Toshihiko Izutsu Sufism And Taoism 1

Contents
1]
Preface by T. Izutsu
Introduction 1
Notes 4

Part I - Ibn ‘Arab!
I Dream and Reality 7
II The Absolute in its Absoluteness 23
IV The Self-knowledge of Man 39
IV Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 48
V Metaphysical Perplexity 68

2]

VI The Shadow of the Absolute 89
VII The Divine Names 99
VIII Allah and the Lord 110
IX Ontological Mercy 116
X The Water of Life 141

3]

XI The Self-manifestation of the Absolute 152
XII Permanent Archetypes 159
XIII Creation 197
XIV Man as Microcosm 218
XV The Perfect Man as an Individual 247
XVI Apostle, Prophet, and Saint 263
XVII The Magical Power of the Perfect Man 275

4]
Part II - Lao-Tzu & Chuang-Tzu
I Lao-Tzu and Chuang-Tzu 287
II From Mythopoiesis to Metaphysics 300
III Dream and Reality 310
IV Beyond This and That 319

5]
V The Birth of a New Ego 332
VI Against Essentialism 354
VII The Way 375

6]
VIII The Gateway of Myriad Wonders 398
IX Determinism and Freedom 418
X Absolute Reversal of Values 430
XI The Perfect Man 444

XII Homo Politicus 457

7]

Part III - A Comparative Reflection

I Methodological Preliminaries 469
II The Inner Transformation of Man 474
III The Multi stratified Structure of Reality 479
IV Essence and Existence 482
V The Self-evolvement of Existence 486

---
Preface





This is originally a book which I wrote more than fifteen years ago,

when I was teaching Islamic philosophy at the Institute of Islamic

Studies, McGill University, Montreal, Canada.



At that time I was becoming conscious of myself gradually getting

into a new phase of my intellectual life, groping my way towards a

new type of Oriental philosophy based on a series of rigorously

philological, comparative studies of the key terms of various

philosophical traditions in the Near, Middle, and Far East. The

present work was the very first product of my endeavour in this

direction.



The book was subsequently published in Japan in two separate

volumes in 1966—1967, under the title A Comparative Study of Key

Philosophical Concepts in Sufism and Taoism (with the subtitle ‘Ibn

‘Arab! and Lao-tzu - Chuang-tzu’) as a publication of the Institute

of Cultural and Linguistic Studies, Keio University, Tokyo, under

the directorship of the late Professor Nobuhiro Matsumoto.







A growing demand for a new, revised edition made me decide to

republish the book while I was in Iran. Printed in England, it had

been scheduled to come out in Tehran towards the end of the year

1978, when the sudden outbreak of the Khomeini ‘revolution’

rendered its publication impossible. Thus it was that, by a strange

working of fate, the book - completely revised, but still in the form

of galley proofs - came back with its author once again to Japan, the

place where it had first seen the light of day.





In the process of revising the book in its entirety, I did my best to

eliminate all the defects and imperfections that had come to my

notice in the meantime. But, of course, there are natural limits to

such work of correction and amendment.



I only hope that this old book of mine in a new form, despite many

mistakes and shortcomings that must still be there, might at least

make a modest contribution towards the development of ‘meta-

historical dialogues’ among representatives of the various







4m,





philosophical traditions in the East and West, a special kind of

philosophical dialogue of which the world today seems to be in

urgent need.



It is my pleasant duty to express my deep gratitude to the Iwanami

Shoten, Publishers, for having undertaken the publication of this

book. My thanks go in particular to Mr Atsushi Aiba (of the same

publishing house) who has spared no effort in smoothing the way for

the realization of this project. I take this occasion to thank also the

authorities of my alma mater, Keio University, from whom, as I

recall now, I derived inestimable encouragement while I was

engaged in writing this book in its original form.



T.Izutsu

October 4, 1981

Kamakura, Japan




Introduction









As indicated by the title and the subtitle, the main purpose of the

present work in its entirety is to attempt a structural comparison

between the world-view of Sufism as represented by Ibn ‘ Arabi and

the world-view of Taoism as represented by Lao-tzu and Chuang-

tzu. I am aware of the fact that this kind of study has a number of

pitfalls. A comparison made in a casual way between two thought-

systems which have no historical connection may become superfi-

cial observations of resemblances and differences lacking in

scientific rigor. In order to avoid falling into this error, an effort will

be made to lay bare the fundamental structure of each of the two

world-views independently and as rigorously as possible before

proceeding to any comparative considerations.



With this in view, the First Part will be entirely devoted to an

attempt at isolating and analyzing the major ontological concepts

which underlie the philosophical world-view of Ibn ‘Arabi, while in

the second part exactly the same kind of analytic study will be made

concerning the world-view of Lao-tzu and Chuang-tzu, in such a way

that both parts may constitute two entirely independent studies, one

of Ibn ‘Arabi and the other of ancient Taoism. Only in the third part

will an attempt be made to compare, and co-ordinate, the key-

concepts of these two world-views which have been previously

analyzed without any regard to similarities and differences between

them.



However this may be, the dominant motive running through the

entire work is the desire to open a new vista in the domain of

comparative philosophy and mysticism. A good starting point for

such a comparison is provided by the fact that both world-views are

based on two pivots, the Absolute and the Perfect Man, 1 a whole

system of ontological thought being developed in each case between

these two poles.



It is to be noted that as an ontological structure this is nothing

peculiar to Sufism and Taoism. The opposition of the Absolute and

the Perfect Man in various forms as the two pivots of a world-view is

a basic pattern common to many types of mysticism that have











2





Sufism and Taoism





developed in the world in widely different places and ages. And a

comparative consideration of a number of systems sharing the same

broad pattern and differing from each other in details both of origin

and historical circumstance would seem to prove very fruitful in

preparing the ground for that which Professor Henry Corbin has

aptly called ‘un dialogue dans la metahistoire’ , meta-historical or

transhistorical dialogue, and which is so urgently needed in the

present situation of the world.



Referring to the fact that Ibn ‘Arab! has evoked so much discus-

sion and controversy, unprecedented in the history of Islamic

thought, and attributing this fact to the nature of Islam itself which

combines two Truths: haqiqah ‘the truth based on Intellection’ and

shari'ah ‘the truth based on Revelation’, Dr Osman Yahya makes

the following interesting remark 2 : le cas d’Ibn ‘ Arabi ne se poserait

pas avec autant d’acuite dans une tradition de pure metaphysique

comme le taoism ou le vedanta ou la personality du Maitre . . . eut

pu s’epanouir librement, ni non plus dans une tradition de pure loi

positive ou son cas n’eut meme pas pu etre pose puisqu’il eut ete

refuse par la communaute tout entiere, irremediablement. Mais le

destin a voulu placer Ibn ‘Arabi a la croisee des chemins pour

degager, en sa personne, la veritable vocation de l’lslam.



There can be no denying that Lao-tzu’s metaphysics of Tao

presents in its abysmal depth of thought a number of striking

similarities to Ibn ‘ArabFs conception of Being. This is the more

interesting because, as I shall indicate in the Second Part, Lao-tzu

and Chuang-tzu represent a culmination point of a spiritual tradi-

tion which is historically quite different from Sufism.



We must, as I have remarked above, guard ourselves against

making too easy comparisons, but we must also admit, I believe,

that a comparative study of this kind, if conducted carefully, will at

least furnish us with a common ground upon which an intercultural

dialogue may fruitfully be opened.



In accordance with the general plan above outlined, the first half

of the present book will be concerned exclusively with an analytic

study of the key-concepts which constitute the ontological basis of

Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view. This world-view, as I have said, turns

round two pivots, the Absolute and the Perfect Man, in the form of

an ontological Descent and Ascent. In describing this cosmic pro-

cess Ibn ‘Arabi develops at every stage a number of concepts of

decisive importance. It is these concepts that the present work

intends to analyze. It purports to analyze methodically the ontologi-

cal aspect of Ibn ‘ArabFs mystical philosophy regarding it as a

system of key-concepts that relate to ‘being’ and existence’.



Ontology, we must admit, is but one aspect of the thought of this

extraordinary man. It has other no less important aspects such as





Introduction





3







psychology, epistemology, symbolism, etc., which, together, consti-

tute an original and profound world-view. But the concept of Being,

as we shall see, is the very basis of his philosophical thinking, and his

theory of Being is doubtless of such originality and of such a far-

reaching historical importance that it calls for separate treatment.



At the very outset I would like to make it clear that this is not a

philologically exhaustive study of Ibn ‘Arabi. On the contrary, the

present study is based, as far as concerns Ibn ‘Arabi himself, almost

exclusively on only one of his works: ‘The Bezels of Wisdom’ or

Fu$ii$ al-Hikam. It is essentially an analysis of the major ontological

concepts which Ibn ‘Arabi develops in this celebrated book that has

often been described as his opus magnum, and has been studied and

commented upon by so many people throughout the centuries. 3 So

on the material side, the present work does not claim to offer

anything new.



From the beginning it was not my intention to be exhaustive. My

intention was rather to penetrate the ‘life-breath’ itself, the vivify-

ing spirit and the very existential source of the philosophizing drive

of this great thinker, and to pursue from that depth the formation of

the whole ontological system step by step as he himself develops it.

In order to understand the thought of a man like Ibn ‘Arab!, one

must grasp the very spirit which pervades and vivifies the whole

structure; otherwise everything will be lost. All considerations from

outside are sure to go wide of the mark. Even on an intellectual and

philosophical level, one must try to understand the thought from

inside and reconstruct it in one’s self by what might be called an

existential empathy. For such a purpose, to be exhaustive, though of

course desirable, is not the first requirement.



Ibn ‘Arab! was not merely a profound thinker; he was an unusu-

ally prolific writer, too. The authorities differ among themselves on

the exact number. Al-Sha‘rani, to give an example, notes that the

Master wrote about 400 works. 4 The repertoire general of the

above-mentioned bibliographical work by Dr Osman Yahya lists as

many as 856 works, although the number includes doubtful works

and those that are evidently spurious.



In a situation like this, and for purposes like ours, it is not only

irrelevant but, even more, positively dangerous to try to note every-

thing the author has said and written on each subject over a period

of many years, For one might easily drown oneself in the vast ocean

of concepts, images and symbols that are scattered about in utter

disorder throughout the hundreds of his works, and lose sight of the

main line or lines of thought and the guiding spirit that underlies

the whole structure. For the purpose of isolating the latter from the

disorderly (as it looks at first sight) mass of symbols and images, it





4





Sufism and Taoism





will be more wise and perhaps, more profitable to concentrate on a

work in which he presents his thought in its maturest form . 5



In any case, the present work consists exclusively of an analysis of

the ‘Bezels of Wisdom’ except in a few places where I shall refer to

one of his smaller works for elucidation of some of the important

points . 6 As remarked above, Fu$us al-Hikam has been studied in

the past by many people in many different forms. And yet I hope

that my own analysis of the same book has something to contribute

toward a better understanding of the great Master who has been

considered by many people one of the profoundest, but at the same

time, obscurest thinkers Islam has ever produced.





Notes



1. In Ibn ‘ArabFs system, the Absolute is called haqq (Truth or Reality) and the

Perfect Man is called insan kamil meaning literally ‘perfect man’. In Taoism, the

Absolute is tao and the Perfect Man is sheng jen (Sacred Man or Saint), chert jen

(True Man), etc. I have dealt with the relationship between the Absolute and the

Perfect Man in Taoism in particular in my Eranos lecture for 1967: ‘The Absolute

and the Perfect Man in Taoism’, Eranos- Jahrbuch , XXXVI, Zurich, 1968.



2. Histoire et classification de I’ceuvre d’Ibn ' Arab f, 2 vols. 1964, Damas, avant-

propos, pp. 18-19.



3. Dr Osman Yahya lists more than 100 commentaries on Fkjzzj al-Hikam, cf. op.

cit., I, p. 17, pp. 241-257.



4. al-Sha‘rani, al-Yawaqit wa-al-Jawahir, Cairo, 1305 A.H., vol. I., p. 10.



5. Ibn ‘Arabi (born in Spain in 1165 A.D.) died in Damascus in 1240/ Fujiis

al-Hikam was written in 1229, ten years before his death. As regards his life anahis

works the best introduction, to my knowledge, is found in Seyyed Hossein Nasr’s

Three Muslim Sages, Cambridge, Mass., 1964, pp. 84-121.



6. As a concrete illustration of the oft-repeated attempt at bringing philosophical

coherence and order into the world-view of the Master, I shall in most cases give

al-QashanFs comments side by side with Ibn ‘ArabFs words. ‘Abd al-Razzaq al-

Qashani (d. 1330) is one of the greatest figures in the school of Ibn ‘Arabi. The

edition used in the present book is Sharh al-Qashani ‘ala Fu$u$ al-Hikam, Cairo,

1321 A.H. For the interpretation of difficult passages of the text I have also used

Qayjari and Jami.






I Dream and Reality





So-called ‘reality’ , the sensible world which surrounds us and which

we are accustomed to regard as ‘reality’, is, for Ibn ‘Arab!, but a

dream. We perceive by the senses a large number of things, distin-

guish them one from another, put them in order by our reason, and

thus end up by establishing something solid around us. We call that

construct ‘reality’ and do not doubt that it is real.



According to Ibn ‘Arabi, however, that kind of ‘reality’ is not

reality in the true sense of the word. In other terms, such a thing is

not Being ( wujiid ) as it really is. Living as we do in this phenomenal

world, Being in its metaphysical reality is no less imperceptible to us

than phenomenal things are in their phenomenal reality to a man

who is asleep and dreaming of them.



Quoting the famous Tradition, ‘All men are asleep (in this

world); only when they die, do they wake up,’ he remarks:



The world is an illusion; it has no real existence. And this is what is

meant by ‘imagination’ ( khayal ). For you just imagine that it (i.e ., the

world) is an autonomous reality quite different from and indepen-

dent of the absolute Reality, while in truth it is nothing of the sort 1 .



. . . Know that you yourself are an imagination. And everything that

you perceive and say to yourself, ‘this is not me’, is also an imagina-

tion. So that the whole world of existence is imagination within

imagination . 2



What, then, should we do, if what we have taken for ‘reality’ is but a

dream, not the real form of Being, but something illusory? Should

we abandon once for all this illusory world and go out of it in search

of an entirely different world, a really real world? Ibn ‘Arab! does

not take such a position, because, in his view, ‘dream’, ‘illusion’ or

‘imagination’ does not mean something valueless or false; it simply

means ‘being a symbolic reflection of something truly real’.



The so-called ‘reality’ certainly is not the true Reality, but this

must not be taken to mean that it is merely a vain and groundless

thing. The so-called ‘reality’, though it is not the Reality itself,

vaguely and indistinctively reflects the latter on the level of imagina-

tion. It is, in other words, a symbolic representation of the Reality.





8





Sufism and Taoism





Dream and Reality





9





All it needs is that we should interpret it in a proper way just as we

usually interpret our dreams in order to get to the real state of affairs

beyond the dream-symbols.



Referring to the above-quoted Tradition, ‘All men are asleep;

only when they die, do they wake up’, Ibn ‘Arab! says that ‘the

Prophet called attention by these words to the fact that whatever

man perceives in this present world is to him as a dream is to a man

who dreams, and that it must be interpreted’ . 3



What is seen in a dream is an ‘imaginal’ form of the Reality, not

the Reality itself. All we have to do is take it back to its original and

true status. This is what is meant by ‘interpretation’ ( ta’wil ). The

expression: ‘to die and wake up’ appearing in the Tradition is for

Ibn ‘ Arabi nothing other than a metaphorical reference to the act of

interpretation understood in this sense. Thus ‘death’ does not mean

here death as a biological event. It means a spiritual event consisting

in a man’s throwing off the shackles of the sense and reason,

stepping over the confines of the phenomenal, and seeing through

the web of phenomenal things what lies beyond. It means, in short,

the mystical experience of ‘self-annihilation’ (Jana).



What does a man see when he wakes up from his phenomenal

sleep, opens his real eyes, and looks around? What kind of world

does he observe then - that is, in the self-illuminating state of

‘subsistence’ ( baqa’)l To describe that extraordinary world and

elucidate its metaphysical-ontological make-up, that is the main

task of Ibn ‘Arabi. The description of the world as he observes it in

the light of his mystical experiences constitutes his philosophical

world-view.



What, then, is that Something which hides itself behind the veil of

the phenomenal, making the so-called ‘reality’ a grand-scale net-

work of symbols vaguely and obscurely pointing to that which lies

beyond them? The answer is given immediately. It is the Absolute,

the real or absolute Reality which Ibn ‘Arab! calls al-haqq . Thus the

so-called/ reality’ is but a dream, but it is not a sheer illusion. It is a

particular appearance of the absolute Reality, a particular form of

its self-manifestation (tajalli). It is a dream having a metaphysical

basis. ‘The world of being and becoming ( kawn ) is an imagination’ ,

he says, ‘but it is, in truth, Reality itself’. 4



Thus the world of being and becoming, the so-called ‘reality’,

consisting of various forms, properties and states, is in itself a

colorful fabric of fantasy and imagination, but it indicates at the

same time nothing other than Reality - if only one knows how to

take these forms and properties, not in themselves, but as so many

manifestations of the Reality. One who can do this is a man who has

attained the deepest mysteries of the Way (tariqah).







Prophets are visionaries. By nature they tend to see strange

visions which do not fall within the capacity of an ordinary man.

These extraordinary visions are known as ‘veridical dreams’ ( ru’ya

§adiqah ) and we readily recognize their symbolic nature. We ordi-

narily admit without hesitation that a prophet perceives through

and beyond his visions something ineffable, something of the true

figure of the Absolute. In truth, however, not only such uncommon

visions are symbolic ‘dreams’ for a prophet. To his mind everything

he sees, everything with which he is in contact even in daily life is

liable to assume a symbolic character. ‘Everything he perceives in

the state of wakefulness is of such a nature, though there is, cer-

tainly, a difference in the states’. 5 The formal difference between

the state of sleep (in which he sees things by his faculty of imagina-

tion) and the state of wakefulness (in which he perceives things by

his senses) is kept intact, yet in both states the things perceived are

equally symbols. 6



Thus, a prophet who lives his life in such an unusual spiritual state

may be said to be in a dream within a dream all through his life. ‘The

whole of his life is nothing but a dream within a dream’. 7 What Ibn

‘Arabi means by this proposition is this: since the phenomenal

world itself is in truth a ‘dream’ 8 (although ordinary people are not

aware of its being a ‘dream’), the prophet who perceives unusual

symbols in the midst of that general ‘dream’ -context may be com-

pared to a man who is dreaming in a dream.



This, however, is the deepest understanding of the situation, to

which most people have no access, for they are ordinarily convinced

that the phenomenal world is something materially solid; they do

not notice its symbolic nature. Not even prophets themselves - not

all of them - have a clear understanding of this matter. It is a deep

mystery of Being accessible only to a perfect prophet like

Muhammad. Ibn ‘Arabi explains this point taking as an illus-

tration the contrast between the prophet Yusuf (Joseph) and the

Prophet Muhammad regarding their respective depth of

understanding.



It is related in the Qoran (XII, 4) that Joseph as a small boy once

saw in a dream eleven stars, and the sun and the moon bowing down

before him. This, Ibn ‘Arab! observes, was an event which occurred

only in Joseph’s imagination {khayal). Joseph saw in his imagina-

tion his brothers in the form of stars, his father in the form of the

sun, and his mother in the form of the moon. Many years later,

before Joseph, who was now a ‘mighty prince’ in Egypt, his brothers

fell down prostrate At that moment Joseph said to himself, ‘This is

the interpreted meaning ( ta’wil ) of my dream of long ago. My Lord

has made it true!’ (XII, 99).



The pivotal point, according to Ibn ‘Arabi, lies in the last phrase:





10





Sufism and Taoism





‘has made it true’. 9 It means: ‘God has made to appear in the

sensible world what was in the past in the form of imagination’. 10

This implies that the realization or materialization in a sensible form

of what he had seen in a dream was, in the understanding of Joseph,

the final and ultimate realization. He thought that the things left the

domain of ‘dream’ and came out to the level of ‘reality’.



Against this Ibn ‘Arab! remarks that, as regards being sensible,

there is fundamentally no difference at all between ‘dream’ and

‘reality’; what Joseph saw in his dream was from the beginning

sensible, for ‘it is the function of imagination to produce sensible

things ( mahsusat ), nothing else’. 11



The position of Muhammad goes deeper than this. Viewed from

the standpoint of the prophet Muhammad, the following is the right

interpretation of what happened to Joseph concerning his dream.

One has to start from the recognition that life itself is a dream. In

this big dream which is his life and of which Joseph himself is not

conscious, he sees a particular dream (the eleven stars, etc.). From

this particular dream he wakes up. That is to say, he dreams in his

big dream that he wakes up. Then he interprets his own (particular)

dream (the stars = his brothers, etc.). In truth, this is still a continua-

tion of his big dream. He dreams himself interpreting his own

dream. Then the event which he thus interprets comes true as a

sensible fact. Thereupon Joseph thinks that his interpretation has

materialized and that his dream has definitely come to an end. He

thinks that he stands now completely outside of his dream, while, in

reality, he is still dreaming. He is not aware of the fact that he is

dreaming. 12



The contrast between Muhammad and Joseph is conclusively

summed up by al-Qashani in the following way:



The difference between Muhammad and Joseph in regard to the

depth of understanding consists in this. Joseph regarded the sensible

forms existing in the outer world as ‘reality’ whereas, in truth, all

forms that exist in imagination are (also) sensible without exception,

for imagination ( khayal ) is a treasury of the sensible things. Every-

thing that exists in imagination is a sensible form although it actually

is not perceived by the senses. As for Muhammad, he regarded the

sensible forms existing in the outer world also as products of imagina-

tion (khayaliyah), nay even as imagination within imagination. This

because he regarded the present world of ours as a dream while the

only ‘reality’ (in the true sense of the word) was, in his view, the

Absolute revealing itself as it really is in the sensible forms which are

nothing but so many different loci of its self-manifestation. This point

is understood only when one wakes up from the present life - which is

a sleep of forgetfulness - after one dies to this world through self-

annihilation in God.





Dream and Reality





11







The basic idea which, as we have just observed, constitutes the very

starting-point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontological thinking, namely, that

so-called ‘reality’ is but a dream, suggests on the one hand that the

world as we experience it under normal conditions is not in itself

Reality, that it is an illusion, an appearance, an unreality. But

neither does it mean, on the other hand, that the world of sensible

things and events is nothing but sheer fantasy, a purely subjective

projection of the mind. In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, if ‘reality’ is an illusion,

it is not a subjective illusion, but an ‘objective’ illusion; that is, an

unreality standing on a firm ontological basis. And this is tan-

tamount to saying that it is not an illusion at all, at least in the sense

in which the word is commonly taken.



In order that this point become clear, reference must be made to

the ontological conception peculiar to Ibn ‘Arab! and his school of

the ‘five planes of Being’ . The structure of these ‘planes’ (/ hadarat ) 13

is succinctly explained by Al-Qashani as follows. 14 In the Sufi

world-view, five ‘worlds’ fawalim) or five basic planes of Being are

distinguished, each one of them representing a Presence or an

ontological mode of the absolute Reality in its self-manifestation.



(1) The plane of the Essence ( dhat ), the world of the absolute

non-manifestation ( al-ghayb al-mutlaq) or the Mystery of

Mysteries. 15



(2) The plane of the Attributes and the Names, the Presence of

Divinity ( uliihiyah ). 16



(3) The plane of the Actions, the Presence of Lordship

(rubiibiyah) .



(4) The plane of Images (amthal) and Imagination (khayal). 11



(5) The plane of the senses and sensible experience

(mushahadah) .



These five planes constitute among themselves an organic whole,

the things of a lower plane serving as symbols or images for the

things of the higher planes. Thus, according to al-Qashani, what-

ever exists in the plane of ordinary reality (which is the lowest of all

Divine Presences) is a symbol-exemplification (mithal) for a thing

existing in the plane of Images, and everything that exists in the

world of Images is a form reflecting a state of affairs in the plane of

the Divine Names and Divine Attributes, while every Attribute is

an aspect of the Divine Essence in the act of self-manifestation.



Details about the five planes will be given in the following chap-

ters. Suffice it here to note that the whole world of Being, in Ibn

‘Arabf s view, consists basically of these five levels of Divine self-

manifestation, and that there exists between the higher and lower

levels such an organic relation as has just been mentioned. With this

in mind, let us return to the problem of our immediate concern.







