Polymathic Spirituality and the Unity of Being: Poetry and Thought in Ibn Arabi and Toyin Falola
Oluwatoyin Adepoju
Polymathic Spirituality
and the
Unity of Being
Poetry and Thought
in
Ibn Arabi and Toyin Falola
Oluwatoyin Vincent Adepoju
Ibn Arabi and Toyin Falola
Abstract
This essay explores the remarkable convergence between two polymathic thinkers separated by eight centuries: the Andalusian Sufi philosopher Ibn Arabi (1165-1240) and the contemporary Nigerian-American scholar Toyin Falola, in relation to convergence between Islam and other faiths, examining how both figures embody a transreligious consciousness that embraces multiplicity while seeking or gesturing towards the unity of Being.
Both manifest what may be termed polymathic spirituality: a spiritual sensibility that traverses symbolic, theological, and visionary modes of knowing, integrating diverse faiths and thought worlds.
Central to Ibn ʿArabī is the doctrine of wahdat al-wujūd (unity of being), the cosmological and mystical posture in which multiplicity emerges from, and returns to, a single divine ground.
The essay examines Ibn Arabi's mystical encounter at the Kaaba that produced his magnum opus, the Futuhat al-Makkiyya (Meccan Illuminations), alongside Falola's dream-hajj, the pilgrimage experienced through spiritual imagination rather than physical travel, as recounted in Malaika and the Seven Heavens and his exploration of the Yoruba metaphysics of Esu, in his essay "Ritual Archives",which together produce a lived theology of liminality—between faiths, between worlds, between waking and dream.
By analyzing Falola's engagement with Esu, the complex Yoruba orisa of liminality and transformation, a cognitive and metaphysical symbol of ambivalence, disruption, and illumination, the essay illuminates how polymathic spirituality creates space for seemingly contradictory religious commitments to coexist productively.
This polymathic spirituality is grounded in symbolic insight, philosophical expansiveness, and the poetics of inner pilgrimage, demonstrating how spiritual vision operates as a mode of knowledge production that refuses the containment of singular religious identity.
The essay argues that both thinkers offer prophetic models of faith able to hold difference without collapsing it, to dwell in paradox without despair, revealing how visionary experience and polymathic learning generate expansive religious consciousness.
Ultimately, this study argues that Ibn Arabi and Falola represent a continuous tradition within Islam and other faiths, of radical inclusivity grounded in the recognition that all authentic spiritual paths orbit the same divine center.
Both thinkers are shown to represent complementary manifestations of universal faith—two seekers whose hearts are vast enough to contain every path to the divine.
The essay contributes to religious studies, comparative mysticism, and African theological thought by articulating how symbolic vision, imaginative pilgrimage, and metaphysical ambiguity inform a universal faith rooted in multiplicity and love.
Ibn ʿArabī and the Circle of Being
In Tarjuman al-Ashwaq (The Interpreter of Desires), Ibn Arabi famously declares, "My breast is a haven for all faiths, the pilgrims Kaaba and a shrine for idols, the Christian Church and a temple for the Hindus, a sacred ground for all ways of calling towards that which pulls the human being beyond itself towards the Ultimate".
Arabi was invoking a radical approach to the Sufi philosophy of wahdat al wujud, the unity of being, in which all aspects of existence exist in a centripetal relationship towards the centre of being, like all points on the circumference of a circle are equidistant from its centre, the circle image being powerfully deployed by Arabi in his Futuhat al-Makkiyya (Meccan Revelations) to evoke the coinherence of human and divine mind in shaping and encapsulating cosmic being and becoming, in the same sureness of balance as a geometer draws a circle, beginning from the point where a leg of the compass is fixed, and returning to that point as the circle is completed, its fixed point representing the Absolute, its moving leg tracing the circumference, the cosmos enabled by the Absolute— a symbol of cosmic creation and return, of cosmic creativity and human quest to grasp that completeness of expression.
Thus, all peoples, with all their belief systems, no matter how seemingly different from the Islamic message, are all existing through the agency of the divine centre and are expressions of it, hence Ibn Arabi, as an agent of that ultimate unifier, carries in his breast the sacred resonance of the myriad faiths of the world.
The human heart, capable of encompassing multiplicity, becomes a microcosmic Kaaba, the geographical centre of Muslim pilgrimage understood as a cosmic nexus —a sanctuary of all the names and forms through which the Divine discloses Itself.
Arabi, Falola and the Visionary Pilgrimage
Over the centuries, various identifiers with Islam have embodied vision of the kind expressed by Arabi.
One of those is the contemporary Nigerian-American thinker and writer Toyin Falola.
