The Duality of Time Theory

As we mentioned in chapter IV, using the same standard Avicennian classification, Ibn al-Arabi divides things in terms of existence into three exclusive categories: necessary, possible and impossible. The Necessary Existence is Allah Himself, while the impossible is what may not be described by existence, such as another god along with Allah. The various entities of the whole world, therefore, are in the category of possible existence, because they may come into being by the divine Command “Be!”. Because Allah is All-Knowing, He already knew all the possible entities of the world, before they come to exist. With regard to Allah, therefore, all the possible entities of the worlds are determined in His fore-knowledge, and when things become in existence, their relative states change with regard to each other but not with regard to Allah. With regard to Allah all things are constant entities.

Therefore, for Allah Himself, the state of the existence of world has not changed, , because there is no time flowing in the realflat space, but for each individual entity, or observer, since they exist only inspace and they only come to realize theworld as it develop sequentially in time, so they observe motion and change. The dispute between theologians and philosophers over the eternity of the world is because of the way they perceive it as if it is three-dimensional space changing in time, when it is actuallywith regard to their mortal and changing existence. Allah, however, never ceases seeing all the constant entities of theworld, while we consider the existence of the world in relation to our own entities, which are nonexistent, abstract points in this world, so we imagine that it must have come into existence after it was not [II.666.35].

Theflat space corresponds to pure eternal light filling the void, because the outer time equals the inner time:, thusas we just mentioned above, and since alreadyas we explained in chapter V; so this pure flat existence, which is the aether, is moving at the speed of light in the three dimensions at once, with regard to any hypothetical observer at rest. With regard to its own being, however, this flat space is not moving at all, because it exists in all places at once, since its speed is. Therefore, the abstract geometrical points of this flat three dimensional space are absolutely constant, and they are called fixed, or immutable, essences or entities, or permanent archetypes, as they have been translated by some scholars from the original Arabic: “aayan thabita”, but we simply describe them as “constant”, in order to stress that this is their natural intrinsic state, in which they have always been, eternally, and not that they may have been muted or fixed in this state by any external cause.

For this reason, one of the divine Names of Allah is “the Light”, and He described Himself as “the Light of the heavens and the earth” (24:35). One of Ibn al-Arabi’s most influential students, Sadruddin al-Qunawi explains that “True Light brings about perception but is not perceived”, just as True Being brings about manifestation and finding but is neither manifest nor found, thus True Light is “identical with the Essence of the Real in respect of Its disengagement from relations and attributions” [Qunawa, al-Fukuk, 225 [2]]. This True Light is the non-delimited Being, but it discloses itself in time as delimited being. As Ibn al-Arabi explains:

Were it not for light, nothing whatsoever would be perceived, neither the known (i.e. the spiritual worlds), nor the sensed (i.e. the physical world), nor the imagined (i.e. the psychical worlds). The names of light are diverse in keeping with the names of all faculties ... smell, taste, imagination, memory, reason, reflection, conceptualization, and everything through which perception takes place are light. As for the objects of perception ... they first possess manifestation to the perceiver, then they are perceived; and manifestation is light. ... Hence every known thing has a relation with the Real, for the Real is Light. It follows that nothing is known but Allah [III.276-77].