Ibn Arabi Quotes

‏"كل حب يكون معه طلب ، لايعول عليه ... كل شوقٍ يسكن باللقاء ، لايعول عليه...

‏"لاراحــــــةَ لك من الخلـــــق ، فارجع إلى الحـــــــق ، فهو أولــــــى بك !

Your personal nature seeks its paradise.

None but God is loved in the existent things. It is He who is manifest within every beloved to the eye of every lover – and there is nothing in the existent realm that is not a lover

سبحان الله! محيط يمشي خلف بحيرة" قول ابن عربي حول جلال الدين الرومي حين رآه في طفولته ماشياً خلف والده

I was wedded to all the stars of the sky.There was not a single star left, and I married every one of them with great spiritual pleasure. Then I married the moon.

The desires of this world are like sea water. The more you drink of them, the more you thirst.

Each person is oriented toward a quest for his personal invisible guide, or . . . he entrusts himself to the collective, magisterial authority as the intermediary between himself and Revelation.

It is He who is revealed in every face, sought in every sign, gazed upon by every eye, worshipped in every object of worship, and pursued in the unseen and the visible. Not a single one of His creatures can fail to find Him in its primordial and original nature. al-Futûhât al-Makkiyya

The sight of God in woman is the most perfect of all." Ibn Arabi.

أوصيك لا تحتقر أحدا و لا شيئا من خلق الله , فإن الله ما احتقره حين خلقه

Deliver us, O Allah, from the Sea of Names.

لقد كنتُ قبلَ اليومَ أنكرُ صاحبي إذا لم يكن ديني إلى دينهِ داني لقد صارَ قلبي قابلاً كل صـورةٍ فمرعى لغزلان وديرٌ لرهبانِ وبيتٌ لأوثان وكعبةُ طائـــفٍ وألواحُ توراة ومصحفُ قرآنِ أَدينُ بدين الحبِّ أنّى توجهــتْ ركائبه فالحبُّ ديني وإيماني

God sleeps in the rock, dreams in the plant, stirs in the animal, and awakens in man.

Ibn al-Arabi gave this advice: Do not attach yourself to any particular creed exclusively, so that you may disbelieve all the rest; otherwise you will lose much good, nay, you will fail to recognize the real truth of the matter. God, the omnipresent and omnipotent, is not limited by any one creed, for he says, 'Wheresoever ye turn, there is the face of Allah' (Koran 2:109). Everyone praises what he believes; his god is his own creature, and in praising it he praises himself. Consequently, he blames the disbelief of others, which he would not do if he were just, but his dislike is based on ignorance.

Know that that which is referred to as other-than-Allah, or the universe, is related to Allah as the shadow is related to the person. The universe is the shadow of Allah.

In this I conformed to my usual manner of thinking in symbols; this because the things of the invisible world attract me more than those of actual life

وكلُّ حبٍّ يزولُ ليس بحبّ، وكلُّ حبٍّ يتغيّرُ فليسَ بحبّ، إنّما الحُّب ما ثَبَت.

How can the heart travel to Allah when it is chained by its desires

I follow the Way of Love, and where Love's caravan takes its path, there is my religion, my faith.

Ibn Arabi observes that the most perfect of mystic lovers are those who love God simultaneously for himself and for them- selves, because this capacity reveals in them the unification of their twofold nature (a resolution of the torn "conscience malheureuse" ). He who has made himself capable of such love is able to do so because he combines mystic knowledge ( ma rrifa ) with vision ( shuhud) .

The individual is identified with the perishable; what can become eternal in the individual pertains exclusively to the separate and unique active Intelligence.

Ich folge der Liebe, Wohin auch ihre Karawane zieht, Liebe ist meine Religion, Liebe ist mein Glaube.

I saw Divinity with the Eye of the Heart. I said, “Who are you. It said, “You.

الكتبُ ثمرات عقول الواضعين لها، وفي الثمرات طيبٌ وخبيثٌ، فانظرْ بأيّ ثمرة تغذّي عقلك.

To be acquainted with what is best and oldest in yourself, is to know yourself as you were, before the world was made, before you emerged into time.

في كلِّ صديق شرٌّ يُـتَّـقَى، فمَن كثُرَ أصدقاؤُه كَـثُـر اتِّـقاؤهُ.

اعلم أنّ من الخيانة لرسول الله الخيانةُ لأهل بيته فيما سألك فيه من المودّة لهم. وحبُّ آل البيت لا يتبعّضُ، فإنّ مَن كره أحدًا من أهل بيته فقد كره رسول الله صلى الله عليه وسلّم.

As Ibn Arabi says: ‘Absolute existence is the source of all existence’.

دخلتُ يوماً بقرطبةَ على قاضيها أبى الوليد بن رشد ، وكان يرغب فى لقائى لما سمع وبلغه ما فتح الله به علىَّ فى خلوتى ، فكان يُظهر التعجُّبَ مما سمع . فبعثنى والدى إليه فى حاجةٍ ، قصداً منه حتى يجتمع بى ، فإنَّه كان من أصدقائه ، وأنا (آنذاك) صبىٌّ ما بقل وجهى ولا طرَّ شاربى . فعندما دخلت عليه ، قام من مكانه إلىَّ محبَّةً وإعظاماً ، فعانقنى وقال لى : نعم ! قلت له : نعم ! فزاد فرحه بى لفهمى عنه ، ثم استشعرتُ بما أفرحه ، فقلت : لا ! فانقبض وتغير لونه وشك فيما عنده . وقال لى : كيف وجدتم الأمرَ فى الكشف والفيض الإلهى ، هل هو ما أعطاه لنا النظر ؟ قلت : نعم ولا ، وبين نعم ولا تطيرُ الأرواحُ من موادِّها والأعناق من أجسادها ! فاصفرَّ لونُه وأخذه الأفكل وقعد يحوقل وقال: هذه حالة أثبتناها وما رأينا لها أربابا.

