-last modf 1446 AH, 2024-10-21 09:34 +0200, bit.ly/_giti1 [017] index
12min read
Thread by Safwan Spiker, @SafwanSpiker, 2024-08-14[1]
Excerpts and edited, with footnotes by the webeditor OKN.
{ هُوَ اللَّهُ الَّذِي لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ }
All creation has the rank of temporal origination, it is the emergence of every 'thing' from the non-existent objects of God’s knowledge (acc. to Muhyiddin ibn ʿArabi , a.o.)
So creation is not co-eternal with God[4], which is the view of the primitive peripatetic Philosopher.[5]
All creation is, ontologically, a temporal event, (but not the commonplace understanding of it, produced by our senses and imagination combined).
[ For a deeper explanation go to ch. 01d and especially ch.07]
Relatedly, Shaykh al-Akbar ق remarked[22]
"Regarding the statement of Imam Al Ghazali,
'There is nothing within the realm of possibility, more perfect than what is.'
This is diction of utmost precision, because for us there are only two ranks, eternality and emergence. Al-Haqq (Allah swt) has the rank of eternality and creation has the rank of emergence. Thus if God created what He created, it does not escape the rank of emergence.[2]
Pre-eternity and emergence or origination of a thing, simply means that which does not require a cause for its coming into existence and has always existed, (which is God alone)… but the fact remains that all creation is, ontologically, a temporal (not the commonplace understanding of it, produced by our senses and imagination combined) event.
□ comment: If Allah/ God would be 'the cause' of things, He would be bound up in a cause-effect relationship, but He is above of that!
Referring to Hamadāni[6]
God's being the ultimate source of all things is not necessarily a temporal event.
It should be noted that whether we adopt the first understanding or the second, creation at this stage is invariably regarded as a temporal event. In the view of Hamadāni, however, the deep structural meaning which underlies this kind of common-sense understanding of creation is solely that Something (maʿna) which, "when viewed outside of the veils of mystery, is called God (Allāh) in the common parlance of the Arabs," is the ultimate source of all existent things in all their exuberant colors and forms. But God's being the ultimate source of all things is not necessarily a temporal event.
Rather it [creation] has in itself nothing to do with time. It is only at the level of empirical cognition that this originally temporal state of affairs evolves as a temporal event in accordance with the essential requirement coming from the peculiar structure of our reason and sensation.
In the "domain beyond reason" it reveals itself as something entirely different from creation understood as a temporal event.
more ch.07
In the Quran "creation" has two meanings.
1st it means to determine (taqdīr) that is, to give/ take "measure" to/ of something.
2nd, in the more commonly understood sense, it means to give existence to something (ījād)…
Thus Muhyiddin ibn ʿArabi tells us that when the Quran calls God {the most beautiful of creators} (23-14) it is comparing Him with others and attributing creation also to them, and this can only be the creation of determination. In contrast, when it affirms that God alone creates, it means that He alone gives wujūd to things/ to the cosmos.[17]
Muhyiddin ibn ʿArabi
Allah (God) says, {Blessed is God, the most beautiful/ best of creators} 23-14, and He says, {is He who creates like him who does not create?} 16-17. Creation by people is determining (taqdīr). The other creation is existence giving (ījād) - giving wujūd to things.[17]
… and there is more to it.
The general modality based division of things are three.
In this Ayn al-Qudāt ق agrees semantically with the philosophers and kalam theologians, but categorically there are stark differences.
1. The Impossible
3. The Possible
3. The Necessary
Ayn al-Qudāt ق’s modal categories pertain to the pre-determination of things in God’s knowledge, which later became a central doctrine of Akbariān and Muhaqqīq kalam metaphysical tradition, known as “ʿayān al-thabīta”[26] or “nafs al-amr”; the purely detached essences or entities.[3]
Kurani:
The essences of non-existent possibles subsist in nafs al-amr (or “ʿayān al-thabīta”) - which is the knowledge of God[27] - separately from extramental[28] particular and umbral (shaded), representational (zillī irtisāmī) existences.
(The actualization of nafs al-amr is more general than the mind and extramental particulars.)[16]
Eternal Genesis and Subsistence of Essences in the Divine Knowledge
Al-Alūsi demonstrated the connection of the question of the subsistence of non-existent entities to the question of the real nature of nafs al-amr.[7]
The true position is that asserted by the gnostics namely, that non-existent objects possess a form of subsistence in the Divine knowledge.