12





Sufism and Taoism





Anything that is found at the lowest level of Being, i.e., the

sensible world, or any event that occurs there, is a ‘phenomenon’ in

the etymological meaning of the term; it is a form {§urah) in which a

state of affairs in the higher plane of Images directly reveals itself,

and indirectly and ultimately, the absolute Mystery itself. To look at

things in the sensible world and not to stop there, but to see beyond

them the ultimate ground of all Being, that precisely is what is called

by Ibn ‘ArabTunveiling’ ( kashf ) or mystical intuition . 18 ‘Unveiling’

means, in short, taking each of the sensible things as a locus in which

Reality discloses itself to us. And a man who does so encounters

everywhere a ‘phenomenon’ of Reality, whatever he sees and hears

in this world. Whatever he experiences is for him a form manifesting

an aspect of Divine Existence, a symbol for an aspect of Divine

Reality. And in this particular respect, his sensory experiences are

of the same symbolic nature as visions he experiences in his sleep . 19



In the eyes of a man possessed of this kind of spiritual capacity,

the whole world of ‘reality’ ceases to be something solidly self-

sufficient and turns into a deep mysterious foret de symboles, a

system of ontological correspondences. And dreams which arise in

the ‘imaginal’ plane of Being turn out to be the same as the things

and events of the world of sensory experience. Both the world of

sensible things and the world of dreams are, in this view, the same

domain of symbols. As al-Qashani says, ‘Everything which comes

manifesting itself from the world of the Unseen into the world of

sensible experience - whether it manifests itself in the senses or

imagination, or again in an image-similitude - is a revelation, an

instruction or communication from God’ . 20



The symbolic structure of the world here depicted, however, is

accessible only to the consciousness of an extremely limited number

of persons. The majority of people live attached and confined to the

lowest level of Being, that of sensible things. That is the sole world

of existence for their opaque consciousness. This lowest level of

Being only, being tangible and graspable through the senses, is real

for them. And even on this level, it never occurs to them to ‘inter-

pret’ the forms of the things around them. They are asleep.



But since, on the other hand, the common people, too, are

possessed of the faculty of imagination, something unusual may -

and does - occur in their minds on rare occasions. An invitation

from above visits them and flashes across their consciousness like

lightning when it is least expected. This happens when they have

visions and dreams.



Ordinarily, imagination or fantasy means the faculty of producing

in the mind a deceptive impression of the presence of a thing which

is not actually there in the external world or which is totally non-

existent. With Ibn ‘Arab!, it has a different meaning. Of course in





Dream and Reality





13











his theory, too, imagination is the faculty of evoking in the mind

those things that are not externally present, i.e., things that are not

immediately present in the plane of sensible experience. But it is not

a wild fantasy or hallucination which induces the mind to see things

that are nowhere existent. What it produces is not a groundless

reverie. It makes visible, albeit in an obscure and veiled way, a state

of affairs in the higher planes of Being. It is a function of the mind

directly connected with the ‘world of Images’.



The ‘world of Images’ (‘ alam al-mithal ) is ontologically an inter-

mediate domain of contact between the purely sensible world and

the purely spiritual, i.e., non-material world. It is, as Affifi defines it,

‘a really existent world in which are found the forms of the things in

a manner that stands between “fineness” and “coarseness”, that is,

between pure spirituality and pure materiality ’. 21



All things that exist on this level of Being have, on the one hand,

something in common with things existing in the sensible world, and

resemble, on the other, the abstract intelligibles existing in the

world of pure intellect. They are special things half-sensible and

half-intelligible. They are sensible, but of an extremely fine and

rarefied sensible-ness. They are intelligible, too, but not of such a

pure intelligibility as that of the Platonic Ideas.



What is commonly called imagination is nothing but this world as

it is reflected in the human consciousness, not in its proper forms,

but obliquely, dimly, and utterly deformed. Images obtained in such

a way naturally lack an ontological basis and are rightly to be

disposed of as hallucinations.



Sometimes, however, the ‘world of Images’ appears as it really is,

without deformation, in the consciousness even of an ordinary man.

The most conspicuous case of this is seen in the veridical dream. The

‘world of Images’ is eternally existent and it is at every moment

acting upon human consciousness. But man, on his part, is not

usually aware of it while he is awake, because his mind in that state is

impeded and distracted by the material forces of the external world.

Only when he is asleep, the physical faculties of his mind being in

abeyance, can the faculty of imagination operate in the proper way.

And veridical dreams are produced.



However, even if a man sees in his sleep a veridical dream, it is

always presented in a series of sensible images. And it remains

devoid of significance unless it be ‘interpreted’. Ibn ‘Arabi sees a

typical example of this in the Biblical- Qoranic anecdote of

Abraham sacrificing his son.



Abraham once saw in a dream a sacrificial ram appearing in the

image of his son Isaac (Ishaq). In reality, this was a symbol. It was a

symbol for the first institution of an important religious ritual;





14





Sufism and Taoism





namely, that of immolation of a sacrificial animal on the altar. And

since this ritual itself was ultimately a symbol of man’s offering up

his own soul in sacrifice, Abraham’s vision was to be interpreted as a

sensible phenomenal form of this spiritual event. But Abraham did

not ‘interpret’ it. And he was going to sacrifice his son. Here is the

explanation of this event by Ibn ‘Arabi . 22



Abraham, the Friend (of God), said to his son, ‘Lo, I have seen

myself in my dream sacrificing thee’. (Qoran XXXVII, 102). Dream,

in truth, is a matter, pertaining to the plane of Imagination. 23 He,

however, did not interpret (his dream). What he saw in the dream

was a ram assuming the form of the son of Abraham. And Abraham

supposed his vision to be literally true (and was about to sacrifice

Isaac). But the Lord redeemed him from the illusion of Abraham

with the Great Sacrifice (i.e. the sacrifice of a ram). This was God’s

‘interpretation’ of the dream of Abraham, but the latter did not know

it. He did not know it because all theophany in a sensible form in the

plane of Imagination needs a different kind of knowledge which

alone makes it possible for man to understand what is meant by God

through that particular form. . . .



Thus God said to Abraham, calling out to him, ‘O Abraham, thou

hast taken the vision for truth’ (XXXVII, 104-105). Mark that God

did not say, ‘Thou has grasped the truth in imagining that it is thy

son’. (The mistake pointed out here) arose from the fact that

Abraham did not ‘interpret’ the dream but took what he had seen as

literally true, when all dreams must of necessity be ‘inter-

preted’ ... If what he imagined had been true, he would have

sacrificed his son. 24 He merely took his vision for truth and thought

that (Isaac, whom he had seen in the dream) was literally his own son.



In reality, God meant by the form of his son nothing more than the

Great Sacrifice.



Thus He ‘redeemed’ him (i.e., Isaac) simply because of what occurred in

Abraham’s mind, whereas in itself and in the eye of God it was not at all a

question of redeeming. 25



Thus (when Isuac was ‘redeemed’) his visual sense perceived a

sacrificial animal (i.e., a ram) while his imagination evoked in his

mind the image of his son . (Because of this symbolic correspondence)

he would have interpreted his vision as signifying his son or some

other thing if he had seen a ram in imagination (i.e., in his dream,

instead of seeing his son as he actually did). Then says God, ‘Verily

this is a manifest trial’ (XXXVII, 106), meaning thereby the trial (of

Abraham by God) concerning his knowledge; namely, whether or

not he knows that the very nature of a vision properly requires an

‘interpretation’. Of course Abraham did know that things of Im-

agination properly require ‘interpretation’. But (in this particular

case) he carelessly neglected to do that. Thus he did not fulfil what

was properly required of him and simply assumed that his vision was

a literal truth.



Abraham was a prophet. And a man who stands in the high spiritual





15







Dream and Reality



position of prophethood must know (theoretically) that a veridical

dream is a symbol for an event belonging to the plane of higher

realities. And yet Abraham actually forgot to ‘interpret’ his dream.

If prophets are like that, how could it be expected that ordinary men

‘interpret’ rightly their dreams and visions? It is but natural, then,

that an ordinary man cannot see that an event occurring in so-called

‘reality’ is a symbol for an event corresponding to it in the higher

plane of the Images.



How can man cultivate such an ability for seeing things symboli-

cally? What should he do in order that the material veil covering

things be removed to reveal the realities that lie beyond?



Regarding this question, Ibn ‘ Arab! in a passage of the Fusu$ points to

a very interesting method. It is a way of discipline, a way of practice for

cultivating what he calls the ‘spiritual eyesight’ (‘ayn al-basirah). It is a

way that renders possible the inner transformation of man.



This inner transformation of man is explained by Ibn ‘Arab! in

terms of transition from the ‘worldly state of being {al-nash’ah

al-dunyawiyah) to the ‘otherworldly state of being’ {al-nash’ah

al-ukhrawiyah ). 26 The ‘worldly state of being’ is the way the major-

ity of men naturally are. It is characterized by the fact that man, in

his natural state, is completely under the sway of his body, and the

activity of his mind impeded by the physical constitution of the

bodily organs. Under such conditions, even if he tries to understand

something and grasp its reality, the object cannot appear to his mind

except in utter deformation. It is a state in which man stands

completely veiled from the essential realities of things.



In order to escape from this state, Ibn ‘Arab! says, man must

personally re-live the experiences of Elias-Enoch and re-enact in

himself the spiritual drama of the inner transformation symbolized

by these two names.



Elias (Ilyas) and Enoch (Idris) were two names assumed by one

and the same person. They were two names given to one person in

two different states. Enoch was a prophet before the time of Noah.

He was raised high by God and was placed in the sphere of the sun.

His name was Enoch in that supreme position. Later he was sent

down as an apostle to the Syrian town of Baalbek. In that second

state he was named Elias . 27



Elias who was sent down in this manner to the earth from the high

sphere of heaven did not stop halfway but became totally ‘earthly’.

He pushed the ‘elemental if unhurt) state of being’ on the earth to its

extreme limit. This symbolizes a man who, instead of exercising his

human reason in a lukewarm way as most people do, abandons

himself thoroughly and completely to the elemental life of nature to

the degree of being less than human.





16





Sufism and Taoism





While he was in that state, he had once a strange vision, in which

he saw a mountain called Lubnan split up and a horse of fire coming

out of it with a harness made entirely of fire. When the prophet

noticed it, he immediately rode the horse, bodily desires fell from

him and he turned into a pure intellect without desire. He was now

completely free from all that was connected with the physical self . 28

And only in this purified state could Elias see Reality as it really is.



However, Ibn ‘Arab! observes, even this supreme ‘knowledge of

God’ ( ma'rifah bi-Allah) attained by Elias was not a perfect one.

‘For in this (knowledge). Reality was in pure transcendence

(munazzah), and it was merely half of the (perfect) knowledge of

God ’. 29 This means that the pure intellect that has freed itself

completely from everything physical and material cannot by nature

see God except in His transcendence ( tanzih ). But transcendence is

only one of the two basic aspects of the Absolute. Its other half is

immanence (tashbih). All knowledge of God is necessarily one-

sided if it does not unite transcendence and immanence, because

God is transcendent and immanent at the same time. Who, how-

ever, can actually unite these two aspects in this knowledge of God?

It is, as we shall see in Chapter III, the prophet Muhammad, no one

else, not even Elias.



Keeping what has just been said in mind, let us try to follow the

footsteps of Enoch-Elias in more concrete, i.e., less mythopoeic,

terms.



As a necessary first step, one has to go down to the most elemen-

tal level of existence in imitation of the heavenly Enoch who went

down to the earth and began by living at the lowest level of earthly

life. As suggested above, one must not stop halfway. Then abandon-

ing all activity of Reason and not exercising any longer the thinking

faculty, one fully realizes the ‘animality’ ( hayawaniyah ) which lies

hidden at the bottom of every human being. One is, at this stage, a

pure animal with no mixture of shallow humanity. Such a man ‘is

freed from the sway of Reason and abandons himself to his natural

desires. He is an animal pure and simple ’. 30



In this state of unmixed animality, the man is given a certain kind

of mystical intuition, a particular sort of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ). This

‘unveiling’ is the kind of ‘unveiling’ which is naturally possessed by

wild animals. They experience this kind of ‘unveiling’ because, by

nature, they do not exercise, and are therefore not bothered by, the

faculty of Reason.



In any case, the man who seriously intends to re-experience what

was once experienced by Enoch-Elias must, as a first step,

thoroughly actualize his animality; so thoroughly, indeed, that ‘in

the end is “unveiled” to him what is (naturally) ’’unveiled” to all





Dream and Reality





17







animals except mankind and jinn. Only then can he be sure that he

has completely actualized his animality ’. 31



Whether a man has attained to this degree of animality may be

known from outside by two symptoms: one is that he is actually

experiencing the animal ‘unveiling’, and the other is that he is

unable to speak. The explanation by Ibn ‘ Arabi of these two symp-

toms, particularly of the first one, is quite unusual and bizarre, at

least to our common sense. But it is difficult to deny the extraordi-

nary weight of reality it evokes in our minds. It strikes as real

because it is a description of his own personal experience as an

unusual visionary.



The first symptom, he says, of a man actually experiencing the

animal kashf , is that ‘he sees those who are being chastised (by the

angels) in the graves, and those who are enjoying a heavenly felicity,

that he sees the dead living, the dumb speaking, and the crippled

walking’. To the eye of such a man there appear strange scenes

which our ‘sane and healthy’ Reason would unhesitatingly consider

sheer insanity. Whether such a vision is rightly to be regarded as

animal experience is a question about which the ordinary mind is

not in a position to pass any judgment. For here Ibn ‘Arab! is talking

out of his personal experience . 32 But we can easily see at least that,

in the mind of a man who has completely liberated himself from the

domination of natural Reason, all those petty distinctions and dif-

ferentiations that have been established by the latter crumble away

in utter confusion, and things and events take on entirely different

and new forms. What Ibn ‘Arab! wants to say by all this is that all the

seemingly watertight compartments into which Reality is divided by

human Reason lose their ontological validity in such an ‘animal’

experience.



The second symptom is that such a man becomes dumb and is

unable to express himself ‘even if he wants and tries to describe in

words what he sees. And this is a decisive sign that he has actualized

his animality ’ 33 Here he gives an interesting description of his own

experience concerning this point:



Once I had a disciple who attained to this kind of ‘unveiling’. How-

ever, he did not keep silent about his (experience). This shows that he

did not realize his animality (in perfect manner.) When God made

me stand at that stage, I realized my animality completely. I had

visions and wanted to talk about what I witnessed, but I could not do

so. There was no actual difference between me and those who were

by nature speechless.



A man who has thus gone all the way to the furthest limit of

animality, if he still continues his spiritual exercise, may rise to the state

of pure Intellect . 34 The Reason (‘ aql ) which has been abandoned





18





Sufism and Taoism





before in order to go down to the lowest level of animality is an

‘aql attached to and fettered by his body. And now at this second

stage, he acquires a new ‘aql, or rather recovers possession of his

once-abandoned ‘aql in a totally different form . The new ‘aql , which

Ibn ‘Arabi calls ‘pure Intellect’ (‘aql mujarrad ), 35 functions on a

level where its activity cannot be impeded by anything bodily and

physical. The pure Intellect has nothing at all to do with the body.

And when a man acquires this kind of Intellect and sees things with

the eye of the pure Intellect itself, even ordinary things around him

begin to disclose to him their true ontological structure.



This last statement means, in terms of Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view,

that the things around us lose their independence in the eye of such

a man and reveal their true nature as so many ‘phenomena’ of things

belonging to the ontological stage above them.



(Such a man) has transformed himself into a pure Intellect away from

all natural material elements. He witnesses things that are the very

sources of what appears in the natural forms. And he comes to know

by a sort of intuitive knowledge why and how the things of nature are

just as they are . 36



In still more concrete terms, such a man is already in the ontological

stage above that of the things of nature. He is in the stage of the

Divine Names and Attributes. In the language of ontology peculiar

to Ibn ‘Arabi, he is in the stage of the ‘permanent archetypes’ (a‘yan

thabitah ), 37 and is looking down from that height on the infinitely

variegated things of the sensible world and understanding them in

terms of the realities (haqaiq) that lie beyond them.



He who has attained to this spiritual height is an ‘arif or ‘one who

knows (the transcendental truth)’, and his cognition is rightly to be

regarded as an authentic case oidhawq or ‘immediate tasting’. Such

a man is already ‘complete’ (tamm).



As we have remarked before, however, the cognition of Enoch

was only ‘half’ of the cognition of the Absolute reality. A man of

this kind is certainly tamm, but not yet ‘perfect’ (kamil). In order that

he might be kamil, he has to go a step further and raise himself to a

point where he sees that all, whether the ‘permanent archetypes’ or

the things of nature or again he himself who is actually perceiving

them, are after all, nothing but so many phenomenal forms of

the Divine Essence on different levels of being; that through all the

ontological planes, there runs an incessant and infinite flew of the

Divine Being . 38 Only when a man is in such a position is he a ‘Perfect

Man’ ( insan kamil).



The above must be taken as an introduction to the major prob-

lems of Ibn ‘Arabi and a summary exposition of the experiential

basis on which he develops his philosophical thinking. It has, I think,





Dream and Reality





19







made clear that Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s philosophy is, in brief, a theoretic

description of the entire world of Being as it is reflected in the eye of

the Perfect Man. It is, indeed, an extraordinary world-view because

it is a product of the extraordinary experience of an extraordinary

man. How, then, does the Perfect Man, that is, a man who has been

completely awakened, see the world? That will be the main theme

of the following chapters.



Before we close this chapter, however, it will not be out of place

to look back and re-examine the major concepts that have been

touched upon, and consider the relations that are recognizable

among them. In so doing we have to keep in mind that we are still at

a preliminary stage of our research, and that all we have done is

simply to adumbrate the structure of the whole system.



First and foremost, I would like to draw attention to a fact of

capital importance which has been suggested in the course of the

present chapter but not explicitly stated; namely, that the

philosophical thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, with all its perplexing complex-

ity and profundity, is dominated by the concept of Being. In this

sense, his thought is, in essence, through and through ontological.



The concept of Being in the double meaning of ens and esse is the

highest key-concept that dominates his entire thought. His philoso-

phy is theological, but it is more ontological than theological. That is

why even the concept of God (Allah) itself which in Islam generally

maintains its uncontested position is given here only a secondary

place . 39 As we shall see presently, God is a ‘phenomenal’, i.e.,

self-manifesting, form assumed by Something still more primordial,

the Absolute Being. Indeed, the concept of Being is the very found-

ation of this world-view.



However, it is by no means a common-sense notion of Being.

Unlike Aristotle for whom also Being had an overwhelming fascina-

tion, Ibn ‘Arab! does not start his philosophizing from the concept

of Being on the concrete level of ordinary reality. For him, the

things of the physical world are but a dream. His ontology begins -

and ends - with an existential grasp of Being at its abysmal depth,

the absolute Being which infinitely transcends the level of common

sense and which is an insoluble enigma to the minds of ordinary

men. It is, in short, an ontology based on mysticism, motivated by

what is disclosed only by the mystical experience of ‘unveiling’

(kashf).



The absolute Being intuitively grasped in such an extraordinary

experience reveals itself in an infinite number of degrees. These

degrees or stages of Being are classified into five major ones which

were introduced in this chapter as ‘five planes of Being’. Ibn ‘Arabi

himself designates each of these planes of Being hadrah or ‘pres-

ence’ . Each hadrah is a particular ontological dimension in which





20





Sufism and Taoism





the absolute Being (al-wujud al-mufiaq) manifests itself. And the

absolute Being in all the forms of self-manifestation is referred to by

the term haqq



The first of these five planes of Being, which is going to be our

topic in the next chapter, is Reality in its first and primordial

absoluteness or the absolute Being itself. It is the Absolute before 40

it begins to manifest itself, i.e., the Absolute in a state in which it

does not yet show even the slightest foreboding of self-

manifestation. The four remaining stages are the essential forms in

which the Absolute ‘descends’ from its absoluteness and manifests

itself on levels that are to us more real and concrete. This self-

manifesting activity of the Absolute is called by Ibn ‘Arab! tajalli, a

word which literally means disclosing something hidden behind a

veil.



the first hadrah (the Absolute in its

absoluteness)



the second hadrah (the Absolute mani-

festing itself as God)



the third hadrah (the Absolute mani-

festing itself as Lord)



the fourth hadrah (the Absolute mani-

festing itself as half-spiritual and

half-material things)



the fifth hadrah (the Absolute mani-

festing itself as the sensible world)



As this diagram shows, everything in Ibn ‘ArabFs world-view,

whether spiritual of material, invisible or visible, is a tajalli of the

Absolute except the Absolute in its absoluteness, which is, needless

to say, not a tajalli but the very source of all tajalliyat.



Another point to note is that these five planes constitute an

organic system of correspondences. Thus anything found in the

second hadrah, for example, besides being itself a ‘phenomenon’ of

some aspect of the first hadrah , finds its ontological repercussions in

all the three remaining hadarat each in a form peculiar to each

hadrah.



It is also important to remember that the first three planes are

purely spiritual in contrast with the fifth which is material, while the

fourth represents a border-line between the two.



With these preliminary notions in mind we shall turn immediately

to the first hadrah.







Dream and Reality



Notes





21





1. Fujiis al-Hikam , p. 117/103. In quoting from the Fuju$ al-Hikam (. Fw> .), I shall

always give two paginations: (1) that of the Cairo edition of 1321 A.H., containing

al-Qashani’s commentary, and (2) that of Affifi’s critical edition, Cairo, 1946 (1365

A.H.).



2. Fus., p. 199/104. ‘Imagination within imagination’ here means that the world as

we perceive it is a product of our personal faculty of imagination which is active

within the larger domain of the ‘objective’ Imagination. For a lucid and most

illuminating exposition of the concept of Imagination in this latter sense, see Henry

Corbin L’ imagination creatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ‘Arabi, Paris, 1958.



3. Fus., p. 200/159.



4. Fu$., p. 200/159





5. Fuj., p. 110/99.



6. Fu$., p. 111/99.



7. ibid.







8. i.e., a system of symbols pointing to the Absolute.



9. ja'ala-ha haqqa.



10. Fuj., p. 112/101.



11. Fuj., p. 113/101.



12. Fus., pp. 112-113/101. The following words of al-Qashani are found in his

commentary, p. 113.



13. literally, (Divine) Presences. They are the five fundamental modes or dimen-

sions of the self-manifestation of the Absolute.



14. p. 110. It is to be remembered that this is not the only form in which the ‘planes

of Being’ are presented. Al-Qashani himself gives in another place a slightly different

explanation (see later, Chapter XI).



15. to be explained in the following chapter.



16. to be discussed in Chapter VII together with the next plane, the plane of the

Actions.



17. This is an intermediary plane which lies between the properly Divine domain of

Being (1,2, 3) and the material world of senses, the so-called ‘reality’ (5). It is a world

sui generis of eternal Archetypes or Images, in which the originally formless Ideas

assume ‘imaginal’ forms and in which the material things of our empirical world

appear as ‘subtle ( latif ) bodies’ having been divested of their grossly material forms.



18. p. 111/99.





19. ibid.





22





Sufism and Taoism





20. p. 110.



21. Commentary on the Fu$u$, p. 74. This commentary is found in the above-

mentioned Cairo edition by Affifi. Throughout the present work, this commentary

will be referred to as Affifi, Fu$., Com.



22. Fu$., pp. 84-86/85-86.



23. i.e., it is a symbol, and needs ‘interpretation’.



24. i.e., God would not have stopped him.



25. The last sentence means: God redeemed Isaac with a sacrificial ram. But the

truth is that the whole matter merely looked to Abraham as ‘redeeming’ . There was,

in fact, no ‘redeeming’ because from the beginning it was not God’s intention to

make Abraham sacrifice his son. Since, however, Abraham had misunderstood

God’s intention, what God did to his son was in his eyes an act of redemption.



26. Fu$., pp. 234—235/186.



27. Fus., p. 227/181.



28. Fw>., p. 228/181.



29. ibid.



30. Fus., p. 235/186.



31. ibid.



32. Besides, all his statements are, in general, based on his personal experience,

whether he explicitly says so or not. And this is one of the reasons why his description

(of anything) is so powerful and persuasive.



33. These words, together with the following quotation, are from Fuj., p. 235/186-

187.



34. i.e., a spiritual state in which the intellect (‘ aql ) is free from all physical fetters

(al-Qashanl).



35. The Arabic here is a bit confusing because the same word ‘aql is used for both

forms: the ‘physical’ or ‘natural’ ‘aql which a mystic must abandon and the pure

‘spiritual’ ‘aql which he acquires afterwards.



36. Fu$., p. 236/187.



37. About the ‘permanent archetypes’ details will be given later.



38. Fuf., p. 236/187.



39. unless, of course, we use, as Ibn ‘Arab! himself often does, the word Allah in a

non- technical sense as a synonym of the Absolute ( haqq ).



40. Strictly speaking, the word ‘before’ is improper here because the ‘absoluteness’

is beyond all temporal relations: there can be neither ‘before nor after in the

temporal sense.




II The Absolute in its Absoluteness







In religious non-philosophical discourse the Absolute is normally

indicated by the word God ox Allah. But in the technical terminol-

ogy of Ibn ‘Arabi, the word Allah designates the Absolute not in its

absoluteness but in a state of determination. The truly Absolute is

Something which cannot be called even God. Since, however, one

cannot talk about anything at all without linguistic designation, Ibn

‘Arabi uses the word haqq (which literally means Truth or Reality)

in referring to the Absolute.



