6.5  The Universal Soul

According to Ibn al-Arabi’s cosmological model, as explained in chapter IV, the universe, which comprises both the material and the spiritual worlds, appeared in the Cloud which is an abstract space that extended in the breath of the All-Merciful expressing His passion to become known, as can be concluded from the famous divine Hadith of the hidden treasure, quoted at the beginning of chapter IV. In this Cloud, Allah first created an undefined number of Roaming Spirits, that He created directly, without any intermediaries, which caused them to become completely absorbed in His Presence, knowing nothing but Him. Allah then appointed one of these spirits and granted him a special epiphany of divine Knowledge that engraved in him all that Allah wanted to create in this entire world until the Last Day. This initial epiphany caused this Spirit, which is then called the “Universal Intellect” because he understood what Allah taught him, to become aware both of himself and of other Spirits, while they did not know about him.

Through this epiphany, the First Intellect saw himself composed of himself and of his further ability to realize or intelligize. He also saw that he has an ontic “shadow” caused by the Light of that special epiphany, which was realized through the divine Name “the Light”. This shadow is his “soul”, which is then called the ”Universal Soul” or the “First Soul”, or also the “Protected Tablet”, in which he is going to “write” what he now knows is going to happen, which is what Allah wanted to create through him until the Last Day. The creations are therefore the words of Allah written by this Pen in the Protected Tablet of the Soul; that is why the cosmos, for the Sufis, is equivalent to the Holy Book of Quran [I.366.1, II.403.21, II.459.6], as we explained in section 3 of chapter IV with more details.

In explaining this further, Ibn al-Arabi says in chapter 369 of the Meccan Revelations, in section 9 of the Treasuries of Generosity that deals with the Treasury of Teaching, where he says that the first to accept knowledge through learning, i.e. through time, rather than by essence, is the First Intellect; so he comprehended what Allah taught him and ordered him to write in the Protected Tablet that He created from him. For this reason, Allah called him by the Pen, a name given to one full chapter in Quran [68:1]. And for this same knowledge and manners that Allah taught him, the Intellect politely asked Allah as to what he should write? Allah then told him to write down what he learned and what Allah shall dictate him. The Pen first wrote down the Primordial Cloud, or inscribed it in the Tablet, and then he wrote all the realities that this Cloud includes, including the existence of the Roaming Spirits and their states, and he even wrote himself, his own existence and what he contains of knowledge, and the Tablet itself. When the Pen finished writing all that, the exalted Real started dictating him what He wants to create till the Last Day, i.e. the different states that all these creations shall go through and develop into, and this he could not be taught in advance because these states are infinite, and it is not possible for the infinite to enter existence all at once, so it can not be written beforehand, but rather it can only be dictated instantly as these states emerge into existence, which are nothing but the divine manifestations reflected in the Cosmic Heart as we shall see shortly.

Ibn al-Arabi adds that the Pen wrote with his head down, in good manner with his Teacher, Allah the Creator, and because dictation is not related to “seeing”, for seeing relates to that in which he writes, whereas “hearing” is what the Pen needs in order to hear the dictation of the Real. We shall use this important note below to explain the relation between the heart, the soul and the intellect.

In the same Treasury of Teaching, Ibn al-Arabi also adds that, in addition to his being the first student, the First Intellect was also the first teacher in creation, and the first created thing to learn from him was the Protected Tablet that is the Universal Soul, that is the first emanated existent to be originated from the Intellect. It is with relation to the Intellect just like Eve with relation to Adam; since she was created from him and was united with him, and the cosmos appeared between both of them in the same manner as the human progeny are born from Adam and Eve [III.399.17].

We must note, however, that these parallel terms and alternative names mentioned above, such as the Universal Soul and the Protected Tablet, do not always refer to exactly the same thing, but maybe to one thing with different respects. Thus, following this analogy of writing, the Protected Tablet is the Cloud rather than the Soul, while the Soul is the collection of the words of Allah as written by the Intellect in the Protected Tablet, but because the Cloud is an abstract space that does not exist without the creations, so all these three terms: the Cloud, the Tablet and the Soul are, in the end, identical. If the world is like a book, the Initial Body is the physical body of this book while the Universal Soul is the story or the meanings contained in it.