This is because a (distinct) conception of a possible non-existent entity (al-maʿdūm al-mumkin) can be formed, and one (particular non-existent entity) can be intended rather than another.
Anything that this is true of is, separate from any mental supposition, distinct in itself; and all such (separate) things are subsistent and fixed, outside of our minds, and detached from individuated particulars.
Such things are, then, nowhere other than in nafs al-amr, by which is intended the knowledge of the Real.[8]
Non-existent objects possess a form of subsistence in the Divine knowledge - they have not been granted existence (yet).
A thing is ontologically impossible to exist if it has not yet existed.
The ontological impossibility (can be divided, by Ayn al-Qudāt ق) into
(a) “impossible by itself” (muhāl bi-dhāti-hi) and
(b) “impossible by another” (muhāl bi-ghayri-hi)
Regarding modality
(a): Things stand in relation to Divine power in the same way as odor to the eye, because odor is by essence not to be seen. It is such a thing that by essence is not in a position to become an object of Power.
(b): Things in relation to Divine power like the sun to a man, as long as he is veiled by a roof and has not yet moved under the open sky, in order for the effect to be actualized in the locus i.e., man.
So the “impossible by another” is that whose conditions are actualizable but are not necessarily to be actualized.[14]
(It is to be noted that the word "possible" is here used to mean something different from the "possible" conceived as an imaginary point between non-existence and existence.)[15]
The “impossible by another” thing becomes modally “necessary” (existent) at the moment of its actualization, right after the conditions are fulfilled. (You can picture that in light of the example of the heat of the sun and man moving under the open sky.)
Quote
The thing, before coming into the state of existence, is, of course, in the state of non-existence.
As long as a thing remains in the state of non-existence, it is "impossible" to exist. (This is Hamadāni's understanding of ontological impossibility.)[18]
However, at the very moment when it comes into the state of existence and turns into an actually existent thing, the thing becomes "necessary" to exist, that is to say, it is necessarily existent.
The ontological possibility is merely the imaginary boundary line between the “impossible by another” (non-existent) and “necessary” (existent). It is imaginary just like the present between future and past or a point on a line.
So the ontological possibility, for Ayn al-Qudāt ق, is not existentially real.
In fact, the end of the past is directly connected with the beginning of the future. As for the boundary-line between them, it has no reality except in imagination. (Hamdani)
So then, there is no ontological possibility. Everything is either ontologically impossible; the distinction of in itself and by another considered, or ontologically necessary to exist, and the way they should exist and when they should exist.
The necessary cause-effect relation is not applicable in case of God’s creative act, and the priority of cause over effect being a mere mental conception, not true on the level of wujūd (existence).
This is the position of Shaykh al-Akbar ق, shared by Ayn al-Qudāt ق, a. o.
Quote[13]
Ibn al-'Arabi describes the cosmos as God's sign, signifier, mark, waymark, and image.
In all these cases, the relationship is one of tashbih, in the sense that the cosmos is understood to be a reflection or shadow of the Real in a manner that cannot fully be grasped by the rational mind.[n1] These terms are all Koranic, and they are rooted in the concreteness of the Arabic language and actual human experience of the world.
He quotes Muhyiddin ibn ʿArabi:
The Real is existent through His own Essence for His own Essence, unbounded in wujūd, not bound by other than Himself. He is not caused by anything, nor is He the cause of anything.
On the contrary, He is the Creator of the effects and the causes, the King, the All-Holy who always was.[n2]
(It is known that the level of the cause is prior to the level of its effect in rational conception, but not in existence.)
All ontological phenomena take place without reference to the ordinary idea of time and temporality, since there is no time before God creates something. Time itself is created. (The things are atemporal phenomena caused by God.)
Time is the locus of motion (zarf al-haraka), and motion is actualized only where there are bodies. Thus where there are only non-things, i.e. where there is nothing, time cannot be actualized.
Quoting Hamdani[6]
Absolutely no self-subsistent thing exists in the domain where the Absolute exists, neither at present nor in the past nor again in the future. All things in relation to God's Face are equidistant in terms of time, there being no distinction here between the past, present, and future.
The relation of all existents to God is one. Those that exist at present, those that existed in the past, and those that will exist in the future are equal to each other in their relation to God.
Quote[12]
Two basic kinds of eternity are distinguished in the intellectual tradition of Islam: one is "pre-eternity" (azaliyya) and the other is "post-eternity" (abadiyya).