The Absolute in such an absoluteness or, to use a peculiarly

monotheistic expression, God per se is absolutely inconceivable and

inapproachable. The Absolute in this sense is unknowable to us

because it transcends all qualifications and relations that are

humanly conceivable. Man can neither think of anything nor talk

about anything without first giving it some qualification and thereby

limiting it in some form or another. Therefore, the Absolute in its

unconditional transcendence and essential isolation cannot be an

object of human knowledge and cognition. In other words, as far as

it remains in its absoluteness it is Something unknown and unknow-

able. It is forever a mystery, the Mystery of mysteries.



The Absolute in this sense is said to be ankar al-nakirat, i.e., ‘the

most indeterminate of all indeterminates’, 1 because it has no qual-

ities and bears no relation to anything beside itself. Since it is

absolutely indeterminate and undetermined it is totally unknow-

able. Thus the phrase ankar-nakirat means ‘the most unknown of all

the unknown’.



From the particular viewpoint of the Divine self-manifestation

(tajalli) which will be one of our major topics in what follows, the

Absolute in the state of unconditional transcendence is said to be at

the level of ‘unity’ ( ahadiyah ). There is as yet no tajalli. Tajalli is

only expected of it in the sense that it is to be the very source of

tajalli which has not yet begun. And since there is actually no

occurrence of tajalli , there is absolutely nothing recognizable here.

In this respect the Absolute at this stage is the One ( al-ahad ). The





L





24 Sufism and Taoism



word ‘one’ in this particular context is not the ‘one which is a

whole of ‘many’. Nor is it even ‘one’ in opposition to ‘many . It

means the essential, primordial and absolutely unconditional sim-

plicity of Being where the concept of opposition is meaningless.



The stage of Unity is an eternal stillness. Not the slightest move-

ment is there observable. The self- manifestation of the Absolute

does not yet occur. Properly speaking we cannot speak even nega-

tively of any self-manifestation of the Absolute except when we

look back at this stage from the later stages of Being. The tajalli of

the Absolute begins to occur only at the next stage, that of the

‘oneness’ ( wahidiyah ) which means the Unity of the Many.



It is impossible that the Absolute manifest itself in its absolute-

ness. ‘Those who know God in the true sense assert that there can

never be self-manifestation in the state of Unity , 2 because, not

only in the normal forms of cognitive experience in the phenomenal

world but also even in the highest state of mystical experience, there

is, according to Ibn ‘Arab!, kept intact the distinction between the

one who sees ( nazir ) and the object seen ( manzur ). Mystics often

speak of ‘becoming one with God’, which is the so-called unio

mystica. In the view of Ibn ‘ Arabi, however, a complete unification

is but a fallacy on their part or on the part of those who misconstrue

their expressions. If a mystic, for example, describes his experience

of unio mystica by saying, ‘I have seen God through Him’



( Nazartu-hu bi-hi) meaning ‘I have transcended my own existence

into God Himself and have seen Him there with his own eyes’, and

supposing that the expression is true to what he has really experi-

enced, yet there remains here a distinction between himself who

sees and himself who is seen as an object.



If, instead of saying ‘I have seen Him through Him , he said, I

have seen Him through myself’, ( Nazartu-hu bi), does the expres-

sion describe the experience of the Unity? No, by the very fact that

there intervenes ‘I’ (ana) the absolute Unity is lost. What about,

then, if he said ‘ I have seen Him through Him and myself’ ( Nazartu-

hu bi-hi wa-bi )? Even in that case - supposing again that the

expression is a faithful description of the mystic s experience — the

pronominal suffix -tu (in nazartu ) meaning ‘I (did such-and-such a

thing)’ suggests a split. That is to say, the original Unity is no longer

there. Thus in every case ‘there is necessarily a certain relation

which requires two elements: the subject and object of seeing. And

this cannot but eliminate the Unity, even if (the mystic in such an

experience) only sees himself through himself’. 3



Thus even in the highest degree of mystical experience, that of

unio, the prime Unity must of necessity break up and turn into

duality. The Absolute on the level of Unity, in other words, remains

for ever unknowable. It is the inescapable destiny of the human act





The Absolute in its Absoluteness





25





of cognition that, whenever man tries to know something, there

comes in a particular relation, a particular condition which impedes

an immediate grasp of the object. Man is unable to know anything

without taking up some position, without looking at it from some

definite point. The Absolute, in its absoluteness, however, is pre-

cisely Something which transcends all such relations and aspects.



Is it impossible, then, for man to say even a word about the Abso-

?■ lute? Can we not predicate anything at all of the absolute Absolute?

| As is clear from what has just been said, strictly speaking no predi-

cation is possible. Philosophically, however, there is one single thing

which we predicate of the Absolute on this level. It is ‘being’. As

long as it is a word with a meaning, it also delimits and specifies the

Absolute. But within the boundaries of philosophical thinking,

‘being’ is the most colorless - and therefore the least specifying

predication thinkable. It describes the Absolute with the highest

degree of unconditionality.



The Absolute viewed from this standpoint is called by Ibn ‘Arab!

dhat 4 or ‘essence’. The world dhat in this context means absolute

Being (wujud mu(laq), Being qua Being, or absolute Existence, that

is, Existence viewed in its unconditional simplicity. As the epithet

‘absolute’ indicates, it should not be taken in the sense of a limited

and determined existent or existence; it means Something beyond

all existents that exist in a limited way, Something lying at the very

source of all such existents existentiating them. It is Existence as the

ultimate ground of everything.



The ontological conception of the Absolute is a basic thesis that

runs through the whole of the Fu$us. But Ibn ‘Arabi in this book

does not deal with it as a specifically philosophic subject. On behalf

of the Master, al-QashanT explains the concept of dhat scholastic-

ally. He considers it one of the three major ideas that concern the

very foundation of Ibn ‘ ArabF s thought. The whole passage which is

reproduced here is entitled ‘an elucidation of the true nature of the

Essence at the level of Unity’. 5



The Reality called the ‘Essence at the level of Unity’ ( al-dhat al-

ahadiyah) in its true nature is nothing other than Being (wujud) pure

and simple in so far as it is Being. It is conditioned neither by

non-determination nor by determination, for in itself it is too sacred

(muqaddas) to be qualified by any property and any name. It has no

quality, no delimitation; there is not even a shadow of multiplicity in

it.



It is neither a substance nor an accident, for a substance must have a

quiddity other than existence, a quiddity by which it is a substance as

differentiated from all other existents, and so does an accident which,

furthermore, needs a place (i.e., substratum) which exists and in

which it inheres.





26





Sufism and Taoism





And since everything other than the Necessary Being ( wajib ) is either

a substance or an accident, the Being qua Being cannot be anything

other than the Necessary Being. Every determined (i.e., non-

necessary) being is existentiated by the Necessary Being. Nay, it is

essentially [no other than the Necessary Being] 6 ; it is entitled to be

regarded as ‘other’ than the Necessary Being only in respect of its

determination. (Properly speaking) nothing can be ‘other’ than it in

respect to its essence.



Such being the case (it must be admitted that in the Necessary Being)

existence is identical with essence itself, for anything which is not

Being qua Being is sheer non-Being (‘ adam ). And since non-Being is

‘nothing’ pure and simple, we do not have to have recourse, in order

to distinguish Being qua Being from non-Being, to a particular act of

negation, namely, the negation of the possibility of both being com-

prehended under a third term . 7 Nor does Being ever accept non-

Being; otherwise it would, after accepting non-Being, be existence

which is non-existent. Likewise, pure non-Being, on its part, does not

accept Being. Besides, if either one of them (e.g., Being) accepted its

contradictory (e.g., non-Being) it would turn into its own contradic-

tory (i .e., non-Being) while being still actually itself (i.e., Being). But

this is absurd.



Moreover, in order that anything may ‘accept’ something else there

must necessarily be multiplicity in it. Being qua Being, however, does

not include any multiplicity at all. That which does accept Being and

non-Being is (not Being qua Being but) the ‘archetypes’ ( a'yan ) and

their permanent states in the intelligible world, becoming visible with

Being and disappearing with non-Being.



Now everything (in the concrete world of ‘reality’) is existent through

Being. So in itself such an existent is not Being. Otherwise when it

comes into existence, we would have to admit that its existence had

already existence even before its own (factual) existence. But Being

qua Being is from the beginning existent, and its existence is its own

essence. Otherwise, its quiddity would be something different from

existence, and it would not be Being. If it were not so, then (we would

have to admit that) when it came into existence, its existence had an

existence (i.e., as its own quiddity) even before its own existence.

This is absurd.



Thus Being itself must necessarily exist by its own essence, and not

through existence of some other thing. Nay, it is that which makes

every other existent exist. This because all other things exist only

through Being, without which they would simply be nothing at all.



It is important to notice that al-Qashani in this passage refers to

three categories of Being; (1) Being qua Being, that is, absolute

Being, (2) the archetypes, and (3) the concrete beings or existents of

the sensible world. This triple division is a faithful reflection of the

main conception of Ibn ‘Arabi himself. In the Fu$u$, he does not

present a well-organized ontological discussion of this problem

from this particular point of view. It is nonetheless one of the





The Absolute in its Absoluteness





27







cardinal points of his philosophy. A concise systematic presentation

is ound in his short treatise, Kitab Insha’ al-Dawa’ir . 8 There he

mentions the three categories, or, as he calls them, three ‘degrees’

or ‘strata’ (maratib), of Being, and asserts that there can be no other

ontological category. These three are: (1) the absolute Being (2) the

limited and determined Being, and (3) something of which neither

Being nor non-Being can be predicated. The second of the three is

the world of the sensible things while the third, which he says can

neither be said to exist nor not to exist, is the world of the

archetypes.



As for the ontological nature of the archetypes and the sensible

things we shall have occasions to discuss it in detail later on. The first

degree of Being alone is what interests us in the present context.



Know that the things that exist constitute three degrees, there being

no other degree of Being. Only these three can be the objects of our

knowledge, for anything other than these is sheer non-Being which

can neither be known nor be unknown and which has nothing at all to

do with anything whatsoever.



With this understanding I would assert that of these three

(categories) of things the first is that which possesses existence by

itself, i.e., that which is existent per se in its very essence. The

existence of this thing cannot come from non-Being; on the contrary,

it is the absolute Being having no other source than itself. Otherwise,

that thing (i.e., the source) would have preceded it in existence’

Indeed, it is the very source of Being to all the things that exist; it is

their Creator who determines them, divides them and disposes them.



It is, in brief, the absolute Being with no limitations and conditions.

Praise be to Him! He is Allah, the Living, the Everlasting, the

Omniscient, the One, who wills whatever He likes, the Omnipotent . 9



It is remarkable that Ibn ‘Arabi, in the concluding sentence of the

passage just quoted, explicitly identifies the absolute Being with

Allah, the Living, Omniscient, Ominpotent God of the Qoran. It

indicates that he has moved from the ontological level of discourse

with which he began to the religious level of discourse peculiar to

the living faith of the believer.



As we have remarked before, the Reality in its absoluteness is, in

Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysical-ontological system, an absolutely

unknowable Mystery that lies far beyond the reach of human cogni-

tion. Properly speaking, in the name of Allah we should see the

self-manifestation ( tajalli ) of this Mystery already at work,

although, to be sure, it is the very first beginning of the process and

is, in comparison with the remaining levels of tajalli, the highest and

the most perfect form assumed by the Mystery as it steps out of its

abysmal darkness. However, from the viewpoint of a believer who

talks about it on the level of discourse directly connected with his





28





Sufism and Taoism





living faith, the absolute Being cannot but take the form of

Allah. Existence per se cannot in itself be an object of religious

belief.



This fact makes it also clear that whatever we want to say about

the absolute Being and however hard we try to describe it as it really

is, we are willy-nilly forced to talk about it in one aspect or another

of its self-manifestation, for the Absolute in the state of non-

manifestation never comes into human language. The absolute

Reality in itself remains for ever a ‘hidden treasure , hidden in its

own divine isolation.



It will be natural, then, that, from whatever point of view we may

approach the problem, we see ourselves ultimately brought back to

the very simple proposition from which we started*, namely , that the

Absolute in its absoluteness is essentially unknown and unknow-

able. In other words, the inward aspect of the Absolute defies every

attempt at definition. One cannot, therefore, ask, What is the

Absolute?’ And this is tantamount to saying that the Absolute has

no ‘quiddity’ ( mahiyah ).'°



This, however, does not exclude the possibility of a believer

justifiably asking what is the mahiyah of God. But the right answer

to this question can take only one form. And that sole answer is,

according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, represented by the answer given by Moses

in the Qoran.



The reference is to XXVI (23-24) where Moses, asked by

Pharaoh, ‘And what is the Lord of the worlds?’ ( Ma rabbu al-

‘alamina?), answers, ‘The Lord of the heavens and earth and what is

between them’. Ibn ‘Arab! considers the question hurled at Moses

by Pharaoh (‘ What is ...?’) as a philosophical one asking about the

mahiyah of God, asking for a definition of God. And he gives the

situation of this dialogue quite an original interpretation.



He argues: this question was asked by Pharaoh not because he

was ignorant, but simply because he wanted to try Moses. Knowing

as he did to what degree a true apostle of God must know about

God, Pharaoh wanted to try Moses as to whether the latter was truly

an apostle as he claimed to be. Moreover, he was sly enough to

attempt cheating those who were present, that is, he designed the

question in such a way that, even if Moses were a genuine apostle,

those present would get the impression of Moses being far inferior

to Pharaoh, for it was to be expected from the very beginning that

Moses - or anybody else for that matter - could not in any case give

a satisfactory answer to the question. However, Ibn Arabi does not

clarify the point. On his behalf, al-Qashani gives the following

explanation. 12



By asking, ‘What is God?’, Pharaoh gave those who were there

the impression that God had somehow a mahiyah in addition to His





The Absolute in its Absoluteness





29









existence. The onlookers were thereby led to the idea that, since

God had a mahiyah , a true apostle must know it and must, there-

fore, be able to give a satisfactory answer to the question. Since,

however, there can be no ‘definition’ ( hadd ) of God in the logical

sense, a true apostle - if he is a true apostle, and not a fraud - can

never give a ‘satisfactory’ answer in the form of a definition. But in

the eyes of those who are not conversant with the real nature of the

problem, a vague non-definitive answer is a sign indicating that the

man who gives such an answer is not a real ‘knower’.



Now the actual answer given by Moses runs: ‘the Lord of the

heavens and earth and what is between them”. This is just the right

answer and the only possible and the most perfect answer in this

case. It is, as Ibn ‘Arabi puts it, ‘the answer of those who truly know

the matter’. Thus Moses in his answer said what there was really to

be said . And Pharaoh, too, knew perfectly well that the right answer

could not be anything other than this. Superficially, however, the

answer looks as if it were not a real answer. So Pharaoh achieved his

aim of producing the impression in the minds of the onlookers that

Moses was ignorant of God, while he, Pharaoh, knew the truth

about God.



Is it wrong, then, philosophically to ask, ‘What is God?’ as

Pharaoh did? No, Ibn ‘Arabi says, 13 the question in this form is not

at all wrong in itself. To ask about the mahiyah of something is

nothing other than asking about its reality or real essence. And

God does possess reality. Strictly speaking, asking about the

mahiyah of something is not exactly the same as asking for its logical

definition. To ask about the mahiyah of a thing, as understood by

Ibn ‘Arabi, is to ask about the reality ( haqiqah ) of that object, which

is unique and not shared by anything else. 14 ‘Definition’ in the

logical sense is different from this. It consists of a combination of a

genus and a specific difference, and such a combination is thinkable

only in regard to things (i.e., universal) that allow of common

participation.



Anything, therefore, that has no logical genus in which to belong

cannot be ‘defined’ , but this does not in any way prevent such a thing

having its own unique reality which is not common to other things.

More generally speaking, ‘there is nothing’, as al-Qashani

observes, 15 ‘that has not its own reality ( haqiqah ) by which it is just

as it is to the exclusion of all other things. Thus the question (what is

God?) is a perfectly justifiable one in the view of those who know

the truth. Only those who do not possess real knowledge assert that

anything that does not admit of definition cannot be asked as to

“what” (ma) it is’.



Moses, in reply to the question: ‘What is God?’, says that He is

‘the Lord of the heavens and earth and what is between them, if you





30





Sufism and Taoism





have a firm faith’. Ibn ‘Arabi sees here ‘a great secret’ ( sirr kabir)

that is to say, a profound and precious truth hidden under a seem-

ingly commonplace phrase.



Here is a great secret. Observe that Moses, when asked to give an

essential definition ( hadd dhatl ), answered by mentioning the ‘act’

(fi'l )' 6 of God.



Moses, in other words, identified 17 the essential definition (of God)

with the (essential) relation of God to the forms of the things by

which He manifests Himself in the world or the forms of the things

which make their appearance in Him. Thus it is as though he said, in

reply to the question: ‘What is the Lord of the worlds?’, ‘It is He in

whom appear all the forms of the worlds ranging from the highest -

which is the heaven - to the lowest - which is the earth, or rather the

forms in which He appears ’. 18



Pharaoh, as the Qoran relates, sets out to show that such an answer

can come only from a man who is ignorant of God or who has but a

superficial knowledge of God. He tries thereby to prove in the

presence of his subjects his superiority over Moses. The latter,

against this, emphasizes that God is ‘the Lord of the East and West

and what is between them, if you but have understanding’ (XXVI,

28 ).



This second statement of Moses is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi in

such a way that it turns out to be a symbolic expression of his own

ontology. The East, he says, is the place from which the sun makes

its appearance. It symbolizes the visible and material aspect of

theophany. The West is the place into which the sun goes down to

conceal itself from our eyes. It symbolizes the invisible aspect (i.e.,

ghayb) of the self-manifestation of the Absolute. And these two

forms of theophany, visible and invisible, correspond to the two

great Names of God: the Outward (al-zahir) and the Inward ( al -

batin). The visible theopany constitutes the world of concrete mat-

erial things (‘ alam al-ajsam ), while the invisible theophany results in

the rise of the non-material spiritual world (‘alam al-arwah). Natu-

rally ‘what lies between the East and West’ would refer to those

forms that are neither purely material nor purely spiritual, that

is, what Ibn ‘Arabi calls amthal or Images on the level of

Imagination . 19



Here Ibn ‘Arabi draws attention to a fact which seems to him to

be of decisive importance; namely that, of the two answers given by

Moses, the first is qualified by a conditional clause: ‘if you have a

firm faith’ . 20 This indicates that the answer is addressed to those who

have yaqin, i.e., the ‘people of unveiling’ (kashf) and immediate

unitative knowledge ( wujud ). 21 Thus in the first answer Moses

simply confirms what the true ‘knowers’ have yaqin about. What,

then, is the content of this yaqin which Moses is said simply to be





The Absolute in its Absoluteness





31





confirming here? The answer is given by al-Qashani in the following

way . 22



The truth of the matter is that it is an impossibility to give a direct

answer to the question about the reality of God without any refer-

ence to any relation. Thus Moses, instead of anwering directly to the

question asked concerning the mahlyah (of God), mentions the act

(of theophany). He thereby indicates that the Absolute is above all

limitation and definition, and that it does not come under any genus

nor can it be distinguished by any specific difference because it

comprehends the whole in itself.



So (instead of trying to define the Absolute) Moses has recourse to an

explication of the reality of the Lordship ( rububiyah ). In this way

(instead of explaining God) he is content with explaining what is

attributed to Him, namely with stating that He is the One to whom

belongs the Lordship of the world of the higher spirits, the world of

the lower objects and all the determinations, relations and attribu-

tions that lie between the two worlds. He states that God is the

Outward by his Lordship over all and the Inward by his inmost nature

(huwiyah, lit. ‘He-ness’) which resides in all, because He is the very

essence of everything that is perceived in any form of experience.

Moses makes it clear that the definition of God is impossible except in

this way, that is, except by putting Him in relation to all without

limitation or to some (particular things). This latter case occurs when

he says (for example): ‘(He is) your Lord and the Lord of your

ancient ancestors' .



In contrast to the first answer which is of such a nature, the second

one is qualified by a different conditional clause: ‘if you have

understanding’ , or more precisely ‘if you know how to exercise your

reason ’. 23 This clause indicates that the second answer is addressed

to those who understand everything by Reason (‘ aql ), those, in

other words, who ‘bind and delimit’ things 24 in their understanding.

These people are those whom Ibn ‘Arab! calls ‘the people of

binding, limiting and restricting’ (ahl ‘aql wa-taqyid wa-hasr ).

These are the people who grasp any truth only through arguments

created by their own reason, i.e., the faculty of setting formal

limitations.



The gist of both the first and the second answer consists in

identifying the object asked about (i.e., the Absolute) with the very

essence of the world of Being. Moses, to put it in another way, tried

to explain the Absolute in its self-revealing aspect, instead of mak-

ing the futile effort to explain it in its absoluteness. Pharaoh who

asked that question - apart from his bad intention - and Moses who

replied as he did, were right each in his own way. When Pharaoh

asked him ‘What is God?’ Moses knew that what Pharaoh was

asking for was not a ‘definition’ of God in the philosophical or

logical sense. Therefore he did give the above-mentioned answers.





32 Sufism and Taoism



If he had thought that Pharaoh’s intention was to ask for a

definition, he would not have answered at all to the question,

but would have pointed out to Pharaoh the absurdity of such a

question . 25



All this has, I think, made it clear that for Ibn ‘ ArabI the Absolute in

its absoluteness is an ‘absolute mystery’ ( ghayb mutlaq), and that

the only way to approach the Absolute is to look at it in its self-

revealing aspect. Is it then possible for us to see the Absolute itself

at least in this latter aspect? Will the Unknown-Unknowable trans-

form itself into Something known and knowable? The answer, it

would seem, must be in the affirmative. Since, according to a Tradi-

tion, the ‘hidden treasure’ unveils itself because it ‘desires to be

known’ , self- manifestation must mean nothing other than the Abso-

lute becoming knowable and known.



But, on the other hand, the Absolute in this aspect is no longer the

Absolute in itself, for it is the Absolute in so far as it reveals itself. In

Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view, the world of Being consists of material

objects ( ajsam , sg. jism) and non-material or spiritual beings

( arwah , sg. ruh). Both these categories are the forms of self-

manifestation assumed by the Absolute. In this sense everything,

whether material or spiritual, reveals and discloses the Absolute in

its own way. However, there is a certain respect in which these

things cover up the Absolute as thick impenetrable veils in such a

way that the Absolute hides itself behind them and is invisible in

itself. As a famous Tradition says: ‘God hides Himself behind

seventy thousand veils of light and darkness. If He took away these

veils, the fulgurating lights of His face would at once destroy the

sight of any creature who dared to look at it.’



In referring to this Tradition, Ibn ‘Arabi makes the following



remark : 26



Here God describes Himself (as being concealed) by veils of dark-

ness, which are the physical things, and by (veils) of light, which are

fine spiritual things, for the world consists of ‘coarse’ things and ‘fine’

things, so that the world in itself constitutes a veil over itself. Thus the

world does not see the Absolute as directly as it sees its own self . 27

The world, in this way, is forever covered by a veil which is never

removed. Besides (it is covered by) its knowledge (or consciousness)

that it is something different and distinct from its Creator by the fact

that it stands in need of the latter . 28 But (in spite of this inner need) it

cannot participate in the essential necessity which is peculiar to the

existence of the Absolute and can never attain it.



Thus the Absolute remains for this reason forever unknowable by an

intimate knowledge, because no contingent being has access to it

(i.e., the essential necessity of the Absolute).







The Absolute in its Absoluteness 33







Here again we come across the eternal paradox: the things of the

world, both material and non-material, are, on the one hand, so

many forms of the Divine self-manifestation, but on the other, they

act exactly as veils hindering a (complete) self-manifestation of

God. They cover up God and do not allow man to see Him directly.



In this latter sense, the created world in relation to the absolute

Absolute is referred to in the Qoran by the pronoun ‘they’ (hum).

Hum is grammatically a ‘pronoun of absence’ . It is a word designat-

ing something which is not actually present. The creatures, in other

words, are not there in the presence of the Absolute. And this

‘absence’ precisely is the ‘curtain’.



The recurring Qoranic phrase hum alladhina kafaru ‘they are

those who cover up’ means, according to the interpretation of Ibn

‘Arabi, nothing other than this situation of ‘absence’. The verb

kafara in the Qoran stands in opposition to amana ‘to believe in’,

and signifies ‘infidelity’ or ‘disbelief’. But etymologically the verb

means ‘to cover up’. And for Ibn ‘Arabi, who takes the word in this

etymological meaning, alladhina kafaru does not mean ‘those who

disbelieve (in God)’ but ‘those who cover and veil’. Thus it is an

expression referring to people who, by their ‘absence’, conceal the

Absolute behind the curtain of their own selves . 29



The whole world, in this view, turns out to be a ‘veil’ (hijab)

concealing the Absolute behind it. So those who attribute Being to

the world enclose the Absolute within the bounds of a number of

determinate forms and thereby place it beyond a thick veil. When,

for example, the Christians assert that ‘God is Messiah, Son of

Mary’ (V, 72), they confine the Absolute in an individual form and

lose sight of the absoluteness of the Absolute. This makes them

absent from the Absolute, and they veil it by the personal form of

Messiah. It is in the sense that such people are Kafirs, i.e., ‘those

who cover up (-Hhose who disbelieve )’. 30



The same thing is also explained by Itj>n ‘Arabi in another interest-

ing way. The key-concept here is the Divine self-manifestation

(tajalli). And the key-symbol he uses is that of a mirror, which

incidentally, is one of his most favorite images.



