Introduction to the Fusûs al-Hikam-Bulent RauF
Lathief
exposition of what for him are facts which he has proven, so to speak,
before our eyes, Ibn 'Arabi's tenet presents a complete, circular and
magnificent system of perfect Oneness, where all the questions that are
sometimes left only partially explained, here find satisfactory answers
from both religious and philosophical approaches. He affirms that
"there is nothing but God". Not only that He is everything, and that
"like unto Whom there is nothing", but also that He is not just a
conglomeration of everything there is, on the contrary, but that there
is nothing other than Him even though everything is not Him. He
manifests Himself in an infinity of forms. God does not contain, but
is, all the forms, and yet He has no form. He is the essence of all
existence. Hence man's existence can only be through Him. Looked at,
then, from man's point of view, there is beyond man and inclusive of
himself, One Reality, One Essence and One Existence, of which man
partakes, to which man relates, in which man finds his own Reality and
relationship. Since, as we have seen, that there is no other existent
but the One and Only and Unique Existent, the Reality of the universes
is again the same as that of man. The difference between man and the
universe, of which he is obviously a part, is therefore only a
difference in the concentration of consciousness. To this consciousness
it is the mystic's heart alone which is most fully receptive.
Divine Essence is unqualifiable. It is endowed with Attributes only
when It manifests Itself, and consequently all created things are the
result of His Attributes. His Attributes are identical with Himself.
When viewed apart from Him they are nothing. Since the universe, and
everything in it, is the consequence of God's manifested Attributes,
its existence is relative; God alone is Absolute. The Divine Essence is
the knower, the known and the knowing, and since there exists no other
than Him there exists a complete unity of subject, object and the
relationship between them.
Where everything devolves from the One and Only Source, the Essence,
there can be no question of a creation - a situation when there was not
and then there was. Creation ex nihilo, then, is unimaginable. Also,
nothing cannot produce something. Since there was no time when there
was not, and the universe was not created at some time in the past,
then it must be that it manifests constantly the Divine Existence. It
can be said that the universe is in a perpetual state of recreation out
of time, creation meaning simply the coming into concrete manifestation
of something already existing. It is the causes within the thing itself
which result in that thing coming into manifestation, albeit according
to the Divine plan. This is not a plan as an object, but rather the
plan of His Own Being and consequential and subsequent manifestation.
God has only to will it - to say "Be" - for it to happen. That which
qualifies what has thus come to be is the Divine Attribute. A Divine
Attribute is a Divine Name manifested in the external world. The Divine
Essence is unqualifiable and embraces both Its own non-phenomenal and
phenomenal aspects. These manifestations are particular aspects of
Reality.
It follows that the Divine consciousness must embrace all the
intelligible forms of the prototypes or a'yân. Consequently, the
Divine Essence embraces all the potential essences of the prototypes.
In fact these potentialities are the 'latent realities' or a'yân
al-thâbita. The Essence of each of these then is no other than a
'mode' of God.
These latent realities or potentialities which are of and in the
Essence, present in the unqualifiable Existent, never get manifested.
It is the images of their potentialities which are the manifested
'modes'. All the seemingly existent multitude of things and beings are
therefore, as images of the a'yân, individuated 'modes' of His
Existence. It is this multitude of individuated 'modes' of the Essence
which form the phenomenal aspects of the One and Only Reality.
Therefore the phenomenal world is a reality in its Essence by virtue of
the whole of this manifestation, which is no other than the particular
aspects of Reality qualified and thereby rendered relative, and only
the relative image of the unlimited and infinite potentialities which
is the unqualifiable Divine Essence.
The 'mechanism' of manifestation on the other hand is at once simple,
since it is an expression of the Divine Will - Be - and complex, due to
the nature of the variable and infinite relativities expressed as the
phenomenal universe. The basic factor of this manifestation into
relativity, however, is still the Divine Essence as One. But equally
one must bear in mind that there must be a parallel to this, a
manifestation of the One Absolute and Unqualifiable as the Qualifiable
One, an equally valid manifestation of the Essence of the One, again,
into a qualifiable multiplicity - the whole process remaining as The
One and The Unique at the same time. Consequently, the only manner in
which this can happen, is for the Unique Unqualifiable Essence to
express Itself, to exteriorise Itself as a multiplicity - remaining the
Unique Unqualifiable Essence as the interior Reality of this
expression. We have, then, a curious seeming duality of the
exteriorised Uniqueness as a multiplicity of images and forms and, at
the same time, we have the Unique Unqualifiable Essence manifested in
toto in all Its qualities and attributes. The former Ibn 'Arabi calls
the Perfect Man, the latter the Godhead. The qualifiable multiplicity
of the One, known as God or the Godhead, is no other than the
multiplicity of the Divine Names and Attributes.
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