"Pre-eternity" is visioned in the direction of the past; it is the beginningless past (God). "Post-eternity" means that a thing does not reach any end in the direction of the future (God), but there is more to it.
From the point of view of the "domain beyond reason," pre-eternity is not a matter of the past; nor is post-eternity a matter of the future. For there is in this domain neither past nor future.
In reality, the time of Adam is just as close to us as this present time of ours. For in the presence of pre-eternity two different times turn out to the one and the same.
(Pre-eternity covers the future time as well as the past time without any distinction between them.)[19]
Perhaps the relation of pre-eternity to different times may best be compared to the relation of knowledge to various places.[11]
In fact, knowledge (of various things) is not differentiated from one another in terms of being close to a place or being far from a place."
Rather knowledge bears one and the same relation to all places. Knowledge is 'with' every place, whereas no place is ‘with' knowledge.
Exactly in the same way must one conceive of the relation which pre-eternity bears to time.
For not only is pre-eternity 'with' every unit of time and 'in' every unit of time, but it comprehends in itself every unit of time and precedes every unit of time in existence, whereas time cannot comprehend pre-eternity just as no place can comprehend knowledge.
A reminder[10 ]
When describing relations and situations pertaining to the supra-mental/ supra-rational level or to "the domain beyond reason", human language is only an approximation.
So for example the understanding of the cosmos as a reflection or shadow of the Real in Its Self-Disclosure (tajalli) can only be infinitesimally[9] grasped by the rational mind, intuited[20] by the intellectual intuition.[21]
However, language explanation is still necessary, also in order to avoid simplistic, misleading assumptions or claims from mechanical thinking (when done without thought or automatically), however we are constantly called upon by Allah in His Book to use our mind, to reflect and to understand.
{
كِتَابٌ أَنزَلْنَاهُ إِلَيْكَ مُبَارَكٌ لِّيَدَّبَّرُوا آيَاتِهِ وَلِيَتَذَكَّرَ أُولُو الْأَلْبَابِ
}
{˹This is˺ a blessed Book which We have revealed to you ˹O Prophet˺ so that they/ mankind may contemplate its verses, and men of understanding/ people of reason may be admonished/ mindful.}
38-29
Quoting[23] Shaykh al-Akbar ق
The fact of the matter is that the existence of the Real is not determined (temporally or causally) by the existence of the world: not temporally before, with, or after, because temporal or spatial precedence with relation to Allah is confronted by the realities confronting whoever speaks about it factually - unless they say something by the way of illumination, as had been said by the Messenger, peace be upon him, or it was expressed in the (Divine) Book.
For not everyone is able to experience the unveiling of these realities. We can only say that the Exalted Real exists by Himself and for Himself; His existence is absolute, is not confined by any other than Him, and is not caused by something nor is He the cause of anything - But He is the Creator of causes and results, {the King, the Most-Holy One} - (Quran 59-23), Who always is and has been.
{ هُوَ اللَّهُ الَّذِي لَا إِلَٰهَ إِلَّا هُوَ الْمَلِكُ الْقُدُّوسُ السَّلَامُ الْمُؤْمِنُ الْمُهَيْمِنُ الْعَزِيزُ الْجَبَّارُ الْمُتَكَبِّرُ ۚ سُبْحَانَ اللَّهِ عَمَّا يُشْرِكُونَ }
{ He is Allah—there is no god except Him: the King, the Most Holy, the All-Perfect, the Source of Serenity, the Watcher ˹of all˺, the Almighty, the Supreme in Might (the One Whose Will cannot be resisted, and Who comforts those who are broken or oppressed), the Majestic. Glorified is Allah far above what they associate with Him ˹in worship˺!} 59-23
The world exists through Allah, not by itself or for itself. Therefore the existence of the Real Who exists by Himself is a determining condition for the existence of the world, which would not exist at all without the existence of the Real. And since time cannot exist without the existence of the Real and the (Divine) Source (mabda) of the world, therefore the world comes to exist "in other-than-time".[24]
We believe Islam is the answer and the way - and there is no god except Allah (God), the Lord of the universe - no reality, but the reality of the Real (Allah), and Mohammad is certainly His Messenger (may His blessings & peace be upon him).
- Islam - The Way of the Prophets
- Islam the Natural, Easy Religion
- The Sum Of Islam
Footnotes
LINK: x.com/safwanSpiker7…378
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Thus it cannot be said: ”Can Al Haqq create what is eternal like him?” Because such a question is frivolous due to its impossibility.