The Absolute, ‘in order that it be known’, discloses itself in the

world. But it discloses itself strictly in accordance with the require-

ment of each individual thing, in the form appropriate to and

required by the nature of ‘preparedness’ ( isti‘dad ) of each indi-

vidual existent. There can absolutely be no other form of self-

manifestation. And when the locus, i.e., the individual thing in

which the Absolute discloses itself happens to be a human being

endowed with consciousness, he sees by intuition the self-revealing





34 Sufism and Taoism



Absolute in himself. Yet, since it is after all the Absolute in a

particular form determined by his own ‘preparedness’ , what he sees

in himself is nothing other than his own image or form (surah ) l as

mirrored in the Absolute. He never sees the Absolute itself. His

Reason may tell him that his own image is visible there reflected in

the Divine mirror, but, in spite of this consciousness based on

reasoning, he cannot actually see the mirror itself; he sees only

himself.



The Divine Essence (dhat) discloses itself only in a form required by

the very ‘preparedness’ of the locus in which occurs the self-

manifestation. There can be no other way.



Thus the locus of the Divine self-manifestation does not see any-

thing, other than its own form as reflected in the mirror of the

Absolute It does not see the Absolute itself. Nor is it at all possible

for it to do so, although it is fully aware of the fact that it sees its own



form only in the Absolute. .



This is similar to what happens to a man looking into a mirror in the

empirical world. When you are looking at forms or your own form in

a mirror you do not see the mirror itself, although you know well that

you see these forms or your own form only in the mirror.



Thus we are faced with a curious fact that the forms or images of

things in a mirror, precisely because they are visible, intervene

between our eyesight and the mirror and act as a veil concealing t e

mirror from our eyes.



This symbol (of mirror) has been put forward by God as a particularly

appropriate one for His essential self-manifestation so that the per-

son who happens to be the locus of this Divine self-manifestation

might know what exactly is the thing he is seeing. Nor can there be a

symbol closer than this to (the relation between) contemplation (on

the part of man) and self-manifestation (on the part of God).



(If you have some doubt of this) try to see the body of the mirror

while looking at an image in it. You will not be able to do so, nevei.



So much so that some people who have experienced this with regard

to images reflected in the mirror maintain that the form seen in the

mirror stands between the eyesight of the person who is looking and

the mirror itself. This is the furthest limit which (an ordinary intel-

lect) can reach . 31



Thus the view that the image in the mirror behaves as a ‘veil

concealing the mirror itself is the highest knowledge attainable by

ordinary people; that is, by those who understand things through

their intellect. But Ibn ‘ Arabi does not forget to suggest in the same

breath that for those who are above the common level of under-

standing there is a view which goes one step further than this. The

deepest truth of the matter, he says, is represented by a view which

he already expounded in his al-Futuhdt al-Makkiyah.





The Absolute in its Absoluteness





35





The ‘deepest truth’ here referred to is explained by al-Qashani as

follows: 32







That which is seen in the mirror of the Absolute is the form of the

man who is looking; it is not the form of the Absolute. To be sure, it is

no other than the very Essence of the Absolute that discloses itself to

his eye, but this self-manifestation is done in his (i.e., the man’s)

form, not in its (i.e., the Essence’s) form.



However, the form seen in (the mirror of) His Essence is far from

constituting a veil between Him and the man who is looking. On the

contrary, it is the Essence at the level of Unity ( ahadiyah ) disclosing

itself to the man in his form. And shallow indeed is the view of those

who assert in connection with the (symbol of the) mirror that the

form (seen) works as a veil between it and the man who sees (the

form therein).



And al-Qashani adds that a deep understanding of this nature is

only obtainable in the experience of immediate vision and ‘unveil-

ing’. This may be explained somewhat more theoretically and

briefly in the following manner.



The image reflected in the mirror of the Absolute has two differ-

ent aspects. It is, in the first place, a self-manifestation of the

Absolute in a particular form in accordance with the demand of the

‘preparedness’ of the locus. But in the second place, it is the Form of

the Divine self-manifestation, however much it may be particular-

ized by the demand of the locus. The reflected image behaves as a

concealing veil because the spiritual eye of an ordinary man is

riveted to the first of these aspects. And as the second aspect looms

in the consciousness of the man through the profound experience of

‘unveiling’ the reflected image ceases to be a veil, and the man

begins to see not only his own image but the Form of the Absolute

assuming the form of his own.



This, Ibn ‘Arabi asserts, is the highest limit beyond which the

human mind is never allowed to go. 33



Once you have tasted this, you have tasted the utmost limit beyond

which there is no further stage as far as concerns the creatures. So do

not covet more than this. Do not make yourself weary by trying to go

up further than this stage, for there is no higher stage than this.

Beyond this there is sheer nothing.



We may remark that the ‘highest limit’ here spoken of is the stage

peculiar to the Perfect Man. Even for the Perfect Man there can be

no spiritual stage realizable at which he is able to know the Absolute

as it really is, i.e., in its absoluteness. Yet, such a man is in a position

to intuit the Absolute as it reveals itself in himself and in all other

things. This is the final answer given to the question: To what extent

and in what form can man know the Absolute?





36





Sufism and Taoism





And this will be the only and necessary conclusion to be reached

concerning the metaphysical capability of the Perfect Man if we are

to start from the basic assumption that Divine Essence ( dhat ) and

Unity ( ahadiyah ) are completely identical with each other in indi-

cating one and the same thing, namely, the Absolute in its absolute-

ness as the highest metaphysical stage of Reality. There is, however,

another theoretical possibility. If, following some of the outstanding

philosophers of the school of Ibn ‘ Arabi, we are to divide the highest

level of Reality into two metaphysical strata and distinguish be-

tween them as (1) dhat, the absolute Absolute and (2) ahadiyah

which, although it is still the same absolute Absolute, is a stage

lower than dhat in the sense that it represents the Absolute as it is

turning toward self-manifestation - then, we should say that the

Perfect Man in his ecstatic experience is capable of knowing the

Absolute qua Absolute just before it reveals itself in eidetic and

sensible forms, that is, the Absolute at the stage of ahadiyah, though

to be sure the Absolute at the stage of dhat still remains unknown

and unknowable.





Notes



1. Fuj., p. 238/188. We may remark in this connection that in another passage (p.

188) Ibn ‘Arabi uses the same phrase, ankar al-nakirat , in reference to the word shay ’

‘thing’. He means thereby that the concept of ‘thing’ is so indeterminate that it is

comprehensive of anything whatsoever.



2. Fuy., p. 95/91.



3. ibid.



4. Here and elsewhere in this book in the conceptual analysis of the Absolute at the

stage of absoluteness I follow the tradition of those who completely identify the

metaphysical stage of dhat with that of ahadiyah, like Qashani and Qaysari. It is to be

remarked that there are others (like Jill) who distinguish between dhat and ahadiyah .

For them, dhat is the absolute Absolute while ahadiyah is the next metaphysical stage

at which the Absolute discloses itself as the ultimate source of tajalti.



5. Fu$., Com., p. 3.



6. The printed text is here obviously defective. I read: bal huwa bi-i‘tibdr al-haqiqah

[‘ aynu-hu , wa-ghayru-hu ] bi-itibar al-ta‘ayyun.



7. because there cannot be a wider concept that would comprehend within itself

both Being and non-Being.



8. K.S., H.S. Nyberg, ed., Leiden, 1919, p. 15 et. sqq.





9. ibid.





The Absolute in its Absoluteness





37







10. Mahiyah from Ma hiya? meaning ‘what is it?’ corresponding to the Greek

expression to ti en einai.



11. Fuy., p. 259/207-208.



12. p. 259.



13. Fu$., pp. 259-260/208.



14. It is to be noted that in Islamic philosophy in general the mahiyah ‘what-is-it-

ness’ is of two kinds: (1) mahiyah ‘in the particular sense’ and (2) mahiyah ‘in a

general sense’ . The former means ‘quiddity’ to be designated by the definition, while

the latter means ontological ‘reality’, that which makes a thing what it is.



15. p. 260.



16. i.e., the act of ‘Lordship’ which in the philosophy of Ibn ‘Arabi means the act of

self-manifestation in the concrete phenomena of the world.



17. i.e., replaced the definition of God by the mentioning of the relation of God to

His phenomenal forms.



18. Fuy., pp. 260/208.



19. Fuy., p. 260/208-209. Concerning ‘what lies between the East and West’,

however, Ibn ‘ Arabi in this passage simply says that it is intended to mean that God is

Omniscient (bi kull shay’ ‘alim).



20. in kuntum muqinin, the last word being a derivative of the same root YQN from

which is derived the word yaqin. Yaqin means a firm conviction in its final form.



21. ahl al-kashfwa-al- wujud . The word wujud here does not mean ‘existence’, but a

particular stage in myscal experience which follows that of wajd. In wajd, the mystic is

in the spiritual state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ), a state in which he has lost his

individual consciousness of the self, while in wujud he is in the state of ‘subsistence’

(baqa’) in the Absolute. Only in this latter state does the mystic ‘finds’ ( wajada ) God

in the true sense, cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 310.



22. p. 260.



23. in kuntum ta qilun ', the last word comes from the root from which is derived the

word ‘aql ‘reason’.



24. The verb aqala meaning ‘to understand by reason or intellect’ etymologically

means to bind the folded legs of a camel to his thighs (in order to prevent him from

moving freely’.



25. Fuj., p. 260/208-209.



26. Fuy., p. 22/54-55.



27. i.e., the only possible way in which we can see the Absolute is through the

things , yet, on the other hand, since what we actually and directly see are the



‘things’, they intervene between our sight and the Absolute. Thus indirectly we see

the Absolute, but directly we see only the things which prevent our direct vision of the

Absolute.





38





Sufism and Taoism





28. We feel at every moment that we are in need of our Creator for our existence.

This very feeling produces in us the consciousness of separation or distinction

between us and the Absolute.



29. Fus ., p. 188/148-149.



30. Cf. Qashani, p. 189.



31. Fus., p. 33/61-62.



32. p. 33.



33. Fu$., p. 33/62.




Ill The Self-knowledge of Man





It has been made clear by the preceding that the Absolute perse is

unknowable and that it remains a dark mystery even in the mystical

experience of ‘unveiling’ ( kashf ) and ‘immediate tasting’ ( dhawq ).

Under normal conditions the Absolute is knowable solely in its

forms of self-manifestation. The same thing may be expressed

somewhat differently by saying that man is allowed to know the

Absolute only when the latter descends to the stage of ‘God’. In

what follows the structure of this cognition will be analyzed. The

m central question will be: How and where does the absolutely

I unknowable appear as ‘God’?



i Answering this question Ibn ‘ Arabi emphatically asserts that the

only right way of knowing the Absolute is for us to know ourselves.

And he bases this view on the very famous Tradition which runs:

‘He who knows himself knows his Lord ’. 1 What is suggested is, for

Ibn ‘Arabi, that we should abandon the futile effort to know the

| Absolute per se in its absolute non-manifestation, that we must go



f back into the depth of ourselves, and perceive the Absolute as it

■ manifests itself in particular forms.



I In Ibn ‘ Arabi’s world-view, everything, not only ourselves but all



l the things that surround us, are so many forms of the Divine

self-manifestation. And in that capacity, there is objectively no

essential difference between them. Subjectively, however, there is a

remarkable difference. All the exterior things surrounding us are

I for us ‘things’ which we look at only from outside. We cannot

penetrate into their interior and experience from inside the Divine

life pulsating within them . Only into the interior of ourselves are we

able to penetrate by our self-consciousness and experience from

inside the Divine activity of self-manifestation which is going on

there. It is in this sense that to ‘know ourselves’ can be the first step

toward our ‘knowing the Lord’ . Only he who had become conscious

of himself as a form of the Divine self-manifestation is in a position

to go further and delve deep into the very secret of the Divine life as

it pulsates in every part of the universe.



However, not all self-knowledge of man leads to the utmost limit







40





Sufism and Taoism





of knowledge of the Absolute. Ibn ‘Arab! in this respect roughly

divides into two types the way of knowing the Absolute through

man’s self-knowledge. The first is ‘knowledge of the Absolute

(obtainable) in so far as (“thou” art) “thou” ’ (ma‘rifah bi-hi min

hayth anta ), while the second is ‘knowledge of the Absolute

(obtainable) through “thee” in so far as (“thou” art) “He , and not

in so far as (“thou” art) “thou” ’ (ma‘rifah bi-hi min hayth huwa la





min hayth anta). n ,



The first type is the way of reasoning by which one inters uoa



from ‘thee’, i.e., the creature. More concretely it consists in one s

becoming first conscious of the properties peculiar to the creatural

nature of ‘thou’ , and then attaining to knowledge of the Absolute by

the reasoning process'of casting away all these imperfections from

the image of the Absolute and attributing to it all the opposite

properties. One sees, for example, ontological possibility in oneself,

and attributes to the Absolute ontological necessity which is its

opposite; one sees in oneself ‘poverty’ ( iftiqar ), i.e., the basic need

in which one stands of things other than oneself, and attributes to

the Absolute its opposite, that is, ‘richness’ (, ghina ) or absolute

self-sufficiency; one sees in oneself incessant ‘change’, and attri-

butes to the Absolute eternal constancy, etc. This type of know-

ledge, Ibn ‘Arab! says, is characteristic of philosophers and

theologians, and represents but an extremely low level of the know-

ledge of God, though, to be sure, it is a kind of ‘knowing one s Lord



by knowing oneself’ . . . , D .



The second type, too, is knowledge of ‘Him’ through thee . But

in this case the emphasis is not on ‘thee’ but definitely on Him . it

consists in one’s knowing the Absolute - albeit in a particularize

form - by knowing the ‘self’ as a form of the direct self-

manifestation of the Absolute. It is the cognitive process by which

one comes to know God by becoming conscious of oneself as God

manifesting Himself in that particular form. Let us analyze this

process in accordance with Ibn ‘Arabi’s own description. Three

basic stages are distinguished here.



The first is the stage at which man becomes conscious of the Abso-

lute as his God.





If from the Divine Essence were abstracted all the relations (i.e., the

Names and Attributes), it would not be a God (ilah). But what

actualizes these (possible) relations (which are recognizable in the

Essence) are ourselves. In this sense it is we who, with our own inner

dependence upon the Absolute as God, turn it into a ‘God .bo the

Absolute cannot be known until we ourselves become known. To this

refer the words of the Prophet: ‘He who knows himself knows his

Lord’ . This is a saying of one who of all men knows best about God.







The Self-knowledge of Man





41





What is meant by this passage is as follows. The nature of the

Absolute perse being as it is, the Absolute would remain for ever an

unknown and unknowable Something if there were no possibility of

its manifesting itself in infinitely variegated forms. What are gener-

ally known as ‘Names’ and ‘Attributes’ are nothing but theological

expressions for this infinite variety of the possible forms of self-

manifestation of the Absolute. The Names and Attributes are, in

oth^r words, a classification of the unlimited number of relations in

which the Absolute stands to the world.



These relations, as long as they stay in the Absolute itself, remain

in potential they are not in actu. Only when they are realized as

concrete forms in us, creatures, do they become ‘actual’. The

Names, however, do not become realized immediately in individual

material things, but first within the Divine Consciousness itself in

the form of permanent archetypes. Viewed from the reverse side, it

would mean that it is our individual essences (i.e., archetypes) that

actualize the Absolute. And the Absolute actualized in this way is

God. So ‘we (i.e., our permanent archetypes), turn the Absolute

into God’ by becoming the primal objects or loci of the Divine

self-manifestation. This is the philosophical meaning of the dictum:

‘Unless we know ourselves, God never becomes known.’



Some of the sages - Abu Hamid 4 is one of them - claim that God can

be known without any reference to the world. But this is a mistake.

Surely, the eternal and everlasting Essence can (conceptually) be

known (without reference to the world), but the same Essence can

never be known as God unless the object to which it is God (i.e., the

world) is known, for the latter is the indicator of the former . 5



The commentary of al-Qashani makes this point quite explicit. He

says : 6



What is meant by Ibn ‘Arabi is that the essence in so far as it is

qualified by the attribute of ‘divinity’ ( uluhiyah ) cannot be known

except when there is the object to which it appears as God . . . Surely,

our Reason can know (by inference) from the very idea of Being itself

the existence of the Necessary Being which is an Essence eternal and

everlasting, for God in His essence is absolutely self-sufficient. But

not so when it is considered as the subject of the Names. In the latter

case the object to which He is God is the only indicator of His being

God.



The knowledge that the whole created world is no other than a

self-manifestation of the Absolute belongs to the second stage,

which is described by Ibn ‘Arabi in the following terms : 7



After the first stage comes the second in which the experience of

‘unveiling’ makes you realize that it is the Absolute itself (and not the





42





Sufism and Taoism





world) that is the indicator of itself and of its being God (to the

world). (You realize also at this stage) that the world is nothing but a

self-manifestation of the Absolute in the forms of the permanent

archetypes of the things of the world. The existence of the archetypes

would be impossible if it were not for the (constant) self-

manifestation of the Absolute, while the Absolute, on its part, goes

on assuming various forms in accordance with the realities of the

archetypes and their states.



This comes after (the first stage at which) we know that the Absolute

is God.



Already at the first stage the Absolute was no longer Something

unknown and unknowable, but it was ‘our God . Yet, there was an

essential breach between the Absolute as God and the world as the

object to which it appeared as God. The only real tie between the

two was the consciousness that we, the world, are not self-subsistent

but essentially dependent upon God and that we, as correlatives of

the Absolute qua God, are indicators of the Names and Attributes

and are thereby indirectly indicators of the Absolute.



At the second stage, such an essential breach between God and

the world disappears. We are now aware of ourselves as self-

manifestations of the Absolute itself. And looking back from this

point we find that what was (as the first stage) thought to be an

indicator-indicated relation between God and the object to which

the Absolute appeared as God is nothing but an indicator-indicated

relation between the Absolute in its self-manifesting aspect and the

Absolute in its hidden aspect. Here I give a more philosophical

formulation of this situation by al-Qashani. 8



When by Divine guidance Reason is led to the conclusion that there

must exist the Necessary Being existing by itself away from all others,

it may, if aided by good chance, attain the intuition that it is nothing

but this real Necessary Being that is manifesting itself in the form of

the essence of the world itself. Then it realizes that the very first

appearance of this Necessary Being is its self-manifestation in the

One Substance or the One Entity 9 in which are prefigured all the

forms of the permanent archetypes in the Divine Consciousness, and

that they (i.e., the archetypes) have no existence independently of

the Necessary Being , 10 but have an eternal, everlasting existence in

the latter. And to these archetypes are attributed all the Attributes of

the Necessary Being as so many Names of the latter, or rather as so

many particularizing determinations of it. Thus only through the

archetypes do the Names become (actually) distinguishable and

through their appearance does Divinity (i.e., the Necessary Being s

being God) make its appearance. And all this occurs in the forms of

the world. The Absolute in this way is the Outward (appearing

explicitly) in the form of the world and the Inward (appearing invis-





The Self-knowledge of Man





43





ibly) in the forms of the individual essences of the world. But it is

always the same Entity making its appearance (in diverse forms). The

Absolute here behaves as its own indicator. Thus after having known

| (at the first stage) that the Absolute is our God, we now know (at the



| second stage) that it diversifies into many kinds and takes on various



I I forms according to the realities of the archetypes and their various



I states, for, after all, all these things are nothing else than the Absolute



I itself (in its diverse forms.)



In this interesting passage al-Qashani uses the phrase ‘the first

appearance’ (al-zuhur al-awwal), i.e., the first self-manifestation of

the Absolute, and says that it means the Absolute being manifested

in the ‘ One Substance’ . This, in fact, refers to a very important point

in Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics, namely, the basic distinction between

two kinds of self-manifestation ( tajalliyyan ): (1) self-manifestation

in the invisible (tajalli ghayb ) and (2) self-manifestation in the

l visible (tajalli shahadah). 11



| The first of these two is the self-manifestation of the Essence

within itself. Here the Absolute reveals itself to itself. It is, in other



}



words, the first appearance of the self-consciousness of the Abso-

| lute. And the content of this consciousness is constituted by the



I permanent archetypes of things before they are actualized in the



outward world, the eternal forms of things as they exist in the Divine

Consciousness. As we shall see later in detail, Ibn ‘ArabI calls this

type of the self-manifestation of the Absolute ‘the most holy ema-

nation’ ( al-fayd al-aqdas ), the term ‘emanation’ {fayd) being for

Ibn ‘ArabI always synonymous with ‘self-manifestation’ ( tajalli ). 14



This is a (direct) self-manifestation of the Essence ( tajalli dhatiy ) of

which invisibility is the reality. And through this self-manifestation

I the ‘He-ness’ is actualized . 13 One is justified in attributing ‘He-ness’



to it on the ground that (in the Qoran) the Absolute designates itself

by the pronoun ‘He’. The Absolute (at this stage) is eternally and

everlastingly ‘He’ for itself . 14



: It is to be remarked that the word ‘He’ is, as Ibn ‘ArabI observes, a



; pronoun of ‘absence’. This naturally implies that, although there



| has already been self-manifestation, the subject of this act still



remains ‘absent’, i.e., invisible to others. It also implies that, since it

is ‘He’, the third person, the Absolute here has already split itself

; into two and has established the second ‘itself’ as something other

than the first ‘itself’. However, all this is occurring only within the

Consciousness of the Absolute itself. It is, at this stage, ‘He’ only to

' itself; it is not ‘He’ to anybody or anything else. The Consciousness

of the Absolute is still the world of the invisible ( ‘alam al-ghayb ).

The second type of self-manifestation, the tajalli shahadah, is





44





Sufism and Taoism





45





different from this. It refers to the phenomenon of the permanent

archetypes which form the content of the Divine Consciousness

coming out of the stage of potentiality into the outward world of

‘reality’. It means the actualization of the archetypes in concrete

forms. In distinction from the first type, this second type of self-

manifestation is called by Ibn ‘Arab! ‘the holy emanation’ (al-fayd

al-muqaddas ). And the world of Being thus realized constitutes the

world of sensible experience (‘alam al-shahadah).



So much for the second stage of man’s ‘knowing his Lord by

knowing himself’ . Now we turn to the third and the last of the three

stages distinguished above.



Let us begin by quoting a short description of the third stage by Ibn

‘Arab! himself . 15



Following these two stages there comes the final ‘unveiling’. There

our own forms will be seen in it (i.e., the Absolute) in such a way that

all of us are disclosed to each other in the Absolute. All of us will

recognize each other and at the same time be distinguished from one

another.



The meaning of this somewhat enigmatic statement may be

rendered perfectly understandable in the following way. To the eye

of a man who has attained this spiritual stage there arises a scene of

extraordinary beauty. He sees all the existent things as they appear

in the mirror of the Absolute and as they appear one in the other.

All these things interflow and interpenetrate in such a way that they

become transparent to one another while keeping at the same time

each its own individuality. This is the experience of ‘unveiling’

(kashf).



We may remark in this connection that al-Qashani divides the

‘unveiling’ into two stages . 16



The first ‘unveiling’ occurs in the state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) in

the Absolute. In this state, the man who sees and the object seen are

nothing other than the Absolute alone. This is called unification’

{jam). The second ‘unveiling’ is ‘subsistence’ ( baqa ) after ‘self-

annihilation’. In this spiritual state, the forms of the created world

make their appearance; they make their appearance one to the other

in the Absolute itself. Thus the Reality here plays the role of a mirror

for the creatures. And the One Being diversifies itself into many

through the innumerable forms of the things. The reality (of the

mirror) is the Absolute and the forms (appearing in it) are creatures.

The creatures in this experience know one another and yet each is

distinguished from others.



Al-QashanI goes on to say that of those whose eyes have been

opened by the second- 4 unveiling’, some attain the state of perfec-







The Self-knowledge of Man



tion’ ( kamal ). These are men ‘who are not veiled by the sight of the

creatures from the Absolute and who recognize the creaturely

Many in the very bosom of the real Unity of the Absolute’. These

are the ‘people of perfection’ (ahl al- kamal) whose eyes are not

veiled by the Divine Majesty (i.e., the aspect of the phenomenal

Many) from the Divine Beauty (i.e., the aspect of the metaphysical

One), nor by the Divine Beauty from the Divine Majesty. The last

point is mentioned with particular emphasis in view of the fact that,

according to al-Qashani’s interpretation, the first ‘unveiling’ con-

sists exclusively in an experience of Beauty ( jamal ), while the

second is mainly an experience of Majesty ( jalal ), so that in either

case there is a certain danger of mystics emphasizing exclusively

either the one or the other.



