IV.1.3 Unicity of God and the Trinity of the Cosmos

According to Ibn al-Arabi, and more generally to Islam, and also some other religions, Allah is both One and (indivisible whole) Unit, or Unique. The first attribute means that He is one God, not many or multiple in any way, and the second means that He is not divisible into other entities that He is otherwise somehow composed of. Moreover, as indicated by the more metaphysically problematic second attribute of Unity , or Unicity , we can t describe Him as a single entity, like other ordinary entities, with specific dimensions that are placed somewhere in space or began at a point of time. Allah is simply uniquely different from whatever we may know or imagine, because He is incomparable to any creation. Therefore, we can t achieve full knowledge or awareness of the Essence of Allah, because this is beyond our human limited perception. It is, however, possible to describe Him and speak about His Attributes and divine Names, for example as they are mentioned in the Quran and Hadith. We may attain knowledge about the divine Names and descriptions of Allah, but not about His Essence Himself. As Chittick has pointed out, for Ibn al-Arabi: God is known through the relations, attributions and correlations between Him and the cosmos. But the Essence is unknown, since nothing is related to It [6, p. 63].

Therefore, whatever the human being may know about Allah is in the end partial and incomplete. No one can ever achieve full knowledge or awareness of Him, since the best knowledge one might gain of the Essence of Allah is to know that He is different from anything [IV.301.17]. Ibn al-Arabi expressed this lack on knowledge nicely in his prayers by saying: it is enough for me that You know my ignorance. You are as I know, but beyond what I know to a degree that I do not know. This is because, being some individuals of His creation, we may know Allah only through His manifestations in us and in our limited view of the world, and His manifestations are never exactly repeated the same for any one person, nor the same for any two. This means that knowing Allah is an infinite process for us, because Allah Himself is not finite, in the sense that He never manifests in the same form twice [I.266.10], and also because His manifestations reveal some of his attributes and descriptions, but don t fully reveal His ultimate Essence or Identity. Ibn al-Arabi summarizes this again by saying, in one of his many elaborations of the famous divine Saying of the Hidden Treasure , quoted at the beginning of this chapter, that:

Allah, the Exalted, loved to be known in order to grant the world the privilege of knowing Him, the most Exalted. But He knew that His Identity (or Essence) can t be (completely) known, and nobody can ever know Him as He knows Himself. The best knowledge that can be achieved about Him, His Highness, in the world is that the knower knows that he doesn t know. And this (human inability to know the Essence) is (also) called knowledge, as the Righteous (Abu Bakr al-Siddiq) said: (knowing) the incapacity to attain (full) realization is realization. . [III.429.7]

Nevertheless, the (Perfect, and to lesser extents, any) Human Being, is the creature most capable of knowing Allah, the Exalted, because when He created Adam (the first Perfect Human Being), He taught him all the Names [Quran 2:31], thus ordered the angels to prostrate before Adam out of respect and acknowledgment [Quran 2:34, 7:11, 17:61, 18:50, 20:116, II.46.33]. As Ibn al-Arabi also notes elsewhere, the Prophet Muhammad (as the Perfect Human being) has also clearly expressed this same recognition by saying: I can t enumerate the ways of praising Thee: Thou art as Thou has praised Thyself [I.126.15, I.271.5], and Allah also said in Quran: (they do not encompass Him with knowledge) [20:110].

Ibn al-Arabi also says that the divine Names of Allah are countless, and that, in fact, everything in the cosmos is a divine Name. Moreover, although each Name of the divine Names is different from others, Ibn al-Arabi repeatedly cautions his readers that all Names are intrinsically implicit in each one of them, which is to say that each Name can be described by all the other Names [I.101.5]. This key insight is extremely important to cosmology, and it is equivalent to saying: in everything there is everything! as we shall explain further in section I.4.

However, despite the multiplicity of these Names, they all refer to the same One Absolute Essence of Allah, while conveying different Attributes of Him due to His various infinite manifestations and relations [I.48.23]. Multiplicity is not an intrinsic property of Allah Himself, since Allah has many different Names only when considered with relation to His creation:

The Names of the Real become plural and multiple only in manifestations, but with respect to Himself, the property of number has no rule, not even its root, which is (the number) one (since we only describe Him as One to distinguish Him from multiplicity). So His Names, in respect to Him, may not be (exclusively or restrictively) described by unity or multiplicity. [II.122.19]

In this regard also, we should take all divine descriptions and Names as mere approximations, because they are words spoken in our own language: the Names (as spoken or inscribed words) that we know are actually the names of the Names, and not the Names themselves [II.56.33]. Although we may know about Allah by knowing His Attributes and Names, those outward verbal Names are words in our language so that we may, for example, look up their meanings in the dictionary, or even use them to name and describe people and things. So although those same familiar words are Names of Allah, their actual meanings are quite distinct when Allah is called by them. For this reason, one of the Names of Allah is the Singular, because He is distinct, or singled-out, from the creation [IV.276.33]. Similarly, all His Names are described by their singular uniqueness . The Names that are revealed to us in everything in the cosmos are the outward forms, while the inner meaning of those forms is Allah s own knowledge of Himself.

