1.2.1 Meeting the Greatest Master
Ibn al-Arabi had already reported several times that he had extraordinary non-local and non-temporal experiences with people who have passed away many centuries before, but apart from the various visions in which he helped me to understand some critical issues in the subject of this life-long research, the following extraordinary story happened with me in real physical dimensions, although some might still prefer the classical interpretation, that it may all be just a matter of simple coincidence.
When I submitted the thesis and the University of Exeter specified the date for the final viva examination, it happened at the same time that Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi Society in Oxford invited me for their annual symposium, which was held in May 14-15, 2005, at Worcester College, and the theme was also chosen specifically on the subject of time. So I went to the British Embassy in Abu Dhabi to get the visa for UK, and I entered the hall waiting for my turn to be interviewed. There were only few people waiting for their names to be called, then the speaker called upon the name: “Sheikh Muhyiddin”!
At first I was going to answer because I thought that I might have filled the application by mistake and put his name as the applicant, but then recalled that I did not even mention his name anywhere in the application. In fact, I remembered quickly that I deliberately intended not to mention any religious indications because the tension of 9-11-2001 was still maximum, so I made sure not to include in the application the invitation from Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi Society, and I put instead the letter from Exeter University which did not specify the subject of my research.
For few seconds I was completely perplexed, then I saw a young chap stood up from the back of the room, and as he went into the interview window, he looked at me with a tender smile. He was younger than twenty years, Arabian looking, with short beard and soft mustache that have never been cut, exactly as Sheikh Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi described himself in his early youth in the only one occasion in the Meccan Revelations [I.153.33].
At that time, I did not have time to think about it and I thought it was just a mere coincidence, although “Sheikh” is normally not used as a first name, and “Muhyiddin” is also not commonly used as surname, and statistically speaking, it is a chance in billions I meet someone with this specific name in such particular occasion.
However, it was only during the lunch after the viva, when the examiner Prof. Ian Netton asked me if I had any mysterious encounters with Ibn al-Arabi, as some other researchers have frequently reported. Then I told him the story, and only at that time, as I was recalling the events, I realized that it was not any coincidence at all, especially after I recalled all the circumstances in the conference and during the viva; it was then very clear to me that he was really present with me all the time, to the extent that, given the extreme complexity of the new ideas presented in the thesis, that sometimes it seemed as if it was not myself who is answering the questions!
The reason why such extraordinary encounters are not normally appreciated in science is because they do not seem to be reproducible, and the current laws of physics prohibit them because they must incorporate some kind of super-luminous motion, which is not possible at least on the macroscopic scales. With the new concept of complex-time, however, it will be clearly shown that instantaneous motion of macroscopic objects is possible and can be described mathematically by the same laws of quantum mechanics. It will be also shown in chapter VI that the world of “dreams” is as real as our own physical world, and all other psychological entities, such as angels, jinn, the soul and the spirit, are covered by the same laws of physics because they have carnal space-time geometry just as all other physical objects. In fact, all these creations and realms have material structure exactly like our own, with the same kind of atoms and elementary particles, except that they exist in different dimensions within our encompassing space-time, as it will become clear by the end of this book.
However, my meetings and encounters with the Greatest Master, soon moved to the normal ordinary physical life, as it happened that during these same years I established a connection with Sheikh Ramadan Subhi Deeb, and soon enough my relationship with him started very quickly to become strong and interactive. I then realized that many prominent scholars of Ibn al-Arabi are his students, including for example Michel Chodkiewicz, to the extent that many often call him as the living Ibn al-Arabi, not by chance that he was actually living and working in Damascus only few hundred meters close to the historical Ibn al-Arabi’s mosque which includes his shrine.
Consequently, all the aspects of my relation with Sheikh Ramadan were deeply mysterious that it is impossible to state in any ordinary language. What is important with relation to the subject of this book is that his teachings to me were not in the form of any direct intellectual communication, though he mostly answers my questions before I ask. In addition to his clear fierce ability of reading my mind, as if I am an open book before him, and despite that we are living in different countries, he is also able to create active thoughts in my own heart in different ways and mostly without any direct communication.