Arabi's Meeting with the Mysterious Figure at the Kaaba
Falola embodies the visionary relationship with Islam that Arabi demonstrates so well, even narrating what is, incidentally, his own version of Arabi's Meccan Illuminations, in which Arabi, circumambulating the Kaaba, the Black Stone that is a centre of Muslim devotion in Mecca, the geographical centre of Islam and its historic point of origin, observes a figure, human in form yet not human, visible in the crowd circling the sacred zone, but whom the assembled humans pass through as if he were not there.
Arabi approaches the figure and expresses the desire to learn who he is. " I am neither dead nor alive", the figure declares." I am a symbol and can be communicated with only in symbols", he states.
Arabi is overwhelmed with awe on finding a master from whom he can learn sublime mysteries, an embodiment of the arcane depths of cosmos he has long sought to penetrate.
" I wish to be your student" Arabi declares on recovering from his shock, "learning all that is possible about the journey from the centre to the circumference and the circumference back to the centre", invoking an ancient image of cosmic unity, of the harmonious symmetry of diversity, how the One becomes the Many, and the Many, the One.
The enigmatic figure responds " read the shape of my form. Though composed of the proportions of the human body it embodies the architecture you seek, the building blocks of totality and their assemblage by the Master Mason".
Arabi's study of that symbolic form emerged as the Futuhat al-Makkiyya, the Meccan Illuminations, a work both gargantuan and sublime, scholarly and poetic, learned and aflame with vision, his magnum opus.
Toyin Falola and the Dream Pilgrimage
What happens with Oloruntoyin Omoyeni Falola, whose last name alludes to the immersion of his ancestors in Ifa, the ancient Yoruba knowledge system, hence the abbreviation "Fa" in his surname, while his given names invoke Yoruba conceptions of divine providence?
Falola, never having visited Mecca as a participant in the Hajj, the journey that is one of the virtues that may be acquired by a Muslim demonstrating both devotion and the means to so express it, visits the Holy Land in his dream, a visionary experience that mysteriously stamps his soul with the indelible force of a physical encounter with the sacred centre:
I am many things; my name depicts that—Oloruntoyin Ifalola. While some of my dreams are consistent with realities, my encounter with Islam transcends the confines of waking life; it comes in dreams, too.
Since I have told different tales of my encounters in reality, let me also set sail and share other stories from the other world, the dreamland.
In one such dream, I found myself amid devout souls who had gathered for devotion and prayers, a scene that depicted the holy land. I am over seventy years of age, and I have, at different times, sponsored Muslim friends and families on pilgrimage, but I have never gone on one.
In my dream, the words being uttered sounded strange in my ears, and at the same time, I thought I had heard them before. They sounded like words used during a pilgrimage, but I couldn’t interpret the meanings.
'Labbayka -llāhumma labbayka,
Labbayka lā šarīka laka labbayka,
ʾinna -l-ḥamda wa-n-niʿmata laka wa-l-mulka lā šarīka lak
Here I am [at your service] O God, here I am.
Here I am [at your service].
You have no partners (other gods).
To You alone is all praise and all excellence,
And to You is all sovereignty.
There is no partner to You.'
Having a deep understanding of hajj, I can comprehend my dreams and narrate what they look like in detail when I am awake.
I might not have visited Saudi Arabia for hajj, but I know the intricate details: the actions, sayings, and deeds—all of which I’d read about in books.
As pilgrims circumambulated in my dream, I joined the chanting, dressed in a white robe and with my white hair shaved.
The chant continued:
'Labbayka -llāhumma labbayka,
Labbayka lā šarīka laka labbayka,
ʾInna -l-ḥamda wa-n-niʿmata laka wa-l-mulka lā šarīka lak.'
As we stopped at the seventh round, I realized it was such an engaging exercise and not for the weak. It took strength and piety.
At this moment, among individuals of diverse color, race, and title, the essence of what Prophet Muhammad’s (PBUH) sermon was all about dawned on me. Islam doesn’t segregate.
Moving to another setting, we were engaged in a vigil...
As I stood among the believers, the air heavy with the mingling fragrances of incense and the whispers of prayers, a profound sense of serenity washed over me.
With each whispered invocation, I felt a connection to something greater than myself, a divine presence that transcended earthly bounds, listening to the melodious language of Arabic and reciting verses from the Quran with a reverence that resonated deep within the depth of my soul.
With each prostration, I felt the weight of the world lifting from my shoulders as I poured out my hopes, fears, and aspirations before the Almighty. In the rhythm of the prayer, I found solace and strength.
The dream stretched on, and I lost track of time, consumed by the intensity of the moment.