The first ‘unveiling’ brings out Beauty alone. The subject who

experiences it does not witness except Beauty . . . Thus he is nat-

urally veiled by Beauty and cannot see Majesty.



But among those who experience the second ‘unveiling’ there are

some who are veiled by Majesty and cannot see Beauty. They tend to

imagine and represent the (state of affairs) on this level in terms of

the creatures as distinguished from the Absolute, and thus they are

veiled by the sight of the creatures from seeing the Absolute.





The same situation is described in a different way by Ibn ‘Arabi

himself by a terse expression as follows : 17





Some of us (i.e., the ‘people of perfection’) are aware that this

(supreme) knowledge about us 18 (i.e., about the phenomenal Many)

occurs in no other than the Absolute. But some of us (i.e., mystics

who are not so perfect) are unaware of the (true nature of this)

Presence (i.e., the ontological level which is disclosed in the baqa-

experience) in which this knowledge about us (i.e., the phenomenal

Many) occurs to us . 19 I take refuge in God from being one of the

ignorant!





By way of conclusion let us summarize at this point the interpreta-

tion given by Ibn ‘Arabi to the Tradition: ‘He who knows himself

knows his Lord’.



He begins by emphasizing that the self-knowledge of man is the

absolutely necessary premise for his knowing his Lord, that man’s

knowledge of the Lord can only result from his knowledge of

himself.



What is important here is that the word ‘Lord’ ( rabb ) in Ibn

‘ Arabi’ s terminology means the Absolute as it manifests itself

through some definite Name. It does not refer to the Essence which

surpasses all determinations and transcends all relations. Thus the

dictum: ‘He who knows himself knows his Lord’ does not in any way

suggest that the self-knowledge of man will allow man to know the





46





Sufism and Taoism





Absolute in its pure Essence. Whatever one may do, and however

deep one’s experience of ‘unveiling’ may be, one is forced to stop at

the stage of the ‘Lord’. Herein lies the limitation set to human



cognition. . .



In the opposite direction, however, the same human cognition is

able to cover an amazingly wide field in its endeavor to know the

Absolute. For, after all, the self-revealing Absolute is, at the last

and ultimate stage of its activity, nothing but the world in which we

live And ‘every part of the world’ is a pointer to its own ontologica

ground, which is its Lord .’ 20 Moreover, man is the most perfect of all

the parts of the world. If this most perfect part of the world comes to

know itself through self-knowledge or self-consciousness, it wi

naturally be able to know the Absolute to the utmost limit of

possibility, in so far as the latter manifests itself in the world . 21



There still seems to remain a vital question: Is man really capable of

knowing himself with such profundity? This, however, is a relative

question. If one takes the phrase ‘know himself’ in the most rigor-

ous sense, the answer will be in the negative, but if one takes it in a

loose sense, one should answer in the affirmative. As Ibn ‘Arabi

says, ‘You are right if you say Yes, and you are right if you say No.





Notes



1. Man ‘arafa nafsa-hu ‘arafa rabba-hu.



2. i.e., all the attributes peculiar to the created things as ‘possible’ and ‘contingent

existents.



3. Fus-, p. 73/81.



4. al-Ghazall.



5. Fu$., p. 74/81.



6. p. 74.



7. Fus-, p. 74/81—82.



8. p. 74.



9 This does not mean the absolute One at the level of primordial Unity which has

already been explained above. The ‘One’ referred to here is the One containing in a

unified form all the Names before they become actually differentiated. It is, in brief,

the unity of Divine Consciousness in which exist all the archetypes of the things of the

world in the form of the objects of Divine Knowledge.





The Self-knowledge of Man





47





10. Since the archetypes are no other than the very content of the Divine Con-

sciousness as prefigurations of the things of the world, they cannot exist outside the

Divine Consciousness.



11. Fus., pp. 145-146/120-121.



12. That is to say, the term ‘emanation’ should not be taken in the usual neo-

Platonic sense.



13. Asa result of the ‘most holy emanation’ the Absolute establishes itself as ‘He’.

And as the Divine ‘He’ is established, the permanent archetypes of all things are also

established as the invisible content of the ‘He’ -consciousness of God.



14. Fus., p. 146/120.



15. Fus., p. 74/82.



16. pp. 74-75.



17. Fus., P- 74/82.



18. The ‘(supreme) knowledge about us’ refers back to what has been mentioned

above; namely, the extraordinary scene of all the existent things penetrating each

other while each keeping its unique individuality.



19. This means that the phenomenal Many, being as it is Divine Majesty, is no less

an aspect of the Absolute than the metaphysical One appearing as Divine Beauty.

The knowledge of the phenomal Many through baqa’ is no less a knowledge of the

Absolute than the knowledge of the metaphysical One through fana’.



20. Fus., p- 267/215.



21. Cf. Affifi, Fus., Com., p. 325.









Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion









49





IV Metaphysical Unification and

Phenomenal Dispersion





What the preceding chapters have made clear may briefly be sum-

marized by saying (1) that the Absolute has two aspects opposed to

each other: the hidden and the self- revealing aspect; (2) that the

Absolute in the former sense remains for ever a Mystery and

Darkness whose secret cannot be unveiled even by the highest

degree of fo*s/t/-experience; (3) that the Absolute comes fully into

the sphere of ordinary human cognition only in its self-revealing

aspect in the form of ‘God’ and ‘Lord’; and (4) that between these

two is situated a particular region in which things ‘may rightly be

said to exist and not to exist’, i.e., the world of the permanent

archetypes, which is totally inaccessible to the mind of an ordinary

man but perfectly accessible to the ecstatic mind of a mystic. This

summary gives the most basic structure of Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view

from the ontological standpoint.



Since the hidden aspect of the Absolute can neither be known nor

described, the whole of the rest of the book will naturally be

concerned with the self-revealing aspect and the intermediate re

gion. But before we proceed to explore these two domains which are

more or less accessible to human understanding, we must consider

the radical opposition between the hidden and the self-revealing

aspect of the Absolute from a new perspective. The analysis will

disclose an important phase of Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought.



From this new perspective Ibn ‘Arab! calls the hidden and the

self-revealing aspect tanzih and tazhbih, respectively. These are two

key-terms taken from the terminology of the traditional Islamic

theology. Both terms played an exceedingly important role m

theology from the earliest times of its historical formulation. Tanzih

(from the verb nazzaha meaning literally ‘to keep something away

from anything contaminating, anything impure ) is used in theology

in the sense of ‘declaring or considering God absolutely free from all

imperfections’. And by ‘imperfections’ is meant in this context all

qualities that resemble those of creatures even in the slightest

degree.







Tanzih in this sense is an assertion of God’s essential and absolute

incomparability with any created thing, His being above all crea-

turely attributes. It is, in short, an assertion of Divine transcen-

dence. And since the Absolute per se, as we have seen, is an

Unknowable which rejects all human effort to approach it and

frustrates all human understanding in any form whatsoever, the

sound reason naturally inclines toward tanzih . It is a natural attitude

of the Reason in the presence of the unknown and unknowable

Absolute.



In contrast to this, tashbih (from the verb shabbaha meaning ‘to

make or consider something similar to some other thing’) means in

theology ‘to liken God to created things’. More concretely, it is a

theological assertion posited by those who, on the basis of the

Qoranic expressions suggesting that ‘God has hands, feet, etc.’,

attribute corporeal and human properties to God. Quite naturally it

tends to turn toward crude anthropomorphism.



In traditional theology, these two positions are, in their radical

forms, diametrically opposed and cannot exist together in harmony.

One is either a ‘transcendentalist’ ( munazzih , i.e., one who exer-

cises tanzih) or an ‘anthropomorphist’ ( mushabbih , i.e., one who

chooses the position of tashbih, and holds that God ‘sees with His

eyes’, for example, and ‘hears with His ears’, ‘speaks with His

tongue’ etc.).



Ibn ‘Arabi understands these terms in quite an original manner,

though of course there still remains a reminiscence of the meanings

they have in theological contexts. Briefly, tanzih in his terminology

indicates the aspect of ‘absoluteness’ ( iflaq ) in the Absolute, while

tashbih refers to its aspect of ‘determination’ (taqayyud). 1 Both are

in this sense compatible with each other and complementary, and

the only right attitude is for us to assert both at the same time and

with equal emphasis.



Of all the prophets who preceded Muhammad in time, Ibn ‘Arabi

mentions Noah as representative of the attitude of tanzih. Quite

significantly, Ibn ‘Arabi entitles the chapter in his Fu$ii$ , in which he

deals with Noah, ‘the transcendentalist wisdom ( hikmah sub-

buhiyyah) as embodied in the prophet Noah’. 2 )



According to the Qoran, Noah in the midst of an age in which

obstinate and unbridled idol-worship was in full sway, denied the

value of the idols, openly exhorted the worship of the One God, and

advocated monotheism. In other words, he emphasized throughout

his life the principle of tanzih. This attitude of Noah, in the view of

Ibn ‘Arabi, was an historical necessity and was therefore quite

justifiable. For in his age, among his people, polytheism was so

rampant that only a relentless exhortation to a pure and extreme





51





50





Sufism and Taoism





Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion





tanzih could have any chance of bringing the people back to the

right form of religious belief.



Apart from these historical considerations, however, tanzih as a

human attitude toward God is definitely one-sided. Any religious

belief based exclusively on tanzih is essentially imperfect and

incomplete. For to ‘purify’ God to such an extent and to reduce Him

to something having nothing at all to do with the creatures is

another way of delimiting Divine Existence which is actually

infinitely vast and infinitely profound. ‘Tanzih' , as Ibn ‘Arab! says , 3

‘in the opinion of the people who know the truth, is nothing less than

delimiting and restricting God’. This sentence is explained by al-

Qashanl as follows : 4



Tanzih is distinguishing the Absolute from all contingent and physi-

cal things, that is, from all material things that do not allow of tanzih.



But everything that is distinguished from some other thing can only

be distinguished from it through an attribute which is incompatible

with the attribute of the latter. Thus such a thing (i.e., anything that is

distinguished from others) must necessarily be determined by an

attribute and delimited by a limitation. All tanzih is in this sense

delimitation.



The gist of what is asserted here is the following. He who ‘purifies’

God purifies Him from all bodily attributes, but by that very act he is

(unconsciously) ‘assimilating’ ( tashbih ) Him with non-material,

spiritual beings. What about, then, if one ‘purifies’ Him from ‘limit-

ing’ ( taqyid ) itself? Even in that case he will be ‘limiting’ Him with

‘non-limitation’ ( i(laq ), while in truth God is ‘purified’ from (i.e.,

transcends) the fetters of both ‘limitation’ and ‘non-limitation’. He is

absolutely absolute; He is not delimited by either of them, nor does

He even exclude either of them.



Ibn ‘ Arabi makes a challenging statement that ‘anybody who exer-

cises and upholds tanzih in its extreme form is either an ignorant

man or one who does not know how to behave properly toward

God’.



As regards the ‘ignorant’, Ibn ‘Arabi gives no concrete example.

Some of the commentators, e.g., Bali Efendi , 5 are of the opinion

that the word refers to the Muslim Philosophers and their blind

followers. These are people, Bali Effendi says, who ‘do not believe

in the Divine Law, and who dare to ‘purify’ God, in accordance with

what is required by their theory, from all the attributes which God

Himself has attributed to Himself’ .



As to ‘those who do not know how to behave properly’, we have

Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s own remark. They are ‘those of the people who believe

in the Divine Law (i.e., Muslims) who “purify” God and do not go

beyond tanzih ’ . They are said to be behaving improperly because

‘they give the lie to God and the apostles without being conscious of





it’. Most probably this refers to the Mu‘tazilite theologians 6 who are

notorious for denying the existence of Attributes in the Essence of

God. They are believers, but they recklessly go to this extreme

driven by the force of their own reasoning, and end by completely

ignoring the aspect of tashbih which is so explicit in the Qoran and

Traditions.







Now to go back to the story of Noah which has been interrupted.

The kind of tanzih symbolized by Noah is an attitude peculiar to,

and characteristic of, Reason. Al-Qashani calls it ‘ tanzih by Reason’

(al- tanzih al-‘aqliy). Reason, by nature, refuses to admit that the

Absolute appears in a sensible form. But by doing so it overlooks a

very important point, namely, that ‘purifying’ the Absolute from all

sensible forms is, as we have seen a few lines back, not only tan-

tamount to delimiting it but is liable to fall into a kind of tashbih

which it detests so violently.



Commenting upon a verse by Ibn ‘Arab! which runs: ‘Every time

(the Absolute) appears to the eye (in a sensible form), Reason

expels (the image) by logical reasoning in applying which it is always

so assiduous’, al-Qashanl makes the following remark : 7



The meaning of the verse is this: Whenever (the Absolute) manifests

itself ( tajalli ) in a sensible form, Reason rejects it by logical reason-

ing, although in truth it (i.e., the sensible phenomenon) is a reality (in

its own way) on the level of the sensible world as well as in itself (i.e.,

not merely qua a sensible phenomenon but in its reality as an authen-

tic form of the self-manifestation of the Absolute). Reason ‘purifies’

it from being a sensible object because otherwise (the Absolute)

would be in a certain definite place and a certain definite direction.

Reason judges (the Absolute) to be above such (determinations).

And yet, the Absolute transcends what (Reason) ‘purifies’ it from, as

it transcends such a ‘purifying’ itself. For to ‘purify’ it in this way is to

assimilate it to spiritual beings and thereby delimit its absoluteness. It

makes the Absolute something determinate.



The truth of the matter is that the Absolute transcends both being in a

direction and not being in a direction, having a position and not

having a position; it transcends also all determinations originating

from the senses, reason, imagination, representation and thinking.



Besides this kind of tanzih symbolized by Noah, which is ‘ tanzih by

Reason’ , Ibn ‘Arab! recognizes another type of tanzih. This latter is

Tanzih of immediate tasting’ (al-tanzih al-dhawqiy), and is symbol-

ized by the above-mentioned prophet Enoch.



The two types of tanzih correspond to two Names: the one is

subbuh which has been mentioned at the beginning of this chapter,

and the other is quddus, the ‘Most Holy ’. 8 Both are tanzih , but the

one symbolized by Noah is ‘purifying’ the Absolute from any partners





52





Sufism and Taoism





and from all attributes implying imperfection, while the sec-

ond, in addition to this kind of tanzih , removes from the Absolute all

properties of the ‘possible’ beings (including even the highest per-

fections attained by ‘possible’ things) and all connections with mat-

eriality as well as any definite quality that may be imaginable and

thinkable about the Absolute . 9



The second type of tanzih represents the furthest limit of ‘subtrac-

tion’ ( tajrid ) which attributes to the Absolute the highest degree of

transcendence. According to Ibn ‘Arabi, the prophet Enoch was

literally an embodiment of such tanzih. Depicting the mythological

figure of Enoch as a symbol of this kind of tanzih, al-Qashani

says : 10



Enoch went to the extreme of ‘subtracting’ himself (i.e., not only did

he ‘subtract’ everything possible and material from the Absolute, but

he ‘subtracted’ all such elements from himself) and ‘spiritualization’

(tarawwuh), so much so that in the end he himself was turned into a

pure spirit. Thus he cast off his body, mixed with the angels, became

united with the spiritual beings of the heavenly spheres, and

ascended to the world of Sanctity. Thereby he completely went

beyond the ordinary course of nature.



In contrast to this, al-Qashani goes on to say, Noah lived on the

earth as a simple ordinary man with ordinary human desires, got

married and had children. But Enoch became himself a pure spirit.



All the desires fell off from him, his nature became spiritualized, the

natural bodily properties were replaced by spiritual properties. The

assiduous spiritual discipline completely changed his nature, and he

was transformed into a pure unmixed Intellect {‘aql mujarrad). And

thus he was raised to a high place in the fourth Heaven.



In less mythological terminology this would seem to imply that the

tanzih of Noah is that exercised by the Reason of an ordinary man

living with all his bodily limitations, while that of Enoch is a tanzih

exercised by the pure Intellect or mystical Awareness existing apart

from bodily conditions.



Intellect, being completely released from the bondage of body,

works, not as the natural human faculty of logical thinking, but as a

kind of mystical intuition. This is why its activity is called ‘ tanzih of

immediate tasting’. In either of the two forms, however, tanzih, in

Ibn ArabFs view, is one-sided and imperfect. Only when combined

with tashbih does it become the right attitude of man toward the

Absolute. The reason for this is, as has often been remarked above,

that the Absolute itself is not only an absolute Transcendent but

also Self-revealer to the world in the world.



The Absolute has an aspect in which it appears in each creature. Thus

it is the Outward making itself manifest in everything intelligible.





53







Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion



while being, at the same time, an Inward concealing itself from every

intelligence except in the mind of those who hold that the world is its

Form and its He-ness as (a concrete manifestation of) the Name ‘the

Outward’."



This passage is reproduced by al-Qashani in a more explicitly articu-

late form as follows : 12



The Absolute appears in every creature in accordance with the

‘preparedness’ (i.e., natural capacity) of that particular creature. It is

in this sense the Outward appearing in everything intelligible in

accordance with the ‘preparedness’ of the individual intelligence.

And that (i.e., the particular ‘preparedness’) is the limit of each

intelligence. . . .



But (the Absolute) is also the Inward, (and in that capacity it is) never

accessible to the intelligence beyond the limit set by the latter’s own

‘preparedness’. If the intelligence attempts to go beyond its natural

limit through thinking, that is, (if it tries to understand) what is

naturally concealed from its understanding, the heart goes off the

track, except in the case of the real sages whose understanding has no

limit. Those are they who understand the matter of God from God,

not by means of thinking. Nothing is ‘inward’ (i.e., concealed) from

their understanding. And they know that the world is the Form or

He-ness of the Absolute, that is, its inward reality, manifesting itself

outwardly under the Name ‘the Outward’. For the Divine Reality

(haqiqah) in its absoluteness can never be ‘ He-ness’ except in view of

a determination (or limitation), be it the determination of ‘absolute-

ness’ itself, as is exemplified by the Qoranic words: ‘He is God, the

One.’



As to the Divine Reality qua Divine Reality, it is completely free

from any determination, though (potentially) it is limited by all the

determinations of the Divine Names.



Not only does the Absolute manifest itself in everything in the world

in accordance with the ‘preparedness’ of each, but it is the ‘spirit’

(ruh) of everything, its ‘inward’ ( bafin ). This is the meaning of the

Name ‘the Inward’ . And in the ontological system of Ibn ‘Arabi, the

Absolute’s constituting the ‘spirit’ or ‘inward’ of anything means

nothing other than that the Absolute manifests itself in the

archetype (or the essence) of that thing. It is a kind of self-

manifestation ( tajalli ) in no less a degree than the outward tajalli.

Thus the Absolute, in this view, manifests itself both internally and

externally.



(The Absolute) is inwardly the ‘spirit’ of whatever appears outwardly

(in the phenomenal world). In this sense, it is the Inward. For the

relation it bears to the phenomenal forms of the world is like that of

the soul (of man) to his body which it governs . 13



The Absolute in this aspect does manifest itself in all things, and the





54





Sufism and Taoism





latter in this sense are but so many ‘determined (or limited)’ forms

of the Absolute. But if we, dazzled by this, exclusively emphasize

‘assimilation’ ( tashbih ), we would commit exactly the same mistake

of being one-sided as we would if we should resort to tanzih only.

‘He who “assimilates” the Absolute delimits and determines the

Absolute in no less a degree than he who “purifies” it, and is

ignorant of the Absolute’. 14 As al-Qashani says: 15



He who ‘assimilates’ the Absolute confines it in a determined form,

and anything that is confined within a fixing limit is in that very

respect a creature. From this we see that the whole of these fixing

limits (i.e., concrete things), though it is nothing other than the

Absolute, is not the Absolute itself. This because the One Reality

that manifests itself in all the individual determinations is something

different from these determinations put together.



Only when one combines tanzih and tashbih in one’s attitude, can

one be regarded as a ‘true knower’ (‘arif) of the Absolute. Ibn

‘Arabi, however, attaches to this statement a condition, namely,

that one must not try to make this combination except in a general,

unspecified way, because it is impossible to do otherwise. Thus

even the ‘true knower’ knows the Absolute only in a general

way, the concrete details of it being totally unknown to him. This

may be easily understood if one reflects upon the way man knows

himself. Even when he does have self-knowledge, he knows himself

only in a general way; he cannot possibly have a comprehensive

knowledge of himself in such a way that it would cover all the details

of himself without leaving anything at all. Likewise no one can

have a truly comprehensive knowledge of all the concrete details of

the world, but it is precisely in all these forms that the self-

manifestation of the Absolute is actualized. Thus tashbih must of

necessity take on a broad general form; it can never occur in a

concretely specified way. 16



As to the fact that the Absolute manifests itself in all, i.e., all that

exists outside us and inside us, Ibn ‘Arab! adduces a Qoranic verse

and adds the following remark: 17



God says (in the Qoran): ‘We will show them Our signs 18 in the

horizon as well as within themselves so that it be made clear to them

that it is Reality’ (XLI, 53). Here the expression ‘signs in the horizon’

refers to all that exists outside yourself, 19 while ‘within themselves’

refers to your inner essence. 20 And the phrase: ‘that it is Reality’

means that it is Reality in that you are its eternal form and it is your

inner spirit. Thus you are to the Absolute as your bodily form is to

yourself.



The upshot of all this is the view mentioned above, namely, that the

only right course for one to follow in this matter is to couple tanzih





9



Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 55



and tashbih. To have recourse exclusively to tashbih in one’s con-

ception of the Absolute is to fall into polytheism; to assert tanzih to

the exclusion of tashbih is to sever the divine from the whole

created world. The right attitude is to admit that, ‘thou art not He

(i.e., the phenomenal world is different from the Absolute), nay

thou art He, and thou seest Him in concretely existent things

absolutely undetermined and yet determined’ . 21 And once you have

attained this supreme intuitive knowledge, you have a complete

freedom of taking up the position either of ‘unification’ ( jam" , lit,

‘gathering’) or of ‘dispersion’ ( farq , lit. ‘separating’), 22 Concerning

these two terms, yam’, and farq, al-Qashani remarks: 23



Taking up the position of ‘unification’ means that you turn your

attention exclusively to the Absolute without taking into considera-

tion the creatures. This attitude is justified because Being belongs to

the Absolute alone, and any being is the Absolute itself.



(The position of ‘dispersion’ means that) you observe the creatures in

the Absolute in the sense that you observe how the essentially One is

diversified into the Many through its own Names and determinations.

The position of ‘dispersion’ is justified in view of the creaturely

determinations (of the Absolute) and the involvement of the ‘He-

ness’ of the Absolute in the ‘This-ness’ (i.e., concrete determina-

tions) of the created world.



I? The distinction between ‘unification’ and ‘dispersion’, thus

explained by al-Qashani, is an important one touching upon a

cardinal point of Ibn ‘Arabi’s ontology. As we already know, the

distinction is more usually expressed by tanzih and tashbih . We shall

now examine the distinction and relation between the two in more

H detail and from a somewhat different angle.







Ibn ‘Arabi starts from a well-known and oft-quoted Qoranic verse:

Laysa ka-mithli-hi shay’un, wa-huwa al-samiu al-bafir meaning

‘there is nothing like unto Him, and He is All-hearing, All-seeing’

(XLII, 11), which he interprets in an original way. The interpreta-

tion makes it clear from every aspect that tanzih and tashbih should

be combined if we are to take the right attitude toward God.



Let us start by observing that the verse grammatically allows of

two different interpretations, the pivotal point being the second

term ka-mithli-hi, which literally is a complex of three words: ka

‘like’ mithli ‘similar to’, and hi ‘Him’.



The first of these three words, ka ‘like’, can syntactically be

interpreted as either (1) expletive, i.e., having no particular mean-

ing of its own in the combination with mithli which itself connotes

similarity or equality, or (2) non-expletive, i.e., keeping its own

independent meaning even in such a combination.



If we choose (1), the first half of the verse would mean, ‘there is





56





Sufism and Taoism





nothing like Him’ with an additional emphasis on the non-existence

of anything similar to Him. It is, in other words, the most emphatic

declaration of tanzih. And in this case, the second half of the verse:

‘and He is All-hearing, All-seeing’ is to be understood as a state-

ment of tashbih, because ‘hearing’ and ‘seeing’ are pre-eminently

human properties. Thus the whole verse would amount to a combi-

nation of tanzih and tashbih.



If we choose the second alternative, the first half of the verse

would mean the same thing as laysa mithla-mithli-hi shay’ meaning

‘there is nothing like anything similar to Him’. Here something

‘similar to Him’ is first mentally posited, then the existence of

anything ‘similar’ to that (which is similar to Him) is categorically

denied. Since something similar to Him is established at the outset,

it is a declaration of tashbih. And in this case, the second half of the

verse must be interpreted as a declaration of tanzih . This interpreta-

tion is based on the observation that the sentence structure - with

the pronominal subject, huwa ‘He, put at the head of the sentence,

and the following epithets, samV (hearing) and basir (seeing) being

determined by the article, al- (the) - implies that He is the only

sami’ and the only basir in the whole world of Being . 24 Thus, here

again we get a combination of tanzih and tashbih.