Oh, her beauty--the tender maid! Its brilliance gives light like lamps to one travelling in the dark. She is a pearl hidden in a shell of hair as black as jet, A pearl for which Thought dives and remains unceasingly in the deeps of that ocean. He who looks upon her deems her to be a gazelle of the sand-hills, because of her shapely neck and the loveliness of her gestures.

شوق بتحصيل الوصال يزول والاشتياق مع الوصال يكون *** إن التخيل للفراق يديمه عند اللقاء فربه مغبون *** من قال هون صعبة قلنا له ما كل صعب في الوجود يهون *** هو من صفات العشق لا من غيره والعشق داء في القلوب دفين

Who anyway can define the borderline between gnosis and poetic knowledge? The two modes are not identical, and yet they interpenetrate one another. Are we to call the gnosis of Novalis, Blake, and Shelley a knowledge that is not poetic? In domesticating the Sufis in our imagination, Corbin renders Ibn 1 Arabi and Suhrawardi as a Blakl· and a Shelley whose precursor is not Milton but the Koran.

ما من نور إلا فى مقابلة ظلمة ، وكل ظلمة على قدر نورها ، والأنوار متميزة ، وكذلك الظلم ، ما من شئ إلا له مقابل

ما جفَّ قلمُ عالِمٍ يستمدّ من بحر الحقائق

ما كلُّ مَن ذاق طعما نال لذته منْ لمْ يذُقْ طعمَ حبِّ اللهِ لمْ يذقِ

ليس في العالم المخلوق قوة أعظم من المرأة، لسرّ لا يعرفه إلا من عرف فيم وُجِد العالم .

عجبتُ من بحرٍ بلا ساحل وساحلٍ ليسَ له بحرُ وضحوةٍ ليس لها ظُلمة وليلةٍ ليس لها فجرُ وكرةٍ ليس لها موضع يعرفها الجاهلُ والحبر وقبةٍ خضراءَ منصوبةٍ جاريةٍ نقطتُها القهرُ وعَمَدٍ ليس لها قُبةٌ ولا مكان خفي السر خطبت سراً لم بغيره كن فقيل هل هيمك الفِكرُ فقلتُ ما لي قدرةٌ فارفقوا عليه في الكونِ ولا صبر فإنَّ بالفكر إذا ما استوى في خلدي يتَّقدُ الجمر فيصبح الكلُّ حريقاً فلا شفعٌ يُرى فيه ولا وِتر فقيل لي ما يجتني زَهره من قال رفقاً إنني حر

Others love you for their own sakes. I love you for your own self, And you, you flee from Me. Dearly beloved! You can not treat Me fairly, for if you approach Me, It is because I have approached you.

The parallels to modern physics [with mysticism] appear not only in the Vedas of Hinduism, in the I Ching, or in the Buddhist sutras, but also in the fragments of Heraclitus, in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, or in the teachings of the Yaqui sorcerer Don Juan.

Angels are the powers hidden in the faculties and organs of man

مهما برزَ في ميدانِ المجادلة بِدْعِيٌّ، برزَ له أشعريٌّ (الفتوحات، ج1/ ص 157)

كل صبر على بلاء يمنعك من الدعاء في رفعه لا يعوَّل عليه

لا تصاحب أحدًا إلا من ترى معه الزيادة في دينك، فإن نقص منه فاهرب منه كهروبك من الأسد بل أشد، فإن الأسد يهدم دنياك فيعطيك الدرجات، والقرينُ السوء يحرمك الدنيا والآخرة.

between the universe that can be apprehended by pure intellectual P.erception (the universe of the Cherubic Intelligences) and the universe perceptible to the senses, there is an intermediate world, the world of Idea-Images, of archetypal figures, of subtile substances, of "immaterial matter." This world is as real and objective, as consistent and subsistent as the intelligible and sensible worlds; it is an intermediate universe "where the spiritual takes body and the body becomes spiritual," a world consisting of real matter and real extension, though by comparison to sensible, corruptible matter these are subtile and immaterial. \The organ of this universe is the active Imagination; it is the place oftheophanic visions, the scene on which visionary events and symbolic histories appear in their true reality.\ Here we shall have a good deal to say of this universe, but the word imaginary will never be used, because with its present ambiguity this word, by prejudging the reality attained or to be attained, betrays an inability to deal with this at once intermediate and intermediary world.

the hearts of all mystic lovers.” Likewise when Ibn Arabi, the distinguished philosopher, writer, and mystic, saw the young Rumi walking behind his father one day, he exclaimed, “Glory be to God, an ocean is

From my insufficiency to my perfection, and from my deviation to my equilibrium From my sublimity to my beauty, and from my splendor to my majesty From my scattering to my gathering, and from my rejection to my communion From my baseness to my preciousness, and from my stones to my pearls From my rising to my setting, and from my days to my nights From my luminosity to my darkness, and from my guidance to my straying From my perigee to my apogee, and from the base of my lance to its tip From my waxing to my waning, and from the void of my moon to its crescent From my pursuit to my flight, and from my steed to my gazelle From my breeze to my boughs, and from my boughs to my shade From my shade to my delight, and from my delight to my torment From my torment to my likeness, and from my likeness to my impossibility From my impossibility to my validity, and from my validity to my deficiency. I am no one in existence but myself,