Each rakka of prayer felt like a journey in itself, a testament to the resilience of the human spirit and the power of collective devotion.
In the quiet space of that dream vigil, I found myself praying fervently for Nigeria, my beloved homeland.
With each whispered plea, I prayed to the Almighty to bestow his blessings upon the nation, to guide us through the darkness, and to lead us toward a future of peace, prosperity, and unity.
Just as the first light of dawn began to break, I woke up from the depths of my dream, my heart brimming with a sense of profound peace and purpose.
Though the vigil existed only in my dreams, its impact lingered within me, serving as a reminder of the transformative power of faith and prayer.
( Malaika and the Seven Heavens: A Memoir of My Encounters with Islam, 2025, 217-219).
The Metaphysics of Èṣù and the Logic of Paradox
What kind of person is this, who finds himself performing the Hajj in spirit, through his dreams?
He is an embodiment of Arabi's vision of unity of faiths, a man whose mind is also the abode of sacred presences of other allegiances, a person able to share his mind and heart with one of the most controversial, perplexing and complex deities in the Orisa spirituality created by his fellow Yoruba, " Esu, who turns right into wrong, wrong into right, who hits a rock until it bleeds, who throws a stone today and hits a bird yesterday, who sits on the skin of an ant, who is constricted in the verandah and the room but at last can stretch himself in a groundnut shell", his oriki, his poetic description goes, trickster, provocateur, yet a guide into the deepest recesses of knowledge (" Eshu, God of Fate", Martin White, Oral Poetry from Africa; Henry Louis Gates Jr, The Signifying Monkey).
How does Falola describe his relationship with this power which is seen by some as best avoided, "Esu ooo Esu oo, onile, onita ooo jo ma yo ju soro mi, Esu, owner of inside and outside, please do not direct your attention to my affairs", a Yoruba prayer to Esu goes, since Esu is often associated with chaos, which some interpret as rupture opening the mind to grasp the unexpected, forcing consciousness beyond comfortable certainties toward unexpected knowledge?:
An Esu image, like the ambiguity of Esu itself, cannot be read in an interpretive singularity.
The image has ideas within itself, and ideas outside of itself.
Seeing the image is to see force and strength, power, epistemic responses that connect back to language, and metaphysical perceptions.
An artistic production becomes a body of knowledge at various levels— political, cultural, and social.
The image is about the body, in its physical and non-physical realms.
The thought that you express to yourself and to others moves you back to the Esu image. Its force becomes a part of you.
Whether you hate or like Esu, the image is activated. In the process, you must generate text around the image, expressing your religiosity, philosophy, and opinions.
Esu has entered your mental system, active in your conversation with yourself and others.
Your thought is a text, on the physical world, on the afterlife, on mythologies, on religions, and more.
Combined, they deal with the invisible [ and visible] realities of knowledge.
What originally appears as a small wooden object opens up a vastness of knowledge, its edges become borderless, its existence acquires a force.
We are forced to move into the orbits of knowledge in which all component parts of the body become signifiers as oju Esu [ eyes/face of Esu] becomes different from eti Esu [ears of Esu], oko Esu [Esu's penis] , ogo Esu [Esu's forehead ], and inu Esu [ inwardness of Esu].
Each unit is semi-autonomous but aggregated to gbogbo ara Esu [ the totality of Esu] in another layer of meaning.
Like your own orì [ essence of self], that of Esu is also the zone of intelligence and emotions. All his calculations and miscalculations reside here... fronting multiple ideas. ... all connected with personal foibles and destiny.
You must trigger your own wisdom and strength to deal with ori Esu , and as you do, your own orì begins to breakdown into a series of components as that of ogbon (wisdom) or oromugo (foolishness).
( From Toyin Falola, " Ritual Archives" in The Toyin Falola Reader on African Culture, Nationalism, Development and Epistemologies, 2018, 912-937; 15-16)
For Falola, an image of Esu is not a singular icon but a dense field of knowledge.
This analysis reveals Falola's methodology: sacred symbols from different traditions operate as portals to wisdom rather than as competing truth claims requiring exclusive allegiance.
He is, like Ibn Arabi, a man whose consciousness serves as an abode for diverse sacred presences. Like Arabi, who could hold "the pilgrims' Kaaba and a shrine for idols" simultaneously in his heart, Falola maintains interior space for both Islamic tawhid (divine unity) and Yoruba recognition of orisa as manifestations of divine attributes and cosmic principles.
In his writing, Esu,the enigmatic trickster, messenger, and threshold-keeper becomes not merely a deity but a principle of interpretation, a force that transforms ambiguity into insight.
Through Esu, Falola articulates a philosophy of dynamic knowing: the world as an ever-evolving conversation between opposites.
