III.4.2 The Universal Spirit and the Origin of Light
Based on the hadith that declares that Allah created the (perfect) human upon His own Image [I.163.20, II.395.25], Ibn al-Arabi asserts that the cosmos itself, on its turn, is created upon the human image [II.652.25]. For this reason the cosmos is often called as the great human and the human is called a microcosm [II.150.25, III.11.18]. This same analogy between the human and the cosmos led the Sufis to use the terms such as the Universal Spirit , the Universal Intellect , the Universal Soul and the Universal Body in connection with their theories of creation and ontology.
Similar to the human body, the body of the cosmos was first prepared for the breath of the divine Spirit. The body, however, in its ultimate meaning, is -quite opposite to the spirit- pure darkness which is nothing but the preparedness and the readiness for the acceptance of light or life that is about to be breathed into it. It is the possible nonexistence that is about to become existing, denoted as the Cloud or the Primordial Matter that is a form of the potential Nature [III.21.34]. In this sense we can also say that the abstract initial body of the cosmos is the divine foreknowledge according to which the cosmos shall be created, and when this creation started to take place it exactly followed that prototype and took the same shape that was already designated in this primordial Cloud that the philosophers call it chaos , as we discussed in the Introduction.
The Spirit, in its highest ultimate form, is attributed to Allah, and it is the Breath of the Merciful [I.275.3, II.172.5, III.33.21]. This Spirit manifested in the creation in the form of the Universal Spirit that can be described as the most perfect divine image in creation. Ibn al-Arabi usually refers to this entity using different names such as the Holy Spirit, the Secretary Spirit or the Greatest Element. Also, because all things are mere images or forms of this Universal Spirit that alone can be described as having real existence, it is thus called as the real , but not the Real as a divine Name. Ibn al-Arabi sometimes calls it as the real-through-whom-things-are-created , alluding to the verse in Quran where Allah says: (We created not the Heavens, the Earth, and everything in between, but by the real [15:85, 30:8, 44:39, 46:3].
Ibn al-Arabi then explained that the name for spirit in Arabic (rouh), can be connected to two different but closely related roots; the first one means to rest or to relieve , and this indicates that the spirit is always in ease, happiness and rest, and the second root means to go , because it goes in ease, or without resistance or inertia, throughout the capacious orbs of the knowledge. For this reason, the Universal Spirit is so called because it consumed all the three possible cycles or goings : through the divine states to receive knowledge, through the states of the cosmos to deliver to them this knowledge, and through knowing itself. Thus, because it has exhausted all these three comprehensive levels of knowledge, it is then called Universal, because there remains nothing else to go through, as Ibn al-Arabi explains in his important book the White Pearl , whose title also alludes to the Universal Spirit or maybe to the Single Monad.