‘How One Becomes What One Is’

Description

“Man is a rope, fastened between animal and superman – a rope over an abyss. A dangerous going-across, a dangerous wayfaring, a dangerous looking-back, a dangerous shuddering and staying-still. What is great in man is that he is a bridge and not a goal; what can be loved in man is that he is a going-across and a down-going.” (Nietzsche, Friedrich. Thus Spoke Zarathustra)

Mystic, philosopher, poet, sage, Muhyiddin Ibn ‘Arabi (1165-1240) was one of the world’s great spiritual teachers. He was born in Murcia in Arab al-Andalus, and his writings had an immense impact throughout the Islamic world and beyond. The universal ideas underlying his thought are of immediate relevance today (reference here)

Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900) was born in Germany. His father was a Lutheran Pastor whose tragic death when Friedrich was hardly five years old affected him deeply. Friedrich Nietzsche was a brilliant student and eventually turned to Classical Philology. At the age of only 24 he was appointed Chair of Classical Philology at University of Basel, Switzerland. He also spent some brief time as a medical orderly in the Franco-Russian war (1870-71). His extraordinary critical writings have been extremely influential on much modern thought: “I am not a man I am Dynamite”, he said. His most famous statement is, of course, “God is dead”. Nevertheless, the implications of his monumental replacement-concept of the Übermensch offers profound and surprisingly numinous insights into the very nature of self-knowledge.

Peter Coates is the author of “Ibn ‘Arabi and Modern Thought” (2002), the first book to systematically examine modern thought in the light of the universal vision of Ibn ‘Arabi. He was Senior Lecturer in the Department of Psychology at the University of Lincoln, where he taught courses in the philosophy of psychology. He has been studying the works of Ibn ‘Arabi for over 40 years.