
of Him varies according to different individuals and com-
munities, but according to Ibn ‘Arabi any conception which
deprives God of His absoluteness and universality, or renders
His unity in any way incomplete by admitting the reality of
any other deity or even of the Phenomenal World, is poly-
theistic. A complete conception of God, therefore, is one
which comprises the two aspects of Reality (immanence and
transcendence), i.e. of God as being both in and above the
universe. This is the starting point in Ibn ‘Arabi’s Philoso-
phy of Religion, as we shall see later.

22

We are forced to do this, he goes on to say, because the
attributes we predicate of the Phenomenal World demand
their logical correlatives: contingency demands necessity; rel-
ativity demands absoluteness; finitude demands infinity and
so on. These logical correlatives can only be applied to a
Reality thus conceived. “The key to the mystery of ‘Lord-
ship’ is thou” (the phenomenal). The fundamental difference
between Reality as conceived in (1) and in (2) is that in (1)
the transcendental Attributes of God (sifat al-tanzih), which
are the logical correlatives of the immanent Attributes (sifat
al-tashbih), have no application. Attributes which express any
relation between God and the Universe (in the orthodox
sense) are explained away by Ibn ‘Arabi, so we are really
left with only two types of Attributes: transcendent, which
are characteristic of God, and immanent, which are charac-
teristic of the phenomenal world; each type explaining an
aspect of Reality. We must not, therefore, predicate of God
such attributes as ‘green’ or ‘circular’ or ‘hearing’ or ‘see-
ing’, etc., although His Essence is the essence of all that is
green, circular and all that hears and sees.

What Ibn ‘Arabi means by saying that, “we ourselves (in-
cluding the phenomenal world) are the attributes with which
we describe God”, and, “there is not a single Name or At-
tribute with which He is characterised, the meaning or the
spirit of which is not found in the phenomenal world” is, on
the one hand, that the phenomenal world possesses unique
characteristics which explain God’s immanent side; and on
the other, that through these characteristics we are formally
led to ascribe to Him Attributes which explain His transcend-
ent side. But regarding Reality as the Essence of All, all
attributes whatever, transcendent and immanent, may be
predicated of it. Ibn ‘Arabi says, “He, may He be exalted, is
(actually) named by all the names of the objects of the phe-
nomenal world”; “Glory to Him who is ‘meant’ by all the
attributes of the Godhead and created objects”; “Our names
are His Names”; “He is called Abu Sa‘id al-Kharraz”; etc.,
ete.

23

3. Reality such as we do not directly know or perceive, but
which, following our reason, we logically infer as we in-
fer the existence of a substance when we perceive its
accidents.

This is the Divine Essence, of which we can predicate noth-
ing except bare existence. It is unknowable and
incommunicable when regarded in abstraction and apart
from any relation or limitation whatever. It is ultimately in-
definable and, like a substance, it can only be described in
terms of its ‘states’ which, in this case, are the phenomenal
world. Its nature admits of no opposition or contradiction
(didd) or comparison (mithl), yet it unites in itself all oppo-
sites and similars. It has no qualities or quantities, yet it is
the source of all qualities and quantities. It is generally re-
ferred to as ‘Pure Light’, or ‘Pure Good’, or ‘the Blindness’
(al-‘ama).

This is the state of Uniqueness (ahadiyya), which admits of
no plurality whatever. As such, it is not an object of wor-
ship. The object of worship is the Lord (al-Rabb), not the
Unique (al-Ahad). But such unity becomes intelligible once
we admit the other aspect, i.e. multiplicity, for, in itself, it
transcends all multiplicity. It is the state of the ‘One to Whom
belong the burning splendours’ (al-subuhat al-muhriga); that
is, the One, the manifestation of Whom would cause all the
multiplicity of phenomena to vanish, so that nothing would
remain except the Real. He says, “The veil of the Unity (al-
ahadiyya) will never be removed; limit your hope, therefore,
to the attainment (of knowledge) of the Oneness (al-
wahidiyya), i.e. the unity of the Divine Names”. No-one knows
God as He really is (i.e. His Essence) except God, not even a
mystic, for a mystic belongs to the multiplicity.

Ibn ‘Arabisometimes identifies the Divine Names with what
he calls the hadarat (Divine Presences), using the term hadarat
in a different sense from that in which it is used in connec-
tion with the five Divine hadarat (Five Planes of Being). He

24

enumerates only some of these, for according to him they
are infinite in number. The ‘Presence of the Godhead?’ (al-
hadrat al-ilahiyya), for example, is the state in which God is
revealed as Allah; the ‘Presence of the Merciful’ is that in
which He is revealed in the Name of the Merciful; and so on.

The only distinction Ibn ‘Arabi makes between the One and
the Many, or God and the Phenomenal World, which has
already been explained, is expressed in a different way by
what he calls the two aspects of the Divine Names. Regard-
ed as a unity and as essentially one with the Divine Essence,
the Names are said to be ‘active’ in the sense that each Name
indicates one or other of the infinite lines of activity of the
One. As a multiplicity manifested in the external world, i.e.
regarded as the external world itself (for the external world
is nothing other than the Divine Names) they are ‘passive’
and receptive. The former aspect he calls tahagqug (the point
of view of the Real), the latter takhallug (the point of view of
the Created), and the relation between the two, through
which actual manifestation is effected, is called ta‘alluq. The
Divine Names are also active when considered in relation to
the a‘yan al-thabita (established potentialities), for these are
nothing but the phenomenal world in latency; and in their
turn, the a‘ yan al-thabita are active in relation to the external
world. It is all a hierarchy of higher and lower; the higher is
active in relation to the lower and passive in relation to the
one higher than itself.

There is but One Reality, which however much you multi-
ply it (in thought) or try to conceive it, now as a multiplicity
of existents, now as One Essence characterised by innumer-
able attributes and Names, remains in itself ultimately
inconceivable and unalterable. All our knowledge of it is
subjective and vain. There is no multiplicity, not even of
Attributes or Names —- no passivity or activity. These are
terms which we ourselves have coined and found convenient
to use for expressing what we choose to understand by
Reality.

25

THE A ‘YAN AL-THABITA

Ibn ‘Arabi was the first to use the term a ‘yan al-thabita — which
may be rendered ‘fixed prototypes’, or ‘latent realities of
things’, or ‘established potentialities’ — in a more or less de-
termined sense, and to give it a prominent place in a
metaphysical system.

Before coming into concrete existence, things of the phenom-
enal world were in a state of potentiality in the Divine
Essence of God and were — as ideas of His future ‘becoming’
— the content of His eternal knowledge, which is identical
with His knowledge of Himself. God revealed Himself to
Himself in a state of self-consciousness (not at any point of
time) in what Ibn ‘Arabi calls God’s First Epiphany or
Particularisation (al-ta‘ayyun al-awwal), in which He saw in
Himself and for Himself an infinity of these a‘ydn as deter-
minate ‘forms’ of His own Essence - ‘forms’ which reflected
and in every detail corresponded to His own eternal ideas
of them.

These ‘forms’ are what Ibn ‘Arabi calls the a‘ydan al-thabita.
We may therefore define them as the latent states, both in
the Mind and in the Essence of God, of His future ‘becom-
ing’; states which can only be expressed in terms of the Divine
Names and all the possible relations which hold between
them. The two-fold nature of these a‘yan, i.e. their being in-
telligible ideas or concepts in the mind of God on the one
hand, and particular ‘modes’ of the Divine Essence on the
other, is explained by the fact that Ibn ‘Arabi and his school
use the terms mahiyya and huwiyya as equivalent to the term
‘ayn al-thabita. The one (mahiyya) explains the first aspect of
the ‘ayn, i.e. its being an idea or a concept; the other (huwi-
yya), the second aspect, i.e. its being an essential ‘mode’.

We can no more say that these a‘ yan, these potential ‘modes’
of the Essence, are other than the Essence or can have any
existence apart from it, than say that mental states of our

26

own minds are other than our minds, or can have any sepa-
rate existence apart from them; or indeed, the states of any
other substance whatever. Mentally, however, we may dis-
criminate between the Essence and the a‘yan, or the mind
and its states, and think of them as apart. The a‘ yan al-thabtta
are in reality one with the Divine Essence and the Divine
Consciousness. Yet, as ‘states’ or ‘modes’ they are no more
the Divine Essence itself than our mental states are our
minds.

Ibn ‘Arabi calls them non-existent; not in the sense that they
have no reality or being whatever, but in the sense that they
have no external existence, or any existence apart from the
Essence of which they are states. “Let it be known like this”,
Ibn ‘Arabi says, “that the a‘yan al-thabita are the images of
the Divine Names and Qualities and ‘things’ of the Ipseity,
in the Presence of Knowledge of the Ipseity, in whose image
the Divine Essence is particularised and revealed in the
Presence of Knowledge with specific individuation; they are
established according to non-existence and they are not qual-
ified by existence”. There is only one Reality — and a
non-existent subjective multiplicity and non-existent sub-
jective relations which limit and determine the One.

The a‘yan al-thabita are what Ibn ‘Arabi calls the logical cor-
relatives (mugtadayat) of the Divine Names; but they are also
potential essences. An interesting passage from Ibn ‘Arabi’s
Futahat al-Makktya will explain his own view on the subject.
“Ts that”, he asks, “which we call existent and perceive by
our senses, the ‘ayn al-thabita ‘transferred’ from a state of
non-existence to a state of existence? Or is it only its hukm
(subjective determination) brought into an intelligible rela-
tion with the ‘ayn of the Real Being (God) - as a mirror image
is related to a mirror — the so-called thing (external object)
itself being a non-existent as it always was in its state of
latency? (If the latter is the case), the a‘yan of contingent be-
ings must perceive each other only in and through the ‘ayn
of the mirror of the Real Being; the a‘ yan al-thabita (these fixed

27

prototypes) remaining as they always were in a state of non-
existence.”

“Or is it”, he goes on to say, “that God manifests His being
in (the forms of) these a‘yan, which are to Him like theatres,
so that each ‘ayn perceives the other when God manifests
Himself in this other, a fact which is usually described as a
thing having acquired existence (istafada’l-wujid) but which
is nothing other than the manifestation or appearance of God
in the form of that thing. This (second explanation) is nearer
the truth in one respect; the other (explanation) is nearer the
truth in another respect; but in both cases the ‘ayn al-thabita
of the thing in question is a non-existent (externally) and still
remains in its state of latency.”

As potentialities and as intelligible ideas in the mind of God,
they certainly are mere subjectivities; but as essences, they
are all that is, since they are the Divine Essence Itself as par-
ticularised or determined. He says that God revealed Himself
to Himself in ‘the Most Holy Emanation’ (al-fayd al-aqdas) in
the forms of these a‘yan. The ‘Most Holy Emanation’, with
which we shall have to deal more fully later, is a continual
process — in that it had no beginning and will never have an
end — and potentialities in the One Essence are continually
and unceasingly becoming actualities without any lapse in
time, and they will continue to do so forever.

The Divine Consciousness embraces all the intelligible forms
of the a‘yan; the Essence, all their potential essences. Ibn
‘Arabi often calls these essences spirits, and attributes to
them functions and activities. God becomes conscious of
Himself through the First Intellect, the Rah (the Spirit), but
He becomes conscious of each of the a‘yan (each spirit)
through the essences of the a‘yan themselves, i.e. through
the spirits which are particular ‘modes’ in the Universal
Spirit.