Nevertheless, according to Ibn al-Arabi, the divine Names are grouped into three categories: Names of Essence, Names of Descriptions or Attributes, and Names of Actions [I.423.20, I.67.28]. The cosmos, on the other hand, is made up of the manifestations of the most beautiful Names of the All-Merciful, and since Allah reveals these manifestations in the world through the Universal Intellect, who is created according to the Image of the All-Merciful , the whole cosmos came out with three faces because it is based on these three categories of divine Names.

That is why Ibn al-Arabi asserts that (everything in) the cosmos is built on a kind of metaphysical trinity [III.126.21], and he later explains this further by saying:

The body is (composed of at least) eight points, just as the knowable (aspects) of the Real are the Essence and the seven Attributes: They are not Him, and They are not other than Him. (Likewise) the body is not other than the points, and the points are not other than the body.

We said that eight points are the minimum (required to compose) bodies because the name line is for two points or more, and the origin of the plane is from two lines or more, so the plane is from (at least) four points. And the origin of the body is from two planes or more, so the body is from eight points.

Therefore the name (or attribute) of length is applicable to the body from the line (that is included in it); the name width is applicable to it from the plane; and the name depth is applicable to it from the combination of two planes. Thus the body is built on a trinity, just as the formation of proofs (in syllogistic logic) is based on a threefold structure, and just as the Source of existence, that is the Real, only becomes manifest through the bestowing of existence through three realities: His Entity, His Willing intention and His Speaking (the Command Be ). Thus the world became manifest according to the Form of the One Who gives it existence, both in physical sensation (i.e. the visible world) and in (its spiritual dimensions of) meaning. [III.276.1]

Because of this threefold structures underlying all generative processes, Ibn al-Arabi emphasizes that we need two elements (subject and object) in order to produce a result (act) [I.278.14], because from the one alone nothing may be produced [III.126.1]. In fact, the metaphysical trinity of subject, object and resulting act is fundamental throughout Ibn al-Arabi s cosmology. Thus he summarizes the process of creation by saying that the Universal Intellect (subject or symbolic father ) is writing down in the Universal Soul (the object or mother ) all that Allah wants to create till the Last Day (i.e., the result or son ). For this reason, Ibn al-Arabi regards the numberthreeas the first single , or odd, number, since he consistently considers thatoneis not a number, while two is the first number, but it is even, from which nothing may be formed without a third, intermediate principle, to link or interface:

No contingent entity has come to exist through one (alone), but only through a plurality (or conjunction of elements), and the least of plurals is three. So since the (divine) Name the Singular is threefold in its effects, He gives to the contingent entity that He brings into existence those three things (i.e., Essence, Will, and the creative Command) that He must unavoidably consider, and (only then) He brings (the contingent thing) into existence. ... Therefore this (metaphysical principle of) trinity runs inwardly through the totality of all things, because it exists in the (divine creative) Source. [III.126.5]

Now the Universal Intellect is the intermediary reality between Allah and the world, and therefore it has two interfaces: it faces Allah from the side of His unity, and it faces the world from the side of His threefold creative dimensions. When it faces Allah (in order to perceive knowledge), it turns away from us (the world), and this is our night ; and when it faces the world, this is our day-time or manifest existence. The Perfect Human Being or First Intellect is, according to the famous Hadith, the Image or Form of the Real, and likewise the world is the subsequent image of this Perfect Human Being. Hence the manifest world, like the Perfect Human Being, is according to the Image of the Real Himself, although without the Perfect Human Being it couldn t participate in this perfection. So if we consider the manifest images of the world, we can potentially discover the face of the Perfect Human Being reflected in it, and if we come to know the Perfect Human Being, then we also come to know Allah. This is the fundamental ontological trinity of Allah-Human Being-world or Allah-Intellect-world [I.125-6].

According to Ibn al-Arabi, this fundamental trinity is manifested again within each human being as in our threefold nature of spirit-heart-body. The spirit is the single immaterial and mysterious divine reality that is the principle underlying life and creation, while the body is the place where this creation occurs in many different ways, so it is composed of many different material multiplicity. And the heart is the link between the body and the spirit through which the spirit exerts its effects on the multiplicity of the body. On the other hand, the sensations collected through the different organs of the body are eventually elevated to the spirit as spiritual or abstract meanings and realities.

Another favorite symbolic trinity for Ibn al-Arabi, deeply rooted in the symbolism of the Quran and certain key Hadith, is the astronomical trinity of the Sun-Moon-Earth. The Earth gains its life from the Sun, and when the Sun doesn t face the Earth from a specific direction, the Moon takes part and reflects the light of the Sun with a degree that is small or large according to its relative place in space. In fact, if one wants to look at the Sun, one is instead obliged to look at the Moon when it is full, because the Sun can t be seen unveiled at all, since it will burn up everything that its direct light falls on. This symbolism is directly connected, for Ibn al-Arabi, with the famous Hadith of the veils , according to which Allah has seventy thousand veils of light and darkness, such that if He removed those veils His light would burn everyone who tried to see Him directly.

Indeed the trinity of Sun-Moon-Earth particularly well illustrates Ibn al-Arabi s view of the creation and its relation to the Creator. For although the creation by Allah is done through the Universal Intellect, Ibn al-Arabi also emphasizes, as we have seen above, that Allah also has a direct, individual face turned toward every single entity in the world. Similarly the Sun doesn t only give its light indirectly through the Moon, but also much more directly to the Earth, so everything on Earth is connected with the Sun in the course of the day with different degrees and at different times.