Chapter 2: Physical Multiplicity and the Oneness of Being

“The time of anything is its presence; but I am not in time, and You are not in time; so I am Your time, and You are my time!” Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations: III.546.16

“We have no doubt that everything in the world ceases from existence in the second instance-of-time after its becoming (and then it is re-created again, perpetually).” Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, II.208.27

“The Real has a unique aspect towards everything, ... and every (single) thing is one, ... and He is One. So only one is proceeding from Him, and He is always (manifesting) in the oneness of every one.” Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, II.434.23

The Greatest Master Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240 AD) is one of the most influential Sufi thinkers in Islamic history. His writings have deeply influenced Islamic civilization for centuries, and have more recently attracted wide interest in the West. His two most famous works are “The Meccan Revelations” (“al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya” ), an encyclopedic discussion of Islamic wisdom, and the “Bezels of Wisdom” (“Fusus al-Hikam” ), a concise book which comprises twenty-seven chapters named after prophets who characterize different spiritual types. This latter book created unfathomable philosophical debate in the following centuries, and it was followed by more than two hundred extensive commentaries by later scholars and critics. In addition to that, he also wrote hundreds of other lesser known books and treatises, many of them are now available in print. In one of his treatises, he himself listed 289 titles, that he remembered at the time, and the number increases to 317 confirmed works when added to other titles he mentioned throughout his various books, but more than 850 works have been attributed to him, though many of them are not authentic.

Ibn al-Arabi was not an astronomer, neither had he ever been interested in astronomy or cosmology as a science. But as a Sufi and mystical theologian constantly inspired by the cosmological teachings and symbolism developed throughout the Quran, and in a number of related Hadith (Prophetic sayings), he talks about planets and orbs and their motion as a structure Allah created on His divine Image, and relates them to the divine Names. He uses cosmology to refer to the ways we acquire more knowledge of the Creator. Apart from a few short treatises where he talks specifically about some cosmology subjects mixed with philosophy and theology, Ibn al-Arabi didn’t devote any special book to describing the heavens, as did other astronomers. Nevertheless, in his major book of the Meccan Revelations, for example, we find many paragraphs and chapters that can be used to illustrate his profound view of the cosmos.

In the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos (Volume I in the series), we have introduced Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmology and other related conceptions, with extensive cross-referencing to his various books. In the second volume, this model was developed to the Duality of Time Theory, that provided elegant solutions to many persisting problems in Physics and Cosmology. Ibn al-Arabi’s view of the cosmos is truly challenging, even as compared to the latest modern theories and observations. For example, he clearly declared that the stars are moving, more than seven centuries before this was scientifically known, and he explained why we don’t observe their motion. Moreover, he estimated the proper motion of some visible stars, quite consistent with the measurements taken only few decades ago.

Ibn al-Arabi also explained the observed retrograde motion of some planets and their formation in the solar system in a similar manner to what is widely accepted today. But most important in this regard is that his view of the world is heliocentric, similar to what Copernicus suggested many centuries afterwards, although he explains the geocentric view as the correct relative view of observers standing on the Earth. He also clearly affirmed that the Earth is a moving and rotating sphere, and he also explained why people don’t realize its motion around the center.

However, because Ibn al-Arabi did not dedicate any special books on the subject, these astronomical observations come only as minor topics in the course of his extensive treatment of other profound philosophical and theological subjects. Almost all his major books, and many other shorter treatises, are engrossed with extensive discussions interconnected with the various sciences, such as natural philosophy, cosmology, cosmogony, epistemology and metaphysics. In all these diverse sciences, Ibn al-Arabi has his own unique and original views that he often expounds in various contexts after reviewing what other scholars or schools have to say about the subject.

Ibn al-Arabi considers time to be “imaginary” , as a tool employed by the mind to chronologically arrange events and the motions of heavenly spheres and physical objects. He also distinguishes between two kinds of time: “physical’ and “psychical” , and explains that the origin of this ultimately imaginary time is from the two forces of the Soul: the active force and the intellectual force. Despite being imaginary, he still considers time as one of the four main constituents of nature: “time” , “space” , “the monad” , and “the form” . Like some modern theories, he also considers time to be “cyclic” , “relative” and “inhomogeneous” . Moreover, he gives a precise definition of the “day” , the “daytime” and the “night” and generalizes that in relation to all other (real and imaginary) orbs or spheres, so that every orb has its own day and those days are measured by our normal day that we count on the Earth.

On the other hand, Ibn al-Arabi gives special importance to the cosmic “Week” , and he says that each of the seven cosmic week-Days are unique and not alike. Saturday in particular has a special importance, because he considers it to be the “Day of eternity” , so that all the observable week days, including Saturday itself, are therefore happening in Saturday! This initially may look rather confusing, but it should become easier to understand, especially after we explain the re-creation principle and the theory of the Oneness of Being.

However, what is most important and unique about his view of time is that Ibn al-Arabi considers time to be “discrete” : there is a minimum indivisible “day” or “time” , and quite surprisingly, this “single day” is equal to the normal day itself which we live in and divide into hours, minutes, seconds and much less than that! This conception at first looks very strange and ambiguous, but in order to explain this, based on corresponding verses from Quran, he introduces three kinds of days, depending on the actual flow of time that is not so uniform and smooth as we may ordinarily imagine. The key point is that he stresses that, according to the Quran, only one “event” should be happening every “day” (of the actual cosmic days), and not many different events as we normally observe. To achieve his deeper understanding of this key Quranic expression, he reconstructs the underlying reality of the normal days in a special way from the different days of the actual flow of time, as we have discussed at length, with several diagrams and illustrations, in Chapter IV of Volume II. Also based on a number of key verses in the Quran, Ibn al-Arabi says that the World ceases to exist instantly and intrinsically the next moment right after its creation, and then it is re-created again and again, perpetually.

This eccentric view of the flow of time and creation has never been suggested or discussed by any other philosopher or scientist, before or even after Ibn Arabi. We have already introduced this eccentric view in the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos, and showed in the final two chapters of that book how this could potentially solve many problems and paradoxes in the current cosmological and theoretical models of modern physics. Further research revealed that the Single Monad Model is indeed the Theory of Everything, no wonder that “Everything” is actually a name Ibn al-Arabi gives to the Single Monad which is perpetually creating every single thing in the cosmos. This distinctive cosmic vision of the “ever-renewed creation” , when added to the understanding of the actual flow of time based on the three kinds of days alluded to above, was employed to construct the Single Monad Model and the Duality of Time Theory discussed at length in Chapter VI of Volume I and developed further in Chapter V of Volume II, and we shall summarize that in this chapter below. The application of these novel concepts on modern physics and cosmology are discussed in the following chapter.

One of the main problems that confronts physicists, if they want to read Ibn al-Arabi, is the different terminology he employs, obviously, in addition to the difficult symbolic language he mostly uses, as well as the fact that he, intentionally, didn’t discuss the subject of time at length in any single place in his extant works, so that we must piece together his overall cosmological understanding of time from his scattered treatments in many works and in different contexts from the various chapters of the Meccan Revelations.