Tbn ‘Arabi’s view about the identification of the knowledge
of the One with the a ‘yan of things (the things themselves) is

28

substantially the same as that of Plotinus. He identifies the
Divine Knowledge with the Divine Essence, from which it
follows that the Divine Knowledge is identical with all the
potential ‘modes’ of the Essence, and that each ‘mode’ be-
comes identified with an idea of itself in the Divine
Consciousness. In other words, each ‘mode’ must be at the
same time a state in the Essence and a state in the Divine
Knowledge, and the two states coincide and are in reality
one in what Ibn ‘Arabi calls the ‘ayn al-thabita.

He calls the a‘yan al-thabita the ‘keys of the Unseen’ (mafatih
al-ghayb) and the ‘first keys’ (mafatth al-awwal) because they
were the opening chapter in the history of creation (although,
strictly speaking, creation has no beginning or end); i.e. the
revelation of the One to Himself as the Creator, contemplat-
ing in Himself the infinity of His creatures (His future
manifestations). This particular state is known only to God
Himself.

Ibn ‘Arabi holds that it is not so impossible for a true mystic
to obtain knowledge of the a‘ydn al-thabita themselves, par-
ticularly his own ‘ayn. He says, “Or it may be that God reveals
to him (the mystic) his ‘ayn al-thabita and its infinite succes-
sion of states, so that he knows himself in the same way that
God knows him, having derived his knowledge from that
same Source.”

The a‘yan al-thabita have the unique characteristic of being
both active and passive (or ‘receptive’). Inasmuch as they
are, in one sense, ‘emanations’ from the One and ‘forms’ of
the Divine Names and potential ‘modes’ in the Divine
Essence, they are passive and receptive (qabil). “The recep-
tive (beings) come from nothing except His Most Holy
Emanation”, by which he means the a‘yan al-thabita. This
Most Holy Emanation he also calls the Presence of Oneness,
the Merciful Presence (al-hadrat al-Rahmaniyya), the First
Epiphany (al-ta‘ayyun al-awwal), the Presence of the Names
(hadrat al-asma’), the sphere of the spirits (‘alam al-arwah);

29

etc., etc. And in respect of their essences, that is by virtue of
their possessing within themselves all the potentialities of
becoming what the external existents of the phenomenal
world are, they are regarded as active.

But activity and passivity here mean nothing more than log-
ical determination (hukm). The a‘yan are passive in relation
to the Divine Names because of the ahkam (determinations)
which the Divine Names exercise over them; a state very
analogous to the determination by a universal of its particu-
lars. They are active in relation to the phenomenal objects in
the same sense as a potentiality is active in relation to the
actuality it becomes; i.e. in both cases it is only logical
determination.

THE SELF-REVELATIONS OF THE ONE

In his own few words, “Glory be to God Who created things,
being Himself their essences”. “He alone is proof of His own
existence which is manifested in the a‘yan of contingent
beings.” “There is nothing but God; nothing in existence oth-
er than He. There is not even a ‘there’ where the Essence of
all things is one.” “From whom dost thou flee and there is
nought in existence but He?” “My eye sees nought but His
Face (Essence), and my ear hears no other than His speech.”

“Base the whole matter of your seclusion (khalwa) upon fac-
ing God with absolute unification, which is not marred by
any (form of) polytheism, implicit or explicit; and by deny-
ing with absolute conviction all causes and intermediaries,
whole or part; for verily if you are deprived of such tawhid,
you will be bound to fall into polytheism.” He denies be-
coming one with God. There is no ‘becoming’ whatever, but
there is the realisation of the already existing fact that you
are one with God.

30

“So on Him alone we depend for everything; our depend-
ence on other things is in reality dependence on Him; for
they are nothing but His appearances. Bayazid once asked
God, “O Lord, with what can I draw nigh to Thee?”, where-
upon God replied, “With that which does not belong to Me”,
to wit, servility and dependence.

“For He, glory to Him”, Ibn ‘Arabi says, “has no resemblance
whatever to His creation. His Essence cannot be apprehend-
ed by us, so we cannot compare it with tangible objects,
neither are His actions like ours.” “The movement of all ex-
istence is circular; it returns where it begins.” He says that
the ‘movement’ of the creation of the world originated
through the essential love of the One to manifest Itself in
external realities. “I was a hidden treasure, and I loved to be
known so I created the world that I might be known”.

The tajalliyat (self-revelations or manifestations) are the
different ways in which the One manifests Himself to us in
the course of our knowledge of Him. Tajalli is “the eternal
and everlasting self-manifestation”; the “overflowing of ex-
istence from the Essence to the forms; not in the sense of two
vessels pouring, the one into the other, but in the sense of
the One conceived now as an Essence, now as a form”. That
the universe is related to Him as an emanation is contrary to
the nature of the Absolute. Absoluteness implies freedom
from all relations.

There is One Reality which reveals or manifests Itself in an
infinity of forms; not one that produces or creates, or one
from which anything other than Itself emanates. Even the
phrase ‘manifestation in forms’ is misleading, for the Essence
and forms never stood apart, except in our thought. The First
Intellect, Universal Soul, Universal Nature, etc., are not sep-
arate existents or in any way independent of one another,
but different ways of viewing the One: i.e. the One regarded
as Universal Consciousness; the One as Active Principle in

31

the universe; the One as Life-giving Principle; the One as
concretely manifested in the Phenomenal World; and so on.

The self-revelations of the One (al-tajalliyat), thus understood,
are as follows. When we conceive the One as apart from all
possible relations and individualisations, we say that God
has revealed Himself in the state of Unity (al-ahadiyya) or is
in the Blindness (al-‘ama, non-communication) — the state of
the Essence. When we regard it in relation to the potential
existence of the phenomenal world, we say that God has re-
vealed Himself in the state of the Godhead (al-martaba
al-ilahiyya). This is the state of the Divine Names. And when
we regard it in relation to the actual manifestations of the
phenomenal world, we say that God has revealed Himself
in the state of Lordship (al-rubabiyya).

If regarded as the Universal Consciousness containing all
intelligible forms of actual and potential existents, we say
that Reality revealed Itself in the First Intellect; and God re-
vealed Himself as the Inward or the Unseen, and we call this
state hagiqat al-haqa’iq (Reality of Realities). But if regarded
as actually manifested in the phenomenal world, we say that
God has manifested Himself in forms of the external world,
and we identify Him with the Universal Body (al-jism al-kulli).
When we think of Him as the Universal Substance which
receives all forms, we say that God revealed Himself as Prime
Matter (al-hayila), which Ibn ‘Arabi sometimes calls al-kitab
al-mastur (the Inscribed Book); and so on and so on.

32

THe REALITY OF REALITIES

The Logos may be understood from many different points
of view. As a purely metaphysical category it is called the
First Intellect. From the mystical point of view it is called
the Perfect Man, regarding it as the active principle in all
divine and esoteric knowledge. In relation to Man, the Logos
may be identified with the Real Man, while in relation to the
universes it may be called the Reality of Realities. As a reg-
istry of everything it is called the Book (al-kitab) and the Most
Exalted Pen (al-qalam al-a‘la). As the Essence whence every-
thing takes its origin, it is called the hayila and the First
Substance. The greatest danger is to forget that these terms
refer to different aspects of the One Being, rather than to
different beings.

The objects of all our knowledge, Ibn ‘Arabi says, fall under
three metaphysical categories:

1. Absolute Being which exists per se and is the origin of all
that exists;

2. Contingent being which exists through the Absolute Being
— otherwise it is ‘not-being’; this is the universe;

3. Being which is neither existent nor non-existent, neither
eternal nor temporal; it is co-eternal with the eternal and
temporal with the temporal. Of this category of Being we
can no more assert that it is prior to the universe than say
God Himself is. It is prior to the universe, but its priority
is only logical — without time priority. It is the inward as-
pect of the Godhead and the Godhead is its outward
aspect. This is the ‘Reality of Realities’ or ‘Idea of Ideas’,
the Summum Genus, the First Intellect and so on. It com-
prehends all ideas and all existing things absolutely. It is
neither a whole nor a part, neither does it increase nor
decrease. It is indefinable. It stands as near as possible to
Matter. It multiplies with the multiplication of existents
but does not divide (except in thought).

33

One could say it is God or the universe, but one could also
say that it is neither. From it the universal proceeds as a par-
ticular proceeds from a universal. It contains the realities
(ideas being identified with realities, haga’iq) of diverse ob-
jects; yet in itself it remains homogeneous. It stands in the
closest relation to God’s knowledge. It is known to God
through itself, i.e. it is the consciousness of God. It is not the
divine knowledge itself, but rather the content and substance
of such knowledge. In it the knower, the known and the
knowledge are one. Through it the universe is brought to
manifestation. It is the ‘store’ of intelligible and archetypal
ideas of the world of ‘becoming’.

The Reality of Realities thus described is no more other than
God than a potentiality, which under certain conditions be-
comes an actuality, can be called other than this actuality. It
is God conceived as the Self-revealing Principle of the uni-
verse; God as manifesting Himself in a form of universal
consciousness, at no particular time or place, but as the Re-
ality which underlies all realities, and as a Being whose
consciousness is identical with His Essence.

The Reality of Realities is completely manifested in the world
which ‘reflects’ its positive being. It is perfect, and the uni-
verse which manifests its perfection is perfect. But while the
universe manifests this perfection analytically, Man alone
(the Perfect Man; not Animal Man) manifests it synthetically.
Ibn ‘Arabi attributes to this Reality of Realities (or First
Intellect, etc) a creative activity which is very much analo-
gous to the volitional activity of Man — but we have already
seen what he means by creation and God as the Creator. It
has, he says, the same relation to the latent realities of things
(al-a‘ yan al-thabita) as that which our minds have to their vo-
litional states. Besides this creative activity, Ibn ‘Arabi
attributes to the Reality of Realities rationality. It is through
it, as we have already seen, that God becomes conscious of
Himself. Like Plotinus, Ibn ‘Arabi believes that “to think it-
self belongs to the mind (which is hagigat al-haga’iq) not to

34

the One”. This consciousness has reached its highest point
in the Perfect Man, in whom the object of creation is realised
_ the love of God to be known; and it is in the Perfect Man
that God knows Himself perfectly.

The Reality of Realities marks the first step by which the
Absolute is removed from its absoluteness in the process of
‘ts descent (to our knowledge). It is the First Epiphany of
God, to whom God addressed Himself — as the Tradition of
the Prophet says — “I have not created a creature dearer to
Me than thee; with thee I give and with thee I take and with
thee I punish”.

THE PERFECT MAN

No treatment of Ibn ‘Arabi’s doctrine of the Logos is com-
plete which does not take into consideration his views of the
Perfect Man, for this explains the practical aspect of his
Logos: its relation to and manifestation in Man. His theory
of the Logos therefore, presented in its completest form, com-
prises the following elements:

1. The Logos as the Reality of Realities: the metaphysical
aspect;

2. The Logos as the Reality of Muhammad: the mystical
aspect;

3. The Logos as the Perfect Man: the human aspect.

The Principle of Universal Reason is immanent in everything
and constitutes, as it were, the Divine Consciousness, hith-
erto identified with the Reality of Realities and the Reality
of Muhammad; but is not present in all beings in an equal
degree. Man is the only being in whom this Principle is man-
ifested in so high a degree that he deserves to be called the
Viceregent of God (al-khalifa) and the Image of God (al-siira)
and the Microcosm (al-kawn al-jami‘); or the mirror which
reflects all the perfections and Attributes of God; or even

35

God Himself. Ibn ‘Arabi puts it all very boldly in the follow-

ing passages:

a. Only two beings rightly call themselves God: God Him-
self who calls Himself Allah in His Books; and the Perfect
Man (al-‘abd al-kamil) like Bayazid; and

b. “When God, glory to Him, in respect of His Most Beauti-
ful Names which are beyond enumeration, willed to see
their a‘yan, or if you like you may say, His ‘ayn, in a uni-
versal being (kawn jami‘) which contains the whole matter
(of creation) inasmuch as it is endowed with all aspects of
existence, and through which the mystery of God is man-
ifested to Himself, for the vision which consists of a thing
seeing itself by means of itself is not the same as that of
the thing seeing itself in something else which serves as a
mirror for it...” Adam is the very ‘polishing’ of this mirror
and the spirit of this form (in which God manifested Him-
self, i.e. Man) and the Angels are some of the ‘powers’ of
that form, i.e. the universe, which the Sufis call the ‘Great
Man)’ (al-insdn al-kabir).

