The Single Monad Model of the Cosmos

As we already explained, Ibn Arabi showed that the creation of the world by Allah is a 'series' process. That is, He creates only one event at a time (or indeed in each Day), as Allah says: each Day He is upon some (one) task (55:29). Yet we observe multitudes of different events happening apparently at once. According to Ibn Arabi, the way to understand this apparent paradox is to correct our view of the flow of time.

Ibn Arabi shows that the actual flow of time (the divine creative 'Week' as the basic unit of space-time) is not the witnessed flow from Sunday to Monday and so on to Saturday. These normal days of the week that we witness are the 'circulated' days, and not the actual divine Days (the 'Days of Event') in which only one single event should be happening each and every single Day. In order to define or construct the actual cosmic 'Days of events', we need first to attach each night-time to its own daytime, for again the underlying metaphysical connection is not as we observe: i.e., the ('real') night-time of each daytime is not the observed night-time that precedes or follows this daytime, but rather it is 'taken out' and separated from its own daytime by three daytimes and three night-times. This extraordinary connection, Ibn Arabi explains, is symbolically related to our three-dimensional structure as human beings. Finally, he also affirms (according to Qur anic indications), that the actual Days of events are 'intertwined' with the observable, 'circulated' days in a specific manner that I he details in his book Kitab Ayyam Al-Sha n ('The Book of the Days of Task').

So we shall first explain in this chapter the meanings and the relations between those three metaphysically distinct types of days: the 'circulated' days (ayyam al-takwir), the taken out days (ayyam al-salkh) and the intertwined days (ayyam al-ilaj). There we shall see that based on the hypothesis of 'intertwining', Ibn Arabi introduces a unique new concept of time (and space) that has apparently not been discussed before. Finally, we turn to explaining the distinctive motion of each Day in the zodiac and the kinds of effects that are caused in the world in these Days. And at the end of this chapter we shall see the divine origin of dividing the normal days into hours minutes, and seconds.