4.4.10.1 Circulated Days
If we stick to one place and watch the flow of time, we see that the Sun sets, for example, at the beginning of ‘Sunday night’, the night that begins before Sunday morning, according to the Arabic system where the night precedes the day; and then it rises on Sunday morning, and so on until it completes a full week by the beginning of the following Sunday night. This is the witnessed week, and its days are the normal days, or the witnessed days. Ibn al-Arabi calls them the ‘circulated days’, because they (day-times and night-times) seem to run after each other in a circle, as Allah says in the Quran: (He created the Heavens and the Earth through the real. He causes the night-time to encircle the day-time, and the day-time to encircle the night-time, and He has subjected the Sun and the Moon: each one follows a (designated) course for a time appointed. Is He not the All-Mighty, the All-Forgiving?) [39:5].
So we can also say that the day-times are circulated around the night-times, and the night-times are circulated around the day-times, because the day-time and the night-time are like hemispheres surrounding the Earth all the time, but running after each other as if they were seeking each other, as Allah also said in Quran: (Lo! Your Lord is Allah Who created the Heavens and the Earth in six Days then mounted He on the Throne. He covers the night-time with the day-time, which is in haste to seek it) [7:54].
The Arabic verb used in this verse for ‘to cover’ also means ‘to embrace’ [Ayyam al-Shaan: 7], and it is particularly used for marriage or mating. Thus Ibn al-Arabi suggests that it is as if the day-time and the night-time are seeking each other because they want to ‘marry’ each other, to produce progeny, since we and everything else in the world are all the ‘progeny’ of the day-times and night-times [Ayyam al-Shaan: 7]. This ‘abstract marriage’, is a basic concept in Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmological teachings, and we have seen in sections 3.1 and 1.3. Additionally, this alludes to the fact that the fundamental cause of physical motion is love, as we introduced in section 3 when we talked about Principle of Love, which will be elucidated further in chapter VI.
In every normal ‘circulated’ day, as we observe it in one specific place on the Earth, a vast number of ‘Days of events’ happen, as many as there are indivisible moments in this day. In other words, in every moment that we encounter on the Earth, there is a Day of event happening that encompasses the whole creation. Yet each Day of event is also composed of the seven distinctive Days of creation, the divine creative ‘Week’, described in section 4.4.
The circulated days are the normal days that we encounter, where each day is followed by the next day in the same usual order: Sunday, Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, Friday and Saturday, as depicted in Figure 4.10:
Figure 4.10: The Circulated Days, normally flowing starting from Sunday-night to Sunday-day, Monay-night, ... and so on till the end of Saturday-day.
The science of Time is a noble science, that reveals the secret of Eternity. Only the Elites of Sages may ever come to know this secret. It is called the First Age, or the Age of ages, from which time is emerging.