He spoke about cognition.” “Is that all you know? Don’t you remember anything?” “I remember the verses he interpreted.” “Whose verses?” “I don’t know.” “Let me hear.” “Ahriman knows not The secret of God’s unity. Ask Asaf, he knows. Can a sparrow swallow the mouthful of the Anka-bird? ‘Can a single jug take in The waters of a great sea?’” “Those are the verses of Ibn Arabi.They say that the perception of God’s wisdom is possible only for the chosen, only for a few.” “And what remains for us?” “To comprehend what we can. If a sparrow cannot swallow the mouthful of the Anka-bird, it will still eat as much as it can. You cannot scoop up the whole sea with a jug, but whatever you scoop up is also the sea.

Los ángeles son los poderes ocultos en las facultades y órganos del hombre

والعشق مثل اللبلابة التى تلتف على شجرة العنب وأمثالها، فهو يلتف بقلب المحب حتى يعميه عن النظر إلى غير محبوبه

my vision of Him is His vision of me

The Imagination is the scene of the encounter whereby the supersensory-divine and the sensible "descend" at one and the same "abode.

That is why the theopathic maxim of the disciples of Ibn Arabi was not Ana'l Haqq "I am God " (Hallaj) , but Ana sirr al-l Haqq, "I am the secret of God," that is to say, the secret of love that makes His divinity dependent on me, because the hidden Treasure "yearned to be known" and it was necessary that beings exist in order that He might be known and know Himself.

Make a ritual ablution before each prayer, beginning every action with "In the name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful." First wash your hands, intending to pull them away from the affairs of this world. Then wash your mouth, remember and reciting God's name, purifying it in order to utter His Name. Wash your nose wishing to inhale the perfumes of the Divine. Wash your face feeling shame, and intending to wipe from it arrogance and hypocrisy. Wash your forearms trusting God to make you do what is good. Wet the top of your head feeling humility and wash your ears (in preparation) to hear the address of your Lord. Wash from your feet the dirt of the world so that you don't stain the sands of Paradise. Then thank and praise the Lord, and send prayers of peace and blessing upon our Master, who brought the canons of Islam and taught them to us. After you leave the place of your ablution without turning your back to it, perform two cycles of prayer out of hope and thankfulness for His making you clean. Next, stand in the place where you are going to make your prayers as if between the two hands of your Lord. Imagine, without forms and lines, that you are facing the Ka'bah, and that there is no one else on the face of this earth but you. Bring yourself to express your servanthood physically. Choose the verses you are going to recite, understanding their meanings within you. With the verses that start with "Say..." feel that you are talking to your Lord as He wishes you to do: let every word contain praise. Allow time between the sentences, contemplating what our Master, the Messenger of God, gave us, trying to keep it in your heart. Believing that your destiny is written on your forehead, place it humbly on the floor in prostration. When you finish and give salutations to your right and to your left, keep your eyes on yourself and your connection with your Lord, for you are saluting the One under whose power you are and who is within you...

If it had not been for this love, the universe would not have appeared in its source. Its movement from non-existence to existence is the movement of the love of the One who brings into existence for this purpose. The universe also loves to witness itself in existence as it was witnessed in immutability. Thus by every aspect, the movement from immutable non- existence to the existence of the sources is a movement of love, both in respect of Allah and in respect to itself.

My heart has opened unto every form: it is a pasture for gazelles, a cloister for Christian monks, a temple for idols, the Kaaba of the pilgrim, the tables of the Torah and the book of Quran. I practice the religion of Love; in whatsoever directions its caravans advance, the religion of Love shall be my religion and my faith.

When a man loves a woman, he desires union, that is, the goal of union which exists in love. In the elemental form, there is no greater union than marriage. (10) By this appetite encompasses all parts. For that reason, complete ritual washing is prescribed after intercourse. Purification envelops him as annihilation in the woman was complete in the obtainment of appetite. Allah is very jealous of His slave if He believes that he finds pleasure in other than Him. So man purifies himself by ritual washing in order to return to Him in whom he was annihilated, since that is all there is.

الإنسان قديم محدث موجود معدوم

وقد كان شيخنا صالح البربري بإشبيلية قد قال لي يا ولدي إياك أن تذوق الخل بعد العسل فعلمت مراده

إن أردتَ أن تكون من الأولياء فلا يدخل عليك الوقتُ إلا وأنت في المسجد، فأمَّا إن فاتتكَ تكبيرةُ الإحرام أو ركعة فأنت من العامة المطعون في إيمانهم بالنقص، ولا حديث عليك.

Glory be to Him who veils Himself through His manifestation and manifests Himself through His veil!

ومما لا بد منه: البحث عن هذه اللقمة، فأساس هذا الطريق: اللقمة الحلال، عليها قام عماد هذا الطريق، ولا تثقل على أحد ولا تقبل من أحد، واحترف، وتورع في كسبك ونطقك ونظرك وسمعك، وفي جميع حركاتك

To sum up, the power of the heart is a secret force or energy ( quwwat Khafiya ), which perceives divine realities by a pure hierophanic knowledge { idrak wadih jali) without mixture of any kind, because the heart contains even the Divine Rahma. In its un- veiled state, the heart of the gnostic is like a mirror in which the microcosmic form of the Divine Being is reflected.

