6.7  The Cosmic Heart

The Arabic word for the “heart” is “qalb”, which can be related to many different but closely connected roots as summarized by Abdulkarim al-Jiliy in his book of “al-Insan al-Kamil” (“The Perfect Human”). First, like the English word, it means that it is the summary of the creations and the outline of all existents. It can also be connected to the Arabic verb “qalaba” which means “to turn over”, and that is because it changes so quickly, as it is always perpetually turning from one state into another. Yet another meaning is that the heart is the inverse (“maqlub”) of all contingent things, because its origin is divine and eternal, and it keeps returning to this divine origin because it is always fluctuating between witnessing the creation and witnessing the Real. For this reason the heart is like a mirror in which all the realities of existence are reflected, so that it always shows their inverse images, though, as a matter of fact, the Jiliy adds: the cosmos is the image of the heart rather than the opposite, because the heart is the origin and the cosmos is a reflection.

On the other hand, Ibn al-Arabi explains that the heart is a power beyond the intellect because it is always switching between states; it never remains on one state, just like divine manifestations. The intellect and other forces hold the information, while the heart keeps turning from one state to another in order to follow up with divine manifestations; for this reason the person who doesn’t witness these manifestations with his heart may deny them, thus Allah said in Quran after mentioning some signs: “There is some reminder in that for that who has a heart or who gives ear and witnesses (the truth)” [50:37], and the Prophet peace be upon him said that the heart is between two Fingers of the Fingers of the All-Merciful where He keeps turning it over as He wills [I.289.31]. Also, in his commenting on the verse where Allah says: “those who believe and their hearts calm down in remembering Allah, for in remembering Allah the hearts calm down” [13:28], Ibn al-Arabi explains that they calm down in their changing along the breath, because they know that staying on one state is not possible, since the form of the Real is not confined, and its immensity is achieved only through changing... because everyday He is at one task (as we explained this verse in chapter IV) [I5.21.6].

Ibn al-Arabi also explains further that the heart, which is the hidden or the inner dimension, has six faces to meet the six faces or directions of the outer space that is the locus of divine manifestations [III.305.24]. In this way the heart is capable of seeing the manifested cosmos all at once at every instance of time, while the intellect is only capable of hearing the command of Allah or conducting his knowledge into the cosmos through speaking, i.e. only one bit at a time.

Ibn al-Arabi then asserts that the first form, that the Breath of the All-Merciful accepted, was the form of the Cloud which was the first instance of the existence of the Real, so the Real was for this Cloud like the heart for the Human, just as He is for the heart of the knowing human believer (i.e. the Perfect Human) like the heart for the human, so He is the Heart-of-the-Heart [III.430.2]. Therefore, the heart is the instantaneous form that the spirit keeps acquiring, while the soul is the sum of all these forms through time.

Following the Sufi comparison between the world and the Book, as we mentioned above, Ibn al-Arabi asserts that the world is an inscribed book in the unfolded scroll of existence [I.366.3, III.112.23, II.367.18, III.455.19], alluding also to Quran where Allah swears by the Mount (of Revelation), by the Book inscribed in an unfolded Scroll, and by the Populated House [52:1-4]. Ibn al-Arabi showed in many occasions that the Populated House, that is also called the Grave, that is located in the seventh heaven [II.453.1], is the Heart of the true believer that encompassed the Real while neither His Heavens nor His Earth were able to encompass Him [I.120.24], alluding also to one famous Hadith. Going along with this comprehensive comparison Ibn al-Arabi adds that Allah said about Jesus peace be upon him that he is His Word that He recited onto Mary [4:171], and Allah also said that His Words never exhaust [31:27], and they are the creations written by the First Intellect in the Tablet of the Universal Soul, as we explained above.

With all this in mind, we can argue that the Universal Spirit is like the Ink used for writing the Book of the Cosmos, and the First Intellect is the Pen that writes the Words of Allah in the Tablet that is the Universal Soul that is the sum of the images of all creations that are coming into existence. We use the word “images” here to stress that the creations do not have real independent existence because, just like the words in normal writing, they are simply the trace left over by the Pen when it wrote them down.

