Chapter IV: Time and the Single Monad Model

“I was a Treasure unknown, so I loved to become known; thus I created the creation, and I revealed Myself to them, that they may come to know Me.”Allah, The Exalted, Hadith Qudsi (Divine Narration: The Meccan Revelations: III.267.12)

“The Real has a unique aspect towards everything, ... and every (single) thing is one, ... and He is One. So only one is proceeding from Him (at a time), and He is always in the oneness of every one.”Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, II.434.23

“We have no doubt that everything in the world ceases from existence in the second instance-of-time after its becoming (and then it is re-created again, perpetually).”Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, II.208.27

The Greatest Master Muhyiddin Ibn al-Arabi (1165-1240 AD) is one of the most influential Sufi thinkers in Islamic history. His writings have deeply influenced Islamic civilization for centuries, and have more recently attracted wide interest in the West. His two most famous works are “The Meccan Revelations” (“al-Futuhat al-Makkiyya”), an encyclopedic discussion of Islamic wisdom, and the “Bezels of Wisdom” (“Fusus al-Hikam”), a concise book which comprises twenty-seven chapters named after prophets who characterize different spiritual types. This latter book created unfathomable philosophical debate in the following centuries, and it was followed by more than two hundred extensive commentaries by later scholars and critics. In addition to that, he also wrote hundreds of other lesser known books and treatises, many of them are now available in print. In one of his treatises, he himself listed 289 titles, that he remembered at the time, and the number increases to 317 confirmed works when added to other titles he mentioned throughout his various books, but more than 850 works have been attributed to him, though many of them are not authentic.

Ibn al-Arabi was not an astronomer, neither had he ever been interested in astronomy or cosmology as a science. But as a Sufi and mystical theologian constantly inspired by the cosmological teachings and symbolism developed throughout the Quran, and in a number of related Hadith (Prophetic sayings), he talks about planets and orbs and their motion as a structure Allah created on His divine Image, and relates them to the divine Names. He uses cosmology to refer to the ways we acquire more knowledge of the Creator. Apart from a few short treatises where he talks specifically about some cosmology subjects mixed with philosophy and theology, Ibn al-Arabi didn’t devote any special book to describing the heavens, as did other astronomers. Nevertheless, in his major book of the Meccan Revelations, for example, we find many paragraphs and chapters that can be used to illustrate his profound view of the cosmos.

In the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos, we have introduced Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmology and other related conceptions, with extensive cross-referencing to his various books, but we want in this chapter to expand on outlining his cosmological model in order to compare it with the previous brief historical account of ancient and modern philosophy and physics, that we have summarized in chapters II and III, and also to be able to situate the Duality of Time hypothesis, that will be discussed further in chapter V, with other related issues in his overall cosmological system.

Ibn al-Arabi’s view of the cosmos is truly challenging, even as compared to the latest modern theories and observations. For example, he clearly declared that the stars are moving, more than seven centuries before this was scientifically known, and he explained why we don’t observe their motion. Moreover, he estimated the proper motion of some visible stars, quite consistent with the measurements taken only few decades ago. As we noticed in chapter III, the proper motion of stars was first noticed in 1718, by Edmund Halley, who compared the positions of some stars as they were recorded by the Babylonians and other ancient astronomers, with the latest observations, and he realized that the positions of some of the stars were not the same as they had been thousands of years earlier. Even after that, the belief in the Aristotelian concept of “fixed stars” persisted even after Einstein formulated his theory of General Relativity, where he introduced the cosmological constant because he was so sure that the Universe had to be static.

Ibn al-Arabi also explained the observed retrograde motion of some planets and their formation in the solar system in a similar manner to what is widely accepted today. But most important in this regard is that his view of the world is heliocentric, similar to what Copernicus suggested many centuries afterwards, although he explains the geocentric view as the correct relative view of observers standing on the Earth. He also clearly affirmed that the Earth is a moving and rotating sphere, and he also explained why people don’t realize its motion around the center.

However, because Ibn al-Arabi did not dedicate any special books on the subject, these astronomical observations come only as minor topics in the course of his extensive treatment of other profound philosophical and theological subjects. Almost all his major books, and many other shorter treatises, are engrossed with extensive discussions interconnected with the various sciences, such as natural philosophy, cosmology, cosmogony, epistemology and metaphysics. In all these diverse sciences, Ibn al-Arabi has his own unique and original views that he often expounds in various contexts after reviewing what other scholars or schools have to say about the subject.

In addition to his general cosmological views, what is most important for us here in this book is his distinctive theory of time, that has never been introduced or discussed by any other philosopher or scientist, before or even after Ibn Arabi. We have already introduced this eccentric view in the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos, and showed in the final two chapters of that book how this could potentially solve many problems and paradoxes in the current cosmological and theoretical models of modern physics. After the publication of that first book on the subject, further research revealed that the Single Monad Model is indeed the Theory of Everything, no wonder that “Everything” is actually a name Ibn al-Arabi gives to the Single Monad which is perpetually creating every single thing in the cosmos. The key to understand this original metaphysical view is in understanding the complex nature of time. Therefore, in addition to his general cosmological views, we want also to summarize the general aspects of Ibn al-Arabi’s theory of time, in order to be able to develop it into a complete physics theory in the coming chapter. Most of the contents of this chapter, therefore, are drawn from the previous book, with extended discussion to make it more accessible to physicists and other people interested in natural philosophy.

One of the main problems that confronts physicists, if they want to read Ibn al-Arabi, is the different terminology he employs, obviously, in addition to the difficult symbolic language he mostly uses, as well as the fact that he, intentionally, didn’t discuss the subject of time at length in any single place in his extant works, so that we must piece together his overall cosmological understanding of time from his scattered treatments in many works and in different contexts from the various chapters of the Meccan Revelations. For these reasons, and mainly because of the different terminology, this chapter may be a little difficult for physicists and even philosophers, but in chapter V we will treat the subject in a more modern manner supported with rigorous mathematical analysis.