The Duality of Time Theory

For this reason Ibn al-Arabi asserts that time is a like chest in which the heart is locked, and we are normally imprisoned in the chest of time, just as the heart of the person lacking faith is imprisoned in or veiled by his own chest. To break out of time, we need to perceive the reality of existence through the heart, and in particular the special inner aspect between the heart and the Real. Thus Ibn al-Arabi explains that: For every ‘chest’ there is a ‘heart’, so as far as the heart remains in the chest, the person will be blind because the chest is a veil over him. When Allah wants to make him truly seeing, he goes out of his own chest and sees. The causes are the chests of the existing things, and the things are the hearts; as far as they are looking at the cause that they originated from, they will be blinded from witnessing Allah Who (actually, ultimately) created them. Thus when Allah wants to make them truly seeing, they stop looking at the causes that Allah created them ‘next to’ (and ‘through’) them, and they look instead at the ‘special Face’ that is (uniquely) connecting them with their Lord [II.652.35].

Ibn al-Arabi here applies and generalizes the verse in Quran that says: whomsoever Allah wants to guide, He opens his chest for Islam, and whomsoever He wants to leave astray, He makes his chest narrow and constricted as if he were engaged climbing up the sky [6:125]. So he adds that “the chest is in the second state of each form” [II.652.27], since the first state is the essence, or the heart, of the form itself, and the chest is its first appearance or effect. Then he lists many things and their corresponding chests, and he says that “the chest of time is the time (instant) of the Dust’s acceptance of the form” and “the chest of days is Monday” [II.652.27].

So the chest of something is its front, or the first thing to appear, which is why it is so important to know it: You should know that everything has a ‘chest’, and knowing it in this path (of mysticism) is one of the noble sciences and knowledge. This is because the world and every kind (in it) is created according to the image of the Human Being, who is the last existent, and the Human Being alone is created according to the divine Image, both its inner and outer dimensions, and Allah created him with a chest. So between the Real, to Whom is the firstness, and the Human Being, to whom is the lastness, there are ‘chests’ whose number no one knows except Allah the Exalted. [II.652.23]