4.2.2 The Single Monad
Borrowing his language from the atomistic physical theories of earlier kalam theology, Ibn al-Arabi refers to the created world as being made up of monads and forms, or in his technical language, of “substances” (jawahir, s. jawhar) and various changing “accidents” that inhere in and qualify those substances. In the process of manifestation, the substances appear to remain relatively constant, while the accidents don’t stay for more than one moment. In this terminology, the “monad” or substance is, as will be discussed shortly, a physical/metaphysical entity that exists by itself, whereas the “form” or accident exists only through or by some particular monad. The monad, however, may appear in existence only by “wearing” some form or another [II.179.26], so we don’t see the monads but rather only the forms. Also Ibn al-Arabi asserts that the monad exists by itself and its existence is constant and invariable, while the form exists only in the monad and its existence is temporal; it only exists at the time and then it vanishes instantly and intrinsically, and the same form may never come back to existence again [II.677.30, III.452.24].
Generally jawhar signifies everything that exists in reality. Literally it originally meant “jewel”, but in this technical sense borrowed from the physical theory of kalam theology, it means “substance”. In a very different philosophical context, the same Arabic word was used to translate the first of the ten Aristotelian categories. In English, the word “monad” which we shall regularly use for jawhar, is derived from the Greek monados, and it means “ultimate, indivisible unit”. It was used very early by the Greek philosophers of the doctrines of Pythagoras, and it was also used later, in a very different way, by the neo-Platonists to signify the One: thus God is described as the “Monad of monads”.
Like the neo-Platonists, Ibn al-Arabi sometimes uses this term in this higher theological sense to refer to “the one”, “the essence”, “the real” and the origin of everything in the world. However, in such cases he doesn’t refer directly to the highest, transcendent dimension of “God”, but rather to the “Universal/First Intellect” or the “Pen” [II.675.6], who is also the “Perfect Human Being”.
On the other hand, although in this theological or cosmological sense the term monad ordinarily refers to the one real essence of the world, or of all creation, Ibn al-Arabi also sometimes uses the same term in the plural form, as monads, to refer to the essences or souls/spirits, or more precisely, to the “partial intellects” of human beings who are the perceivers of the world, as in contrast with the Universal Intellect, that is their origin. Even more generally, he sometimes uses it to refer to any entity, even inanimate ones, in the creation, whether angels, jinn, humans, animals, plants or elements. In this latter more generic sense, as we have already explained, he considers that everything in creation has a substance which is its monad and a particular form which is its appearance.
These very different dimensions and usages of the term monad, however, are also intrinsically linked in Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmology, since he argues that all the monads of the world are created by, and are therefore the “images”, or reflections, or shadows, of the one Single Monad. Thus in that larger perspective of creation, they are nothing but different images of this one Single Monad that in reality may alone be described as having real existence [III.452.24].