Every part of Esu's being—his eyes (oju Esu), ears (eti Esu), inwardness (inu Esu)—signifies a dimension of intelligence, emotion, and cosmic irony.
As Esu's oriki states , Esu “throws a stone today and hits a bird yesterday.” Such temporal inversion mirrors Ibn ʿArabī’s notion that divine knowledge transcends linear causality—the future can illuminate the past, and meaning is revealed through paradox.
Two Warriors of the Spirit: The Heart as Universal Temple
Martial Mysticism
"I prepared for war the armies of my patience, host after host", declares Ibn Arabi in his quest for his loved one, representing the Divine Ultimacy, in Interpreters, thus describing the sustained discipline required to approach the Beloved.
Falola, too, engages in a sacred war—the lifelong pursuit of integrative understanding across faiths, histories, and worlds.
Both scholars practice what might be termed "martial mysticism"—not passive reception of grace, but active, disciplined engagement with the difficulties of expanded consciousness and inclusive spirituality.
Both thinkers bear the marks of spiritual warriors, moving between symbols and realities, between the Kaaba of Mecca and the crossroads of Esu.
Each sees the Divine not as an exclusive possession but as an infinite mirror. Their journeys reflect the radiant simplicity at the heart of multiplicity: one Light refracted into countless colours.
On the journey to the Ultimate, the two warriors carry with them the multi- religious identities coalesced within them, reflecting light from the many sided Radiance they both seek,unified as one simple flame.
Polymathic Creativity
Their polymathism serves this quest. Ibn Arabi mastered Islamic jurisprudence, Quranic exegesis, Hadith studies, philosophy, poetry, and Sufism.
Falola's expertise spans African history, political science, postcolonial studies, religious studies, literary and artistic criticism and history, creative writing and more.
This breadth of learning generates the intellectual flexibility necessary for visionary synthesis.
Specialization constrains; polymathism liberates the imagination to perceive connections across seemingly disparate domains.
Scribal Discipleship and Visionary
Documentation
Both figures also share commitment to what might be called scribal discipleship and visionary documentation.
Scribal Discipleship
Falola and Arabi are great apostles of the absolute necessity of recording knowledge through writing, in general, and books, in particular, devoting themselves to ceaseless scribal projection, transforming the abstraction of thought into the concrete visibility of letters on a page within the physical embodiment that is a book, a vehicle for ferrying ideas across space and time.
One may learn much from their communicative ordering, their pursuit of organizational and expressive power, their scribal discipleship, in spite of whatever degree one identifies with or does not identify with those aspects of their epistemic identities in particular works or with their oeuvre as a whole.
Visionary Documentation
A commitment to visionary documentation is the imperative to record mystical experience in forms accessible to others.
Ibn Arabi's Futuhat al-Makkiyya runs to thousands of pages, meticulously detailing cosmological visions, theological insights, and spiritual practices.
Falola's memoir similarly documents his dream experience and other elevating encounters with Islamic spirituality in precise, evocative detail, creating textual artifacts that allow readers to participate vicariously in visionary experience.
This documentation serves pedagogical and preservative functions. Both thinkers recognize that mystical experience, however personally transformative, must be communicated to contribute to ongoing spiritual traditions.
The act of writing becomes itself a spiritual discipline, translating ineffable encounter into language that can guide future seekers.
Between Mystical Inclusivity
and Communal Religious
Identity
Moreover, both Ibn Arabi and Falola navigate the tension between mystical inclusivity and communal religious identity.
Ibn Arabi remained a practicing Muslim throughout his life, observing shari'a (Islamic law) even as his heart encompassed all faiths.
Falola does not identify as Muslim, but is deeply informed about its texts, history and cultural traditions.
He has been profoundly shaped by the Islam he grew up with in Ibadan, an experience to which he devotes his memoir Malaika and the Seven Heavens: A Memoir of My Encounters with Islam.
He identifies with and is able to participate in Islam’s ritual culture, having previously attended Islamic school and sponsors others' hajj.
He has written about these personal engagements as well as produced scholarship on Islam, even while maintaining deep personal and scholarly relationships with Yoruba Orisa spirituality.
Neither Falola or Arabi embraces facile relativism or replaces a particular tradition with abstract universalism.
Instead, they demonstrate how depth within one tradition can paradoxically generate openness to others—the more profoundly one understands one path, the more clearly one perceives its connections to all authentic spiritual seeking.
This principle reflects the geometric logic of Ibn Arabi's circle metaphor. The center remains singular, but it generates infinite points on the circumference, each distinct yet equally valid.