The following elliptic expression of Ibn ‘ Arabi will be quite easily

understood if we approach it with the preceding explanation in

mind . 25



God Himself ‘purifies’ (i.e., tanzih) by saying: laysa ka-mithli-hi shay ,

and ‘assimilates’ (i.e., tashbih) by saying: wa-huwa al-samV al-ba$ir.

God ‘assimilates’ or ‘declares Himself to be dual’ by saying: laysa

ka-mithli-hi shay, while he ‘purifies’ or ‘declares Himself to be uni-

que’ by saying: wa-huwa al-samV al-basir.



What is very important to remember in this connection is that, in

Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s conception, tanzih and tashbih are each a kind of

‘delimitation’ ( tahdid ). In both the Qoran and Tradition, he

observes , 26 we often find God describing Himself with ‘delimita-

tion’, whether the expression aims at tanzih or tashbih. Even God

cannot describe himself in words without delimiting Himself. He

describes Himself for example, as, ‘sitting firm on the throne’,

‘descending to the lowest heaven’, ‘being in heaven’, ‘being on the

earth’, ‘being with men wherever they may be’, etc.; none of these

expressions is free from delimiting and determining God. Even

when He says of Himself that ‘there is nothing like unto Him’ in the

sense of tanzih , 11 He is setting a limit to Himself, because that which

is distinguished from everything determined is, by this very act of

distinction, itself determined, i.e., as something totally different

from everything determined. For ‘a complete non-determination is

a kind of determination’.





57







Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion



Thus tanzih is a ‘delimitation’ no less than tashbih. It is evident

that neither of them alone can ever constitute a perfect description

of the Absolute. Strictly speaking, however, even the combination

of the two cannot be perfect in these respects, for delimitations will

remain delimitations in whatever way one combines them. But by

combining these two delimitations which of all the delimitations are

the most fundamental and most comprehensive in regard to the

Absolute, one approaches the latter to the utmost extent that is

humanly possible.



Of these two basic attitudes of man toward the Absolute, Noah, as

remarked above, represents tanzih. In order to fight idolatry which

was the prevalent tendency of the age, he exclusively emphasized

tanzih. Naturally this did nothing but arouse discontent and anger

among the idol- worshippers, and his appeal fell only upon unheed-

ing ears. ‘If, however, Noah had combined the two attitudes in

dealing with his people, they would have listened to his words’ . 28 On

this point al-Qashani makes the following observation:



In view of the fact that his people were indulging in an excessive

tashbih, paying attention only to the diversity of the Names and being

veiled by the Many from the One, Noah stressed tanzih exclusively.



If, instead of brandishing to them the stringent unification and

unmitigated tanzih, he had affirmed also the diversity of the Names

and invited them to accept the Many that are One and the Multiplic-

ity that is Unity, clothed the Unity with the form of Multiplicity, and

combined between the attitude of tashbih and that of tanzih as did

(our prophet) Muhammad, they would readily have responded to

him in so far as their outward familiarity with idolatry was agreeable

to tashbih and in so far as their inner nature was agreeable to tanzih.



As is clearly suggested by this passage, the idols that were worship-

ped by the people of Noah were, in Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s conception, prop-

erly ‘the diversity of the Names’; that is, so many concrete forms

assumed by the Divine Names. The idols in this sense are sacred in

themselves. The sin of idolatry committed by the people of Noah

consisted merely in the fact that they were not aware of the idols

being concrete forms of the self-manifestation of the One, and that

they worshipped them as independent divinities.



The kind of absolute tanzih which was advocated by Noah is called

by Ibn ‘Arabi furqan, a Qoranic term, to which he ascribes an

original meaning , 29 and which is to play the role of a key-term in his

system.



The word furqan, in Ibn ‘ArabFs interpretation derives from the

root FRQ meaning ‘separating’. One might expect him to use it to

designate the aspect of ‘dispersion’ ( farq ) referred to a few para-





58





Sufism and Taoism





graphs back, which is also derived from exactly the same root.

Actually, however, he means by furqan the contrary of ‘dispersion’.

‘Separating’ here means ‘separating’ in a radical manner the aspect

of Unity from that of the diversified self-manifestation of the Abso-

lute. Furqan thus means an absolute and radical tanzih , an intrans-

igent attitude of tanzih which does not allow even of a touch of

tashbih .



Noah exhorted his people to a radical tanzih, but they did not

listen to him. Thereupon Noah, according to the Qoran, laid a bitter

complaint before God against these faithless people saying, ‘I have

called upon my people day and night, but my admonition has done

nothing but increase their aversion’ (LXXI, 5-6).



This verse, on the face of it, depicts Noah complaining of the

stubborn faithlessness of his people and seriously accusing them of

this sinful attitude. However much he exhorts them to pure mono-

theism, he says, they only turn a deaf ear to his words. Such is the

normal understanding of the verse.



Ibn ‘ Arabi, however, gives it an extremely original interpretation,

so original, indeed, that it will surely shock or even scandalize

common sense. The following passage shows how he understands

this verse. 30



What Noah means to say is that his people turned a deaf ear to him

because they knew what would necessarily follow if they were to

respond favorably to his exhortation. (Superficially Noah’s words

might look like a bitter accusation) but the true ‘knowers of God’ are

well aware that Noah here is simply giving high praise to his people in

a language of accusation. As they (i.e. the true ‘knowers’ of God)

understand, the people of Noah did not listen to him because his

exhortation was ultimately an exhortation to furqan.



More simply stated, this would amount to saying that (1) Noah

reproaches his people outwardly but (2) in truth he is merely

praising them. And their attitude is worthy of high praise because

they know (by instinct) that that to which Noah was calling them

was no other than a pure and radical tanzih, and that such a tanzih

was not the right attitude of man toward God. Tanzih in its radical

form and at its extreme limit would inevitably lead man to the

Absolute per se, which is an absolutely Unknowable. How could

man worship something which is absolutely unknown and unknow-

able?



If Noah had been more practical and really wished to guide his

people to the right form of religious faith, he should have combined

tanzih and tashbih . A harmonious combination of tanzih and tashbih

is called by Ibn ‘Arab! qur’an . 31 The qur’an is the only right attitude

of man toward God.





Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion 59



The right (religious) way is qur’an not furqan. And (it is but natural)

that he who stands in the position of qur’an should never listen to (an

exhortation to) furqan, even though the latter itself is contained in

the former. Qur’an implies furqan, but furqan does not imply

qur’an . 32



Thus we see that the relation of Noah with his people, as Ibn ‘Arabi

understands it, has a complex inner structure. On the one hand,

Noah, as we have just observed, outwardly reproaches his people

for their faithlessness, but inwardly he praises them because of the

right attitude they have taken on this crucial question. On the other

hand, the people, on their part, know, if not consciously, that pure

monotheism in its true and deep sense is not to reduce God to one of

his aspects such as is implied by the kind of tanzih advocated by

Noah, but to worship the One God in all the concrete forms of the

world as so many manifestations of God. Outwardly, however, they

give the impression of committing an outrageous mistake by refus-

ing to accept Noah’s admonition and exhorting each other to stick to

the traditional form of idol- worship.



Ibn Arabi terms this relation between Noah and his people

‘(reciprocal) makr , a word meaning ‘stratagem’, ‘artifice’ or ‘cun-

ning deceit’. This is based on a Qoranic verse: ‘And they tried to

deceive by a big artifice’ (LXXI, 22). This situation is explained by

Affifi in a very lucid way. He writes: 33



When Noah called upon his people to worship God by way of tanzih

he did try to deceive them. More generally speaking, whoever calls

upon others to worship God in such a way, does nothing other than

trying to exercise makr upon them to deceive them. This is a makr

because those who are admonished, whatever their religion and

whatever the object they worship, are in reality worshipping nothing

other than God. (Even an idolater) is worshipping the Absolute in

some of its forms of self-manifestation in the external world.



To call upon the idolaters who are actually worshipping God in this

form and tell them not to worship the idols but worship God alone, is

liable to produce a false impression as if the idolaters were worship-

ping (in the idols) something other than God, while in truth there is

no ‘other’ thing than God in the whole world.



The people of Noah, on their part, exercised makr when they, to fight

against Noah s admonition, called upon one another saying, ‘ Do not

abandon your gods! This is also a clear case of makr, because if they

had abandoned the worship of their idols, their worship of God

would have diminished by that amount. And this because the idols

are nothing other than so many self-manifestations of God



Affifi in this connection rightly calls attention to the fact that, for Ibn

‘Arabi, the Qoranic verse: ‘And thy Lord hath decreed that you

should worship none other than Him’ (XVII, 23) does not mean, as





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Sufism and Taoism





it does normally, ‘that you should not worship anything other than

God’, but rather ‘that whatever you worship, you are thereby not

(actually) worshipping anything other than God ’. 34



In explaining why Noah’s call to the worship of God is to be

understood as a makr, Ibn ‘Arabi uses the terms the ‘beginning’

(bidayah) and the ‘end’ (, ghayah ). 35 That is to say, he distinguishes

between the ‘beginning’ stage and the ‘end’ stage in idol-worship,

and asserts that these two stages are in this case exactly one and the

same thing. The ‘beginning’ is the stage at which the people of Noah

were indulging in idol-worship, and at which they were reproached

by Noah for faithlessness. They were strongly urged by him to leave

this stage and go over to the other end, i.e., the ‘end’ stage where

they would be worshipping God as they should. However, already

at the ‘beginning’ stage Noah’s people were worshipping none other

than God albeit only through their idols. So, properly speaking,

there was no meaning at all in Noah’s exhorting them to leave the

first stage and go over to the last stage. Indeed, it was even more

positively an act of makr on the part of Noah that he distinguished

between the ‘beginning’ and the ‘end’ when there was nothing at all

to be distinguished.



As al-Qashani puts it, ‘how can a man be advised to go to God

when he is already with God?’ To tell the idolaters to stop worship-

ping God and to worship God alone amounts exactly to the same

thing as telling those who are actually worshipping God to abandon

the worship of God and to resort to the worship of God! It is absurd,

or rather it is worse than absurd, because such an admonition is

liable to make people blind to the self-revealing aspect of the

Absolute.



The secret of idol-worship which we have just seen may be

understood in more theoretical terms as a problem of the compati-

bility of the One and the Many in regard to the Absolute. There is

no contradiction in the Absolute being the One and the Many at the

same time. Al-Qashani offers a good explanation of this fact, com-

paring it to the essential unity of a human being . 36



(Since there is nothing existent in the real sense of the word except

the Absolute itself, a true ‘knower of God’) does not see in the form

of the Many anything other than God’s face, for he knows that it is He

that manifests Himself in all these forms. Thus (whatever he may

worship) he worships only God.



This may be understood in the following way. The divergent forms of

the Many within the One are either spiritual, i.e., non-sensible, such

as angels, or outwardly visible and sensible such as the heavens and

earth and all the material things that exist between the two. The

former are comparable to the spiritual faculties in the bodily frame of

a man, while the latter are comparable to his bodily members. The





Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion





61





existence of multiplicity in man in no way prevents him from having a

unity. (Likewise, the existence of the Many in God does not deprive

Him of His essential Unity.)



The conclusion to be reached from all this is that there is nothing

wrong with idolatry, for whatever one worships one is worshipping

through it God Himself. Are all idol-worshippers, then, right in

indulging in idolatry? That is another question. Idolatry, though in

itself it has nothing blamable, is exposed to grave danger. Idolatry is

right in so far as the worshipper is aware that the object of his

worship is a manifested form of God and that, therefore, by wor-

shipping the idol he is worshipping God. Once, however, he forgets

this fundamental fact, he is liable to be deceived by his own imagina-

tion and ascribe real divinity to the idol (a piece of wood or a stone,

for example) and begin to worship it as a god existing independently

of, and side by side with, God. If he reaches this point, his attitude is

a pure tashbih which completely excludes tanzih.



Thus in Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, there are two basic attitudes toward

idolatry that are opposed to each other: the one is an attitude

peculiar to the ‘higher’ (a‘la) people, while the other is characteris-

tic of the ‘lower’ ( adna ). He says : 37



The ‘knower’ knows who (really) is the object of his worship; he

knows also the particular form in which the object of his worship

appears (to him). He is aware that the ‘dispersion’ and ‘multiplicity’



Y . are comparable to the corporeal members in the sensible form (of

man’s body) and the non-corporeal faculties in the spiritual form (of

man), so that in every object of worship what is worshipped is no

f. other than God Himself.



In contrast to this, the ‘lower’ people are those who imagine a divine

nature in every object of their worship. If it were not for this (wrong)



Y, imagination, nobody would worship stones and other similar things.



This is why (God) said to men of this kind, ‘Name them (i.e., desig-

nate each object of your worship by its name)!’ (XIII, 23). If they

*!’ were really to name these objects they would have called them a



stone, a tree, or a star, (because their idols were in fact stones, trees

and stars). But if they had been asked, 1 Whom are you worshipping?’,



“ they would have replied, ‘a god!’ They would never have said, ‘God’



or even ‘the god’. 38



Y; The ‘higher’ people, on the contrary, are not victims of this kind of



deceitful imagination. (In the presence of each idol) they tell them-

W selves, ‘This is a concrete form of theophany, and, as such, it deserves



a veneration’. Thus they do not confine (theophany) to this single



instance (i.e., they look upon everything as a particular form of

theophany).



If we are to judge the attitude of Noah’s people who refused to

respond to his advice, we must say that it was right in one respect

and it was wrong in another. They were right in that they upheld





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Sufism and Taoism



(though unconsciously) the truly divine nature of the outward forms

of theophany. This they did by resolutely refusing to throw away

their idols. But they were wrong in that they, deceived by their own

imagination, regarded each idol as an independently existing god,

and thus opposed in their minds ‘small goods ’ 39 to God as the ‘great

God’.



According to Ibn ‘Arabi, the ideal combination of tanzih and

tashbih was achieved only in Islam. The real qur’an came into being

for the first time in history in the belief of Muhammad and his

community. On this point Ibn ‘Arabi says : 40



The principle of qur’an was upheld in its purity only by Muhammad

and his community ‘which was the best of all communities that had

ever appeared among mankind’. 41 (Only he and his community real-

ized the two aspects of) the verse: laysa ka-mithli-hi shay ‘There is

nothing like unto Him’, for (their position) gathered everything into

a unity. 42



As we have seen above, the Qoran relates that Noah called upon his

people ‘by night and day’. Over against this, Muhammad, Ibn

‘Arabi says, ‘called upon his people, not “by night and day” but “by

night in the day and by day in the night” \ 43



Evidently, ‘day’ symbolizes tashbih and ‘night’ tanzih, because

the daylight brings out the distinctive features of the individual

things while the nocturnal darkness conceals these distinctions. The

position of Muhammad, in this interpretation, would seem to sug-

gest a complete fusion of tashbih and tanzih.



Was Noah, then, completely wrong in his attitude? Ibn ‘Arab!

answers to this question in both the affirmative and the negative.

Certainly, Noah preached outwardly tanzih alone. Such a pure

tanzih, if taken on the level of Reason, is, as we have already seen,

liable to lead ultimately to assimilating the Absolute with pure

spirits. And tanzih in this sense is a ‘ tanzih by Reason’, and is

something to be rejected. With Noah himself, however, tanzih was

not of this nature. Far from being a result of logical thinking, it was a

tanzih based on a deep prophetic experience 44 Only, the people of

Noah failed to notice that; for them the tanzih advocated by Noah

was nothing but a tanzih to be reached by the ordinary process of

reasoning.



Real tanzih is something quite different from this kind of logical

tanzih . And according to Ibn ‘ Arabi, the right kind of tanzih was first

advocated consciously by Islam. It does not consist in recognizing

the absolute Unknowable alone with a total rejection and denial of

the phenomenal world of things. The real tanzih is established on

the basis of the experience by which man becomes conscious of the

unification of all the Divine Attributes, each Attribute being actual-









63







Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion



ized in a concrete thing or event in the world. In more plain terms,

the real tanzih consists in man’s peeping through the things and

events of this world into the grand figure of the One God beyond

them. It is ‘purifying’ {tanzih), no doubt, because it stands on the

consciousness of the essential ‘oneness’ of God, but it is not a purely

logical or intellectual ‘purifying’. It is a tanzih which comprises in

itself tashbih.



In Ibn ‘Arabi’s view, the tanzih practised by Muhammad was

inviting men not to the absolute Absolute which bears no relation at

all to the world, but to Allah the Merciful, that is, the Absolute as

the ultimate ground of the world, the creative source of all Being. It

is worthy of notice also that of all the Divine Names the ‘Merciful’

(al-Rahman) has been specially chosen in this context. The name

‘Merciful’ is for Ibn ‘Arabi the most comprehensive Name which

comprises and unifies all the Divine Names. In this capacity the

‘Merciful’ is synonymous with Allah. Al-Qashani is quite explicit on

this point . 45



It is remarkable that the ‘Merciful’ is a Name which comprises all the

Divine Names, so that the whole world is comprised therein, there

being no difference between this Name and the Name Allah. This is

evidenced by the Qoranic verse: ‘Say: Call upon (Him by the Name)

Allah or call upon (Him by the Name) Merciful. By whichever Name

you call upon Him (it will be the same) for all the most beautiful

Names are His’ (XVII, 110).



Now each group of people in the world stands under the Lordship of

one of His Names. And he who stands under the Lordship of a

particular Name is a servant of that Name. Thus the apostle of God

(Muhammad) called mankind from this state of divergence of the

Names unto the unifying plane of the Name Merciful or the Name

Allah.



To this Bali Efendi 46 adds the remark that, unlike in the case of

Noah, there is no relation of reciprocal ‘deceit’ ( makr ) between

Muhammad and his people, for there is no motive, neither on the

part of Muhammad nor on the part of the community, for having

recourse to makr. Muhammad, he goes on to say, certainly invited

men to the worship of the One God , 47 but he did not thereby call

men to the Absolute in its aspect of He-ness. In other words, he did

not unconditionally reject the idols which men had been worship-

ping; he simply taught men to worship the idols (or, indeed, any

other thing in the world) in the right way, that is, to worship them as

so many self-manifestations of God. In the Islamic tanzih there is

included the right form of tashbih.



If a man wants to know the Absolute by the power of his Reason

alone, he is inevitably led to the kind of tanzih which has no place for





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65





Sufism and Taoism



tashbih. If, on the contrary, he exercises his Imagination (i.e., the

faculty of thinking through concrete imagery) alone, he falls into

pure tashbih. Both tanzih and tashbih of this sort are by themselves

imperfect and positively harmful. Only when man sees by the

experience of ‘unveiling’ the true reality of the matter, can tanzih

and tashbih assume a form of perfection.



If Reason functions by itself quite independently of anything else so

that it acquires knowledge by its own cognitive power, the knowledge

it obtains of God will surely be of the nature of tanzih, not tashbih.



But if God furnishes Reason with a (true) knowledge of the Divine

self-manifestation (pertaining to the tashbih aspect of the Absolute),

its knowledge of God attains perfection, and it will exercise tanzih

where it should, and exercise tashbih where it should. Reason in such

a state will witness the Absolute itself pervading all cognizable forms,

natural and elemental. And there will remain no form but that

Reason identifies its essence with the Absolute itself.



Such is the perfect and complete knowledge (of God) that has been

brought by the revealed religions. And the faculty of Imagination

exercises its own judgment (upon every thing) in the light of this

knowledge (i.e., Imagination collaborates with Reason by modifying

the tanzih-\ iew of Reason with its own tashbih-view).™



The gist of what Ibn ‘Arab! says in this passage may be summarized

as follows. Under normal conditions, tanzih is the product of

Reason, and tashbih is the product of Imagination ( wahm ). But

when the experience of ‘unveiling’ produces in the mind a perfect

knowledge, Reason and Imagination are brought into complete

harmony, and tanzih and tashbih become united in the perfect

knowledge of God. Of Reason and Imagination in such a state,

however, it is invariably the latter that holds regal sway {sultan).



Concerning the proper activity of Reason in this process and the

controlling function exercised by Imagination over Reason in such a

way that a perfect combination of tanzih and tashbih may be

obtained, Bali Efendi makes the following illuminating remark : 49



In just the same place where Reason passes the judgment of tanzih,

Imagination passes the judgment of tashbih. Imagination does this

because it witnesses how the Absolute pervades and permeates all

the forms, whether mental or physical. Imagination in this state

observes the Absolute in the (completely purified) form peculiar to

tanzih as established in Reason, and it realizes that to affirm tanzih

(exclusively, as is done by Reason) is nothing but delimiting the

Absolute, and that the delimitation of the Absolute is nothing but (a

kind of) tashbih (i.e., the completely purified Absolute is also a

particular ‘form’ assumed by the Absolute). But Reason is not aware

that the tanzih which it is exercising is precisely one of those forms

which it thinks must be rejected from the Absolute by tanzih.







These words of Bali Efendi makes the following argument of Ibn

‘Arab! easy to understand : 50



It is due to this situation that Imagination 51 has a greater sway in man

than Reason for man, even when his Reason has reached the utmost

limit of development, is not free from the control exercised over him

by Imagination and cannot do without relying upon representation

regarding what he has grasped by Reason.



Thus Imagination is the supreme authority ( sultan ) in the most

perfect form (of Being), namely, man. And this has been confirmed

by all the revealed religions, which have exercised tanzih and tashbih

at the same time; they have exercised tashbih by Imagination where

(Reason has established) tanzih, and exercised tanzih by Reason

where (Imagination has established) tashbih. Everything has in this

way, been brought into a close organic whole, wherefanziTz cannot be

separated from tashbih nor tashbih from tanzih . It is this situation that

is referred to in the Qoranic verse: ‘There is nothing like unto Him,

and He is All-hearing All-seeing’, in which God Himself describes

Him with tanzih and tashbih . . .



Then there is another verse in which He says, ‘exalted is thy Lord, the

Lord of majestic power standing far above that with which they

describe Him (XXXVII, 180). This is said because men tend to

describe Him with what is given by their Reason. So He ‘purifies’

Himself here from their very tanzih, because they are doing nothing

but delimit Him by their tanzih. All this is due to the fact that Reason

is by nature deficient in understanding this kind of thing.





Notes



1. Cf. Affifi, Fuy., Com., p. 33.



2. The epithet subbuhiyyah is a derivative of subbuh or sabbuh which is one of the

Divine Names meaning roughly ‘One who is glorified’ ‘the All-Glorious’. The verb

sabbaha {Allah) means to ‘glorify’ God by crying out Subhana Allah! (‘Far above

stands God beyond all imperfections and impurities!’)



3. Fus., p. 45/68.



4. p. 45.



5. Fu$., Com., p. 47. (The commentary of Bali Efendi is given in the same Cairo

edition of the Fuyizj which we are using in the present work.)



6. Cf. Affifi, Fuj., Com., p. 12.



7. p. 88.



8. Ibn ‘ Arab! calls the wisdom embodied by Noah ‘ wisdom of a subbuh nature’ , and

calls the wisdom symbolized by Enoch ‘wisdom of a quddus nature’ ( hikmah qud-

duslyah), Fus., p. 6 /75.





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Sufism and Taoism





9. Cf. Qashani, p. 60.



10. ibid.



11. Fus., p. 46/68.



12. pp. 46-47.



13. Fus., P- 47/68. Ibn'Arabi takes this occasion to point out that the Absolute does

not allow of definition not only in its absoluteness but also in its self-revealing aspect.

The impossibility of defining the Absolute perse has already been fully explained in

Chapter II. But even in its aspect of self-manifestation, the Absolute cannot be

defined because, as we have just seen, the Absolute in this aspect is everything,

external or internal, and if we are to define it, the definition must be formulated in

such a way that it covers all the definitions of all the things in the world. But since the

things are infinite in number, such a definition is never to be attained.



14. Fus., p. 47/69.



15. p. 47.



16. Fus., P- 47/69.



17. Fus -, p- 48/69.



18. ‘Our signs’, that is, ‘Our Attributes’ - al-Qashani.



19. ‘in so far as their determinations ( ta‘ayyunat , i.e., properties conceived as

‘determinations’ of the Absolute) are different from your determination’ - al-

Qashani. This means that, although essentially it is not necessary to distinguish the

things of the outer world and yourself, there is a certain respect in which ‘all that exist

outside of yourself’, i.e., the modes of determination peculiar to the things of the

outer world, are different from the mode of determination which is peculiar to

‘yourself’, i.e., the inner world.



20. ‘i.e., what is manifested in yourself by His Attributes. If it were not for this

manifestation, you would not exist in the world’. - al-Qashani.



21. Fus -, P- 49/70.



22. Fus., p. 98-99/93.



23. p. 99.



24. that is to say, whenever anybody sees or hears something, it is not the man who

really sees or hears, but God Himself who sees or hears in the form of that man.



25. Fus., P- 49/70.



26. Fus., P- 131/111.



27. taking ka as expletive.



28. Fus., P- 50/70.





Metaphysical Unification and Phenomenal Dispersion





67





29. The word furqan, whatever its etymology, denotes in the Qoran the Qoran itself.

For Ibn ‘Arab!, its meaning is totally different from this.



