Eternity: ab ante–a post — edition and contents

Published in June 2019.  

This book is a translation of one of Ibn al-Arabi's key treatises on the subject of time, and how it can be related to the existence of the World with relation to the ultimate transcendent Being of God, described by eternity. From the beginning, the author makes it clear that Eternity is a negative attribute, indicating the negation of a beginning, not as (infinite) extension of time. However, this is a very slippery subject, as the Arabic root for the word eternity: azal, also means. The reason for this possible, or indeed: inevitable, confusion is because we live in time, and we cannot imagine anything without reference to dimensions, while the fact of the matter is that God is superior to any kind of motion or change.

Based on the conclusions outlined in volumes I and II of the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos: "Duality of Time" and "Ultimate Symmetry", the only way out of this confusion is to appreciate the "genuinely-complex" nature of time, according to which our normal time dimension is truly "imaginary", and so is our very existence, whereas God is the Real Being and transcendental Time. In reality, not only God is transcendent above dimensions, but we normally experience change because we are temporarily imprisoned in the illusory "Chest of Time", unlike some prophets and pious people who may "interact" with God directly in some elevated states of transcendence. One example Ibn al-Arabi comments on throughout this book is the case of prophet Moses, peace be upon him, whom Allah spoke with him directly in Mount Sinai. So it is not that the Exalted God initiated His Words at that particular time for Moses, but when He spoke with him, Moses himself was in a state of transcendence beyond time and space.

This is the only way we could understand the existence of God and the creation of the World, otherwise if we imagine the world, as a whole, in time, we cannot imagine God without some kind of time extension, or dimension, outside the temporal world. The fact is that the World, as a whole is out of time, and it is always described as pre-existing in the fore-knowledge of God, before it actually exists and evolves in time. Therefore, all questions such as: "what is the age of the universe?" or "when did the world begin?" are invalid, because any answer to such questions will quickly lead to the long philosophical debate whether time was created in or before the world, or vice versa; or whether they are both eternal. Many riddles and paradoxes quickly emerge out of this debate. For example, one may ask: if the world started at a certain point of time, why God chose that time in particular? Could the world have been created ten minutes before or after that designated time? And: what was God doing or what was happening before the beginning of the world? Ibn al-Arabi clearly shows that such questions are meaningless, because the world is created out of time, and time itself is part of that created world. The existence of the Creator preceded the existence of the world logically, but not chronologically, so it is like when we say "the day starts when the sun rises": there is no duration of time that separates sunrise from the start of the day, but logically the day would not start if the Sun did not rise.

After discussing the different philosophical opinions about time and eternity, Ibn al-Arabi then goes on to classify the states of existence and the hierarchy of divine Names, Attributes and Descriptions, thus stating the names and other thing that can be described as eternal or pre-existing. however, he also diverges into some mystical discussion about the (Arabic) word for eternity: azal, and the specific lineage of its characters. One of the important secrets he reveals in this book is that "eternity", and all similar words such as "oldness", "firstness", "lastness", "outwardness", and "inwardness", would not have any meaning without "I", the existence of the "self". So if these attributes are true for God eternally, "I" would be also eternal!

 

The Duality of Time Theory, that results from the Single Monad Model, explains how multiplicity is dynamically emerging from absolute Oneness, and vice versa, at every instance of time! This theory leads to the Ultimate Symmetry of Space and its instantaneous breaking into the physical and psychical creations, with two hyperbolically orthogonal arrows of time.

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