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Link: x.com/safwanSpiker7…535
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or an "existentially eternal creation", as will be seen later 'creation' of the world is what is called the "ex-nihilo emergence of creation".
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The school of philosophy in Ancient Greece, especially Aristotle
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Creation & the Timeless Order of Things, pp. 124-138, Toshihiko Izutsu
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Rūh al-Maʿāni, Al-Alūsi
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Things As They Are, p. 149
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In mathematics, an infinitesimal number is a non-zero quantity that is closer to 0 than any non-zero real number is.
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By webadmin OKN
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Creation & the Timeless Order of Things, p. 137, Toshihiko Izutsu
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Creation & the Timeless Order of Things, p. 136, Toshihiko Izutsu
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Quoted from "The Self Disclosure of God", pp. 16-17 on Causality, W C Chittick
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Hamadāní calls “impossible by another” to be “possible by itself” as well, since both are equivalent.
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Creation & the Timeless Order of Things, p. 129, Toshihiko Izutsu
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Kurani, quoted in Things As They Are, p. 149
Kurani: The actualization of nafs al-amr is more general than the mind and extramental[28] particulars, quiddities separate from mental and extramental particular existences have, in the absence of any (mental) supposition, actualization in nafs al-amr.
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Quoted from "The Self Disclosure of God", p.47
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Creation & the Timeless Order of Things, pp. 124-138, Toshihiko Izutsu
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Those who cannot help imagining between them a distinction are simply compelled to do so because their reason is still in the shackles of their habit of relying upon visual imagination.
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from Latin intuit- ‘contemplated’, from the verb intueri, from in- ‘upon’ + tueri ‘to look’.
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On intellectual intuition see for example:
— Symbolism - which is essentially intuitive, is (therefore) more apt than (everyday common) language ”to serve as a support for intellectual intuition, which (by the way) is above reason.”
René Guénon: Words and Symbols
— The intellectual intuition “is essentially a supra-individual faculty…”
Crisis of the Modern World, René Guénon
— Shams, Mother of the Poor, Ibn ʿArabi
Shaykh al-Akbar = Muhyiddin ibn ʿArabi
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This is a quote from one of the following books, which were used in the original thread:
— Creation & the Timeless Order of Things, Toshihiko Izutsu, pp. 124-138.
— Things As They Are, pp. 148-.
— The Self Disclosure of God, pp. 16-17.
— Futuhāt al-Makkiyāh.I.90.9, see also Al-Masa’īl, no. 90.
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therefore the world comes to exist "in other-than-time". So actually we cannot say, in the true reality of things, that Allah existed before the world - because it has been established that "before" is a time phrase, and there was no "time" (before the existence of the world). Nor can we say that the world existed after the existence of the Real, since there is nothing (other than the Real) "after" or "with" the existence of the Real, because He caused (everything else) to exist and is making it and originating it in the words of a famous hadith) "while there was no thing (with Him)".
So as we said, the Real exists by Himself and the world exists through the Real. But if someone governed by his imagination (wahm) should ask "When was the world (created) after the Real?" We would say that "when" is a time-question. But time belongs to the realm of relations (nasīb)[25] and (as such) is created by Allah, but not like the creation of existence, because the realm of relations is created by (our human) "estimation" (or consideration: taqdir), not by the creation of what exists ... Therefore this question is not valid. So you should be careful how you ask, and do not be veiled by the tools of (conventional human) expression from actually realizing and fully comprehending these realities in yourself.
So the only thing left is:
(1) a pure and absolute Existence - not (one coming into existence) after non-existence - and that is the existence of the Real, may He be exalted! And
(2) an existence that only comes to be after the non-existence of the essence of that existent thing itself - and that is the existence of the world. So there is not any comparability or (co-extensive) extension between those two existences, apart from that imagined, presumed one that is removed by (true) knowledge.
So nothing is left of that (falsely supposed comparability of God and the world) but absolute Existence (of God) and determined existence (of the world), Active Existence (of God) and passive existence (of the world). This is what is given by the realities, and peace (i.e. that's all!)."[23]
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Regarding relations, W. C. Chittick writes
Ibn al-‘Arabi often describes the relation between wujūd and the nonexistent things in terms of the divine names. The names denote wujūd’s perfections, such as life, knowledge, desire, and power. The traces of these perfections are observable in the cosmos.
