6.4 The Universal Spirit
The Spirit, in its highest ultimate form, is attributed to Allah, and it is the Breath of the All-Merciful [I.275.3, II.172.5, III.33.21]. This Spirit manifested in the creation in the form of the Universal Spirit that can be described as the most perfect divine image in creation. Ibn al-Arabi usually refers to this entity using different names such as the Holy Spirit, the Secretary Spirit or the Greatest Element that we mentioned in chapter IV. Also, because all things are mere images or forms of this Universal Spirit that alone can be described as having real existence, it is thus called as “the real”, but not the Real as a divine Name. Ibn al-Arabi sometimes calls it as the “real-through-whom-creation-takes-place”, alluding to the verse in Quran where Allah says: (We created not the Heavens, the Earth, and everything in between, but by the real) [15:85, 30:8, 44:39, 46:3].
Ibn al-Arabi showed that the Arabic name of “spirit”: “ruh”, can be connected to two different but closely related roots; the first means to rest or to relieve, which indicates that the Spirit is always in ease and rest, and the second means to go, because it goes in ease through the capacious orbs of the fore-knowledge of its Creator, it also goes in ease through the states of the cosmos to give out to them what Allah has entrusted it, and it also goes through knowing itself, or its self-consciousness. Thus, because it has exhausted all these three comprehensive levels of knowledge, or goings, or cycles, it is then called Universal, because there remains nothing else to go through, as Ibn al-Arabi explains in his important book: the White Pearl (ad-Durrat ul-Bayda).
Accordingly, in terms of the complex-time geometry, the Universal Spirit is described by
, which means that it is moving at the speed of light in the inner as well as the outer levels of time, so it is the Absolute Existence that filled the non-existence. This Universal Spirit is therefore the True Vacuum, or Aether, that is absolutely flat three-dimensional space as we shall see further in section 8.
It must be noted that in Sufi literature there is some confusion between the Universal Spirit and the First Intellect which is also called by other names as we have seen in chapter IV. This confusion happens due to the extreme closeness between them that some mystics may view them as one and some others confuse between their names and descriptions. For example Ibn al-Arabi says about the first thing to exist in the divine Cloud that they are the forms of the roaming spirits, one of them is the highest divine Pen, that is the First Intellect, but then he describes it as the Knowledgeable Writer in the field of messages, and the First Intellect that emanates with wisdom and news, and the Mohammadan Reality, the real-through-whom-creation-takes-place and the Just, for the people of subtleties and signs, and that is the Holy Universal Spirit for the people of unveiling and references [III.444.24], so he calls it with different names or descriptions according to these different groups.