30. Fus., p. 51/70.



31. Qur’an as a technical term of Ibn ‘Arabi’s philosophy is not the name of the

Sacred Book Qur’an (or Qoran). He derives this word from the root QR’ meaning ‘to

gather together’ .



32. Fus ., p. 51/70.



33. Fus., Com., p. 39.



34. ibid. Cf. also Fus., p. 55/72.



35. Fus., p. 54/71-72.



36. p. 55. The problem of the One and the Many will form the specific topic of

Chapter VII.



37. Fus„ p. 55/72.



38. This implies that for these people each idol is ‘a god’, i.e., an independent

divinity; they are not aware that in the forms of the idols they are ultimately

worshipping the One God.



39. Cf. Qashani, p. 55.



40. Fus., p. 51/71.



41. Reference to III, 110 of the Qoran.



42. i.e., it affirmed ‘separating’ ( farq ) in ‘gathering’ ( jam ‘), and affirmed ‘gathering’

in ‘separating’, asserting thereby that the One is Many from a relative point of view

and that the Many are One in their reality - al-Qashani, p. 51.



43. Fus., p. 52/71.



44. Fus., P- 53/71.



45. p. 54.







46. ibid., footnote.



47. Outwardly this might be considered a pure tanzih.



48. Fus., P- 228/181.



49. p. 229, footnote.



50. Fus., P- 229/181-182.



51. The word Imagination ( wahm ) must be taken in this context in the sense of the

mental faculty of thinking through concrete imagery based on representation

{tasawwur).





Metaphysical Perplexity





69




V Metaphysical Perplexity





As the preceding chapter will have made clear, in Ibn ‘Arabi’s

conception, the only right attitude of man toward God is a harmoni-

ous unity composed of tanzih and tashbih , which is realizable solely

on the basis of the mystical intuition of ‘unveiling’.



If man follows the direction of Imagination which is not yet

illumined by the experience of ‘unveiling’, he is sure to fall into the

wrong type of idolatry in which each individual idol is worshipped as

a really independent and self-sufficient god. Such a god is nothing

but a groundless image produced in the mind of man. And the result

is a crude type of tashbih which can never rise to the level of tanzih.

If, on the other hand, man tries to approach God by following the

direction of Reason unaided by Imagination, man will inevitably

rush toward an exclusive tanzih, and lose sight of the Divine life

pulsating in all the phenomena of the world including himself.



The right attitude which combines in itself tanzih and tashbih is, in

short, to see the One in the Many and the Many in the One, or rather

to see the Many as One and the One as Many. The realization of this

kind of coincidentia oppositorum is called by Ibn ‘Arab! ‘perplexity’

(hay rah). As such, this is a metaphysical perplexity because here

man is impeded by the very nature of what he sees in the world from

definitely deciding as to whether Being is One or Many.



Ibn ‘Arabi explains the conception of ‘perplexity’ by an original

interpretation of a Qoranic verse. The verse in question is: ‘And

they (i.e., the idols) have caused many people to go astray’ (LXXI,

24). This is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi to mean that the existence of

many idols has put men into perplexity at the strange sight of the

absolute One being actually diversified into Many through its own

activity. 1



The idols in this context represent the multiplicity of forms that

are observable in the world. And, as al-Qashani remarks, anybody

who looks at them ‘with the eye of unification (tawhidf , i.e., with

the preconception of tanzih, is sure to become embarrassed and

perplexed at the sight of the One being diversified according to the

relations it bears to its loci of self-manifestation.







The Qoranic verse just quoted ends with another sentence: ‘and

(o God) increase Thou not the people of injustice (zalimin) except

in going astray’, and the whole verse is put in the mouth of Noah.



This second sentence, too, is interpreted by Ibn ‘Arabi in quite an

original way. The interpretation is, in fact, more than original, for it

squeezes out of the verse a conception of zalim which is exactly the

opposite of what is meant by the Qoran. He begins by saying that

the word zalim or ‘a man of injustice’ here is equivalent to a phrase

which occurs repeatedly in the Qoran , zalim li-nafsi-hi, meaning ‘he

who does injustice or wrong to himself’. Now according to the

actual usage of the Qoran, ‘he who wrongs himself’ designates a

stubborn unbeliever who disobeys God’s commands and by sticking

obstinately to polytheism, drives himself on to perdition. But, as

interpreted by Ibn ‘Arab! zalim li-nafsi-hi refers to a man who ‘does

wrong to himself’ by refusing himself all the pleasures of the present

world and devotes himself to seeking ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’) in

God. 2



This interpretation is based on another Qoranic verse, namely

XXXV, 32, which reads: ‘Some of them are doing injustice to

themselves and some of them are moderate, while some others vie

one with another in doing good works with the permission of God’ .

And quite opposite to the usual ranking, Ibn ‘Arabi considers ‘those

who do injustice to themselves’ the highest and best of all the three

classes of men. They are, he says, ‘the best of all people, the

specially chosen of God’. 3



Al-Qashani quotes, in this connection, a Tradition from al-

Tirmidhi’s $ahih which reads: ‘These men are all in one and the

same grade; all of them will be in the Garden’. He says that this

Tradition refers to the three classes of men mentioned in the verse

just quoted. These three classes are, as the Tradition explicitly

states, in the same grade in the sense that they all are destined to go

to the Garden, but al-Qashani thinks that this does not prevent

them from forming a hierarchy, the highest being ‘those who do

injustice to themselves’, the middle the ‘moderate’, and the lowest

‘those who vie with one another in the performance of good works’ .

The theoretical explanation he gives of this hierarchy, however,

does not seem to be convincing at all. It would seem to be better for

us to take, as Affifi does, ‘the man who does injustice to himself’ as

meaning a mystic who has had the experience of ‘unveiling’ in

self-annihilation, and ‘the moderate man’ as meaning ‘a man who

keeps to the middle course’. Then most naturally, ‘those who vie

one another’ would mean those who are still in the earlier stage of

the mystical training.



However this may be, what is important for Ibn ‘Arabi is the

conception that the ‘man who does injustice to himself’ occupies the





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Sufism and Taoism





highest rank precisely by being in metaphysical perplexity. As is

easy to see, this has a weighty bearing on the interpretation of the

latter half of the Qoranic verse, in which Noah implores God to

increase more and more the ‘going astray’ of the ‘people of injustice .



Noah, according to this understanding, implores God to increase

even more the metaphysical ‘perplexity’ of the highest class of men,

while the standard, i.e., common-sense, interpretation of the verse

sees Noah calling down Divine curses upon the worst class of men,

the stubborn idol-worshippers.



In exactly the same spirit, Ibn ‘Arab! finds a very picturesque

description of this ‘perplexity’ in a Qoranic verse (II, 20) which

depicts how God trifles with wicked people who are trying in vain to

beguile and delude Him and those who sincerely believe in Him. A

dead darkness settles down upon these people. From time to time

roars frightful thunder, and a flash of lightning ‘almost snatches

away their sight’. And ‘as often as they are illuminated they walk in

the light, but when it darkens again they stand still’ .



This verse in Ibn ‘Arabl’s interpretation, yields a new meaning

which is totally different from what we ordinarily understand.

Although he merely quotes the verse without any comment, what

he wants to convey thereby is evident from the very fact that he

adduces it in support of his theory of ‘perplexity’ . On behalf of his

Master, al-Qashani makes it explicit in the following way: 4



This verse describes the ‘perplexity’ of these people. Thus, when the

light of the Unity ( ahadiyah ) is manifested they ‘walk’, that is, they

move ahead with the very movement of God, while when it darkens

against them as God becomes hidden behind the veil and the Multi-

plicity appears instead (of Unity) obstructing their view, they just

stand still in ‘perplexity’.



This ‘perplexity’ necessarily assumes the form of a circular move-

ment. ‘The man in “perplexity” draws a circle’, as Ibn ‘ Arab! says. 5

This is necessarily so, because the ‘walking’ of such a man reflects

the very circle of the Divine self- manifestation. The Absolute itself

draws a circle in the sense that it starts from the primordial state of

Unity, ‘descends’ to the plane of concrete beings and diversifies

itself in myriads of things and events, and finally ‘ascends’ back into

the original non-differentiation. The man in ‘perplexity’ draws the

same circle, for he ‘walks with God, from God, to God, his onward

movement being identical with the movement of God Himself’. 6



This circular movement, Ibn ‘ Arab! observes, turns round a pivot

(qu(b) or center ( markaz ), which is God. And since the man is

merely going round and round the center, his distance from God

remains exactly the same whether he happens to be in the state of

Unity or in that of Multiplicity. Whether, in other words, he is





Metaphysical Perplexity





71







looking at the Absolute in its primordial Unity or as it is diversified

in an infinite number of concrete things, he stands at the same

distance from the Absolute per se.



On the contrary, a man who, his vision being veiled, is unable to

see the truth, is a ‘man who walks along a straight road’. He

imagines God to be far away from him, and looks for God afar off.

He is deceived by his own imagination and strives in vain to reach

his imagined God. In the case of such a man, there is a definite

distinction between the ‘from’ {min, i.e., the starting-point) and the

‘to’ ( ila , i.e., the ultimate goal), and there is naturally an infinite

distance between the two points. The starting-point is himself

imagined to be far away from himself, and the distance between is

an imaginary distance which he thinks separates him from God.

Such a man, in spite of his desire to approach Him, goes even farther

from God as he walks along the straight road stretching infinitely

ahead.



The thought itself, thus formulated and expressed with the image

of a man walking in a circle and another going ahead along a straight

line, is indeed of remarkable profundity. As an interpretation of the

above-cited Qoranic verse, however, it certainly does not do justice

to the meaning given directly by the actual context. The extraordi-

nary freedom in the interpretation of the Qoran comes out even

more conspicuously when Ibn ‘Arab! applies his exegesis to other

verses which he quotes as a conclusive evidence for his thesis. 7 The

first is LXXI, 25, which immediately follows the one relating to the

‘people who do injustice to themselves’. It reads: ‘Because of their

mistakes ( khafi’at ) they (i.e., the people of injustice), were

drowned, and then put into fire. And they found nobody to help

them in place of God’.



The word khafi’at meaning ‘mistakes’ or ‘sins’ comes from the

root KH-T which means ‘to err’ ‘to commit a mistake’. It is a

commonly used word with a definite meaning. Ibn ‘ Arabi, however,

completely disregards this etymology, and derives it from the root

KH-TT meaning ‘to draw lines’ ‘to mark out’. The phrase min

khan.’ ati-him ‘from their mistakes’ is thus made to mean something

like: ‘because of that which has been marked out for them as their

personal possessions’. And this, for Ibn ‘Arab!, means nothing

other than ‘their own individual determinations {ta ( ayyundt)' , that

is, ‘the ego of each person’.



‘Because of their egos’ , i.e., since they had their own egos already

established, they had to be ‘drowned’ once in the ocean before they

could be raised into the spiritual state of ‘self-annihilation’ ( fana ’).



This ocean in which they were drowned, he says, symbolizes

‘knowledge of God’, and that is no other than the ‘perplexity’. And

al-Qashani: 8





72





Sufism and Taoism





(This ‘ocean' -‘perplexity’) is the Unity pervading all and manifesting

itself in multiple forms. It is ‘perplexing’ because of the Unity appear-

ing in a determined form in every single thing and yet remaining

non-determined in the whole. (It is ‘perplexing’) because of its

(simultaneous) non-limitation and limitation.



As regards the sentence in the verse: ‘then (they) were put into fire’ ,

Ibn ‘Arabi remarks simply that this holocaust occurred in the very

water, that is, while they were in the ocean. The meaning is again

explicated by al-Qashani: 9



This ‘fire’ is the fire of love (‘ ishq ) for the light of the splendor of His

Face, which consumes all the determined forms and individual

essences in thd very midst of the ocean of ‘knowledge of God’ and

true Life. And this true Life is of such a nature that everything comes

to life with it and yet is destroyed by it at the same time. There can be

no perplexity greater than the ‘perplexity’ caused by the sight of

‘drowning’ and ‘burning’ with Life and Knowledge, that is, simul-

taneous self-annihilation and self-subsistence.



Thus ‘they found nobody to help them in place of God’, because

when God manifested Himself to these sages in His Essence, they

were all burned down, and there remained for them nothing else

than God who was the sole ‘helper’ for them, i.e., the sole vivifier of

them. God alone was there to ‘help’ them, and ‘they were destroyed

(i.e., annihilated) in Him for ever’. Their annihilation in God was

the very vivification of them in Him. And this is the meaning of

‘self-subsistence’ ( baqa ), of which fana\ ‘self-annihilation’, is but

the reverse side.



If God, instead of destroying them in the ocean, had rescued them

from drowning and brought them back to the shore of Nature (i.e.,

brought them back to the world of limitations and determinations)

they would not have attained to such a high grade (i.e., they would

have lived in the natural world of ‘reality’ and would have remained

veiled from God by their very individualities).



Ibn ‘Arab! adds that all this is true from a certain point of view, 10

‘although, to be more strict (there is no ‘drowning’, no ‘burning’,

and no ‘helping’ because) everything belongs (from beginning to

end) to God, and is with God; or rather, everything is God.



In a Qoranic verse following the one which has just been discussed,

Noah goes on to say to God: ‘Verily, if Thou shouldst leave them as

they are, they would surely lead Thy slaves astray and would beget

none but sinful disbelievers’.



The words: ‘they would surely lead Thy slaves astray’ mean,

according to Ibn ‘Arabi, 11 ‘they would put Thy slaves into perplexity

and lead them out of the state of being slaves and bring them to their





Metaphysical Perplexity 73



inner reality which is now hidden from their eyes, namely, the state

of being the Lord. (If this happens,) then those who think them-

selves to be slaves will regard themselves as Lords’ . The ‘perplexity’

here spoken of is considered by al-Qashani not the true metaphysi-

cal perplexity but a ‘Satanic perplexity’ (hay rah shay(aniyah). But

this is evidently an overstatement. Ibn ‘Arabi is still speaking of the

same kind of metaphysical ‘perplexity’ as before. The point he

makes here is that, if one permits those who know the Mystery of

Being to lead and teach the people, the latter will in the end realize

the paradoxical fact that they are not only slaves, as they have

thought themselves to be, but at the same time Lords.



The interpretation which Ibn ‘Arab! puts on the ending part of

the verse: ‘and would beget none but sinful disbelievers’, is even

more shocking to common sense than the preceding one. We must

remember, however, that this interpretation is something quite

natural and obvious to Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s mind.



The Arabic word which I have translated as ‘sinful’ is fajir , a

well-established Qoranic term which is derived from the root FJR

meaning ‘to commit unlawful, i.e., sinful, acts’ . Ibn ‘Arabi derives it

from another FJR meaning ‘to open and give an outlet for water’.

And in this paticular context it is taken in the sense of ‘making

manifest’ ( izh 'ar ). Thus the word fajir, instead of meaning ‘a man

who commits sinful acts’, means ‘a man who manifests or unveils

what is veiled’ . In a terminology which is more typical of Ibn ‘Arabi,

a fajir is a man who manifests the Absolute in the sense that he is a

locus of the Absolute’s self-manifestation.



As for the second term translated here as ‘disbeliever’ , the Arabic

is kaffar, an emphatic form of kafir meaning ‘one who is ungrateful

to, i.e., disbelieves in, God’. But, as we have observed before, Ibn

‘Arabi takes this word in its etymological sense; namely, that of

‘covering up’. So kaffar in this context is not an ‘ingrate’ or ‘disbe-

liever’, but a man who ‘covers up’ or hides the Absolute behind the

veil of his own concrete, determined form.



Moreover, it is important to remember, the fajir and kafir are not

two different persons but one and the same person. So that the

meaning of this part of the verse amounts to: ‘these people would do

nothing but unveil what is veiled and veil what is manifest at the

same time’. As a result, those who see this extraordinary view

naturally fall into ‘perplexity’.



But precisely the act of falling into this kind of ‘perplexity’ is the

very first step to attaining ultimately the real ‘knowledge’. And the

‘perplexity’ here in question has a metaphysical basis. We shall

consider in what follows this point in more theoretical terms,

remaining faithful to Ibn ‘ Arabi’ s own description.



* * *





74 Sufism and Taoism



What we must emphasize before everything else is that, in Ibn

‘Arabi’s world-view, the whole world is the locus of theophany or

the self-manifestation of the Absolute, and that, consequently, all

the things and events of the world are self-determinations of the

Absolute. Therefore, the world of Being cannot be grasped in its

true form except as a synthesis of contraditions. Only by a simul-

taneous affirmation of contradictories can we understand the real

nature of the world. And the ‘perplexity’ is nothing other than the

impression produced on our minds by the observation of the simul-

taneous existence of contradictories.



Ibn ‘ArabI describes in detail some of the basic forms of the

ontological contradiction. And the explanation he gives of the

coincidentia oppositorum is of great value and importance in that it

clarifies several cardinal points of his world-view. Here we shall

consider two most fundamental forms of contradiction.



The first 12 is the contradictory nature of the things of the world as

manifested in the relation between the ‘inward’ (bafin) and the

‘outward’ ( zahir ). When one wants to define ‘man’, for example,

one must combine the ‘inward’ and the ‘outward’ of man in his

definition. The commonly accepted definition - ‘man is a rational

animal - is the result of the combination, for ‘animal’ represents the

‘outward’ of man, while ‘rational’ represents his ‘inward’, the

former being body and the latter the spirit governing the body. Take

away from a man his spirit, and he will no longer be a ‘man’ ; he will

merely be a figure resembling a man, something like a stone or a

piece of wood. Such a figure does not deserve the name ‘ man’ except

in a metaphorical sense.



Just as man is man only in so far as there is spirit within the body,

so also the ‘world’ is ‘world’ only in so far as there is the Reality or

Absolute within the exterior form of the world.



It is utterly impossible that the various forms of the world (i.e., the

things in the empirical world) should subsist apart from the Absolute.

Thus the basic attribute of divinity ( uluhiyah ) must necessarily per-

tain to the world in the real sense of the word, not metaphorically,

just as it (i.e., the complex of spirit, the ‘inward’, and body, the

‘outward’) constitutes the definition of man, so long as we understand

by ‘man’ a real, living man.



Furthermore, not only is the ‘inward’ of the world the Reality itself

but its ‘outward’ also is the Reality, because the ‘outward’ of the

world is, as we have seen, essentially the forms of theophany. In this

sense, both the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ of the world must be defined

in terms of divinity.



Having established this point, Ibn ‘Arab! goes on to describe the

strange nature of the praising ( thana ’) of the ‘inward’ by the ‘out-







Metaphysical Perplexity 7 5



ward’ . ‘Just as’ , he says, ‘the outward form of man constantly praises

with its own tongue the spirit within, so the various forms of the

world praise, by a special disposal of God, the inward spirit of the

world’. How does the bodily form of man ‘praise with its own

tongue’ the spirit within? This is explained by al-Qashani in the

following way: 13



The bodily form of man praises the spirit, i.e., the soul, by means of its

movements and by manifestation of its peculiar properties and per-

fections. (The reason why this is ‘praise’ is as follows.) The bodily

members of man are in themselves but (lifeless) objects which, were

it not for the spirit, would neither move nor perceive anything;

besides, the bodily members as such have no virtue at all such as

generosity, liberal giving, magnanimity, the sense of shame, courage,

truthfulness, honesty, etc. And since ‘to praise’ means nothing other

than mentioning the good points (of somebody or something), the

bodily members (praise the spirit) by expressing (through actions)

the virtues of the spirit.



Exactly in the same way, the various forms of the world ‘praise’ the

inner spirit of the universe (i.e., the Reality residing within the

universe) through their own properties, perfections, indeed, through

everything that comes out of them. Thus the world is praising its own

‘inward’ by its ‘outward’.



We, however, usually do not notice this fact, because we do not have

a comprehensive knowledge of all the forms of the world. The

language of this universal ‘praise’ remains incomprehensible to us

‘just as a Turk cannot understand the language of a Hindi!’. 14 The

contradictory nature of this phenomenon lies in the fact that if the

‘outward’ of the world praises its ‘inward’, properly speaking both

the ‘outward’ and ‘inward’ are absolutely nothing other than the

Absolute itself. Hence we reach the conclusion that the one who

praises and the one who is praised are in this case ultimately the

same.



The phenomenon just described, of the Absolute praising itself in

two forms opposed to each other, is merely a concrete case illustrat-

ing the more profound and more general fact that the Absolute,

from the point of view of man, cannot be grasped except in the form

of coincidentia oppositorum. Ibn ‘ArabI quotes in support of his

view a famous saying of Abu Said al-Kharraz, a great mystic of

Bagdad of the ninth century: ‘God cannot be known except as a

synthesis of opposites’. 15



Al-Kharraz, who was himself one of the many faces of the Absolute

and one of its many tongues, said that God cannot be known except

by attributing opposites to Him simultaneously. Thus the Absolute is

the First and the Last, the Outward and the Inward. It is nothing





76





Metaphysical Perplexity





77





Sufism and Taoism



other than what comes out outwardly (in concealing itself inwardly),

whereas in the very moment of coming out outwardly it is what

conceals itself inwardly.



There is no one who sees the Absolute except the Absolute itself, and

yet there is no one to whom the Absolute remains hidden. It is the

Outward (i.e., self-manifesting) to itself, and yet it is the Inward (i.e.,

self-concealing) to itself. The absolute is the one who is called by the

name of Abu SaTd al-Kharraz and by other names of other contin-

gent beings.



The Inward belies the Outward when the latter says ‘I’, and the

Outward belies the Inward when the latter says T. And this applies

to every other pair of opposites. (In every case) the one who says

something is one, and yet he is the very same one who hears. This is

based on the phrase said by the prophet (Muhammad): ‘and what

their own souls tell them’, indicating clearly that the soul is the

speaker and the hearer of what it says at the same time, the knower of

what itself has said. In all this (phenomenon), the essence itself is one

though it takes on different aspects. Nobody can ignore this, because

everybody is aware of this in himself in so far as he is a form of the

Absolute.



Al-Qashani reminds us concerning this fundamental thesis of his

Master that everything, in regard to its ontological source and

ground, is the Absolute, and that all the things of the world are but

different forms assumed by the same essence. The fact that the

phenomenal world is so variegated is simply due to the diversity of

the Divine Names, i.e., the basic or archetypal forms of the Divine

self-manifestation .



Nothing exists except the Absolute. Only it takes on divergent forms

and different aspects according to whether the Names appear out-

wardly or lie hidden inwardly as well as in accordance with the

relative preponderance of the properties of Necessity ( wujuh ) over

those of Possibility ( imkan ) or conversely: the preponderance of

spirituality, for instance, in some and the preponderance of material-

ity in others . 16



As regards Ibn ‘ArabFs words: ‘The Inward belies the Outward

when the latter says “I”, etc.’, al-Qashanl gives the following

explication:



Each one of the Divine Names affirms its own meaning, but what it

affirms is immediately negated by an opposite Name which affirms its

own. Thus each single part of the world affirms its own I-ness by the

very act of manifesting its property, but the opposite of that part

immediately denies what the former has affirmed and brings to

naught its self-assertion by manifesting in its turn a property which is

the opposite of the one manifested by the first.



Each of the two, in this way, declares what it has in its own nature,

and the other responds (negatively) to it. But (in essence) the one







which declares and the one which responds are one and the same

thing. As an illustration of this, Ibn ‘ Arabi refers to a (famous) saying

of the prophet (Muhammad) describing how God pardons the sins

committed by the people of this community, namely , ‘both what their

bodily members have done and what their souls have told them (to

do) even if they do not actually do it.’ This is right because it often

happens that the soul tells a man to do something (evil) and he

intends to do it, but is detained from it by another motive. In such a

case, the man himself is the hearer of what his own soul tells him, and

he becomes conscious of the conflicting properties at work in himself

when he hesitates to do the act.



The man at such a moment is the speaker and the hearer at the same

time, the commander and the forbidder at the same time. Morover,

he is the knower of all this. And (he manifests and gathers in himself

all these contradictory properties), notwithstanding his inner essence

being one and the same, by dint of the diversity of his faculties and

governing principles of his actions such as reason, imagination, repul-

sion, desire etc. Such a man is an image of the Absolute (which is

essentially one) in its divergent aspects and the properties coming

from the Names.



Close to the relation between the ‘inward’ and ‘outward’ is the

contradictory relation between the One and the Many. The two

kinds of contradictory relations are, at bottom, one and the same

thing. For the dictum that the Absolute (or the world) is One and

yet Many, Many and yet One, arises precisely from the fact that the

infinitely various and divergent things of the world are but so many

phenomenal forms of one unique Being which is the Absolute. The

(apparent) difference is due to our taking a slightly different view-

point in each case.



Regarding the second relation which we will now consider, Ibn

‘Arab! offers two explanations, one mathematical and the other

ontological. We begin with the ‘mathematical’ aspect of the

problem.