But the names themselves have no independent existence, since they are simply words that designate relations. And the relations themselves, as Ibn al-ʿArabi often reminds us, are not entities. So the names are words that signify the manner one thing is connected with another thing. The “things” between which connection is established may be said to have wujūd, but the actual connections do not.
Nevertheless, the traces and properties of the relations are observed everywhere. Hence a nonexistence — the relation — leaves its traces in wujūd.
Ibn al-‘Arabi:
The cosmos is restricted to entities and relations. The entities pertain to wujūd, while the relations are intelligible and pertain to nonexistence. This is everything other than God. (III 66.2)
In his chapter The Entities and the Names, in The Self-Disclosure of God, p.39
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From "The Sufi Path of Knowledge", pp. 84ff on Entities, W C Chittick
The term for things/ entities in contrast to Being (wujūd) is ʿayn.
ʿayn thābita - fixed entity/ pl. ʿayān ~
The fixed entities are
- the possible things as they exist in the cosmos
- the possible things non-existent in the cosmos but existent in God's knowledge.
Fixed entities are the things themselves "before" they are given existence in the world. There is no difference between the entity known in God's knowledge and the entity in the cosmos except that in the first case it is "non-existent" while in the second it is "existent."
The fixed entity (ʿayn thābita) and the existent entity (ʿayn mawjūda) are the same reality, but one exists in the cosmos and the other does not.
The difference between the two corresponds exactly to the difference between the possible thing before it is given existence and the same possible thing after it comes into existence.
However, the attribute (thābita) "fixed," helps remind us that the possible thing never leaves its state of possibility in the divine knowledge.
So the entity may "exist" in the cosmos, it is still fixed and "non-existent" in God's knowledge…
Nothing ever leaves God's knowledge in order to come into the cosmos.
What God knows, he knows eternally and immutably. But at the certain point, in keeping with what He knows, He gives preponderance to the existence of the entity over its non-existence, and the entity is then found in the cosmos, without ever coming out of His knowledge.
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'The essences of non-existent possibles subsist in nafs al-amr (or “ʿayān al-thabīta”) - which is the knowledge of God' or in other words:
The possible things (non-existent in the cosmos) but existent in God's knowledge… (see above fn26)
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On the relationship between extramental realities and the understanding of Allah (God)
Two Explanations for 'extramental objects' 28.1 and 28.2
28.1
Extramental literally means "outside the mind" and is related to transcendence, since if an object has some characteristics that are not present in any one moment of consciousness, it in some sense has characteristics that are "outside the mind."
The fact [is] that when we imagine something, we imagine it as an object in the world rather than as something in our minds; that is, we imagine a real faun, rather than imagine ourselves imagining a faun.
Source: reddit.com - askphilosophy
28.2
In the Islamic intellectual tradition, the relationship between extramental realities and the understanding of Allah (God) is rich and multifaceted, drawing on various philosophical and theological perspectives.
1.
Natural Theology: Many Islamic scholars, especially in the tradition of Al-Farabi and Ibn Sina (Avicenna), emphasized the use of reason and observation of the natural world to understand God's existence and attributes. They argued that the complexity and order in the universe point to a necessary being—Allah—as the ultimate cause.
2.
The Qur'an and Divine Signs (Ayat): The Qur'an encourages reflection on the natural world as a means to recognize God. Verses often invite believers to observe creation (e.g., the heavens, the earth, and living beings) as signs (ayat) of Allah’s power and wisdom. This reinforces the idea that extramental realities can lead to a deeper understanding of God.
3.
Philosophical Perspectives: Islamic philosophers like Al-Ghazali critiqued pure rationalism, emphasizing the limitations of human reason when it comes to comprehending the divine. He argued that while extramental realities can inform us, they should not overshadow the importance of revelation and spiritual experience.
4.
Sufi Mysticism: In Sufism, the relationship with extramental realities is often viewed through the lens of inner experience and spiritual insight. Sufis might see the external world as a reflection of the divine, suggesting that true knowledge of Allah comes from transcending the material and experiencing a direct connection with the divine.
5.
The Unity of Existence (Wahdat al-Wujud): Some philosophers, like Ibn Arabi, posited that all existence emanates from Allah. In this view, understanding extramental realities is not just about observing them but recognizing their relationship to the divine presence within all things.
Source: ChatGPT openai.com
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