The Wisdom of the Prophets

Extract from The Wisdom of the Prophets

From the Chapter in the Word of Adam

GOD (al-haqq) wanted to see the essences (al-a’yan) [1] of His most perfect Names (al-asmâ al-husnâ) whose number is infinite – and if you like you can equally well say: God wanted to see His own Essence (‘ayn) [2] in one global object (kawn) which having been blessed with existence (al-wujûd) [3] summarized the Divine Order (al-amr) [4] so that there He could manifest His mystery (sirr) to Himself. [5]

For the vision (ru’ya’) [6] that a being [7] has of himself in himself is not the same as that which another reality procures for him, and which he uses for himself as a mirror: in this he manifests himself to his self in the form which results from the ‘place’ of the vision; this would not exist without the ‘plane of reflection’ and the ray which is reflected therein.

God first created the entire world as something amorphous [8] and without grace, [9] comparable to a mirror not yet polished [10] but it is a rule in the Divine activity to prepare no ‘place’ without it receiving a Divine spirit as is explained (in the Koran) by the blowing of the Divine spirit into Adam [11] and this is none other (from a complementary point of view to the former), than the actualization of the aptitude (al-isti’dâd) which such a form possesses, having already the predisposition for it, to receive the inexhaustible effusion (al-fayd) [12] of the essential revelation (at-tajallî). [13]

NOTES

[1] A’yân is translated here as ‘essences’, since it concerns the essences of the Names as opposed to their verbal or thought forms. The object of the divine ‘vision’ resides in the essential possibilities which correspond to the ‘Most Perfect Names’, meaning the universal and permanent ‘aspects’ of the Being. When one speaks of the one and single Essence of all the Divine Names and Qualities, one employs the term adh-dhât.

[2] The word al-‘ayn (singular of a’yân) contains the meanings of ‘essential determination’, ‘personal essence’, ‘archetype’, ‘eye’, ‘source’. This sentence signi­fies then, that God wanted to see Himself, with the restriction that His vision does not refer to His Absolute Essence (adh-dhât), which transcends all determination, even principial, but to His immediate determination (‘aynah), His ‘personal aspect’, which is precisely characterized by the Perfect Qualities of which the Names are the expression.

[3] Or of the Being, the term al-wujûd having the two meanings. Some manu­scripts give the variant: ‘. . . being endowed with faces (al-wujûh) …’ that is to say with multiple ‘planes of reflection’ differentiating the Divine irradiation (at-tajallî).

[4] The Divine Order is symbolized by the word ‘be!’ (kun); it identifies itself then, to the principle of existence.

[5] The allusion to the Divine Word (hadîth qudsî) revealed by the mouth of the Prophet: ‘I was a hidden treasure; I loved to be known (or: know) and I created the world’.

[6] The visual act is here taken as the symbol of Knowledge in its universal nature.

[7] Literally: ‘the thing’ (ash-shay). Ibn Arabi sometimes employs the term ‘thing’ to designate a reality which he does not want to define in any way; he does not say ‘the Essence’ (adh-dhat), so as not to affirm to the transcendence and the non-manifestation of that which is in question, and neither does he say the ‘Being’ or ‘the Existence’ (al-wujûd), so as not to emphasize thereby the immanence and the manifestation.

[8] Or ‘homogeneous’ (musawwî), that is to say not yet including the qualitative and differentiated imprint of the spirit.

[9] Rawh: ‘grace’, liberty; some read rûh, ‘spirit’.

[10] It is the primordial chaos, where the possibilities of manifestation, still virtual, are lost in the indifferentiation of their materia.

[11] ‘When I shall have formed him, and I shall have breathed my spirit into him’ (Koran XV, 29).

[12] The image of an ‘effusion’, of an ‘overflowing’ or of an ’emanation’ of the Being (al-wujûd) or of the divine Light (an-nûr) in the receptive ‘forms’ of the world must not be understood as a substantial emanation, for the Being – or the increated divine Light – does not proceed outside of Himself. This image expresses on the contrary the sovereign superabundance of the divine Reality, which deploys and illuminates the relative possibilities of the world, although It be ‘rich in Itself’ (ghanî binafsih) and the existence of the world adds nothing to His infinity. – The symbolism of the divine ‘effusion’ (al-fayd) refers to this word of the Prophet: ‘God has created the world in darkness, and then He poured (afâda) on it of His light’.

[13] At-tajallî signifies ‘revelation’ in a general sense) ‘unveiling’ and ‘irradiation’: when the sun, covered by clouds is ‘unveiled’, its light ‘irradiates’ over the earth.