IV.2 Ultimate Symmetry of Constant Entities

As we mentioned in section IV.1.2, applying the same standard Avicennian classification, Ibn al-Arabi divides things in terms of existence into three exclusive categories: necessary, possible and impossible. The Necessary Existence is Allah Himself, while the impossible is what may never be described by existence at all, such as another god. Because Allah is All-Knowing, He already knew all the possible entities of the world, before they come to exist. With regard to Him, the Creator of the worlds, all the possible entities are determined in His fore-knowledge, and when things become into existence, their relative states change with regard to each other, but with regard to the Real, all things are constant in their primordial state of determination, thus they are called Constant Entities. They remain in the category of possible existence, until they come into being through the divine Command Be! which brings them into real existence, one by one, as we have established in Chapter VI of Volume I.

According to the Duality of Time Theory, the determination states of Constant Entities can be described by real flat space, that could be three or four dimensional, or more, but without time. Creation starts when the ultimate symmetry of this space is lowered, first into the hyper symmetry of the spiritual world, and then into the super symmetry by breaking one spatial dimension into two arrows of time as we discussed in Chapters II and III. In polar coordinates, for example, if space is described by the spherical symmetry , which is equivalent to a complex-time geometry  where both the real and imaginary components are equal and absolute. This space can then split into two orthogonal arrows according to the equation: . Equivalently, this can also be expressed through the equation: , so , ,  and .

Therefore, if the original space is three dimensional, without time, the resulting orthogonal spaces are two dimensional with outer time. From here we can understand the dispute between theologians and philosophers over the eternity of the world, because of the way they perceive it as if it is three-dimensional space changing in time, when it is actually  with regard to their mortal and changing existence. Allah, however, never ceases seeing all the Constant Entities of the  world, while we consider the existence of the world in relation to our own entities, which are nonexistent, abstract points in this world, so we imagine that it must have come into existence after it was not [II.666.35].

The  flat space corresponds to pure eternal light filling the void, because the outer time equals the inner time: , thus  as we just mentioned above, and since already , so this pure flat existence, which is the aether, is moving at the speed of light in the three dimensions at once, with regard to any hypothetical observer at rest. With regard to its own being, however, this flat space is not moving at all, because it exists in all places at once, since its speed is  in all directions. Therefore, the abstract geometrical points of this flat three dimensional space are absolutely constant, and they are called fixed, or immutable, essences or entities, or permanent archetypes, as they have been translated by some scholars from the original Arabic: aayan thabita , but we simply describe them as constant , in order to stress that this is their natural intrinsic state, in which they have always been, eternally, and not that they may have been muted or fixed in this state by any external cause.

For this reason, one of the divine Names of Allah is the Light , and He described Himself in Quran: Allah is the Light of the heavens and the earth [24:35]. One of Ibn al-Arabi s most influential students, Sadruddin al-Qunawi explains that True Light brings about perception but is not perceived , just as True Being brings about manifestation and finding but is neither manifest nor found, thus True Light is identical with the Essence of the Real in respect of Its disengagement from relations and attributions [Qunawi, al-Fukuk, 225^[1]]. This True Light is the non-delimited Being, but it discloses itself in time as delimited being. As Ibn al-Arabi explains:

Were it not for light, nothing whatsoever would be perceived, neither the known (i.e. the spiritual worlds), nor the sensed (i.e. the physical world), nor the imagined (i.e. the psychical worlds). The names of light are diverse in keeping with the names of all faculties ... smell, taste, imagination, memory, reason, reflection, conceptualization, and everything through which perception takes place are light. As for the objects of perception ... they first possess manifestation to the perceiver, then they are perceived; and manifestation is light. ... Hence every known thing has a relation with the Real, for the Real is Light. It follows that nothing is known but Allah [III.276-77].

The starting state of creation was void, that is the state of absolute earth , which by itself is literally nothing , but it is the readiness of nature to accept creation. This void is described by absolute earth because it has infinite inertial mass, that is absolutely dead and dark because it does not include any motion or energy, so it is absolutely cold and dry. However, being absolutely empty, it is described by the willingness to accept life and motion.

Henceforth, when the Real manifested in the Form of Beauty, that is also described as absolute Light, Life, and Ability, the state of vacuum was introduced, that is also the element of absolute fire  that filled the void, and the two states  and  were entangled; all this without any sense of space or time, which are null with respect to Light itself, whose speed is absolute, while the sense of space, time and motion are conceivable only for external observers that are non-existing yet. Therefore, this creation scenario is only a conceptual description with absolute ontological reality, or being , that has not become physical yet.

When Allah wanted to create the world, He split the above entangled states of heavens and earth, but not into the separate original states  and , rather He split them into water and air , which are  and , respectively; which means splitting the  flat space of Constant Entities into the two orthogonal worlds  and , that are the physical and psychological worlds as we described in Chapter II. With this splitting of the originally entangled states of vacuum and void, space and time were defined, and all the subsequent physical and psychological dynamic states that are various spatial and temporal superposition of the original two states.

Multiplicity appeared in the creation only because earth and fire were split into water and air, which permitted the emergence of space and time, otherwise since absolute earth is void and absolute fire is Light, so Existence was absolute One Eternal Unchanging Being, as was originally described by Parmenides and Zeno as we showed in Volume II.

The Constant Entities can compared with the Ideas in Plato s cosmology, which were also later described by some Christian scholars as the thoughts in the mind of God . This can be also found in some world-views in many other different terminologies, all indicating some kind of planes or spheres of psychic consciousness, which are sometimes simply called archetypes .

Ibn al-Arabi points out it is not like a single archetypal reality between the Godhead and the material world, but the archetypes manifest in different form on each of the planes of being between the Absolute and the physical world, while the original Essence or Absolute is void of all qualities and relations, it is the most indetermninate of all indeterminates, it is the Thing in itself . It is indestructable, independent and unchangeable, not a substance, but the One substance [1, p. 35].

As we described in the Introduction, the first state of the presence of Allah with relation to the creation is the Inclusive Oneness (Ahadiyyah), which is inconceivable and beyond all attributes, descending towards Exclusive Oneness (Wahidiyyah) possessing the Divine Attributes and Beautiful Names, each of which possessing unique characteristics in virtue of which it is distinguishable from the other, but essentially they are identical with the One Essence and with each other. The Names manifested in the external world both as passive and receptive. Through the divine theophanies, the Essence of God manifests in the various levels of engendered existence.

The Constant Entities are the fixed prototypes or latent realities of things. Before coming into being, things in the phenomenal world existed as potentialities in the divine Essence of God, or as ideas of His future becoming, the content of His eternal knowledge, which is His knowledge of Himself. God revealed Himself to Himself in His First Epiphany or Particularisation in which He saw in Himself and for Himself an infinity of entities as determinate forms of His own Essence, which reflected and in every detail corresponded to His own eternal ideas of them [1, p.47].