This is not the ‘animal’ man (al-insan al-hayawdni) but the
‘rational’ man — the Perfect Man in the strict sense in which
Ibn ‘Arabi uses the term - the class under which all Prophets
and Saints are included, or the ‘Gnostics’ in the fullest sense
of the word.

Everything manifests the Universal Rational Principle in a
measure proportionate to its capacity. Even the so-called
inanimate beings manifest this hidden rationality inasmuch
as they obey their own inner laws. The whole creation is a
rational structure from the lowest mineral to the highest type
of man (the Perfect Man).

“No-one”, Ibn ‘Arabi says, “knows the dignity of Man and
his place in the universe except those who know how to con-
template God perfectly.” He is the only creature in whose
power lies the possibility of knowing God absolutely. In fact
it is through him that God knows Himself, for he is the

36

manifested consciousness of God. Other beings know as
much of the nature of God as they do of themselves, for the
phenomenal objects are nothing but His Attributes. Their
knowledge is imperfect and incomplete compared with that
of Man, who sums up in himself all of God’s Attributes.

Even the Angels’ knowledge of God is imperfect. They know
God as a transcendent Reality which has no relation to the
phenomenal world. Man alone knows God both as the Real
(haqq) and the phenomenal (khalq), for Man himself (the
Perfect Man) is the Real and the phenomenal, the internal
and the external, the eternal and the temporal. The heart of
the Perfect Man is the seat of the manifestation of the Uni-
versal Logos (the Reality of Realities or Reality of
Muhammad, etc.) and in it alone the activities of this Logos
find their fullest expression. The Perfect Man is in immedi-
ate contact with Reality and through him the essential unity
of the universal and the particular are realised.

Ibn ‘Arabi, as well as Jili who follows him very closely on
this subject, says that through the Perfect Man alone all God’s
perfections are revealed. “Perfect Man is”, Ibn ‘Arabi says,
“the Divine unity (al-jam‘iyya al-ilahiyya), i.e. all the
Attributes pertaining to the Divine Presence (al-janab al-ilahi)
and the Reality of Realities and the World of Nature.”

A Perfect Man is not perfect, in his theory, unless he realises
his essential oneness with God. This is what distinguishes
any man from a Perfect Man. Every man is a microcosm in
this sense, but only potentially so. The Perfect Man does
actually manifest all God’s Attributes and perfections, and
such manifestation is incomplete without the full realisation
of his essential unity with God. It follows, therefore, that
every Perfect Man must be a mystic, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s sense,
since in mysticism alone can such realisation be attained.

We have already seen that Ibn ‘Arabi calls the Perfect Man
the inward and the outward aspects of Reality. The essence
of the Perfect Man is a mode of the Divine Essence. His spirit

37

is a mode of the Universal Spirit. His body is a mode of the
Universal Throne (al-‘arsh). His knowledge is a reflection of
the Divine Knowledge. The heart of the Perfect Man corre-
sponds to the celestial archetype of al-Ka‘ba (al-bayt
al-ma‘ mir). His spiritual faculties correspond to the Angels;
his memory to Saturn; his understanding to Jupiter; his
intellect to the Sun; and so on and so on.

Like the Universal Logos which the Perfect Man manifests,
the Perfect Man is called by Ibn ‘Arabian intermediary stage
(barzakh); not in the sense of being an entity between God
and the Universe, the Divine and the Human, but in the sense
of being the only creature which unites and manifests both
perfectly. Ibn ‘Arabi explains the mystery of creation by say-
ing that it was due to the essential love of the One to be
known and to be manifested that God revealed Himself in
the forms of the phenomenal world.

This eternal love of the One to behold His own Beauty and
Perfections manifested in forms, and above all things to be
known to Himself in and through Himself, found, Ibn ‘Arabi
says, its completest realisation in the Perfect Man, who alone
knows Him and manifests His Attributes perfectly. He knows
Him “in a manner which surpasses all doubt; nay, he
perceives Him in the innermost ‘eye’ of his soul”.

“He is to God what the eye-pupil is to the (physical) eye...
and through him God beholds His creatures and has mercy
upon them, i.e. creates them.” It is in this sense that Ibn ‘Arabi
calls the Perfect Man the cause of creation, for in the Perfect
Man alone the object of creation is realised. Were it not for
Man (the Perfect Man) creation would have been purpose-
less, for God would not have been known; so it was for the
sake of the Perfect Man that the whole creation was made,
i.e. that God manifested Himself both in the world and in
the Perfect Man.

The dignity of Man, therefore, cannot be overrated in Ibn
‘Arabi’s view. Man is the highest and most venerable creature

38

God ever created. He should be guarded and honoured, for
“he who takes care of Man takes care of God”. Ibn ‘Arabi
also says, “The preservation of the human species should
have a much greater claim to observance than religious big-
otry, with its consequent destruction of human souls, even
when it is for the sake of God and the maintenance of the
law.” “God has so exalted Man”, Ibn ‘Arabi adds, “that He
placed under his control all that is in the heavens and the
earth, from its highest to its lowest.”

Not only does Ibn ‘Arabi regard Man (the Perfect Man) as
the cause of the creation of the universe in the sense just ex-
plained, but also as the preserver and maintainer of the
universe. “The universe continues to be preserved so long
as the Perfect Man is in it.” “Dost thou not see that when he
departs and is removed from the treasury of the present
world, there shall not remain in it (in the world) that which
God has stored therein, and that which was in it shall go
forth and each part shall become one with each other and
the whole affair shall be transferred to the next world and
shall be sealed everlastingly?”

It seems that when Ibn ‘Arabi calls the Perfect Man the pre-
server and the controller of the whole universe ina real sense,
he means either the Perfect Man as identifying himself with
the Nous in the mystic experience of fana’, i.e. the Divine Man;
or the Nous (the Reality of Realities) itself, i.e. God as the
Creative and Rational Principle.

Ibn ‘Arabi was the first to put forth a synthetic and system-
atic theory, or rather a group of theories, derived from
different sources and brought into one unity. Not only was
he the first to expound such a doctrine, he was also the last
to produce a Logos-doctrine of any importance. All those
who came after him simply reproduced his ideas in some
form or another, sometimes even verbatim et litteratim.

The emphasis laid on the trinity as the fundamental Principle
in all the productive or creative activities of the Universal

39

Logos bears a Christian stamp. But it was not Christianity
itself which influenced Ibn “Arabi, rather that all manifesta-
tion requires three relationships. Ibn ‘Arabi’s trinity was only
a trinity of relative aspects, not of three Persons. Even the
reality of Muhammad is threefold ; Syllogistic reasoning must
have three elements; and he expresses this idea very daringly
in the following line, “My Beloved is three, although He is
One”.

There is a striking resemblance between the philosophy of
the Logos as described by Philo of Alexandria and that of
Ibn ‘Arabi. Ibn ‘Arabi uses the term Logos (kalima), to mean
both eternal wisdom (as the term originally meant in Greek
philosophy) and the ‘Word’ (or ‘speech’ as the term means
in Hebrew).

Philo’s terminology Ibn ‘Arabi’s terminology
The High Priest imam or qutb
The Intercessor al-shafi‘
The Glory of God The Man who is the Reality
(insanu ‘ayn al-hagq)
The Shadow of God The Image of Truth
(haba or siirat al-haqq)
Idea of Ideas Reality of Realities
(haqigat al-haqa’ iq)
The Intermediary The Isthmus (barzakh)

Principle of Revelation Reality of Muhammad

First Born Son of God First Epiphany
(ta‘ayyun al-awwal)

The First of the Angels The Spirit (riih)

Viceregent khalifa

Divine Man Perfect Man

40

SAINTHOOD

Wilaya (sainthood), according to Ibn ‘Arabi, and indeed
according to a great majority of Sufis, does not mean holi-
ness or piety, although such characteristics may be found in
a saint. The distinguishing mark of wildya, as Ibn ‘Arabi un-
derstands it, is ‘gnosis’ (ma‘rifa). In other words, a man is a
saint if he is what Ibn ‘Arabi calls a Perfect Man. Ibn ‘Arabi
extends the meaning of the term saint (walt) so as to include
the following:

1. All prophets and apostles

2. Some Sufis

3. The ‘Singular Men’ (al- afrad) like ‘Abd al-Qadir al-
Gilani

4. The Guards (al-umana’)

5. The Beloved (al-ahbab)

6. The Heirs (al-waratha) etc.

He also uses the term wali (saint) to include all apostles and
prophets. An apostle, according to him, is pre-eminently a
saint who is charged with the external duty of delivering a
message from God, and a prophet is a saint who is distin-
guished from the rest of the sainthood on account of his
possessing unique knowledge of the Unseen Worlds.

Wilaya (sainthood), thus explained, is the basis of all spiritu-
al ranks and the only element common to all of them. It is,
Ibn ‘Arabi adds, originally a Divine Attribute, for God calls
Himself al-Walt, and if we apply the term to men it is only to
those who have realised their essential oneness with Him. It
is more general than either Prophecy (nubuwwa) or Apostle-
ship (risala): Prophecy and Apostleship are particular grades
of it. It is a permanent state, while Prophecy and Apostle-
ship are only temporary. The knowledge which belongs to it
is infinite, for it is identical with God’s Knowledge and with
that of the Spirit of Muhammad; whereas prophetic and
apostolic knowledge is finite.

41

The Universal Logos, as identifying itself in Ibn ‘Arabi’s
Logos-doctrine with the Spirit or Reality of Muhammad,
explains what is meant by the General Viceregency. The real
Viceregent (khalifa) of God is the Muhammedian Spirit, which
is forever manifesting itself in the form of prophets and saints
(the class of people coming under the category of the Perfect
Man), each of whom may be called a khalifa. They all mani-
fest this General Viceregency. We may call them all saints,
for according to Ibn ‘Arabi, every prophet and every apostle
is, in one of his aspects, a saint. All these saints (using the
term in the widest sense), Ibn ‘Arabi says, ‘derive’ such
knowledge as constitutes their sainthood (i.e. esoteric know-
ledge) from the Spirit of Muhammad. In addition to this,
wilaya is more perfect. Ibn ‘Arabi does not mean that any
saint whatever is more perfect than, or superior to, any
prophet or apostle, but rather that the saintly side of a
prophet or an apostle is superior to his prophetic or apostolic
side.

In this way all apostles, prophets and saints belong to one
and the same group, with one common element uniting them
all — this element being the active principle in all revelation
and inspiration: the Logos, the Muhammedian Spirit. He
even goes so far as to say that all religions (shara’i‘) of the
prophets from Adam to Muhammad are nothing but tempo-
ral manifestations, according to the requirements and needs
of the human race at different times, of the one universal
religion which he calls Islam (using the term to mean all
religions, including Islam itself).