A potential dajjalic interruption is an excessive esoterism. All of these people on a grail quest and looking for the ultimate secret to Ibn Arabi’s 21st heaven and endlessly going into the most esoteric stuff without getting the basics right, that is also a fundamental error of our age because the nafs loves all sorts of spiritual stories without taming itself first. The tradition that was practiced in this place for instance (Turkey) was not by starting out on the unity of being or (spiritual realities). Of course not. You start of in the kitchen for a year and then you make your dhikr in your khanaqah and you’re in the degree of service. Even Shah Bahauddin Naqshband before he started who was a great scholar needed 21 years before he was ‘cooked’. But we want to find a shortcut. Everything’s a shortcut. Even on the computer there’s a shortcut for everything. Something around the hard-work and we want the same thing. Because there seems to be so little time (or so little barakah in our time) but there is no short cut unless of course Allah (SWT) opens up a door of paradise or a way for you to go very fast. But we can’t rely on that happening because it’s not common. Mostly it’s salook, constantly trudging forward and carrying the burden until it becomes something sweet and light. And that takes time, so the esoteric deviation is common in our age as well.

ما أن يصبح واضحاً أن كل فهم، بما في ذلك الفهم العقدي و العلمي، هو مجرد فهم الإنسان لنفسه، فإن معرفة المرء لذاته العارفة تغدو أكثر إلحاحاً. و لذلك مرة أخرى، هذا هو المشروع الأساسي لابن عربي، أم يصف حدود النفس على أساس الموضوع الذي تشكل النفس صورة له، أو المعنى الذي هي صورة له.

The authentic mystic wisdom ( mafrifa) is that of the soul which knows itself as a theophany, an individual form in which are epiphanized the divine Attributes which it would be unable to know if it did not discover and apprehend them in itself. 'When you have entered into my Paradise, you have entered into your- self ( into your "soul," nafs), and you know yourself with an- other knowledge, different from that which you had when you knew your Lord by the knowledge you had of yourself," for now you know Him, and it is through Him that you know yourself.

الابتلاء أصله الدعوى ، فمن لا دعوى له لا ابتلاء يتوجه عليه ، ولهذا ما كلفنا الله حتى قال لنا : (أَلَسْتُ بِرَبِّكُمْ) الأعراف ، فقلنا : بَلى ، فأقررنا بربوبيته علينا ، وإقرارنا بربوبيته علينا عين إقرارنا بعبوديتنا له ، والعبودية بذاتها تطلب طاعة السيد ، فلما ادّعينا ذلك حينئذ ، كلّفنا ليبتلي صدقنا فيما ادعيناه

You only know the universe according to the amount you know the shadows, and you are ignorant of the Real according to what you do not know of the person on which that shadow depends. Inasmuch as He has a shadow, He is known, and inasmuch as one is ignorant of what is in the essence of the shadow of the form which projects the shadow, he is ignorant of Allah. For that reason, we say that Allah is known to us from one aspect and not known to us from another aspect.

And the ritual of Prayer embraces all these movements: (a) There is the ascending, vertical movement which corre- sponds to the faithful's erect stance. This is the movement of the growth of man, whose head rises toward the heavens. ( b ) There is the horizontal movement, which corresponds to the orant's state at the moment of the profound inclination. This is the direction in which animals grow. (c) There is the inverse, descending movement, corresponding to the prosternation. This is the movement of the plant , sinking its roots in depth. Thus Prayer reproduces the movements of the creatural universe; it is itself recurrence of Creation and new Creation.

كل صحوة عن سكر لا يعول عليه، فان سكران الحق لا يصحو

Ibn El-Arabi wrote, ‘The Teacher is he who hears you, then unveils you to yourself

Ibn El-Arabi escribió: “El Maestro es quien te escucha, luego te desvela frente a ti mismo”.

Prayer is the highest form, the supreme act of the Creative Imagination.

The truth of passion is that passion is the cause of passion. If there had not been passion in the heart, passion would not have been worshipped.

The "field" encompassed in the "science of the Imagination" is so vast that it is difficult to enumerate all its sectors.

La raison qui m’a conduit à proférer de la poésie (shi‘r) est que j’ai vu en songe un ange qui m’apportait un morceau de lumière blanche ; on eût dit qu’il provenait du soleil. « Qu’est-ce que cela ? », Demandai-je. « C’est la sourate al-shu‘arâ (Les Poètes) » me fut-il répondu. Je l’avalai et je sentis un cheveu (sha‘ra) qui remontait de ma poitrine à ma gorge, puis à ma bouche. C’était un animal avec une tête, une langue, des yeux et des lèvres. Il s’étendit jusqu’à ce que sa tête atteigne les deux horizons, celui d’Orient et celui d’Occident. Puis il se contracta et revint dans ma poitrine ; je sus alors que ma parole atteindrait l’Orient et l’Occident. Quand je revins à moi, je déclamai des vers qui ne procédaient d’aucune réflexion ni d’aucune intellection. Depuis lors cette inspiration n’a jamais cessé.

be summarized in this statement by the Andalusi judge, Abu Bakr ibn al-‘Arabi (d. 543/1148): “The verses of the Qur’an are joined together in such manner that they are like a single word, harmoniously associated, structurally even.”3

