2.5.2 - Meeting with Ibn Rushd (Cordoba, ~ 580/1184)

In Chapter I, section [ref:averroes], we gave a brief introduction about the great philosopher Abu al-Walid Muhammad Ibn Rushd al-Qordubi, known in the West as: Averroes, and his profound impact on Islamic history, being a brilliant linguist and modest philosopher with strong argument, and firm dogma. We also said that he studied the texts of Aristotle and explained them and summarized them, and he tried to reconcile between philosophy and the Islamic law, by correcting the doctrine of the contradictions introduced by theologians.

When Averroes heard about the status of the young Muhammad Ibn al-Arabi and his great divine knowledge and what God opened for him in his retreat, he wondered a lot at that and asked his father Ali Ibn al-Arabi to send him to him in purpose, since he was then the judge of Cordoba and Abu Muhammad was close friends. Since Muhammad at the time was isolated from the people of thoughts and does not enter himself in any doctrinal or philosophical debates that were common among scholars of the time, his father defrauded him and arranged his meeting with Ibn Rushd by sending him in an artificial need. However, Muhammad, who was still a young boy whose face has not yet produced a beard and his mustache had not yet grown, yet he could not reject his father’s request, although he was able to sense the actual reason for the visit.

When he entered on the judge, the latter stood up from his place out of love and exaltation of Muhammad, and he embraced him and said, explaining: “Yes?” to which Mohammed replied: “Yes!”. This increased the joy of the Judge to know that Muhammad had understood him. However, Muhammad, when he felt the joy of the Judge, said to him: “O by God, No!”. At that Abu Walid was caught and his color changed and he doubted his knowledge, thus he more plainly asked: “How did you find it in the divine disclosure and effusion - see section 3.2.7 of Chapter III - is it the same as what consideration gave us?” Then Mohammed replied: “Yes ... No, and between ’Yes’ and ’No’ spirits fly away from their materials and necks from their bodies.”

Realizing what Muhammad had just alluded to him, the Judge sat down, and his color turned pale and started murmuring the Hawqala.footnote(The ؤ¤awqala is an Arabic word referring to the statement: laa ؤ¥awla wa laa quwwata illaa billaah, which is usually translated as “There is no might nor power except in Allah.” This expression is mentioned by Muslims whenever seized by a calamity or in a situation beyond their control.

Although we do not know exactly when this meeting between Ibn al-Arabi and Ibn Rushd took place, but most probably it was during the year 580/1184 or shortly after, because it must be after Shaykh Muhyiddin entered the Way of Sufism, as we discussed in section [ref:entering] at the top of this Chapter above.

Then Shaykh Muhyiddin says that Ibn Rushd asked his father to arrange another meeting to discuss whether his philosophy agrees with or contradicts the science of disclosure brought by Shaykh Muhyiddin, whose approach is totally different, because the first is a result of thought and mental consideration while Shaykh Muhyiddin was not a thinker or philosopher. Nevertheless, the Greatest Shaykh says that Ibn Rushd felt grateful to Allah that he was in a time when he saw someone who entered a retreat with ignorance and came out like this, without ever studying or reading, and he, i.e. Averroes, said: This is a case we have proved it exist but we have not yet seen its masters yet, thanks God that I am in the time in which one of the masters who were able to open its closed doors, I thank God that he honored me with seeing him [Futuhat: I.54].

Then, Shaykh Muhyiddin wanted to meet Ibn Rushd again, but he was held in the vision in the form of a thin veil between them, whereby he could see him while he could not see the Greatest Shaykh who then knew that such meeting will not occur, because he saw him occupied with himself, thus he realized that Ibn Rushd was not intended for this Way of the people of Sufism. A few years after that, Ibn Rushd died in 595 AH in the city of Marrakesh and his body was transferred to Cordoba to be buried there as we mentioned at the end of Chapter I, section [ref:averroes], and as we shall also talk about this incident in section 3.8.8 of Chapter III.

This mysterious exchange of these few words and gestures between these two pillars of Islamic thought, a Sufi and a philosopher, is an attempt to express in symbolic language what is very difficult to explain explicitly. Ibn al-Arabi is alluding here to an essential realization that is beyond normal human comprehension, something that is apparently against our everyday experience or otherwise very difficult to believe. Yet on the other hand, it is something that can be ultimately summarized in only two words: “Yes” and “No”, or even “Yes” alone, because “No” is “not Yes”. In fact, this Ibn al-Arabi’s “digital” answer here: “Yes/No” (or “1/0”, “True/False”, which ultimately amounts to: existence/non-existence) is the best and shortest expression of the creation.

In the Single Monad Model and Duality of Time Theory, by introducing the genuinely-complex “time-time” geometry (which has real and imaginary parts), we were able to convert this essential view of creation into a full theory of physics and cosmology that was able to explain many of the persisting fundamental problems in these fields. The difficulty of expressing this universal Reality in simple words comes from the fact that we live in a diverse world of infinite multiplicity, while at the same time the reality behind this world is literally too simple to be believed. The ultimate Real is Allah, and Allah is uniquely One, while the world is apparently many, so the metaphysical challenge is how to link the (imaginary) multiplicity of the world to the Real One, through some unseen intermediaries.

Philosophers and scientists in general try to understand the world through observations, while the methods of Ibn al-Arabi, and other Sufis in general, rely upon modes of perception that jump directly into the unseen in order to approach the Real directly. As Ibn al-Arabi often points out, observations are subject to many mistakes, due to the inaccuracy of the tools employed, whether human senses or technical equipment, while true visions””as opposed to our sometimes problematic interpretations of them””are always correct [Futuhat: I.307.12, III.7.21]. On the other hand, philosophers and scientists use logic and experiments to deduce their theories and explain their observations, while Sufis in general often describe their visions without paying too much attention to explaining them in a logical manner, especially when some of their visions, though real and true, may be outwardly or apparently illogical. As a result, certain Sufis like Ibn al-Arabi may attain a very high state of knowledge of reality more quickly and more accurately than philosophers, but they find it very difficult to explain their views to others who have not tasted it their way. So when they try to explain their insights, not many people will understand what they say.

In short, the meaning of Ibn Rushd’s question was that he was asking him whether the laws of physics, and the philosophical vision of nature as reached by the wise men, were consistent with the vision of the people of disclosure, as we shall mention in section 3.2.7 of Chapter III. Ibn al-Arabi’s answer was “yes” and “no” at the same time, because it is true for phenomenological world that we observe, but it is not true at all because in reality the whole world is imaginary and it does not persist for more than one instance of time, so it must be continuously re-created anew by Allah Who is bringing everything into existence at every instance of time.

Consequently, these words “Yes/No” undermine the theory of causation and other physical and cosmological laws. In fact, there are no laws at all, but there is a creation related only to the will of God Almighty, while the laws of the world are laws of the phenomenological state that can explain the past, or maybe the time being, but that can not make any prediction of what will come to be, because what relates only to the will of God Almighty, although it is usually the case that He creates things according to the laws He has set in nature.