42

KNOWLEDGE

Not only does knowledge vary in kind, but the channels
through which knowledge is obtained are different. Ibn
‘Arabi gives a classification of propositions (or judgements
expressed in propositions) based on this principle. He holds
that normally all knowledge is obtained through six facul-
ties: the five senses and the intellect, counting the intellect
as a faculty. They are, he says, numerically different, but es-
sentially one. But there are, he adds, people who do not obey
this normal law of things: they acquire all kinds of know-
ledge through only one or other of the senses, and some
acquire it through no sense or faculty whatever. He regards
as abnormal the knowledge resulting from clairvoyance,
telepathy, hypnotism, and, above all, the kind of knowledge
he calls intuitive or esoteric.

Broadly speaking Ibn ‘Arabi divides all propositions or
judgements into two main classes:

1. Necessary judgements, under which he includes:

(i) All perceptual judgements (purely perceptual, i.e. with-
out the interference of the understanding);

(ii) Some intellectual judgements, by which he seems to
mean the a priori self-evident propositions of pure
mathematics and formal logic;

(iii) All intuitive judgements (esoteric judgements).
2. Contingent judgements, under which he includes judge-
ments based on the understanding and the senses together.

By necessary judgements Ibn ‘Arabi means judgements
which are necessarily true. Contingent judgements may be
true, but their truth is not necessary. Perceptual judgements,
he would say, may be regarded as false on the ground that
they do not correspond to objective realities, but he still calls
them necessarily true in the sense that they correspond to

43

something. When a man asserts that he is seeing a pink rat,
his judgement is true, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, in the sense that
the man must have seen something; i.e. the man’s percep-
tion must have been conditioned by something objective. To
call this ‘something’ a pink rat is not the fault of the senses,
but of the understanding. All illusions, like the phenomenon
of the mirage, would be explained by Ibn ‘Arabi in this way.
Judgements which do not correspond to external realities,
and are not conditioned by any external objects whatever,
are fabrications of imagination, and are therefore necessari-
ly false.

Now if we imagine, Ibn ‘Arabi goes on to say, a mental power
which would govern the intellect in the same way as the
understanding governs the senses, it would be conceivable
that such a power might err with regard to the intellect, in
the same way as the understanding errs with regard to the
senses; i.e. that such a power would be likely to pronounce
some of the self-evident propositions of the intellect to be
false, when they appear to the intellect to be necessarily true.
Ibn ‘Arabi does not tell us whether there is such a power,
but what he wishes to emphasise is the fact that necessary
knowledge of the kinds mentioned above is true in itself,
and that it is due to the erring judgement of the understand-
ing, or some other ‘judge’ (hakam), that it is sometimes
pronounced false.

Of the three kinds of necessary knowledge the third, intui-
tive knowledge, is the most important. It forms the kernel of
Ibn ‘Arabt’s mystical philosophy of knowledge. Like the rest
of the mystics, he believes in the possibility of a kind of know-
ledge most unlike that of discursive reason. It is the
immediate perception, not of an external object this time, but
of the Truth Itself; i.e. knowledge of the realities of things as
they are, as contrasted with the probable and merely conjec-
tural knowledge of the intellect.

44

Hallaj asserted long before Ibn ‘Arabi that the human
intellect is incapable of comprehending realities. “Thoughts
are mere ideas of relations.” True knowledge proceeds di-
rectly from the Universal Soul to the particular souls, or as
Hallaj puts it, “from the Light to the light.” Hallaj draws a
distinction between knowledge of the Real and knowledge
of the phenomenal, which correspond to what he calls Length
(tal) and Breadth (ard). To know the Real is to see for your-
self; knowledge of the understanding is limited and indirect.
It is very much similar to Spinoza’s third kind of knowledge
(Scientia intuitiva) which, as Spinoza says, is a state in which
the human consciousness is absorbed in the Amor intellectualis
Dei.

The Sufis themselves were wise in calling this kind of know-
ledge ‘taste’ (dhawq), an act of cognition. Sometimes they call
it the Divine Knowledge (‘ilm ladunnt) and knowledge of the
Mysteries (‘ilm al-asrar) and knowledge of the Unseen (‘ilm
al-ghayb) and “knowledge of the people who, in this world,
possess the nature of the next world”, like prophets and
saints, etc. The unseen (al-ghayb) is of two kinds: the Abso-
lute ghayb, i.e. the Divine Essence which is unknowable; and
the relative ghayb, knowledge of which is possible for some
and impossible for others.

Ibn ‘Arabi divides knowledge into three kinds: knowledge
of the intellect (‘ilm al-‘aql), knowledge of the states (‘ilm al-
ahwal) and knowledge of the Mysteries (“ilm al-asrar). Under
divine knowledge, or knowledge of mysteries, he includes
such things as instinctive knowledge and knowledge of in-
animate beings, since he believes that even inanimate beings
know God and glorify Him.

We may therefore use the terms intuition, or insight, or im-
mediate perception of the truth, or indeed any other term
for divine knowledge, provided we distinguish it from other
kinds, particularly reflective thinking.

45

The following seem to be the most outstanding characteris-
tics of esoteric knowledge as understood by Ibn ‘Arabi:

1.

N

Esoteric knowledge is innate; that of the intellect is
acquired. It belongs to the Divine Effulgence (al-fayd al-
ilahi) which illuminates the very being of all creatures. It
manifests itself in man under certain mystical conditions,
e.g. perfect passivity of mind. The mystic is advised to be
so passive in his thinking that he reaches the state of inan-
imate things. It is not the outcome of any practice or
discipline: it lies dormant in the deepest recesses of the
human heart.

It is beyond reason, and we should not invoke the author-
ity of reason to test its validity. On the contrary, if reason
and intuition should conflict, the former should always
be sacrificed to the latter. If what prophets and saints tell
us seems incompatible with our reason, we should take
the word of the prophet and the saint for granted; reason
is no judge of such truth. Reason may be right sometimes,
but Ibn ‘Arabi holds that its rightness is accidental. Rea-
son should not interfere with divine knowledge or attempt
to interpret it.

- It manifests itself in the form of light which floods every

part of the heart of the Sufi when he attains a certain de-
gree of spiritual purification. Discipline is necessary only
insofar as it helps to remove the ‘veils’ which pertain to
the animal soul, and which prevent the heart from reflect-
ing its eternal knowledge and perfections.

- Esoteric knowledge materialises itself only in certain men.

“There is none amongst us but has his appointed place.”
So all that is meant by kashf (revelation), according to Ibn
‘Arabi, is simply the unveiling. When the veils are lifted
up, the “eye of the heart’ sees all things — eternal and tem-
poral, actual and potential — as they really are in their state
of latency (thubit).

46

5. Unlike speculative knowledge, which at most yields prob-
ability, intuition yields certain knowledge. The former has
for its object the shadow of the Real, the phenomenal
world; the latter, Reality itself. The only way of obtaining
such knowledge is by means of ‘immediate vision’ (shuhiid)
of realities. God’s knowledge is shuhiid and so is the know-
ledge of those whom He favours.

6. It is essentially identical with God’s knowledge, and
though it appears to be of various kinds, it is essentially
one. That it is essentially God’s knowledge is proved by
the fact that no-one attains it unless he has already attained
the mystic station wherein esoteric knowledge is revealed
and wherein he realises his essential oneness with God,
i.e. the state of fana’, in which God becomes (without any
prior severance) the hearing, sight and all the other facul-
ties of the mystic. This is God’s knowledge, obtained in
and through God. It is also our knowledge of Him, through
Him. This point will be treated more fully in connection
with Ibn ‘Arabi’s theory of fana’. As for its being essen-
tially one kind, Ibn ‘Arabi holds that although it appears
to come through different channels, it springs from one
common source. The knowing substance which is the es-
sence (huwiyya) of all human faculties is one and its
knowledge is therefore one. Pure Light (which is also Pure
Being) is the source of all knowledge. The senses and all
other human faculties are media through which this Light
manifests itself. Light is the only apprehending (mudrik)
Principle in all conscious beings; the only thing that is
visible in itself and makes other things visible.

7. Esoteric knowledge is ineffable. It is like sense perceptions
and feelings, i.e. it cannot be known except by immediate
experience. You can no more explain the knowledge re-
vealed by a mystical experience to a person who has not
gone through the experience, than you can explain what
‘red’ means to a blind man. No-one but a mystic can real-
ise the full meaning of such knowledge, and the only way

47

to describe it is to explain it, as mystics have always done,
by means of ambiguous and misleading metaphors. “The
vision is there”, Plotinus says, “for him who will see it.”

8. Through it the mystic gains perfect knowledge of Reality.
The unaided intellect asserts absolute transcendence of
God. The mystic asserts both transcendence and imma-
nence. He sees through the Divine tajalli how the One
permeates the Many, and knows in what sense the One is
different from the Many. This, Ibn ‘Arabi believes, is the
doctrine preached in all divine religions and sanctioned
by awham (conjecture). The transcendence which the mys-
tic asserts of God is not the same as that of the
philosophers. It is the absoluteness of the One which is
revealed to the mystic in his vision. It is not based on in-
ference or logical deduction. “It is”, as Jami says, “like
knowing Zayd personally - the other is like knowing him
by name.”

The philosopher can never hope to know more about cau-
sality than what he observes or infers from observation of
causal happenings in the external world. The believer, on
the other hand, sees for himself how the One Cause operates
in all. Again, the philosopher cannot go beyond asserting
the absolute transcendence of God; the believer knows by
taste (dhawq) both aspects of Reality, i.e. transcendence and
immanence. In one of his mystical states, the believer (who
is also a mystic) realises his essential oneness with the Real,
a state in which the knower and the known become one; this
is beyond the reach of the philosopher altogether.

48

THE HEART

Like the rest of the Sufis, Ibn ‘Arabi metaphorically calls the
human ‘heart’ the instrument through which esoteric know-
ledge is transmitted, or the centre wherein it is revealed. It
is not the heart itself (ie. not the hollow and the conic piece
of flesh situated in the chest) that is meant by this instru-
ment; it is something else which, “though connected with it
physically and spiritually, is different from it and other than
it”. The word ‘heart’ is only a symbol for the rational aspect
of Man - the Spirit. It is not identical with the intellect (as
understood by the philosophers), which Ibn ‘Arabi definitely
regards as phenomenal and dependent on the body; but rath-
er it is an inseparable ‘part’ of the Principle of Universal
Reason which, though it functions through a body, is nei-
ther the body itself, nor dependent on a body for its existence,
nor bound in any way by material limitations.

This mysterious power has, he says, a more mysterious fac-
ulty that he calls the ‘inward eye’ (‘ayn al-basira) which, like
the physical eye, perceives things, but the object of its per-
ception is Reality itself. The things that blind this inward
eye are the evil thoughts harboured by the animal soul, and
all that pertains to the material world. Once freed from such
veils, the heart of the mystic begins to comprehend the Real
and communicate directly with the Rational Principle of the
Universe.

The heart of the mystic is the same as the ‘particular intelli-
gence’ of the philosophers, a term which Ibn ‘Arabi
sometimes uses to mean the rational soul and not the intel-
lect. A particular intelligence, in his view, is a mode - or as
he puts it a ‘particularisation’ — of the Universal Reason. It is
essentially identical with the Universal Soul but conceptual-
ly different from it. The relation between the two is the same
as that between a universal and its particulars, or a continu-
ant and its occurrents — rather the latter than the former. What
multiplies the one soul is the same as that which multiplies

49

the One Essence, i.e. subjective relations (nisab); otherwise,
souls are not divisible. The particular souls are no more parts
of the Universal Soul than mental states are parts of a mind.
Ibn ‘Arabi uses a similar analogy when he calls particular
intelligences ‘powers of the Universal Soul’.