The structure of the metaphysical fact that the One appears in the

multiplicity of things, and the things that are many are ultimately

reducible to the One or the Absolute, is identical with the structure

of the reciprocal relation between the mathematical ‘one’, which is

the very source of all numbers, and the numbers.



The numbers are produced in a serial form by the (repetition of)

‘one’. Thus the ‘one’ brings into existence the numbers, while the

numbers divide the ‘one’, (the only essential difference between

them being that) a ‘number’ subsists as a number by virtue of some-

thing which is counted . 17



Ontologically, as we have seen, the diversification of the unique

Essence by concrete delimitations and various degrees is the cause





78





Sufism and Taoism





of things and events being observable related to one another in an

infinitely complicated manner. The basic structure of this

phenomenon, however, is quite simple. It is, Ibn ‘Arab! says, the

same as the proceeding of the infinite series of numbers out of ‘one’ .

In his view, the mathematical ‘one’ is the ultimate source of all

numbers, and the numbers are nothing but various forms in which

‘one’ manifests itself.



‘One’ itself is not a number; it is the source or ground of all

numbers. Every number is a phenomenal form of ‘one’ brought into

being by the repetition of the latter (just as all the things in the world

are products of the one Essence ‘repeating itself’, mutakarrir, in

various forms of self-determination). 18 The important point is that a

number thus constituted by repetition of ‘one’, is not a mere con-

glomeration of the units, but an independent reality (haqiqah). For

example, the number ‘two’ is explained by al-Qashani in the follow-

ing way: 19



When ‘one’ manifests itself ( tajalla ) 20 in a different form it is called

‘two’. But ‘two’ is nothing other than ‘one’ and ‘one’ put together,

while ‘one’ itself is not a number. It is to be remarked that the

structure of this putting together (of two ‘one’s) is one, and the

product of this putting together, which is called ‘two’, is also one

number. So that the essential form here is one, the matter is one, and

the two ‘one’s put together is also one, i.e., ‘one’ manifesting itself in

a form of the Many. Thus ‘one’ produces the number (‘two’) by

manifesting itself in two different forms. The same is true of ‘three’,

for example, which is ‘one’ and ‘one’ and ‘one’, and the nature and

structure of its one-ness is exactly the same as in the case of ‘two’.



Thus, all the numbers are each a particular form in which ‘one’

manifests itself according to its peculiar determination and the rank

it occupies in the numerical series.



It is very important to note that the numbers brought into being in

this way are all intelligibles ( haqaiq ma‘qulah, lit. ‘realities grasped

by Reason’), and have no existence in the external world; they exist

only in our mind. They exist in the external world merely in so far as

they are recognizable in the objects that are countable. This must be

what is meant by Ibn ‘Arab! when he says (in the above-quote

passage) that a ‘number’ is actualized only by something which is

counted. And this situation corresponds exactly to the ontological

structure of the world of Being.



‘Something which is counted’ ( ma‘dud ), in al-Qashani’s interpre-

tation, refers to the One Reality which manifests itself and

diversifies itself in the Many. But this is clearly a misinterpretation.

The ma‘dud in this context must denote a concrete object which

exists in the external world and which manifests the transcendental

‘one’ in a concrete form. In terms of the correspondence between





Metaphysical Perplexity 79



the mathematical and the ontological order of being, ‘one’ corres-

ponds to the One Reality, i.e., the Absolute, and the numbers that

are intelligibles correspond to permanent archetypes, and finally

the ‘countable things’ correspond to the things of the empirical

world. Bali Efendi brings out this system of correspondences with

an admirable lucidity: 21



You must notice that ‘one’ corresponds symbolically to the one inner

essence (‘ ayn ) which is the reality itself of the Absolute, while the

numbers correspond to the multiplicity of the Names arising from the

self-manifestation of that reality (i.e., of the Absolute) in various

forms in accordance with the requirement of its own aspects and

relations. (The multiplicity of the Names here spoken of) is the

multiplicity of the permanent archetypes in the Knowledge (i.e.,

within the Divine Consciousness). Finally, the ‘things counted’ cor-

respond to the concrete things of this world, that is, creaturely forms

of theophany, without which neither the properties of the Names nor

the states of the permanent archetypes can become manifest (in the

external world in a concrete way).



Only when we understand the word ‘things counted’ in this sense,

are we in a position to see correctly what is meant by the following

words of Ibn ‘Arabi: 22



The ‘thing counted’ partakes of both non-existence and existence, for

one and the same thing can be non-existent on the level of the senses

while being existent on the level of the intellect . 23 So there must be

both the ‘number’ and the ‘thing counted’.



But there must be, in addition, also ‘one’ which causes all this and is

caused by it . 24 (And the relation between ‘one’ and the numbers is to

be conceived as follows.) Every degree in the numerical series (i.e.,

every number) is in itself one reality. (Thus each number is a self-

subsistent unity and) not a mere conglomeration, and yet, on the

other hand, there certainly is a respect in which it must be regarded as

‘one’s put together. Thus ‘two’ is one reality (though it is a ‘gathering’

of ‘one’ and ‘one’), ‘three’ is also one reality (though it is a ‘gathering’

of ‘one’ and ‘one’ and ‘one’), and so on, however far we go up the

numerical series. Since each number is in this way one (i.e., an

independent reality), the essence of each number cannot be the same

as the essences of other numbers. And yet, the fact of ‘gathering’ (of

‘one’s) is common to all of them (i.e., as a genus, as it were, which

comprises all the species). Thus we admit the (existence of) various

degrees (i.e., different numbers, each being unique as an indepen-

dent number) in terms of the very essence of each one of them,

recognizing at the same time that they are all one . 25 Thus we inevi-

tably affirm the very thing which we think is to be negated in itself . 26

He who has understood what I have established regarding the nature

of the numbers, namely, that the negation of them is at the same time

the affirmation of them, must have thereby understood how the

Absolute in tanzih is at the same time the creatures in tashbih.





80 Sufism and Taoism



although there is a distinction between the Creator and the creatures.

The truth of the matter is that we see here the Creator who is the

creatures and the creatures who are the Creator. Moreover, all this

arises from one unique Essence; nay, there is nothing but one unique

Essence, and it is at the same time many essences.



In the eye of a man who has understood by experience the ontologi-

cal depth of this paradox the world appears in an extraordinary form

which an ordinary mind can never believe to be true. Such an

experience consists in penetrating into the ‘real situation’ ( amr )

beyond the veils of normal perception and thought. In illustration,

Ibn ‘Arab! gives two concrete examples from the Qoran. 27 The first

is the event of Abraham going to sacrifice his own son Isaac, and the

second is the marriage of Adam with Eve.



(Isaac said to his father Abraham): ‘My father, do what you have

been commanded to do!’ (XXXVII, 102). The child (Isaac) is essen-

tially the same as his father. So the father saw (when he saw himself in

his vision sacrificing his son) nothing other than himself sacrificing

himself. ‘And We ransomed him (i.e., Isaac) with a big sacrifice’

(XXXVII, 107). At that moment, the very thing which (earlier) had

appeared in the form of a human being (i.e., Isaac) appeared in the

form of a ram. And the very thing which was ‘father’ appeared in the

form of ‘son’, or more exactly in the capacity of ‘son’.



(As for Adam and Eve, it is said in the Qoran): ‘And (your Lord)

created from it (i.e., the first soul which is Adam) its mate’ (IV, 1).

This shows that Adam married no other than himself. Thus from him

issued both his wife and his child. The reality is one but assumes many

forms.



Of this passage, al-Qashani gives an important philosophical expla-

nation. 28 It is to be remarked in particular that, regarding the

self-determination of the Absolute, he distinguishes between the

‘universal self-determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-kulliy ), i.e., self-

determination on the level of species, and the particular or

‘individual self-determination’ ( al-ta‘ayyun al-juz’iy). These two

self-determinations correspond to the ontological plane of the

archetypes and that of the concrete things.



‘The reality is one but assumes many forms’ means that what is in

reality the one unique Essence multiplies itself into many essences

through the multiplicity of self-determinations.



These self-determinations are of two kinds: one is ‘universal’ by

which the Reality in the state of Unity becomes ‘man’, for example,

and the other is ‘individual’ by which ‘man’ becomes Abraham. Thus,

in this case, (the one unique Essence) becomes ‘man’ through the

universal self-determination: and then, through an individual self-

determination, it becomes Abraham, and through another (indi-

vidual self-determination) becomes Ishmael. 29







Metaphysical Perplexity 81



In the light of this, (Abraham, not as an individual named Abraham,

but on the level of) ‘man’ before individuation, did not sacrifice

anything other than himself by executing the ‘big sacrifice’ (i.e., by

sacrificing the ram in place of his son). For (the ram he sacrificed) was

hjmself in reality (i.e., if we consider it on the level of the Absolute

before any self-determination). (It appeared in the form of the ram

because) the Absolute determined itself by a different universal

self-determination 30 (into ‘ram’) and then by an individual self-

determination (into the particular ram which Abraham sacrificed.)

Thus the same one Reality which had appeared in the form of a man

appeared in the form of a ram by going through two different self-

determinations, once on the level of species, then on the level of

individuals.



Since ‘ man’ remains preserved both in father and child on the level of

the specific unity, (Ibn ‘Arabi) avoids affirming the difference of

essence in father and child and affirms only the difference of ‘capa-

city’ ( hukm ) saying ‘or more exactly, in the capacity of son’. This he

does because there is no difference at all between the two in essence,

that is, in so far as they are ‘man’; the difference arises only in regard

to their ‘being father’ and ‘being son’ respectively.



The same is true of Adam and Eve. Both of them and their children

are one with respect to their ‘being man’.



Thus the Absolute is one in itself, but it is multiple because of its

various self-determinations, specific and individual. These self-

determinations do not contradict the real Unity. In conclusion we

say: (The Absolute) is One in the form of Many.



It is remarkable that here al-Qashani presents the contradictory

relation between the One and the Many in terms of the Aristotelian

conception of genus-species-individual. There is no denying that

the world-view of Ibn ‘Arab! has in fact a conspicuously philosophi-

cal aspect which admits of this kind of interpretation. However, the

problem of the One and the Many is for Ibn ‘Arab! primarily a

matter of experience. No philosophical explanation can do justice

to his thought unless it is backed by a personal experience of the

Unity of Being ( wahdah al-wujud). The proposition: ‘Adam mar-

ried himself’, for example, will never cease to be perplexing and

perturbing to our Reason until it is transformed into a matter of

experience.



Philosophical interpretation is after all an afterthought applied to

the naked content of mystical intuition. The naked content itself

cannot be conveyed by philosophical language. Nor is there any

linguistic means by which to convey immediately the content of

mystical intuition. If, in spite of this basic fact, one forces oneself to

express and describe it, one has to have recourse to a metaphorical

or analogical language. And in fact, Ibn ‘Arabi introduces for this

purpose a number of comparisons. Here I give two comparisons

which particularly illumine the relation of the One and the Many.





82 Sufism and Taoism



The first is the organic unity of the body and the diversity of the

bodily members. 31



These forms (i.e., the infinite forms of the phenomenal world) are

comparable to the bodily members of Zayd. A man, Zayd, is admit-

tedly one personal reality, but his hand is neither his foot nor his head

nor his eye nor his eyebrow. So he is Many which are One. He is

Many in the forms and One in his person.



In the same way, ‘man 1 is essentially One no doubt, and yet it is also

clear that ‘Umar is not the same as Zayd, nor Khalid, nor Ja‘far. In

spite of the essential one-ness of ‘man’, the individual exemplars of it

are infinitely many. Thus man is One in essence, while he is Many

both in regard to the forms (i.e., the bodily members of a particular

man) and in regard to the individual exemplars.



The second is a comparison of the luxuriant growth of grass after a

rainfall. It is based on the Qoran, XXII, 5, which reads: ‘Thou seest

the earth devoid of life. But when We send down upon it water, it

thrills, swells up, and puts forth all magnificent pairs of vegetation’.



He says: 32



Water 13 , is the source of life and movement for the earth, as is indicated

by the expression: ‘it thrills’. ‘It swells up’ refers to the fact that the

earth becomes pregnant through the activity of water. And ‘it puts

forth all magnificent pairs of vegetation’ , that is, the earth gives birth

only to things that resemble it, namely, ‘natural’ things like the

earth . 34 And the earth obtains in this way the property of ‘double-

ness’ by what is born out of it . 35



Likewise, the Absolute in its Being obtains the property of multiplic-

ity and a variety of particular names by the world which appears from

it. The world, because of its ontological nature, requires that the

Divine Names be actualized. And as a result, the Divine Names

become duplicated by the world (which has arisen in this way), and

the unity of the Many (i.e., the essential unity of the Divine Names)

comes to stand opposed to the world . 36 Thus (in the comparison of

the earth and vegetation, the earth) is a unique substance which is

one essence like (the Aristotelian) ‘matter’ (hayula). And this unique

substance which is one in essence is many in its forms which appear in

it and which it contains within itself.



The same is true of the Absolute with all the forms of its self-

manifestation that appear from it. So the Absolute plays the role of

the locus in which the forms of the world are manifested, but even

then it maintains intact the intelligible unity. See how wonderful is

this Divine teaching, the secret of which God discloses to some only

of His servants as He likes.



The general ontological thesis that the Many of the phenomenal

world are all particular forms of the absolute One in its self-

manifestation is of extreme importance in Ibn ‘Arabi’s world-view

not only because of the central and basic position it occupies in his









Metaphysical Perplexity 83



thought but also because of the far-reaching influence it exercises

on a number of problems in more particular fields. As an interesting

example of the application of this idea to a special problem, I shall

here discuss the view entertained by Ibn ‘Arabi concerning the

historical religions and beliefs that have arisen among mankind.



The starting-point is furnished by the factual observation that

various peoples in the world have always worshipped and are wor-

shipping various gods. If, however, all the things and events in the

world are but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute, the

different gods also must necessarily be considered various special

forms in which the Absolute manifests itself.



All gods are ultimately one and the same God, but each nation or

each community believes in, and worships, Him in a special form.

Ibn ‘Arab! names it ‘God as created in various religious beliefs’.

And pushing this argument to its extreme, he holds that each man

has his own god, and worships his own god, and naturally denies the

gods of other people. God whom each man thus worships as his god

is the Lord ( rabb ) of that particular man.



In truth, everybody worships the same one God through different

forms. Whatever a man worships, he is worshipping indirectly God

Himself. This is the true meaning of polytheism or idolatry. And in

this sense, idol-worship is, as we have seen above, nothing blam-

able.



In order to bring home this point, Ibn ‘Arab! refers to an article of

belief which every Muslim is supposed to acknowledge; namely,

that God on the day of Resurrection will appear in the presence of

the believers in diverse forms. 37



You must know for sure, if you are a real believer, that God will

appear on the day of Resurrection (in various forms successively):

first in a certain form in which He will be recognized, next in a

different form in which He will be denied, then He will transform

Himself into another form in which He will be again recognized.

Throughout this whole process, He will remain He; in whatever form

He appears it is He and no one else. Yet, on the other hand, it is also

certain that this particular form is not the same as that particular

form.



Thus, the situation may be described as the one unique Essence

playing the role of a mirror. A man looks into it, and if he sees there

the particular image of God peculiar to his religion he recognizes it

and accepts it without question. If, however, he happens to see an

image of God peculiar to some other religion than his, he denies it.

This is comparable to the case in which a man sees in a mirror his own

image, then the image of some one else. In either case, the mirror is

one substance while the images reflected upon it are many in the eye

of the man who looks at it. He cannot see in the mirror one unique

image comprising the whole . 38





84 Sufism and Taoism



Thus the truth itself is quite simple: in whatever form God appears

in the mirror, it is always a particular phenomenal form of God, and

in this sense every image (i.e., every object worshipped as a god) is

ultimately no other than God Himself. This simple fact, however, is

beyond the reach of Reason. Reason is utterly powerless in a matter

of this nature, and the reasoning which is the activity of Reason is

unable to grasp the real meaning of this phenomenon. 39 The only

one who is able to do so is the real‘knower’ (‘arif). Ibn ‘ Arabi calls

such a true ‘knower’ who, in this particular case, penetrates into the

mystery of the paradoxical relation between the One and the Many,

a ‘worshipper of the Instant’ (‘ abid al-waqt), 40 meaning thereby a

man who worships every self-manifestation of God at every

moment as a particular form of the One.



Those who know the truth of the matter show a seemingly negative

attitude toward the various forms which ordinary people worship as

gods. (But this attitude of denial is merely a make-believe. In reality

they do not deny such a form of worship for themselves) for the high

degree of spiritual knowledge makes them behave according to the

dictates of the Instant. In this sense they are ‘worshippers of the

Instant .’ 41



In the consciousness of such men of high spirituality, each Instant is

a glorious ‘time’ of theophany. The Absolute manifests itself at

every moment with this or that of its Attributes. The Absolute,

viewed from this angle, never ceases to make a new self-

manifestation, and goes on changing its form from moment to

moment. 42 And the true ‘knowers’, on their part, go on responding

with flexibility to this ever changing process of Divine self-

manifestation. Of course, in so doing they are not worshipping the

changing forms themselves that come out outwardly on the surface;

they are worshipping through the ever changing forms the One that

remains eternally unchanging and unchangeable.



These men know, further, that not only themselves but even the

idol- worshippers are also (unconsciously) worshipping God beyond

the idols. This they know because they discern in the idol-

worshippers the majestic power of Divine self-manifestation ( sultan

al-tajalli ) working actively quite independently of the conscious

minds of the worshippers. 43



If, in spite of this knowledge, the ‘knowers’ hold outwardly an

attitude of denial toward idolatry, it is because they want to follow

the footsteps of the prophet Muhammad. The prophet forbad

idol-worship because he knew that the understanding of the mass of

people being shallow and superficial, they would surely begin to

worship the ‘forms’ without going beyond them. He urged them,

instead, to worship One God alone whom the people could know







Metaphysical Perplexity 85



only in a broad general way but never witness (in any concrete

form). The attitude of the ‘knowers’ toward idol- worship is pious

imitation of this attitude of Muhammad.



Let us go back to the point from which we started. We opened this

chapter with a discussion of the problem of ‘perplexity’ ( hayrah ).

We are now in a better position to understand the true nature of the

‘perplexity’ and to see to what extent the ontological structure of

Being is really ‘perplexing’ . A brief consideration of the problem at

this stage will make a suitable conclusion to the present chapter.



An infinity of things which are clearly different from each other

and some of which stand in marked opposition to one another are,

with all the divergencies, one and the same thing. The moment man

becomes aware of this fact, it cannot but throw his mind into

bewildering confusion. This ‘perplexity’ is quite a natural state for

those who have opened their eyes to the metaphysical depth of

Being.



But on reflection it will be realized that the human mind falls into

this ‘perplexity’ because it has not yet penetrated deeply below the

level of superficial understanding. In the mind of a sage who has

experienced the Unity of Being in its real depth there can no longer

be any place for any ‘perplexity’ . Here follows what Ibn ‘Arab! says

on this point. 44



The ‘perplexity’ arises because the mind of man becomes polarized

(i.e., toward two contradictory directions, one toward the One and

the other toward the Many). But he who knows (by the experience of

‘unveiling’) what I have just explained is no longer in ‘perplexity’, no

matter how many divergent things he may come to know. For (he

knows that) the divergence is simply due to the nature of the locus,

and that the locus in each case is the eternal archetype itself of the

thing. The Absolute goes on assuming different forms in accordance

with different eternal archetypes, i.e., different loci of self-

manifestation, and the determinate aspects which man perceives of it

go on changing correspondingly. In fact, the Absolute accepts every

one of these aspects that are attributed to it. Nothing, however, is

attributed to it except that in which it manifests itself (i.e., the

particular forms of its self-manifestation). And there is nothing at all

(in the whole world of Being) except this . 45



On the basis of this observation al-Qashani gives a final judgment

concerning the metaphysical ‘perplexity’. It is, he says, merely a

phenomenon observable in the earliest stage of spiritual

development. 46



The ‘perplexity’ is a state which occurs only in the beginning when

there still lingers the activity of Reason and the veil of thinking still





86





Sufism and Taoism



remains. But when the ‘unveiling’ is completed and the immediate

intuitive cognition becomes purified, the ‘perplexity’ is removed with

a sudden increase of knowledge coming from the direct witnessing of

the One manifesting itself in diverse forms of the archetypes in 
accordance with the essential requirement of the Name ‘All-knowing’ (‘alim).* 1



Notes



1. Fu$., p. 55/72.



2. Cf. Affifi, Fu$., Com., p. 40; Fuj., p. 56/72-73.



3. Reference to Qoran, XXXVIII, 47.



4. p. 56.



5. Fuj., p. 56/73.



6. Qashani, p. 56.



7. Fuj., p. 57/73.



8. p. 57.



9. ibid.



10. i.e., from the point of view of the Names, in whose plane alone there come into

existence all these differences in degrees.



11. Fus-, p. 58/74.



12. Fuj., p. 48/69.



13. p. 48.



14. Qashani, ibid.



15. Fuj., p. 64/77.



16. p. 64.



17. Fus„ p. 64/77.



18. The words in parentheses belong to al-Qashani, p. 65.



19. ibid.



20. It is to be remarked that the multiplication of the mathematical ‘one’ is described

in terms of ‘self-manifestation’ ( tajalh ) just in the same way as the Absolute is

described as ‘manifesting itself’ in the Many.





Metaphysical Perplexity



21. p. 65, footnote.



22. Fu$„ p. 65/77-78.





87





23. i.e., one and the same thing qua ‘number’ is non-existent on the level of the

senses, existing only on the level of intellect, but it is, qua ‘a thing counted’, existent

on the level of the senses. In other words, it is the ‘thing counted’ that makes a

number exist in a concrete, sensible form. The same applies to the relation between

an archetype and a thing which actualizes it in a sensible form.



24. i.e., besides the ‘number’ and the ‘thing counted’, there must necessarily be also

‘one’ which is the ultimate source of all numbers and things counted. But ‘one’ which

thus causes and establishes the numbers is also caused and established by the latter in

concrete forms.





25. That is to say: we admit the one-ness (i.e., uniqueness) of each number, while

recognizing at the same time the one-ness (i.e., sameness) of all numbers.



26. You affirm of every number that which you negate of it when you consider it in

itself. This may be explained in more concrete terms in the following way. You admit

the inherence of ‘one’ in every number; ‘one’ is the common element of all the

numbers and is, in this respect, a sort of genus. But, on the other hand, you know that

‘one’ is not inherent in every number in its original form but only in a particularized

form in each case; ‘one’ may be considered a sort of species as distinguished from

genus. Thus ‘one’ , although it does exist in every number, is no longer the ‘one’ perse

in its absoluteness. And this precisely corresponds to the ontological situation in

which the Absolute is manifested in everything, but not as the absolute Absolute.



27. Fu$., p. 67/78.



28. p. 67.



29. the Absolute



/\



(universal self-determination)



/ \ .





, A



( individual



V self-determination ,



. / \



this ram that ram





, N



/ individual \

\ self-determination /



f \



Abraham Ishmael





30. i.e., by a specific self-determination different from the self-determination by

which the Absolute became ‘man’.



31. Fu$„ pp. 231-232/183-184.



32. Fus., p. 253/200.





33. ‘Water’ for Ibn ‘Arabi is a symbol of cosmic Life.



34. The idea is that the earth produces only ‘earth-like’ things, i.e., its own ‘dupli-

cates’ , the symbolic meaning of which is that the things of the world are ultimately of

the same nature as the Absolute which is their ontological ground.





88 Sufism and Taoism



35. i.e., the luxuriant vegetation which grows forth from the earth, being of the same

nature as the latter, ‘doubles’ so to speak the earth.



36. This is a difficult passage, and there is a remarkable divergence between the

Cairo edition and that of Affifi. The Affifi text reads: fa-thabata bi-hi wa-khaliqi-hi

ahadlyah al-kathrah ‘thus the unity of the Many becomes established by the world

and its Creator’. The Cairo edition, which I follow here, reads: fa-thunniyat bi-hi

wa-yukhalifu-hu ahadiyah al-kathrah.



37. Fuy., p. 232/184.



38. i.e., what he actually sees in the mirror is always the particular image of a

particular object which happens to be there in front of the mirror; he can never see a

universal image comprising all the particular images in unity.



39. Fuj., p. 233/185.



40. The word waqt ‘Time’ in this context means, as al-Qashani remarks, the present

moment, or each successive moment as it is actualized (p. 247).



41. Fu. j., p. 247/196.



42. a view comparable with the atomistic metaphysics of Islamic theology.



43. Fus., p. 247/196.



44. Fu$., p. 68/78.



45. All the divergent aspects ( ahk 'am ) that are recognizable in the world of Being are

so many actualizations of the eternal archetypes. And the eternal archetypes, in their

turn, are nothing but so many self-manifestations of the Absolute. In this sense

everything is ultimately the Absolute. And there is no place for ‘perplexity’.



46. p. 68.



47. The archetypes are, as we shall see later in more detail, the eternal essential

forms of the things of the world as they exist in the Divine Consciousness. They are

born in accordance with the requirement of the Attribute of Omniscience.