Religious diversity becomes not a problem to be solved but a manifestation of divine infinitude—the One expressing itself as Many, the Many converging on the One.
In contemporary discourse, such inclusive spirituality might be dismissed as syncretism or superficial "spiritual but not religious" eclecticism.
But Ibn Arabi and Falola demonstrate something more rigorous: principled polymathic spirituality, grounded in serious scholarship, sustained practice, and visionary experience.
Their inclusivity emerges not from dilettantism but from profound engagement with multiple knowledge systems, each of which reveals complementary aspects of ultimate reality.
Falola's description of engaging with Esu further illustrates this rigor, making the deity's body an epistemological system.
This analytical precision—treating sacred imagery as complex semiotic and metaphysical systems—parallels Ibn Arabi's detailed taxonomies of divine names, spiritual stations, and cosmological hierarchies.
The Courage of Visionary
Polymathism
Both thinkers also recognize the transformative danger of their approach. Ibn Arabi faced accusations of heresy; his works were occasionally banned or burned.
Falola risks incomprehension or criticism from some Muslim communities (for his engagements with Yoruba Orisa spirituality) and some Yoruba traditionalists (for his Islamic identity).
Visionary polymathism demands courage—the willingness to inhabit spiritual liminality, to become, like Esu himself, a figure of the crossroads who belongs fully to multiple worlds simultaneously.
From Liminality to Inclusiveness
Yet this liminality may represent not marginality but centrality—the recognition that all authentic spirituality occupies the threshold between human and divine, known and unknown, particular and universal.
Ibn Arabi's symbolic figure at the Kaaba exists "neither dead nor alive," embodying pure potentiality, the space where new understanding emerges.
Similarly, Falola's dream-hajj occurs in the liminal zone between waking and sleeping, where consciousness accesses dimensions unavailable to ordinary perception.
In contemporary contexts of religious polarization and identity politics, Ibn Arabi and Falola offer an alternative model.
They demonstrate that religious identity need not be exclusive or defensive, that serious commitment to one tradition can coexist with genuine appreciation for others, that vision and scholarship together can generate expansive rather than constricted spirituality.
Between Premodern Religious
World Views and Contemporary
Pluralism
Their approach also challenges secular assumptions about the incompatibility of premodern religious worldviews with contemporary pluralism.
Both figures are, in their own contexts, thoroughly modern—engaged with intellectual currents of their times, contributing to multiple fields of knowledge, participating in cosmopolitan conversations.
Yet their modernity enhances rather than displaces their mystical commitments. They prove that visionary spirituality and critical intelligence need not conflict but can mutually enrich.
The Flame of Prismatic Refraction
The journey these two warriors undertake—separated by eight centuries yet walking parallel paths—carries forward the "multi-religious identities coalesced within them, reflecting light from the many-sided Radiance they both seek, unified as one simple flame."
This flame illuminates not through exclusive brilliance but through prismatic refraction, showing how the singular divine light disperses into the spectrum of human religious expression, each color necessary to manifest the complete radiance.
In the end, polymathic spirituality as practiced by Arabi and Falola represents neither religious confusion nor superficial tolerance, but rather a disciplined method for approaching the Infinite through finite forms—recognizing that no single tradition exhausts divine reality, yet each authentic path offers genuine access to it.
Ibn ʿArabī’s “heart that is a haven for all faiths” and Falola’s dream-pilgrimage through the many languages of devotion converge in a shared intuition: that the ultimate act of faith is not allegiance to a form but openness to the Infinite.
Both figures enact a polymathic spirituality—an art of knowing that unites poetry and philosophy, intellect and imagination, devotion and critical inquiry.
In their example, the world’s faiths are not in conflict but in conversation, their symbols interwoven like threads in a cosmic tapestry. To read Arabī beside Falola is to glimpse the future of spiritual thought—a humanism rooted in multiplicity, luminous with the fire of unity.
Their vision remains profoundly relevant: a model of religious engagement characterized by intellectual rigor, mystical depth, cultural particularity, and universal embrace—the circumference returning always to the center, the Many revealing the One.
Note
The quotes from Arabi's Interpreter of Desires and Meccan Illuminations are not completely precise but are modified to project my interpretation of his expressions.
My source for the Meccan Illuminations is Erik Winkel's translation of the first chapter at the site of the Ibn Arabi Society.
That for The Interpreter of Desires is the translation by Reynold Nicholson.
Cover Image
Collage made at photo collage.con
Ibn Arabi painting from the Inside History ( https://x.com/theinsidehistor/status/1444226430594797570)
Toyin Falola picture from University of Cape Town Centre for African Studies
( https://humanities.uct.ac.za/african-studies/contacts/toyin-falola)