Edited and Slides by OmarKN
24 Wujūd
[Wujūd, is intelligence finding the truth + the existence of the mind and heart.]
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Take, for example, the word wujūd, which is used by philosophers and theologians to designate existence or being. Literally it means finding, perceiving, and knowing; it came to mean existence in the usage of the philosophers. After all, to exist is to be found and perceived (if not by us, certainly by the Real).
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It follows that recognition, which is intelligence finding the truth and reality of things within itself, is not just the knowing awareness of the mind and heart; it is also the very existence of the mind and heart.26 Inasmuch as intelligence is identical with its source, it is the radiance of God.
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By giving systematic form to philo-sophia, ‘the love of wisdom,’ philosophers were striving to discipline their souls and to find the light of the universal intellect inside themselves, thus joining with the infinite light of the One Being. To put it mildly, this has not been a goal of modern rationalists.
Related texts
Muhyiddīn Ibn ʿArabi, Presentation of 30 Texts
[26] (Another way to phrase it) ”is that all things in existence—all modes of being—are also modes of consciousness, bliss, awareness, and knowledge, which gives us a cosmic picture that is concrete and palpable. If all things are modes of God’s consciousness—while God is pure consciousness—it means that even apparently inanimate things are thus aware in varying degrees.
This explains why Afḍal al-Dīn Kāshānī (d. 606/1210) links existence with awareness when he says,
’The seed of existence is awareness, and its fruit is also awareness.’”
The Great Chain of Consciousness, Do All Things Possess Awareness? (Renovatio), The Great Chain of Consciousness, Do All Things ~ (Excerpt) Mohammed Rustom ↩