This view was summarized in chapter IV and explained in more detail in the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos, where it was also shown that the First Intellect that is the Single Monad keeps fluctuating between the Real and the Soul to conduct the effects of the manifestations of Allah into the world. These manifestations are the divine Names that act on the creations. Every time he goes back and forth between the Real and the Soul, the Intellect conducts one command or one divine task to one entity in the world, where he appears in the form of that entity. The Intellect keeps appearing in the form of all entities displaying a complete frame of the cosmos into the Soul, which takes him a full Day that is an indivisible time called the single Day [I5.425.8-11] that is a mere instance of the actual time flow in our time scale. This comprehensive image of all divine manifestations that was scanned over one Day/instance is printed in the Heart and reflected onto the Soul. The Heart here acts exactly like a mirror which never keeps any information of the images displayed on it but it is always ready to display and reflect new images. These images, however, as they keep flooding out of the Heart, are memorized in the Soul and sometimes summarized and analyzed by the Intellect.

Ibn al-Arabi also declares that the Populated House is the Perfect Human [III.295.8] and he adds that the perfect divine form appeared only through the Perfect Human, so he is the heart for the body of the cosmos that is everything other than Allah, and he is the House populated with the Real because he encompassed Him, so his rank is like the heart between Allah and the world because it turns over in every form that each day he is in a task, so he has this divine vastness because Allah the Exalted described Himself as being each day in one task, and the day here is the single indivisible time, as we showed in chapter IV, so he is in tasks, as many as there are entities in the world [III.295.9].

In his ascension Ibn al-Arabi says that he saw the Populated House and he discovered that it is his heart [III.350.18], and he explains that Allah established the Populated House, that is called the Grave, in the seventh heaven and it is aligned with Kaaba and he goes on to say that this house has two doors through which seventy thousand angels enter every day from the eastern door, that is the door of the rising of lights, and they exit from the western door, that is the door of the hiding of lights, so they enter into the unseen where nobody knows their destiny. He then adds that Allah creates these angels each day from the river of life from the drops that drip when Gabriel shakes off after he immerses himself in this river. These angels when they exit from the western door they meet with the angles created from the thoughts that occur in the heart of every human that are also seventy thousands thoughts each day, because the hearts are all created from this House [II.443.7].

To put all this together, Figure 6.1 demonstrates the relation between the Universal Spirit, the First Intellect, the Cosmic Heart and the Universal Soul as can be concluded from Ibn al-Arabi’s various allusions mentioned above and in other publications.

Figure 6.1: The Cosmic Heart.

Therefore, if we go along with the comparison that the cosmos, that is the Universal Soul, is a book; the Heart of the Cosmos is the divine Word that keeps manifesting in different forms to compose the chapters of the full story, and since each word is composed of letters, the entities of all creations are these letters and they keep changing to form new words. Just like words that are the different manifestations in the Heart, the letters have different forms and shapes but all are made up of dots that are images of the Universal Spirit, that is the real-through-whom-creation-takes-place, that is the most perfect image of the Real, Allah the Creator. Thus we can easily understand Ibn al-Arabi’s assertion that Allah, the Exalted, is for the heart of the knowing human believer, just like the heart for the human, so He is the Heart-of-the-Heart [III.430.2], that is sometimes called as “the Secret”, though this is only true for the knowing believer, or the Perfect Human, among humans in particular. The hearts of other creatures and other humans who may not be so realized in their realities, may be too thick and veiled that their secrets have a secret which on its turn has a more subtle secret, and some Sufis have suggested seven layers of secrets, where the Real is directly reflected in the most profound secret in the heart [I.117.8].

We can now also understand why the Populated House, that is the Cosmic Heart, is situated in the seventh heaven (the first from above) and why Ibn al-Arabi always associates it with Saturday [II.398.13, II.442.17] that is the day of eternity as we showed in chapter IV; the reason is because this orb contains the other six orbs that correspond to space while this orb is the orb of time.