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From the Meccan Openings: The Myth of the Origin of Religion and Law
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14161 |
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Section : |
MODERN THOUGHT
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| Issue
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1 / 1988 |
4,330 Words |
| Author
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William C. Chittick
William C. Chittick teaches religious studies at the State
University of New York at Stony Brook; he is author of The
Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi (SUNY,
1983) and The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al'Arabi's
Metaphysics of Imagination (SUNY, 1989). |
Islam has produced no greater mystical theologian and philosophical visionary than Muhyi al-Din Ibn al-'Arabi (born in Muricia, 1165; died in Damascus, 1240). He synthesized Islamic law, theology, philosophy, mysticism, cosmology, psychology, and other sciences in a manner that has for the past seven hundred years wielded tremendous influence over Islam. His Meccan Openings (al-Futuhat al-makkiyya), which will fill more than fifteen thousand pages in its new edition, provides a few glimmers and flashes of the luminous sciences he acquired when God "opened" for him the door to the "Treasuries of Unseen Generosity." Ibn al-'Arabi wrote several hundred other works, at least three hundred of which are extant.
Though Ibn al-'Arabi had mastered the academic study of theology and was thoroughly versed in the dry ratiocination of the contemporary doctors, he avoided the standard theological approach, relying instead upon images, symbols, analogies, and allegories derived primarily from "openings" and "tastings" deeply rooted in the Qur'an and in the sayings of Muhammad. In the text that follows from the Meccan Openings, as in all his works, he constantly returns to one basic theme: All things are intimately interrelated through their common roots in the Divine Reality. The universe in its indefinite multiplicity is nothing but the outward manifestation of God's names. The Qur'an tells us that God is the All-Merciful, the All-Compassionate, the All-Forgiving, the All-Loving, the Creator, the Willing, the Knowing, the Powerful, the Mighty, the All-Holy, and so on. For Ibn al-'Arabi these names are the keys that unlock the door to the invisible world. Everywhere we look we see the "properties" and "traces" of the names within each created thing.
Unique among creatures, human beings display all of God's names, which explains why man alone was created "in God's image" and given dominion over all other things, each of which manifests only some of god's names. But people cannot fully actualize the divine names they possess unless they heed the revelation delivered by the prophets in general and Muhammad in particular. By following the scriptural guidance, they can return to their proper and primordial relationship with their Creator.
Reason or "intellect" ('aql), even in the best of circumstances, provides insufficient knowledge of God. It can understand that God in himself is infinitely transcendent and forever unknowable, but through its own resources it can tell us nothing about God's immanence and self-disclosure (tajalli) in all things. In contrast, revelation offers complete knowledge of God, combining the transcendence
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