Ibn 'Arabi Heir to the Prophets
One of the major themes of Ibn ‘Arabi’s writings is the timehonored principle of the Judeo-Christian tradition that God created man in his own image.Muhammad’s version of this saying reads, “God created Adam in His own form.”
I translate the Arabic word sura as “form”rather than “image” to retain its technical meaning. It is used in Islamic philosophy in the Aristotelian sense, in contradistinction to matter (the doctrine of hylomorphism,“matter-form-ism”). In Sufism, the same word is used to designate the appearance of things, in contrast to their “meaning” (ma‘na), which is their invisible reality, the spiritual substance that gives rise to their appearance in the outer world. Ibn ‘Arabi uses the word in both senses, though usually in the latter.
As for the word “image,” it can serve well as a second translation for the word khayal,which we have already met as “imagination.” Khayal denotes not only our subjective power of imagining things, but also the objective reality of images in the world, such as reflections in a mirror.
In one respect, God is infinitely beyond understanding, and the only proper response to him is silence. In another respect, he discloses himself to his human forms, and he does so in two basic ways: first, he discloses his undisclosability, and thereby we come to know that we cannot know him.This is the route of negative theology, and Ibn ‘Arabi frequently takes it. Second, God discloses himself to human beings through scripture, the universe, and their own souls. To the degree that he does so, people can and do come to know him.
Ibn ‘Arabi calls the modality of awareness that discerns God’s undisclosability “reason,” and he calls the modality of understanding that grasps his self-disclosure “imagination.” “Unveiling” is then fully actualized and realized imagination, which recognizes the divine reality in its images. Rational thought pushes God far away, but imaginal thought brings him close. Reason discerns God as absent, but unveiling sees him present.
When reason grasps God’s inaccessibility, it “asserts his incomparability” (tanzih). When imagination finds him present, it “asserts his similarity” (tashbih). Long before Ibn ‘Arabi, asserting God’s incomparability (or transcendence) had been normative for most versions of Islamic theology, and asserting his similarity (or immanence) was often found in Sufi expressions of Islamic teachings, especially poetry. Ibn ‘Arabi’s contribution was to stress the need to maintain a proper balance between the two ways of understanding God.
People are able to maintain the balance between incomparability and similarity by seeing with “both eyes,” that is, both reason and imagination. If we do not see God, the world, and ourselves with the full vision of both eyes, we will not be able to see things as they are.The locus of such a vision is the heart, whose beating symbolizes the constant shift from one eye to the other, made necessary by the divine unity, which precludes a simultaneously dual vision.
To be human, then, is to be a divine form.To be a divine form is to be a divine self-expression within which every name of God – every real quality found in the cosmos,every attribute of the absolutely Real (al-haqq) – can become manifest and known. The human form is both different from God (incomparable) and identical with him (similar). Correct understanding of the situation demands seeing with both eyes.
The Muhammadan inheritors and the great friends of God differ from ordinary human beings in the clarity of their vision and the appropriateness of their activity.They have realized the form in which they were created, so they grasp the realities in proper proportion and respond to every situation as God himself would respond,were he to take upon human form.
From: Ibn ‘Arabi Heir to the Prophets by William C. Chittick
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