واعلم أن البهائم وإن كانت مسخرة مذللة من الله للإنسان فلا تغفل عن كونك مسخرا لها بما تقوم به من النظر في مصالحها في سقيها وعلفها وما يصلح لها من تنظيف أماكنها ومباشرة القاذورات والأزبال من أجلها ووقايتها من الحر والبرد المؤذيات لها فهذا وأمثاله من كون الحق سخرك لها وجعل في نفسك الحاجة إليها فإنها التي تحمل أثقالك إلى بلد لم تكن تبلغه إلا بنصف ذاتك وهو شق الأنفس أي ما كنت تصل إليه إلا بالوهم والتخيل لا بالحس إلا بوساطة هذه المراكب فلا فضل لك عليها بالتسخير فإن الله أحوجك إليها أكثر مما أحوجها إليك ألا ترى إلى غضب رسول الله ص حين سئل عن ضالة الإبل كيف قال ما لك ولها معها حذاؤها وسقاؤها ترد الماء وتأكل الشجر حتى يجدها ربها فما جعل لها إليك حاجة وجعل فيك الحاجة إليها وجميع البهائم تفر منك ممن لها آلة الفرار وما هذا إلا لاستغنائها عنك وما جبلت عليه من العلم بأنك ضار لها ثم طلبك لها وبذل مجهودك في تحصيل شئ منها دليل على افتقارك إليها فبالله من تكون البهائم أغنى منه كيف يحصل في نفسه أنه أفضل منها صدق القائل ما هلك امرؤ عرف قدره" الفتوحات المكية ج ٣ ص٤٩٠

بل عندنا من سوء الأدب مع الله أن لا يسأل العبدُ رفع البلاء عنه، لأن فيه رائحةً من مقاومة القهر الإلهي بما يجده من الصبر وقوته، قال العارف: إنما جوّعَني لأبكي ، فالعارف و إن وجد القوة الصبريّة فليفرَّ إلى موطن الضعف و العبودية وحسن الأدب، فإن القوةَ لله جميعاً، فيسأل ربَّه رفعَ البلاء عنه، أو عصمته منه أن توهَّم وقوعه، وهذا لا يناقض الرضاء بالقضاء، فإن البلاء إنما هو عين المقضي لا القضاء، فيرضى بالقضاء و يسأل الله في رفع المقضي عنه، فيكون راضيا صابرا فهؤلاء أيضا هم الصابرون الذين أثنى الله عليهم

By giving objective body to intentions of the heart (himma, W6V1.111a1S), this creativity fulfils the first aspect of its function. This aspect comprises a large number of phenomena designated today as extrasensory perception, telepathy, visions of syn- chronicity, etc. Here Ibn Arabi contributes his personal testi- mony. In his autobiography ( Risiilat al-Quds), he tells how he was able to evoke the spirit of his shaikh, Yusuf al-Kumi, when- ever he needed his help, and how Yusuf regularly appeared to him, to help him and answer his questions. Sadruddin Qunyawi, the disciple whom Ibn Arabi instructed in Qunya, also speaks of his gift: "Our shaikh Ibn Arabi had the power to meet the spirit of any Prophet or Saint departed from this world, either by making him descend to the level of this world and contem- plating him in an apparitional body ( surat mithaliya ) similar to the sensible form of his person, or by making him appear in his dreams, or by unbinding himself from his material body to rise to meet the spirit.

Where Ibn al-Arabi had written for the intellectual, Rumi was summoning all human beings to live beyond themselves, and to transcend the routines of daily life. The Mathnawi celebrated the Sufi lifestyle which can make everyone an indomitable hero of a battle waged perpetually in the cosmos and within the soul. The Mongol invasions had led to a mystical movement, which helped people come to terms with the catastrophe they had experienced at the deeper levels of the psyche, and Rumi was its greatest luminary and exemplar.

Had we discussed the station of Sulayman in its entirety, you would have seen a matter whose revelation would have struck you with terror. Most of the men of knowledge of this Path have no knowledge of the state and rank of Sulayman. The business is not as they claim.

حضرت في مجلس فيه جماعة من العارفين فسأل بعضُهم بعضًا: من أي مقام سأل موسى الرؤية؟ فقال له الآخر: من مقام الشوق، فقلت له: لا تفعل؛ أصل الطريق أن نهايات الأولياء بدايات الأنبياء، فلا ذوق للولي في حال من أحوال أنبياء الشرائع، فلا ذوق لهم فيه، و من أصولنا أنّا لا نتكلم إلا عن ذوق، و نحن لسنا برسل و لا أنبياء شريعة، فبأي شي‏ء نعرف من أي مقام سأل موسى الرؤية ربه؟!! نعم، لو سألها ولي أمكنك الجواب ، فإن في الإمكان أن يكون لك ذلك الذوق ، و قد علمنا من باب الذوق أن ذوق مقام الرسل لغير الرسل ممنوع، فالتحق وجوده بالمحال العقلي؛ لأن الذات لا تقتضي إلا هذا الترتيب الخاص.

