2.2.2 Space-Time Duality

Although time does not appear to be like space, in the theory of Relativity it is treated as a real dimension just like any one of the other three dimensions of space (length, width, depth : x, y, z). In Relativity, any point in the universe can be expressed in terms of its 4-dimensional space-time coordinates (x, y, z, t); we do not have time alone or space alone, but a single field called space-time.

Likewise, Ibn al-Arabi describes the physical universe as something that “is confined in time and space” [I.121.22], and it has been attributed to him saying that “space is rigid time, and time is liquid space!” . Furthermore, one of the most important results of Ibn al-Arabi’s view of time is that he considers that we are living in “Saturday” , while the other six cosmic “Days” from Sunday to Friday account for the creation of the World, which is now continuously being re-created by Allah, in space. Allah creates the three-dimensional world (actually six-directional if we consider the two directions of each dimension) in six “Days” from Sunday to Friday, but we human beings witness only Saturday because in the other six days of the week we (along with the rest of creation) are still being created. Ibn al-Arabi insists that this divine creative process is repeated every single moment as we shall explain in the following chapters.

However, the result of what we have just said is that time (’Saturday’), though it is special, is still just like any one of the other six Days that correspond to the six (or three) spatial dimensions. So indeed the World, for Ibn al-Arabi, is confined in those seven “dimensions” of space-time (6 plus 1) that are similar, since all are “days” . This is the ultimate meaning of the many verses in the Quran specifying that Allah created the heavens and the earth “in six Days” (corresponding to space) and that then He mounted [i.e., on Saturday, in time] on the Throne (Quran 7:45, 10:3, 11:7, 25:59, 32:4, 50:38 and 57:4). This could also be easily comprehended if we recall that the actual meaning of time is reduced to the existence of the World in the present moment, not the past nor the future. Thus manifest existence is confined in space and time, so both space and time refer to existence, and they have no meaning when taken by themselves, without the things or events that happen in them. This new concept will add another aspect to the theory of Relativity that considers time as one dimension of the four dimensions of space-time, especially since Ibn al-Arabi gives exciting details about how those seven Days of the cosmic Week are interconnected, as we shall see in the following two chapters.

Nevertheless, there are still many obvious and hidden differences between space and time. At the beginning of chapter 59 and in the long chapter 559 (which summarizes the key contributions of each of the preceding chapters of the Futuhat), Ibn al-Arabi points out the similarities and differences between space and time. “Time” , he says, “is just like space, an extension that has no (outer) limit” [I.291.6]. Then he adds:

Space is an attribute of something that exists, but time is an attribute of something that is confined but does not necessarily exist (i.e. imaginary). Space is defined by who sits in it, and time is counted by breaths. The (ontological status of) “contingent possibility” affects both time and space. Time has an (ontological) foundation that it refers back to and is based upon, which is the divine Name “the Age” . Space emerged by the “establishment” (of the All-Merciful on the Throne, Quran: 20:5), and time emerged by the “descending down (of the Lord) to the (lowest) heaven” (referring to the hadith: “Our Lord, may He be Praised, descends every night, in the last third of the night, to the lowest sky ...” ); But there was time in the Dust even before the “establishment” . ...Time is a circumstance for an event just like meanings for letters, and space is not like a circumstance, so it is not like the letter. Time is confined through division by “now” and does not necessarily require the existence of objects, but space cannot be comprehended without objects (that occupy it), so it is a kind of (ontological) “home” (for what is created in it). [IV.337.5]

On the other hand, the concept of using time to measure distance was already used by the ancient Arabs who used to measure distance by how it took them to travel through it, usually by camel. But Ibn al-Arabi uses this concept in a more abstract way that can be compared with the form of measurement that is now widely used in astronomy: the light year. In many places he repeatedly says that the distance between this particular celestial orb and that orb is a particular number of “years” , without specifying what speed or form of motion might be involved. For example, he says that the distance between the top and bottom of Gehenna is “seventy-five hundred years” [I.297.15]. And in other places he says that Gehenna is (or “will be” , [I.297.17]) in the entire space situated from the earth to just below the orb of fixed stars (the constellations of the moon mansions) [I.303.9, III.440-441].

Now according to modern astronomy, the distance from the earth and our solar system to either extreme of the width of our Milky Way galaxy roughly equals the distance traveled by light in 7,500 years. So in effect one could argue that Ibn al-Arabi actually used the unit of a kind of “light-year” to measure distance, more than seven centuries before modern astronomers, and that he gave a very accurate value of the width of what is now known as the Milky-Way galaxy.