The role of khayāl, usually translated as Imagination, is instrumental in Ibn ʿArabī’s writings. Like many Sufis Ibn ʿArabī regards human reason as severely limited which has only the capacity to delimit, define, and analyse. ‘In contrast, properly disciplined imagination has the capacity to perceive God's self-disclosure in all Three Books,’ (Chittick, Stanford). The symbolic language in the Scripture cannot be interpreted with reason’s impediments. Awareness and consciousness are located in the qalb which has two eyes, reason and imagination; if either dominates, the perception and awareness is distorted. Imaginal vision is the product of the rational path of the philosophers and theologians combined with the mystical intuition of the Sufis. Both visions of the qalb, are associated to two titles of the Book, al-Qurʾān, meaning that which brings together, and al-furqān, the differentiator. The first alludes to the unifying Oneness of Being that is perceived by Imagination, and the second which is perceived by reason is the ‘differentiating manyness of knowledge and discernment,’ (Chittick, Stanford).
Corbin proposed the Latin phrase mundus imaginalis to circumnavigate away from the possible Utopian-fantasy-like meaning that could be associated to Ibn ʿArabī’s use of khayāl, which contrasts with an order of reality that it suggests. The organ which permits the penetration into the mundus imaginalis is known as the active Imagination the epiphanic place do the Images of the archetypal world. When the Qurʾān speaks of the ‘heavens, earth and everything in between,’ (Qurʾān: 27.88) Ibn ʿArabī extracted for us the implications of the realm in between, which ‘in one respect is unseen, spiritual, and intelligible, and in another respect visible, corporeal and sensible,’ (Chittick, Stanford) and is precisely the mundus imaginalis. Here the corporeal beings are spiritualised, as when the archangel Jibrīl took a human form when he appeared to Maryam.
Ibn ʿArabī’s mystic theosophy held that the creation is essentially a theophany and is the product of Divine imaginative power: this Divine creative imagination is fundamentally a theophanic Imagination. When the Sufi uses the Active Imagination, it is also a theophanic Imagination; so the ‘God whom it “creates,” far from being an unreal product of our fantasy, is also a theophany,’ (Corbin, 1969). Prayer, then, is addressed to the God that is ‘created’ within the Imagination, who reveals Himself within the prayer to the creation, and as the creation is a theophany, it is, in reality, Allāh revealing Himself to Himself. The Divine Being with the sadness of the primordial solitude makes Himself manifest to Himself, even when He is manifesting Himself to His creation. ‘I was a hidden Treasure, I yearned to be known. That is why I produced creatures, in order to be known in them.'* This is the meeting point between wahdat al-wujūd and khayāl; anyone misunderstanding what the Shaykh al-Akbar intends by wahdat al-wujūd could find him or herself reaching a pantheistic conclusion, that when Allāh reveals Himself to Himself through His creation, His creation too is Allāh.
* Hadīth Qudsī, taken from Corbin, p. 184. As this tradition is not found in any of the established books of ahādīth, it is worth looking at how it is perceived. This is taken from an article entitled, ‘The Science of Hadith’ by Dr. Suhaib Hassan. He notes that, ‘Ibn Taimiyyah says, "It is not from the words of the Prophet (s.a.w), and there is no known isnad for it, neither sahih nor da'if; al-Zarkashi (d.794), Ibn Hajar, al-Suyuti and others agree with him. Al-Qar says, "But its meaning is correct, deduced from the statement of Allah, I have not created the Jinn and Mankind, except to worship Me, i.e. to recognise / know me, as Ibn Abbas has explained." These statements are mentioned by al-Ijlouni, who adds, "This saying occurs often in the words of the Sufis, who have relied on it and built upon it some of their principles."
Further Reading
Ateş, A. "Ibnal-ʿArabī, Muḥyi'l-Dīn Abū ʿAbd Allāh Muḥammad b. ʿAlī b. Muḥammad b. al-ʿArabī al-Ḥātimī al-Ṭāʾī, known as al-S̲ha̲ yk̲h̲ al-Akbar." Encyclopaedia of Islam, Second Edition.
Chittick, W. C., "Ibn Arabi", The Stanford Encyclopedia of Philosophy (2008), Edward N. Zalta (ed.).
Corbin, H., ‘Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi,’ 1969, Princeton University Press
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