But again we must be careful to bear in mind that for Ibn Arabi fana is never absolute annihilation ( the failure to do so has been a source of countless misunderstandings in regard both to Sufismm and to Buddhism ). Fana and baqa are always relative terms. Accord- ing to Ibn Arabi, one must always state toward what there is annihilation, and wherein there is survival, persistence. In the state of fana, of concentration, of "Koran," in which the essential unity of Creator and Creature is experienced, the Divine Attributes become predicables of the mystic ( discrimi- nation is suspended ). Then we may say not only that the mystic "creates" in the same sense as God Himself creates ( that is to say, causes something which already existed in the world of Mystery to be manifested in the sensible world ), but in addi- tion that God creates this effect through him. It is one and the same divine operation, but through the intermediary of the gnostic, when he is "withdrawn" (fana) from his human at- tributes and when he persists, survives ( baqa' ) in his divine attributes. The mystic is then the medium, the intermediary, through whom the divine creative power is expressed and manifested.

Allah saved him from the grief of the ark, so he pierced natural darkness by what Allah gave him of divine knowledge, while he did not depart from nature. He tested him with many trials (9) and gave him experience in many places so that he might realize patience in himself in the trials Allah gave him.

As for the wisdom of tajalli and the discourse on the form of the fire, this was because it was the object of Musa's desire. Allah gave him a tajalli in what he was searching for so that Musa would turn to Him and not turn away. If Allah had given the tajalli in other than the form which he was seeking, Musa would have turned away because his interest was concentrated on a particular goal. If he had turned away, his action would have rebounded on him, and Allah would have turned away from him. Musa was the chosen one and the one brought near. When Allah brings someone near to Him, He gives him a tajalli in the object he desires, without him knowing it. Like the Fire of Musa which he saw as what he needed. It was Allah, but he did not perceive it.

[ياأيها الناس أنتم الفقراء إلى الله والله هو الغني الحميد] و هذه طريقة أغفلها أهل طريقنا و رأوا أن الغنى بالله تعالى من أعظم المراتب و حجبهم ذلك عن التحقيق بالتنبيه على الفقر إلى الله الذي هو صفتهم الحقيقية فجعلوها في الغنى بالله بحكم التضمين لمحبتهم في الغنى الذي هو خروج عن صفتهم و الرجل إنما هو من عرف قدره و تحقق بصفته و لم يخرج عن موطنه و أبقى على نفسه خلعة ربه و لقبه و اسمه الذي لقبه به و سماه فقال أَنْتُمُ الْفُقَراءُ إِلَى الله وَ الله هُوَ الْغَنِيُّ الْحَمِيدُ فلرعونة النفس و جهالتها أرادت أن تشارك ربها في اسم الغني فرأت أن تتسمى بالغنى بالله و تتصف به حتى ينطلق عليها اسم الغني و تخرج عن اسم الفقير فانظر ما بين الرجلين و ما رأيت أحدا من أهل طريقنا أشار إلى ما ذكرناه أصلا من غوائل النفوس المبطونة فيها إلا الله تعالى فهو الذي نبه عباده عليها و بعد هذا فما سمعوا و تعاموا و كم جهدت أن أرى لأحد في ذلك تنبيها عليه فما وجدت و أسأل من الله تعالى أن لا يجعلنا ممن انفرد بها و أن يشاركنا فيها إخواننا من العارفين

In reality there is no existing entity that possesses freedom, since the correlations prevent that. The reality of freedom is found only in the fact that the Essence is "Independent of the worlds" (Ko- ran 3:97), even though the cosmos be- comes manifest from It and through It, not through anything else. Since the Es- sence is "Independent of the worlds," It is free, while the cosmos is poor and needy toward It. The creatures of the cosmos have no freedom whatsoever.

There is no way to neutralize causes because the source-forms necessitate them. They only appear in existence by the form on which they are based at the source since "there is no changing the words of Allah." (10:64) The words of Allah are not other than the sources of existent things. Timelessness is ascribed to Him in respect to their permanence, and in-time ness is ascribed to them in respect of their existence and appearance. Thus we say, a certain man or guest happened (26) to be with us today." That does not mean that he did not have any existence before this event. For that reason, Allah says about His Mighty Word which is timeless, "No reminder (dhikr) from their Lord comes to them lately renewed (27) without their listening to it as if it were a game," (21:2) and "but no fresh (28) reminder reaches them from the All- Merciful, without their turning away from it." (26:5) The Merciful only brings mercy, and whoever turns away from mercy advances the punishment which is the absence of mercy.

It is important to note that the meaning of the Arabic word nafs should not be limited here to the soul, for this word is found in the Arabic translation of the saying in question, while its Greek equivalent psyche does not appear in the original. Nafs should therefore not be taken in its usual sense, for it is certain that it has another much higher significance, which makes it similar to the word essence, and which refers to the Self or to the real being ; as proof of this, we can cite what has been said in a ḥadīth that is like a complement of the Greek saying" 'He who knows himself, knows his Lord'. When man knows himself in his deepest essence, that is, in the center of his being, then at the same time he knows his Lord. And Knowing his Lord, he at the same time Knows all things, which come from Him and return to Him. He knows all things in the supreme oneness of the Divine Principle, outside of which, according to the words of Muhyi 'd-Din Ibn Al-Arabi 'there is absolutely nothing which exists', for nothing can be outside of the Infinite.

For Ibn ’Arabi, whose most beloved teacher Abu Madyan was identified as being the stone, the continual revelation of God’s word is a living, breathing creation. Those highest saints, who are known as the malamatiyya, the blameworthy of this world, the ‘hidden’ or kafirun of God are the embodiment of all the systems of concealment and disclosure, jafr, ta’wil, taqqiyah, et al. The Qur’an is not just a book, it is a person. The texts of al-Kimia are not simple words which when put together produce magical formulas, they are alive.

