Chapter VI: Consciousness and the Three Orthogonal Worlds

“Absolute non-existence is like a mirror for absolute Existence, so He is seeing in it His own (temporal) image(s), that are the entities of contingent things. That is why things have constant entities and thingness even before they actually come to be, and when they become, they appear according to this Image of (Real) Existence.”Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, III.47.32

“If non-existence could speak out, it would tell you: ‘you are created according to my image’, because it sees in you nothing but its own shadow, just as Existence has told you: ‘you are created on My Image’.”Ibn al-Arabi, The Meccan Revelations, I5.154.23

“My soul is from elsewhere, I’m sure of that, and I intend to end up there.”Jalaluddin Rumi, The Essential Rumi

While physicists are interested mainly in the properties of matter and the various interactions between its constituents, meta-physicists investigate the nature of existence, including space-time, causality, and other more abstract concepts such as the mind and the soul. The classical view assumes the independent existence of objects, regardless of observers, but the subjective view gained more support in some later interpretations of Quantum Mechanics as we described in chapter III. According to these interpretations, the existence of objects is directly related to the consciousness of the observer, and some assume that objects are merely some forms of introspection and conceptual analysis in the mind.

According to the Single Monad Model, the world is both physical and metaphysical: it is metaphysical in the inner real flow of time, and physical on the outer imaginary level. So despite all the apparent undeniable physical phenomena, the reality is in the oneness that is exhibiting these phenomena of motion and multiplicity, including both the corporeal and incorporeal realms, which are two image worlds of the spiritual world of divine Attributes and Names. Therefore, the whole world is a combination of these three realms: spiritual, psychical, and physical, as depicted in Figures 6.2 and 6.3.

The Single Monad Model envisages this whole trinitarian world as one linear chronological sequence of digital information, since it is continuously alternating between existence and non-existence, or vacuum and void states, producing the instances of time, which curl into the various dimensions of space and evolve into all types of physical and metaphysical objects that are being interpreted and manipulated in the mind(s), although it still has a corresponding certain objective reality on each level of existence, including the physical cosmos that we observe on the outer level of time that we encounter, as well as the internal psychical and spiritual levels. In all these three levels, the Single Monad takes the current form of the corresponding entities, one individual form at a time, thus creating them as excitations in the abstract vacuum field, and when it completes the creation of one frame it starts again anew, by re-creating the same excitations, with various possible changes and variations, which are eventually interpreted as the entities of objects moving, changing and interacting, in space-time, hence producing the dynamic universe, in a similar manner as the movie is displayed on a computer monitor, as explained in chapter IV.

The observed and imaginable worlds are, therefore, nothing but the temporal excitations of the individual monads that are being re-created perpetually in one linear chronological sequence, by the only one Single Monad, that alone can be described as having real continuous existence, while the existence of the multiplicity of individual monads is discrete, because it is a collection of separate instances of the continuous existence of the Single Monad. That is why the outer time encountered by individual entities is intertwined with the real flow of time, as we explained at the end of chapter IV.

Furthermore, each higher world is a substrate in which the lower levels are manipulated, manifested or interpreted; the physical world is imagined or mirrored in the soul, through its various tools such as the mind, the heart and memory, and both of this physical and psychical worlds are manipulated by the divine Names, or the various Attributes of the Only One Real Essence.

However, in the physical world perceived by humans on the normal level of time, although the divine Attributes are essential for the soul to perceive or become conscious, these Attributes of the Real do not manifest directly, but as the attributes of the “real-through-whom-creation-takes-place” or the Greatest Element that we introduced in chapter IV, and that is why we called the higher dimension spiritual rather than divine, although they are in the end some manifestations of the ultimate divine Real. This is the fundamental reason why the human world is imaginary or hyperbolic, as we showed in chapter V, and as represented in Figure 6.3 and expressed mathematically by equation 6.1.

As a result of sincere contemplation, the Sufis, or the mystics in general, may become more realized in the reality of the world, which will be therefore circular or spherical for them, or perfectly symmetrical, as demonstrated in Figures 6.4 and 6.5, and as we will explain further in chapter VII when we talk about Alchemy and the problem of squaring the circle.