The term ‘union’ must always be taken in a metaphorical
sense. How can there be a real union in a mystical experi-
ence when all particular souls are already united with the
Universal Soul, which is God Himself? (God — the Rational
Principle of the Cosmos). The so-called ‘union’, therefore, is
but a state of ‘waking up’ for the particular soul and the re-
alisation of the already existing union between itself and
All-Soul, rather than an amalgamation of two different souls.
According to Ibn ‘Arabi the final achievement of the mystic,
and the ultimate goal of his endeavours, is not to become
one with God, for he already is, but to realise the meaning
of such oneness. It follows that:

1. There is no real becoming at all: man never becomes God
nor God man. The “Anda’l-Haqq” (Iam the Truth) of Hallaj
is literally true in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view.

2. The so-called esoteric knowledge of the Sufis springs di-
rectly from the individual soul itself. It is not revealed or
inspired in any real sense. All such terms as transmission
and communication of knowledge must be understood
metaphorically. The symbolic language used in this sub-
ject is here, as it is everywhere else, a great source of
danger. If taken literally, it would suggest a duality of a
revealer and a revealed to, a giver and a receiver of know-
ledge, and so on, whereas there is only the One. Ibn ‘Arabi
describes the First Intellect (a term which he uses as equiv-
alent to the Universal Soul) in such a way, and attributes
to it such characteristics, that it appears fundamentally
different from particular intelligences. But we know that
according to him the Universal Soul differs from particu-
lar souls only in the sense in which a whole differs from
its ‘parts’. He also speaks of the Spirit (al-Rah), meaning

50

Gabriel, as identical with Universal Soul, as the only
revealer of esoteric knowledge (al-mulqi), and brings nu-
merous passages from the Qu’ran to bear on this point.
What he really means, as he himself admits, is that it is
the Rih in its particular ‘modes’ that is the sole revealer;
that revelation is the announcement of the soul (the
particular soul) itself.

The mystic is said to receive knowledge in all the hadarat
(presences), but the giver of such knowledge is the self, which
appears in different ‘forms’ according to the nature of each
hadra.

Like Plotinus, whom he follows closely, Ibn ‘Arabi believes
in the essential unity of rational souls with the Universal Soul.
The heart of the Sufi, or the rational soul thus conceived, is
the eye, so to speak, whereby God sees Himself, and the in-
strument whereby He knows Himself in the forms of His
manifestations. Man (the Perfect Man) is the focus of the di-
vine consciousness of God; God is the focus and the essence
of the consciousness of Man.

Reality, which is forever manifesting itself in an infinity of
forms and in all planes of existence, is reflected, as if ina
mirror, in the heart of the true Gnostic, who follows Reality
everywhere and recognises it in everything. Every state of,
or change in, the one eternal substance, corresponds to a state
of, or a change in, the heart of the Gnostic. This is what Ibn
‘Arabi means by saying that God is “contained in the heart
of the Gnostic”. It contains Him in two ways:

1. It reflects all the divine perfections which are separately

manifested in the Macrocosm but collectively manifested
in the Microcosm (Man).

2. It also contains God in the sense that it contains the divine
(the essential or spiritual) aspect of Man, the only aspect
by virtue of which Man may be called God.

51

But Ibn ‘Arabi lays more stress on the former of these two
senses, saying that this is the true meaning of the Prophetic
Tradition, “whoso knows himself knows his Lord”.

THE SOUL

Ibn ‘Arabi recognises three distinct elements in Man, which
he calls body, soul and spirit. He defines body as a material
form which has extension in space and duration in time, and
which is perishable and changeable. It is a particular ‘mode’
of the Universal Body (al-jism al-kulli). Soul, on the other
hand, is defined by him as the vital principle — the animal-
life in the human organism. It is a particular ‘mode’ of
Universal Soul (al-nafs al-kulliya). And lastly, he defines spirit
as the rational principle, the purpose of which is to seek true
knowledge. It is a ‘mode’ of Universal Intellect (al-‘aql al-
kulli).

Ibn ‘Arabi speaks of three distinct aspects of the soul: the
vegetative, the animal and the rational. He definitely asserts
that the vegetative and the animal souls are the body itself.
They function through it, and depend for their very exist-
ence upon it. The rational soul, he says, is identical with
neither the intellect nor the body, although intellect is one
of its subordinate ‘powers’ and, during its association with
body, it functions through it. It is independent of the body;
it can actually exist apart from it, as it did before ‘joining’ it,
and as it will do after parting with it.

“T do not mean by the spirit”, he says, “the food-seeking in-
stinct which resides in the liver; or that human power which
responds to anger and passion; or the life-generating power
lodged in the heart, a power usually called the animal soul,
which manifests itself in sensations and movements and
passions, etc; but I mean that perfect and simple substance
which is living and active, whose sole activities are remem-
bering, retaining ideas, comprehending, discriminating and

52

reflecting.” (Yet he does not identify it with the intellect.) “It
is capable of receiving all kinds of knowledge and never be-
comes weary of receiving abstract ideas. This substance is
the ‘chief’ of all the three souls and the prince (amir) of all
the powers which serve it and obey its commands.” But he
goes on to say, “It is neither a body nor an accident (‘arad),
but a substance belonging to the ‘world of command’ (al-
‘alam al-amr, the spiritual world); and the Divine command
is neither a body nor an accident, but a power like the First
Intellect and the Universal Soul and other Pure Spirits. It is
the reality signified by the word ‘T’.”

Death is no destruction, but a dissolution of ‘parts’ of the so-
called material form. All ‘frames’ (or forms) are regarded by
him as mere nothing —- passing shadows — with a reality be-
hind them which constitutes their very being. The human
body is no exception to the rule. All the so-called three souls
and the body are ultimately one. But the occult is more per-
fect and more venerable than the manifest; the rational soul
in this case, being the hidden aspect of Man, occupies this
honourable position. It is the ‘part’ of Man to which God
addresses Himself, and the one that is expected to fulfil moral
obligations.

Essentially, Ibn ‘Arabi believes, the apprehending reality is
one. This he calls the Light (al-niir) without which nothing
can apprehend or be apprehended. In Man this Light takes
the form of the rational soul which we have already ex-
plained. Ibn ‘Arabi insists on the unity of this principle
(Light) not only in its cosmic functions as the operating
‘Mind’ in all spheres of intellection, but even in every indi-
vidual being wherein it abides. Man hears, feels, tastes; he
thinks, memorises, imagines; and above all receives know-
ledge of the unseen world, etc., by means of senses and
faculties which people call by different names, but which,
according to Ibn ‘Arabi, are essentially one, i.e. this Light.
“If you apprehend sound you call the apprehending Light

53

‘hearing’; and if you perceive by sight, you call it ‘seeing’;
and so on to the end of the senses and faculties.”

In short, Light, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, is everything through
which apprehension takes place. Not only that, but every-
thing that is apprehended must have a special relation to
the apprehending Light which is God. To put it in other
words, God is all that apprehends and all that is apprehend-
ed. If a thing cannot be apprehended by a mind of some sort
(not necessarily by a human mind) it cannot be reality at all.
On this remarkable theory Ibn ‘Arabi bases, with no incon-
sistency, both his empirical and his mystical psychology,
normal and abnormal. The very Light which apprehends
colours and sounds and conceives ideas and forms and im-
ages, etc., is the same as that which directly and immediately
perceives Reality itself.

Ibn ‘Arabi maintains that, though there is a difference be-
tween the intellect (al-‘aql) and the rational soul (al-rih), and
between reflective thinking and immediate intuition, the dif-
ference cannot possibly be regarded as ultimate. If there is a
difference at all, it is in the different ways in which this Light
manifests itself. While the apprehending Light is perfectly
free in mystical intuition, it is comparatively limited in re-
flective thinking and more tied down still by the limitations
of the senses in sense perception.

The senses perceive through the agency of the apprehend-
ing Light, which forms their very essence and the essence of
the objects perceived. Perceptual situations can be appre-
hended by the heart even in the absence of perceptible
objects. It ‘sees’ them in itself as copies of the eternal Ideas
of the Soul.

Concepts are innate ideas in the soul. “The soul is essentially
a knowing substance”; soul is already born with these in-
nate ideas. He speaks of the soul’s forgetting its eternal
knowledge during its temporary association with the body.

54

The so-called acquired knowledge is knowledge remembered
by the soul. Some souls, like those of prophets and saints,
never forget their knowledge and never experience that
sickness (marad) which befalls other souls.

Universal ideas are a common property of every human soul:
Ibn ‘Arabi maintains that they are innate in the human soul.
He reduces all conceptual knowledge — all knowledge of the
external world — to a simple relation between the already
knowing soul (or its concepts) and the objects of the exter-
nal world on the one hand; and to a process of relating these
concepts themselves on the other. For example, to formulate
the proposition ‘a body is standing’ is to relate in mind the
notion of ‘body’ with that of ‘standing’, both of which are
unchangeable ideas. The relation between them, taken in its
universality, is also an unchangeable concept. Even the par-
ticular relation, i.e. that this body is standing now, is
unchangeable in the sense that it (itself) cannot be asserted
of any other body to which it does not belong. If we say that
the particular relation does change, since the standing body
might move the next moment, Ibn ‘Arabi would answer that
the body has entered into another relation altogether, and
the previous relation has not changed. There are, therefore,
four elements in ali conceptual thinking:

1. Abstract relation (nisba mutlaqa),

2. The object to which a relation is made (al-mansub ilayhi),
3. The attribute related (al-nisba),

4. The particular relation (al-nisba al-shakhsiyya).

The great hindrance to clear conceptual thinking, Ibn ‘Arabi
says, is the understanding, because it is always accompa-
nied by images which tend to limit the universality of the
universal concepts we have just explained.

Ibn ‘Arabi draws a distinction between ‘desire’ (shahwa) and
‘will’ (irdda) by defining the former as the mere striving to-
ward the gratification of some natural appetite or other. This
striving is usually determined by the nature of its object. Will,

55

on the other hand, for him, means a divine and spiritual
power whose object is never an existing one (i.e. a concrete
object in the external world). Will has an important bearing
on what the Sufis call the mystic yearning or longing for their
Beloved (God). Ibn Farid and Ibn ‘Arabi have talked about
Absolute Beauty and Absolute Perfection as being the object
(not in a concrete sense) of their love and contemplation, but
no-one except a mystic can fully understand what love in
abstraction or contemplation of the Absolute means.

KHAYAL

Khayal is used to mean any intermediary between two stages.
He calls the Blindness (al-‘ama) khayal (illusory) because it is
an intermediate stage between the Absolute Essence and the
Phenomenal World. Mental images are khayal because they
are an intermediate stage between the spiritual and the vis-
ible world. Dreams are khaydl because they are a stage
between the Real and the phenomenal life. Mirror images
are khayal because they are a species of their own: they are
neither concrete objects nor abstract ideas.

We must be on our guard in understanding what Ibn ‘Arabi
says about khayal, and we must also distinguish between at
least two different kinds of it:

1. The psychological kind, i.e. mental images which are only
seen in, and have no existence apart from, a mind. Under
this category we may class dreams, illusions and ordinary
normal images of waking life.