قال تعالى في حق السموات و الأرض (ائْتِيا طَوْعاً أَوْ كَرْهاً قالَتا أَتَيْنا طائِعِينَ) و كذلك قال (فَأَبَيْنَ أَنْ يَحْمِلْنَها ) ،وذلك لما كان عَرْضاً، وأما لو كان أمراً لأطاعوا و حملوها، فإنه لا تُتَصوّر منهم معصية، جُبِلوا على ذلك، والجِنّ الناري والإنس ما جُبلا على ذلك‏، وكذلك مِن الإنس أصحابُ الأفكار من أهل النظر والأدلة المقصورة على الحواس والضرورات و البديهيات يقولون: لا بد أن يكون المكَلَّف عاقلاً، بحيث يَفهم ما يُخاطَب به. وصَدَقوا ،وكذلك هو الأمرُ عندنا، العالَمُ كُلُّه عاقلٌ حيٌ ناطقٌ من جهة الكشف بخرق العادة التي الناس عليها، أعني حصول العلم بهذا عندنا، غير أنّهم قالوا هذا جمادٌ لا يعقِل ، ووقفوا عند ما أعطاهم بصرُهم، و الأمر عندنا بخلاف ذلك ، فإذا جاء عن نبيٍّ أنَّ حَجَراً كلّمَهُ، أو كتف شاةٍ، أو جذع نخلة، أو بهيمة، يقولون: خلقَ اللهُ فيه الحياةَ والعلمَ في ذلك الوقت. و الأمر عندنا ليس كذلك، بل سرُّ الحياة في جميع العالَم، وأنَّ كلَّ من يسمع المؤذِّنَ من رطِبٍ و يابسٍ يَشهَدُ له ، و لا يشهد إلا من عَلِمَ، هذا عن كشفٍ عندنا، لا عن استنباط من نظر بما يقتضيه ظاهر خبر، ولا غير ذلك، و من أراد أن يقف عليه فليسلك طريق الرجال، و ليلزم الخَلوة و الذّكرَ، فإن الله سيُطلعُهُ على هذا كله عينا ، فيعلم إن الناس في عماية عن إدراك هذه الحقائق‏

The theosophy of Light suggests the metaphor of the mirror and the shadow. But "shadow" must not be taken to imply a dimension of Satanic darkness, an Ahrimanian antagonist; this shadow is essentially a reflection, the projection of a silhouette or face in a mirror. Our authors even speak of a "luminous shadow" ( in the sense that color is shadow in the context of absolute Light: Zill al-nur as opposed to Zill al-zulma, dark shadow). And that is how we must take the following state- ment: "Everything we call other than God, everything we call the universe, is related to the Divine Being as the shadow ( or his reflection in the mirror) to the person. The world is God's shadow.

Once he has recognized his invisible guide, a mystic sometimes decides to trace his own isnlld, to reveal his spiritual genealogy, that is, to disclose the "chain of transmission" culminating in his person and bear witness to the spiritual ascendancy which he invokes across the generations of mankind. He does neither more nor less than to designate by name the minds to whose family he is conscious of belonging. Read in the opposite order from their phenomenological emergence, these genealogies take on the appearance of true genealogies. Judged by the rules of _our historical criticism, the claim of these genealogies to truth seems highly precarious. Their relevance is to another "transhistoric truth," which cannot be regarded as inferior (because it is of a different order) to the material historic truth whose claim to truth, with the documentation at our disposal, is no less precarious. Suhrawardi traces the family tree of the IshrlqiyOn back to Hermes, ancestor of the Sages, (that Idris-Enoch of Islamic prophetology, whom Ibn rArabi calls the prophet of the Philosophers) ; from him are descended the Sages of Greece and Persia, who are followed by certain �ofis (Abo Yazid Bastlmi, Kharraqlni, I;Ialllj, and the choice seems particularly significant in view of what has been said above about the Uwaysis}, and all these branches converge in his own doctrine and school. This is not a history of philosophy in our sense of the term; but still less is it a mere fantasy.

The possible or impossible for Allah Most High involves the divine attribute of qudra or omnipotence, “what He can do”. This attribute in turn relates exclusively to the intrinsically possible, not to what is intrinsically impossible, as Allah says, “Verily Allah has power over every thing” (Qur’an 20:29), “thing” being something that in principle can exist. For example, if one asks “Can Allah create square circle?” the answer is that His omnipotence does not relate to it, for a square circle does not refer to anything that in principle could exist: the speaker does not have a distinct idea of what he means, but is merely using a jumble of words. "On the validity of all religions in the thought of ibn Al-‘Arabi and Emir ‘Abd al-Qadir: a letter to `Abd al-Matin

To become a Compassionate One is to become the likeness of the Compassionate God experiencing infinite sadness over undisclosed virtualities; it is to embrace, in a total religious sympathy, the theophanies of these divine Names in all faiths. But this sympathy, precisely, does not signify acceptance of their limits; it signifies rather that in opening ourselves to them we open them to the expansion that the primordial divine sym- pathesis demands of them; that we increase their divine light to the maximum; that we "emancipate" them-as the divine Compassion did in pre-eternity-that is, emancipate them from the virtuality and the ignorance which still confine them in their narrow intransigence. By thus taking them in hand, religious sympathy enables them to escape from the impasse, that is, the sin of metaphysical idolatry. For this sympathy alone renders a being accessible to the light of theophanies. Mankind discloses the refusal of the divine Names in many forms, ranging from atheism pure and simple to fanaticism with all its variants. All come from the same ignorance of the infinite divine Sadness, yearning to find a compassionate servant for His divine Names. The Gnostic's apprenticeship consists in learning to practice fidelity to his own Lord, that is, to the divine Name with which he, in his essential being, is invested, but at the same time to hear the precept of Ibn •Arabi: "Let thy soul be as matter for all forms of all beliefs. " One who has risen to that capacity is an • arif, an initiate, "one who through God sees in God with the eye of God. "Those who accept and those who decline are subject to the same authority: the God in function of whom you live is He for whom you bear witness, and your testimony is also the judgment you pronounce on yourself.