2. What we may call the metaphysical kind.
The first is divided by Ibn ‘Arabi into two kinds:

a. Separable (munfasil) which is seen in the plane of imagi-
nation (al-hadrat al-khaya@l) as having an external
corporeality; like the forms of Gabriel seen by Muhammad,
and the serpent which was seen in place of Moses’ staff.

56

For Ibn ‘Arabi this is a different type of imagination from
optical illusions (understood in a strictly psychological
sense);

b. Inseparable (muttasil) by which he seems to mean ordinary
mental images. This he divides into two more sub-classes:

1. images which are consciously recalled to the mind by
the process of takhayyul, and

2. images which come to the mind of their own accord
under certain conditions, e.g. in dreams.

Ibn ‘Arabi’s theory of khayal is not purely psychological.
Khayalat are not only mind-dependent products which have
no being in themselves, as a psychologist would say. There
is a definite place allotted to them in Ibn ‘Arabi’s (and even
in Ghazalt’s) theory of being. Some khayalat, e.g. the separa-
ble ones, belong, he says, to the ‘Essential Presence’ (al-hadrat
al-dhatiyya) and are always ready to receive meanings
(ma‘ani) and spirits (arwah). They are forms in which Reality
reveals Itself to the human mind, and he even regards them
as higher forms than those of the sensible world.

It would be desirable to recall what has been said about the
inward ‘eye of the heart’ (al-‘ayn al-basira), for it is, accord-
ing to Ibn ‘Arabi, the only key to the spiritual world in Man’s
possession. Revelations and inspirations, which we have
hitherto explained as springing directly from the heart, are
sometimes, he says, given to the mystic or the prophet in the
form of a dream. This is a veridical dream (al-ru’ yd al-sadigqa),
but there are other dreams which belong to a different class
altogether.

Ibn ‘Arabi holds that the faculty of imagination is always
active, whether in waking life or in sleep. During waking
hours this faculty is too distracted by sense impressions to
do its work properly, but in sleep, when the senses and other
faculties are ina state of rest, the imagination fully awakes.
Sometimes it acts on images connected with ordinary events

57

of the everyday life of the individual and presents them to
the ‘inward eye’ of the heart, which reflects them and
magnifies them like a mirror. In this way ordinary dreams
are caused. They are just associations of ideas and images
connecting themselves with some objects of desire.

But sometimes the ‘Guarded Table’ (by which Ibn ‘Arabi
means the Universal Soul) reveals itself, with all it contains
of archetypal ideas, to the rational soul of man. What he
means here is that the rational soul of man, which is a mode
of the Universal Soul, is revealing itself to itself. The imagi-
nation seizes such ideas and acts upon them even in such a
state. The heart (now in immediate contact with the Univer-
sal Soul) becomes, Ibn ‘Arabi says, like “a running yet
undefiled stream, wherein are reflected illuminated objects
of all descriptions”. The person to whom such a dream is
revealed only sees the reflections in this stream, which are
symbols of realities that lie behind them.

Ibn ‘Arabi holds that although such dreams are veridical,
they must be interpreted because they are symbolic. It is the
imagination that supplies the symbols, and we must not take
symbols for realities. When the Prophet saw milk ina dream,
he only saw a symbol. The reality behind it was knowledge.

Ibn ‘Arabi gives us one more kind of veridical dream in
which there are no symbols. Here the imagination does not
interfere. The heart reflects directly the spiritual impressions
(ma‘ani ghaybiyya, meanings from the unknowable) before
the imagination can read into them any symbolic meaning.
Dreams of this kind need no interpretation. They are revela-
tions of the Real itself, and they correspond in every detail
to things seen (later) in the external world. To this class of
dreams belong some kinds of wahy (revelations) and ilham
(inspiration), which spring directly from the individual soul.

Gnostics create by means of a mysterious power that Ibn
“Arabi calls al-himma (spiritual will), which can produce

58

changes and create objects in the external world wherever it
is concentrated.

To understand what he means by khaydl it is necessary first
to understand what he calls the hadarat-i khamsa (the Five
Presences) of the Divine devolution. The hadrat al-shuhiid (the
Presence of Witnessing and of the Senses) is regarded as the
devolvement of the higher Presence of Similitudes (hadrat
al-mithal), which is often referred to as the Presence of Angels
(hadrat al-malakiit); which is a devolvement of the Presence
of Compelling (hadrat al-jabariit); which is a devolvement of
the Presence of the Unknowable (hadrat al-ghayb). The fifth
hadra is that of the Perfect Man, which englobes all the others.

Once the meaning of these hadarat is grasped, many obscure
points of Ibn ‘Arabi’s theory become more intelligible.
Nothing is really created anew either by God or Man, but
things may be said to be preserved by God in one or other
of these planes of the Five Presences.

Creating, therefore, in the sense of preserving what already
exists in one or other or all of these hadarat, may be attribut-
ed to Man. The heart of Man (the Perfect Man) is a centre for
all the divine activities. It reflects, like a mirror, all the forms
in which Reality reveals Itself. By concentrating on the form
of anything in one or more of these hadarat by means of the
himma (which is a power of the heart), the mystic has a per-
fect control over that thing, and through this control the thing
is preserved in one hadra or another so long as the concen-
tration of the himma is maintained.

The difference between the creation of God and that of Man
(the Perfect Man), on this theory, is that God’s ‘creations’
are preserved at all times and in all the hadras, because God
never becomes forgetful of His creations; while those of Man
are preserved only at one time or other, and in one hadra or
other, and never in all the hadarat. As soon as Man becomes
forgetful of his creations, they disappear — not from exist-
ence altogether, for nothing disappears from existence, but

59

from the hadarat of which Man has become forgetful. It is
not like recalling mental images and preserving them in a
mind: it is ‘preserving’ what has existence outside the place
of the himma. Ibn ‘Arabi says that although the gnostic pos-
sesses this mysterious power called himma, and is able to
dispense it (tasarruf), a true gnostic would refrain from
exercising it for two reasons:

a. He realises his state as a mere servant (‘abd) of God and
therefore he prefers to leave creation to his Lord.

b. He knows that the dispenser and dispensee are essentially
one. Ibn ‘Arabi mentions the two Shaykhs, Aba-l Su‘td
Ibn Shibl and Abii Madyan, as belonging to this class of
mystics who abandoned tasarruf in disdain. But a Sufi may
exercise his tasarruf, Ibn ‘Arabi adds, if God bids him to
do so. This was the case with ‘Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani.

FANA’ & BAQA’

The mystic does not become God, for there is no becoming:
he is essentially one with God in the sense that everything
else is. What the mystic knows, he experiences here. The di-
vine is already there: it is you — not even an element, as Hallaj
calls it, in your nature, but an aspect. Ibn ‘Arabi himself re-
pudiates the idea that a mystic passes away from his own
‘self’, or becomes God. He cannot be contemptuous enough
of people who make such assertions.

According to Ibn ‘Arabi, fana’ may mean either of two things:

a. Fana’ in a mystical sense, by which he means the ‘passing
away’ of ignorance, and the ‘remaining’ (baqa’) of infalli-
ble knowledge (gained by intuition) of the essential
oneness of the Whole. The mystic does not pass away from
his ‘self’, but he realises its essential non-existence as a
form.

60

b. Fana’ in a metaphysical sense, by which he means the
‘passing away’ of the forms of the phenomenal world, and
the continuance of the One Universal Substance. This is,
as Mr. Winfield puts it, the eternal process of “phenome-
na being constantly annihilated in the Universal
Noumenon”: the new creation (al-khalq al-jadid) explained
before. It is summed up by Ibn ‘Arabi’s own words; “The
disappearance of a form is its fand’ at the moment of the
manifestation (fajallt) of God in another form”.

The mystical fand’, he says, is imperfect. The mystic realises
that he, as a form, has no existence per se, but, owing to the
very nature of the form, he cannot completely pass away from
it. How can it be possible even for a mystic, he asks, to die to
‘self’ and be at the same time conscious of God as the all-
embracing Reality? Consciousness itself means persistence
of ‘self’.

Ibn ‘Arabi makes a fundamental distinction between two
mystical states which, he believes, have been confused by
other mystics:

1. The passing away from all traces and characteristics of
‘self’ or personality. This state is similar to sleep. “The
mystic is neither with his ‘self’ nor with his Lord; he is
asleep, he is ignorant.”

2. The passing away of ‘self’ in a state of intuitive know-
ledge in which the essential unity of the Whole is revealed.
This is the aspect of the mystical experience which Ibn
‘Arabi emphasises. It is knowledge of an infallible nature
that Ibn ‘Arabi is after. To say that I have become God, or
died to ‘self’ in any real sense, is ignorance; and to see
your ‘self’ alone in a mystical experience is polytheism.
The perfect mystic, therefore, is one who sees God and
‘self’ in the mystical experience, both by mystical know-
ledge and feeling, i.e. the perfect mystic is the one who
recognises both Essence and form, but realises their es-
sential unity and the absolute non-existence of the form.

61

The particular soul which contemplates the One as itself,
or in itself, never left the One.

According to Ibn ‘Arabi, fand’ is a gradual process of various
stages (one does not go through each necessarily) in which
the mystic knows by intuition (dhawgq — taste) his real place
in relation to God.

Some of these stages are as follows:

1.

oh

The passing away from all actions whatever. In this stage
the mystic realises that God alone is the absolute and the
only agent in the universe. The real agent is God Himself.

. Passing away from one’s own personality (dhat), by which

he means that the mystic realises in such a state the non-
existence of his phenomenal ‘self’ and the subsistence
(baqa@’) of the unchangeable, unperishable substance which
is its essence.

. Passing away from the whole world, i.e. the cessation of

contemplating the phenomenal aspect of the world, and
the realisation of the real aspect which underlies the phe-
nomena.

. Passing away from all that is ‘other than God’, even from

the very act of passing away. One of the conditions of this
stage is that the mystic must cease to be conscious of him-
self as a contemplator. It is God Himself that contemplates
and is contemplated. He is seen in every one of His infi-
nite ‘states’ (shu’iin) i.e. manifestations.

The passing away from all the attributes of God and their
‘relations’, i.e. the contemplation of God as the Essence of
the universe rather than the ‘cause’ of it, as the philoso-
phers say. The mystic then does not regard the universe
as an effect of a cause, but as ‘Reality in Appearance’ (haqq
fi zuhur). He realises the meaninglessness of causality and
such Divine Names as the Creator, the Designer, the Giv-
er and so on. This last stage is the ultimate goal, and is

62

what Ibn ‘Arabi calls the station of absolute transcend-
ence of the unity.

In every one of the so-called mystical stages of fand’, the
essential unity of being is realised by the mystic. To every
stage of fana’ corresponds a stage of baqa’ (subsistence): that
which passes away is the phenomenal and that which en-
dures is the Real. The ultimate goal of Ibn ‘Arabi’s mysticism
is the attainment of what he calls ‘true knowledge’.

Fana’ and baga’ are two complementary aspects of one and
the same experience, in which the Real is ‘seen’ to persist,
the phenomenal to pass away. Fana’ is characteristic of all
that is ‘other than God’; baga’ of God alone. In every one of
these stages one of the ‘veils’ — i.e. the characteristics of the
so-called phenomenal world as we know it; all that is called
other than God — is removed, and the mystic is brought one
step nearer to the Truth. When all the ‘veils’ are lifted up,
Reality appears in its absolute nakedness, and absolute free-
dom of the soul is reached. The mystic is then said to have
arrived (wasala) at his goal, where lies his happiness. This
goal is not God, for how can it be God, Ibn ‘Arabi says, when
He is the very one that arrived at the goal?