Certainly, many people, especially Christians and those easily affected by popular culture, think that Aleister Crowley was 'the wickedest man in the world.' Surprisingly, among the Sufi dervishes there is a tradition called the Malamati. The Sheikh of Sheikhs (in other words the great Sufi teacher), Ibn al-Arabi, referred to a hierarchy among saints, at the pinnacle of which were the blameworthy (Malamiyya, or Malamatis). But rather than promoting a form of elitism, he and other classical Sufis claimed that Malamatis hid themselves among the common people. Turning to a current encyclopedia of Islam, we find that the Malamatiyya (Way of Blame) is described as 'the designation of a tendency, or of a psychological category, of people who attract blame to themselves despite their being innocent.' Crowley demonstrates in 'The Book of Lies' his gnosis that the teachers who are the very pinnacle of wisdom very often disguise their inner reality.

Allah manifests Himself in a special way in every creature. He is the Outwardly Manifest in every graspable sense, and He is the Inwardly Hidden from every understanding except the understanding of the one who says that the universe is His form (4) and His He-ness (huwiyya), and it is the name, the Outwardly Manifest. Since He is, by meaning, the spirit of whatever is outwardly manifest, He is also the Inwardly Hidden. His relation to whatever is manifested of the forms of the world is the relation of the governing spirit to the form. The definition of man, for example, includes both his inward and outward; and it is the same with every definable thing. Allah is defined in every definition, yet the forms of the universe are not held back and He is not contained by them. One only knows the limits of each of their forms according to what is attained by each knower of his form. For that reason, one cannot know the definition of Allah, for one would only know His definition by knowing the definition of every form. This is impossible to attain, so the definition of Allah is impossible. Similarly, whoever connects without disconnection has given limits to Allah and does not know Him. Whoever combines connection and disconnection in his gnosis, and describes Allah with both aspects in general - because it is impossible to conceive in detail because we lack the ability to encompass all the forms which the universe contains - has known Him in general and not in particular, as he knows himself generally and not in particular. For that reason, the Prophet, may Allah bless him and grant him peace, linked knowledge (ma'rifa) of Allah to knowledge of oneself and said, "Whoever knows himself knows his Lord." Allah says, "We will show them Our signs on the horizons (what is outside of you) and in themselves (what is your source) until it is clear to them (the contemplators) that it is the Truth," (41:53) inasmuch as you are His form and He is your spirit. You are to Him as your body-form is to you, and He is to you as the spirit which governs the body.

Whenever a person of unveiling sees a form which communicates to him gnosis which he did not have and which he had not been able to grasp before, that form is from his own source, no other. From the tree of himself he gathers the fruits of his cultivation, as his outer form opposite the reflected body is nothing other than himself, even though the place of the presence in which he sees the form of himself presents him with an aspect of the reality of that presence through transformation. The large appears small in the small mirror and tall in the tall, and the moving as movement. It can reverse its form from a special presence, and it can reflect things exactly as they appear, so the right side of the viewer is his right side, while the right side can be on the left. This is generally the normal state in mirrors, and it is a break in the norm when the right side is seen as the right and inversion occurs. All this is from the gifts of the reality of the Presence in which it is manifested and which we have compared to the mirror.

In this essential point Ibn rArabi declares concisely: "Those to whom God remains veiled pray the God who in their belief is their Lord to have compassion with them. But the intuitive mystics [Ahl al-Kashf] ask that divine Compassion be fulfilled [come into being, exist] through them."28 In other words, the Gnostic's prayer does not tend to provoke a change in a being outside him who would subsequently take pity on him. No, his prayer tends to actualize this divine Being as He aspires to be through and for him who is praying and who "in his very prayer" is the organ of His passion. The Gnostic's prayer means: Make of us, let us be, Compassionate ones, that is to say, "become through us what thou hast eternally desired to be. " For the mystic has come to know that the very substance of his being is a breath (spiritus) of that infinjte Compassion; he is himself the epiphanic form of a divine N arne. Accordingly his prayer does not consist in a request ( the �Ofis have always stood in horror of that kind of prayer )27 but in his actual mode of being ( like the prayer of the heliotrope turning toward its heavenly Lord); it has the value of clarifying the degree of spiritual aptitude he has attained, that is, the measure in which he has become "capable of God. " But this measure is itself determined by his own eternal condition, his archetypal in- dividuality. "As thou wert in pre-eternity, that is to say, in thine eternal virtuality, so wert thou manifested in thy present condition. Everything that is present in the manifest being is the form of what he was in his state of eternal virtuality. "28 It would be a mistake to find here the source of a causal deter- minism of the current variety; more appropriately we might liken this conception to Leibniz' "pre-established harmony.