The supreme happiness of the mystic is in realising, by
means of mystic intuition, his essential unity with God.
What was for him knowledge of certainty (‘ilm al-yagin) is
now the very ‘eye’ or vision of certainty (‘ayn al-yaqin); and
when he transcends the stage of the duality of the knower
and the known, he reaches the highest stage of mystical life
in which he is face to face with the reality of certainty (haqq

al-yagin).

63

BELIEFS

There are three ways in which beliefs regarding God are
formed:

1. The way of the follower of a prophet
2. The way of the philosopher and free-thinker
3. The way of the gnostic (al-‘arif)

The believer, or follower, fashions his beliefs after the man-
ner of his prophet; the thinker bases his on reason; the gnostic
— who may be said to have no definite belief like the other
two — is guided by his immediate perception (dhawg — taste)
of the Truth. Each of them has a conception in which he finds
his God, “and each will, when the truth is revealed in the
next world, recognise the object of his belief (i.e. his God) in
the infinite Being who will then appear in all the forms of
belief”. Only then will they fully apprehend the meaning of
their beliefs, when they obtain an immediate ‘vision’ of
Reality as it really is. Only then shall we see for ourselves,
with keenness of sight that will never be dimmed, the One
object which reflects Itself on the infinite mirror of our be-
liefs, and know what the meaning of God’s huwiyya (Essence)
is. People who believe that God is limited to any particular
form will recognise Him in that particular form and no oth-
er; and people like the Mu‘tazilites, who believe in the
fulfilment of His threat, will not recognise Him in His abso-
lute Mercy which embraces all things; and so on. Only
gnostics, Ibn ‘Arabi says, will recognise Him in all the forms
of belief in which He will reveal Himself, as they now recog-
nise Him in all His manifestations; for the gnostics are the
hayila of all beliefs.

The forms of belief in God vary according to the nature of
the objects of those beliefs, but any belief which deprives
God of His absolute universality, or falls short of explaining
His full nature as being both a transcendent and an imma-
nent Reality, is partial and imperfect. To worship a star ora
tree is to worship a god who is but a partial manifestation of

64

the Real God, but to worship Him in all forms is to worship
Allah, who is the only true object of worship. All other gods
are ‘intelligible objects of beliefs’. We create them in our
minds. Everyone is right in his belief, no matter how partial
it is, but wrong in asserting that the object of his belief is
(when it is not) Allah.

Gnostics alone worship the true God whose Name (Allah) is
the most universal of all the Divine Names. They are called
‘Worshippers of Time’ (‘ubbad al-waqt), because they wor-
ship God at every moment of Time in a fresh manifestation.
Their position is a peculiar one: they combine the belief of
the philosopher, who asserts pure transcendence of God,
with that of the polytheist, who asserts pure immanence; for
neither transcendence alone nor immanence alone explains
the full nature of Reality. Immanence alone leads to a form
of polytheism which Ibn ‘Arabi denounces, and transcend-
ence alone leads to a duality of God and universe which Ibn
‘Arabi rejects. The only religion left for him is the universal
religion, which includes all religions and which is Islam. Islam
is not only the religion of Muhammad, but the embodiment
of all religions and beliefs.

Ibn ‘Arabi maintains that love is the basis of all forms of
worship, and that the only true form of worship is Love. To
worship is to love the object worshipped. But ‘love’ is a prin-
ciple which pervades all beings and binds them together. It
is one universal kind, although it appears to be a multiplici-
ty in forms. It is an essential unity: the Divine Essence itself.
Therefore the highest and the truest object of worship, the
highest manifestation (majla@) in which God is worshipped,
is love. “I swear by the reality of Love that Love is the cause
of all Love; were it not for Love (residing) in the heart, Love
(God) would not be worshipped.”

People’s beliefs are determined by, and vary according to,
their own aptitude (isti‘dad). This, Ibn ‘Arabi says, is what
Junayd meant by saying, “the colour of water is the colour

65

of the vessel which contains it”. The part that God plays in
the matter is that of an Omniscient Being who knows from
eternity what every individual belief is going to be, but even
His knowledge is determined by the nature of the beliefs and
that of the people to whom they belong. Commenting on the
Qur’anic verse, “Verily God is not unjust to His servants”,
Ibn ‘Arabi says, “I (i.e. God) did not ordain polytheism which
dooms them to misery, and then demand of them what lay
not in their power to perform. No, I dealt with them only
according as I knew them, and I knew them only by what
they ‘gave’ me from themselves, of what they themselves
really are. Hence if there is any wrong, they are the wrong-
doers. I said to them nothing but what my Essence decreed
that [should say to them, and my Essence is known to me as
it is... It is mine to say and it is for them to obey or not to
obey.”

The ultimate goal is the realisation of the essential Unity of
the One Reality which is the All, and the full recognition of
the Principle of Love — for God is Love — which pervades
and unites the Whole. In this ‘religion’ God is impersonal,
but those who are incapable of conceiving Him as such may
worship Him in any form they please, provided they know
what the real object of their worship is. To worship the Real
God is to contemplate Him in everything, including
yourself,

Goopb & Evi.

If we say we are responsible, we are right, and if we say God
is responsible, we are equally right: but we must always re-
member the point of view. God does not will in the sense
that He chooses, but in the sense that He decrees what He
knows will take place. That the thing or action which God
has decreed should take place depends entirely on its own
necessary laws. Logically, Ibn “Arabi argues, a ‘possible’
thing or action may be one or other of many alternative things

66

or actions, but actually it is only one: the one God knows
will take place. It is impossible for God to will what lies not
in the nature of things. The intrinsic laws of Man are the
deciding factor in all that he does, good or evil.

Evil, for Ibn ‘Arabi, is not a positive quantity. Pure evil is
the same as pure not-being and pure darkness, and pure good
is pure being and pure light. According to him and
Suhrawardi al-Muqtial, the difference between ‘light’ and
‘darkness’ is not one of contrariety, but one of existence and
non-existence. Ibn ‘Arabi, for example, includes such things
as physical pain, failing health, animal cruelty, and so on, in
what he calls evil. For him, all evil, ethical or otherwise, is
relative. There is nothing that is evil in itself, and God never
creates any evil. Things and actions are called evil for one or
other of the following reasons:

1. Because one religion or other regards them as such;

2. Relative to a certain ethical principle or customary
standard approved by a community;

3. Because they are incongruous with some individual
temperament,

4. Because they fail to satisfy some natural, moral or
intellectual desires of an individual; and so on.

Apart from these and other similar standards by which we
measure the goodness or evilness of things or actions, there
is nothing, Ibn “Arabi says, except the bare essence of things
(a‘ yan al-mawjidat) which we cannot describe as good or evil.

In addition to things which have already been mentioned as
coming under Ibn ‘Arabi's category of evil, we may include
ignorance, falsehood, disharmony, disorder, sin, infidelity,
incompatibility of temper and so on. In all these things there
is something lacking; some positive being or quality which,
if added to the things or actions we call evil, would convert
them into good. Nothing is evil: all that is, is good. In other
words, what we call evil is subjective, not an objective reality.

67

But even good as contrasted with evil is subjective and rela-
tive. The only good that is absolute is Pure Being (God, the
Good).

Our judgement of the goodness and evilness of things is rel-
ative to our knowledge. We call a thing or an action evil
because of our ignorance of the good that is hidden therein.
“Everything”, he says, “has an external and an internal as-
pect. In its internal aspect lies the purpose of the Creator,
and if we are ignorant of such purpose, we are apt to pro-
nounce such a thing to be evil”.

Ibn ‘Arabi gives medicine as an illustration of what he wishes
to say. Here is a case of an apparent evil (e.g. the unpleas-
antness resulting from tasting a repugnant medicine) and of
a positive good of which the patient, who condemns his
medicine as evil, may be ignorant. A thing like medicine,
therefore, is regarded as evil for two reasons, and it is a
relative evil in each case:

1. It lacks some positive qualities, on account of the absence
of which it does not appeal to the taste of the patient, who
regards it as evil;

2. It is considered an evil relative to the knowledge of the
patient, who is ignorant of the good that is in it.

In itself medicine cannot be described as good or evil, and
the same may be said of all other goods and evils. Ibn ‘Arabi
adds that ultimately both good and evil come from God. To
put it in other words, all things are manifestations of God
and all actions are His actions, only we call some of them
good and others bad. The Mercy of God is shown in all things
and actions, for it is through His Mercy that everything has
come to being.

Ibn ‘Arabi makes a distinction between two kinds of Divine
Will:

1. The mashi’a, by which he means something like the Di-
vine Consciousness which is present in all things: the

68

eternal Power of God which decrees that things (potential
or actual) should be what they are. Ibn ‘Arabi means by
mashi’a the Divine Essence Itself. He calls it al-wujiid (Being
or God) and approves of Abu Talib al-Makki’s calling it
al-‘arsh al-dhat (the throne of the Essence).

2. The creative Will (irada), by which he means a power by
means of which God brings into external manifestation
potential existents.

“Sin is disobedience, not to the Divine Will, not to the crea-
tive command of God (al-amr al-takwini), but to mediate
religious command (al-amr bi-l-wasita, or al-amr al-taklift).”
In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, also that of Hallaj, this Divine Command
(amr) is not a real command (amr) but is what they call ibtila’
(trial). It would have been against God’s wisdom if He had
not created things which we call evil, or decreed actions
which we call sins. The world would not have been com-
plete or perfect, for it is a part of the perfection of the world
to include what we call imperfection. God’s complete per-
fections would not have been manifested; the manifested
world is the relative world and in a relative state ‘the more’
or ‘the less’ are of the nature of the relative state. He also
adds that we are enjoined to accept not that which God has
decreed (al-maqdi bihi), but the Decree itself (al-qada’). “Prayer
for removal of evil should be submitted to God”, Ibn ‘Arabi
says; “...it behoves a person in pain to pray to God to re-
move it, because by so doing God removes it from Himself”.
On the contrary, Ibn ‘Arabi argues, to try to refrain from
complaint to God when you are afflicted with pain is to defy
Fate, and this is ignorance.

This, in outline, is Ibn ‘Arabi’s Ethics. The pivot round which
it all turns is self-realisation. Every thing and every action
has one ultimate aim which it is bound to achieve, and this
is to realise itself; and in so doing it realises one or other of
God’s infinite perfections, which include the so-called
imperfections according to Ethics or Religion.

69

His descriptions of Heaven and Hell are merely “allegorical
representations of states” and “corporealisations of ideas”.
“What we learn from tradition”, he says, “is mere words,
and it is left to us to find out what such words mean.” Para-
dise, he says, comes from the verb janna, to conceal, and the
janna of all is the Divine Essence in which all multiplicity
will be ‘concealed’. On the other hand, Hell (jahannam) means
distance or farness (bu‘d), and the real hell lies in imagining
that there is a real chasm between you and God and not re-
alising your essential oneness with Him. -

The ‘Day of Grief’ (yawm al-hasra) he understands as the ‘Day
of Unveiling’, from hasara, to unveil; i.e. the day on which
the One Essence will be revealed in Its absolute universality.
Heaven and Hell are two subjective states. Hell is selfhood.
Heaven, on the other hand, is the realisation of the divine
aspect of his being. Of life after death Ibn ‘Arabi has no doubt
whatever, for life, according to him, is continuous and un-
ceasing. There is only One Being in existence and there is
therefore but one life. “Though the damned”, Ibn ‘Arabi says,
“will enter the abode of misery, they will experience therein
happiness which will be different from that of Paradise.” The
only kind of torment the damned will experience is a nega-
tive one; they will be deprived, for a time, of the greatest
happiness of all, ie. the realisation of their inseparable unity
with God. The One whence all things come is the One to
which they will all return. When we return to the One, we
will realise the truth or falsity of our beliefs, and our posi-
tion relative to Him will be determined entirely by the nature
of such beliefs. The gnostics alone will be in immediate con-
tact with Him, and this will constitute the highest happiness
in Heaven. Souls in the spiritual world will be an essential
unity, yet preserving a degree of consciousness that will en-
able them to enjoy their various grades of spiritual happiness.

70

LovE & BEAUTY

The One is the all-embracing Being — the ultimate ground of
all existence. It is identified with the all-active and the all-
willing Principle. It is the all-pervading Consciousness; the
same Reality as the all-prevailing Love and Beauty.

The fundamental factor underlying all these manifestations
of the One Reality is, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, Divine Love.
He recognises three kinds of Love: natural love, spiritual love
and Divine Love. The first two are species of the third. Di-
vine Love means the essential Love of the One — the eternal
love which is the source of all other kinds. Before any form
of modalisation, the One, in His supreme isolation and sim-
plicity, loved Himself for and in Himself, and loved to be
known and to be manifested. This was the cause of creation.
In loving Himself, the One loved all the a‘ydn of things la-
tent in His Essence, and hence they are impregnated with
love that they now manifest in different ways. “The love of
the a‘yan began”, Ibn ‘Arabi says, “when they were still in
the Blindness (al-‘ama), when they first heard God’s creative
word (Be).”

Spiritual love means mystical love, of which the ultimate aim
is realisation of the essential unity of the lover and the
Beloved. Divine Love, in refinding itself, realises its affinity
as a ‘form’ with the Universal Love of the Whole. This is the
most perfect kind of love. It is the love of the Whole as a
Whole (as an Essence) and as a part (as a particular mode of
the Essence). It is what the Sufis mean by rapture (hayaman).
Ibn ‘Arabi says that the ultimate goal of love is to know the
reality of love and that the reality of love is identical with
God’s Essence. Love is not an abstract quality superadded
to the Essence. It is not a relation between a lover and an
object loved. This is the true love.of the gnostics, who know
no particular object of love. It is the profane that love forms.
Nothing is loved except God, just as nothing is worshipped
except Him. When we say that we love x, y or z, what we

71

really mean is that we love God in the form of x, y or z; and
it is ignorance to say that we love x, y or z themselves, just
as it is ignorance to say that we worship x, y or z themselves.
When we say we love God, or anything, we mean that God
loves Himself in us or in any other form.

The third kind of love is natural love, the object of which is
self-satisfaction, regardless of the object loved. In spiritual
love, the ‘self’ and all its desires are sacrificed in the interest
of the Beloved. In natural love the object is sacrificed. Ibn
‘Arabi includes under natural love what he calls elemental
love (al-hubb al-‘unsurt), under which all physical, psycho-
logical, and even mechanical attractions can be classed. Even
this he regards as a manifestation of the Divine Love in its
lowest and crudest form.

According to Ibn ‘Arabi, love is not an end in itself; it has no
intrinsic value. The basis and cause of all love is Beauty.
We love God because God is Beautiful, and He loves us and
all His creation because He loves the Beautiful. God’s Beauty
is the source of all types of Beauty. It is the source of all spir-
itual and intellectual beauty as well as beauty of form,
although in itself God’s Beauty is above all form and shape.
God loves beauty of form because form reflects His own
Beauty, as it reflects His Being. In abstract beauty as well as
in beauty of form, therefore, God ought to be loved and
worshipped, and this is how a perfect Gnostic knows Him,
loves Him and worships Him.

Love is the cause of creation (or self-manifestation of the One
in His infinite Forms), but it is also the cause of the return of
all the manifestations to the One. “Does not God say,” Ibn
‘Arabi asks, “O David, My yearning for them is greater than
their yearning for Me?” Love is the working principle in all
manifestations of the One, from the highest to the lowest. It
reaches its zenith in Man, the Perfect Man, who above all
creation experiences all the three kinds of Love. Through
Love, the Whole is bound together and through it the object
of creation is realised. Thus the whole system is perfectly
complete.

72

INDEX OF NAMES & ARABIC TERMS

A

‘abd 60

‘abd al-kaémil 36

‘Abd al-Qadir al-Gilani 41, 60
Abti Madyan 60

Abu Sa‘id al-Kharraz 23

Abu Talib al-Makki 69

Abii-l Su‘td Ibn Shibl 60
Adam 36, 42

‘adam al-mahd 10

Affifi, A.E. 5

afrad 41

Ahad 24

ahadiyya 16, 24, 32

ahbab 41

ahkam 9, 12, 13, 19, 30
‘alam 10

‘alam al-amr 53

‘alam al-arwah 29

Allah 25, 65

‘ama 24, 32, 56, 71
amir 53

amr 69

amr al-taklifi 69
amr al-takwini 69
amr bi-l-wasita 69
Ana‘l-Hagq 50
‘aql 54

‘aql al-kulli 52
‘arad 53

ard 45

‘arif 11, 64

‘arsh 38

‘arsh al-dhat 69
arwah 57
Ash‘arites 18

74

‘awalim 10

awham 48

a‘yan 26, 27, 28, 30, 36, 71
a‘yan al-mawjudat 67

a‘yan al-thabita 25, 26, 27, 29, 34
‘ayn 12, 27, 36

‘ayn al-basira 57

‘ayn al-basira 49

‘ayn al-yaqin 63

B

baqa’ 60, 62, 63
barzakh 38, 40
Bayazid 31, 36
bayt al-ma‘mtr 38
bu‘d 70

D

dhat 62

dhawq 45, 48, 62, 64
didd 24

F

fana’ 39, 47, 61, 62, 63
fargq 12

fayd al-ilahi 46

Fusiis al-Hikam 5
Futthat al-Makkiya 27

G

Gabriel 51, 56
ghayb 16, 45
Ghazali 57

H

haba 40
hadarat 24, 51, 59
hadarat-i khamsa 59

75

hadith 20

hadra 51, 59

hadrat al-asma’ 29
hadrat al-dhatiyya 57
hadrat al-ghayb 59
hadrat al-ilahiyya 25
hadrat al-jabartt 59
hadrat al-khayal 56
hadrat al-malakuat 59
hadrat al-mithal 59
hadrat al-rahmaniyya 29
hadrat al-shuhtid 59
hakam 44

Hallaj 45, 50, 60, 69
haqa’iq 34

hagigqa 21

haqigat al-haqa’iq 32, 34, 40
haqq 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 16, 37
haqq al-mitlaq 9

haqq al-yaqin 63

haqq fi zuhtr 62
hayaman 71

hayula 32, 33, 64
himma 58, 59, 60

hubb al-‘unsuri 72
hukm 27, 30

hulal 14

huwiyya 26, 47, 64

I

Ibn Farid 56

Ibn Rushd (Averroes) 19
ibtila 69

ilham 58

‘ilm al-ahwal 45

‘ilm al-‘aql 45

‘ilm al-asrar 45

‘ilm al-ghayb 45

‘ilm al-yaqin 63

76

‘ilm ladunni 45
imam 40

ina‘ 13

insan al-hayawani 36
insan al-kabir 36
insanu ‘ayn al-haqq 40
irada 55, 69

Islam 42, 65

istafad al-wujud 28
isti‘dad 65

itlaq 14, 16

l

jahannam 70

jam‘ 12

jam ‘iyya al-ilahiyya 37
Jami 48

janab al-ilahi 37

janna 70

Jili 37

jism al-kulli 32
Junayd 65

K

Ka‘ba 38

kalima 40

kashf 46

kawn al-jami‘ 35
kawn jami‘ 36
khalifa 35, 40, 42
khalq 11, 12, 13, 14, 15, 37
khalq al-jadid 61
khalwa 30
khayal 56, 59
khayalat 57

kitab 33

kitab al-mastr 32
kufr 14

77

M

ma‘ani 57

ma‘ani ghaybiyya 58
mafatih al-awwal 29
mafatth al-ghayb 29
mahiyya 26
mahiyyat 9

majla 65

manstib ilayhi 55
maqdi bihi 69
marad 55

maratib 10, 21
ma‘rifa 41

martaba al-ilahiyya 32
mashi‘a 68

mith] 24

mudrik 47
Muhammad 35, 37, 40, 41, 42, 56, 65
mulqi 51

munfasil 56
muqtadayat 27
Mu'tazilites 64
muttasil 57
Muwahhid 15

N

nur 53

nafs al-kulliya 52
nisab 50

nisba 55

nisba al-shakhsiyya 55
nisba mutlaqa 55
nubuwwa 41

P

Philo of Alexandria 40
Plotinus 29, 34, 48, 51

78

Q

qada’ 69

qabil 29

qalam al-a‘la 33
Qur’an 51

qutb 40

R

Rabb 24

risala 41

ru’ya al-sadiga 57
rububiyya 32
Rth 28, 40,50

S

shafi* 40

shahwa 55

shara’i‘ 42

shart 18

shuhtd 47

shu’tin 62

sifat al-tanzih 16, 23
sifat al-tashbih 23
Spinoza 45

stira 35

subuhat al muhriqa 24
Suhrawardi al-Muqttl 67
stirat al-haqq 40

T

ta‘alluq 25

ta‘ayyun al-awwal 26, 29, 40
tahaqquq 25

tajalli 31, 48, 61

tajalliyat 31, 32

takhalluq 25

takhayyul 57

takwin 19

79

tanzih 14

tanzih al-tawhid 16
taqyid 14, 16
tasarruf 60
tashbih 14

tawhid 15, 30
thubat 19, 46
thumma 19

tal 45

U

‘ubbad al-waqt 65
umana’ 41

Ww

wahidiyya 24
wahy 58

wajh 21

wajib al-wujtid 9, 11
wali 41

waratha 41
wasala 63

wilaya 41, 42
wujiid al-kulli 9
wujtid al-mutlaq 9

Y

yawm al-hasra 70

Z
zuhtr 19

80

Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi, one of the greatest mystics of
all time, was born in Murcia in 1165, of an ancient
Arab family. His intellectual ability and spiritual
aptitude were apparent from an early age, and he
studied assiduously under many teachers in
Andalusia and the Maghrib. After extensive travels
in the Islamic world, he died at Damascus in 1240.
He left more than 400 writings, in which the
primordial principle of the Absolute Unity of
Existence is expressed with unique clarity and
fullness. To many he is known simply as al-Shaykh
al-Akbar — ‘the Greatest Teacher’

This book consists of edited highlights from A.E.
Affifi’s The Mystical Philosophy of Muhyid Din Ibnul
Arabi, originally published by Cambridge University
Press in 1938. The extracts presented here as a
continuous text were first put together more than
twenty years ago by Bulent Rauf, Consultant to the
Beshara Trust until his death in 1987. His intention
was to provide a complete introductory guide to the
language and thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, particularly
those aspects of his doctrine which refer to the Unity
of Being and the Perfectability of Man.

Long known simply as the ‘Twenty-nine pages’
from the format of its original printing, this text has
been a foundation for study at the Beshara School of
Intensive Esoteric Education, where it has been read
prior to Ibn ‘Arabi’s own more demanding works
such as the Fusus al-Hikam. The clarity of the
exposition and depth of meaning make it an
invaluable reference work for all students of
mysticism and the spiritual life, whatever their
background.

BESHARA PUBLICATIONS

ISBN 0 904975 20 7