Ibn Arabi Quotes on Knowledge
Muḥyī al-Dīn Ibn ʿArabī (1165–1240), the Andalusian-born Sufi metaphysician whose Meccan Revelations (al-Futūḥāt al-Makkiyya) and Bezels of Wisdom (Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam) gave classical Islamic mysticism its most ambitious systematic statement, defended a comprehensive doctrine of the unity of being (waḥdat al-wujūd) according to which all created things are the manifestations through which the single divine reality discloses itself to itself. The corresponding epistemology treats the highest mode of knowing as unveiling (kashf) — the contemplative disclosure of realities not accessible to discursive reason — and the imaginal realm (ʿālam al-mithāl) as the cognitive intermediary in which abstract intelligibles are concretely beheld. The Akbarian school carried the framework across the subsequent Islamic intellectual tradition.
Quotes
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Attributed to Ibn Arabi:
“He who knows himself knows his Lord.”
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Attributed to Ibn Arabi:
“Beware of confining yourself to a particular belief and denying all else, for much good would elude you.”
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“Every self-manifestation bestows a new creation and removes a pre-ceding creation. Its removal is the essence of annihilation (fanaa) in the passing self-manifestation and subsistence (baqaa) in the bestowal of the following self-manifestation.”
Binyamin Abrahamov.Ibn Al-Arabi's Fusus Al-Hikam: An Annotated Translation of "The Bezels of Wisdom" p. 92, كلَّ تجلٍّ يعطي خلقًا جديدًا ويذهب بخلق: فذهابه هو الفناء عند التجلِّي والبقاء لما يعطيه التجلِّي الآخر Bezels of Wisdom (فصوص الحكم) -
“Binyamin Abrahamov.Ibn Al-Arabi's Fusus Al-Hikam: An Annotated Translation of "The Bezels of Wisdom" p. 92, كلَّ تجلٍّ يعطي خلقًا جديدًا ويذهب بخلق: فذهابه هو الفناء عند التجلِّي والبقاء لما يعطيه التجلِّي الآخر Bezels of Wisdom (فصوص الحكم)”
Every self-manifestation bestows a new creation and removes a pre-ceding creation. Its removal is the essence of annihilation (fanaa) in the passing self-manifestation and subsistence (baqaa) in the bestowal of the following self-manifestation. -
“أدين بدين الحب أنَّى توجهتْ ركائبه، فالحب ديني وإيماني,”
I take love as my religion wherever its caravans lead, for love is my religion and my faith. -
“His is the wisdom of singularity because he is the most perfect existent in the human species. That is why the whole affair began with him and is sealed with him. For he was a prophet while Adam was between water and clay. Then, in his elemental configuration, he was the Seal of the Prophets. And three is the first of the singulars. Every singular beyond one derives from it.”
About Muhammad , Fușūş al-ḥikam , as quoted by Sachiko Murata , The Tao of Islam: A Sourcebook on Gender Relationships in Islamic Thought (1992), p. 188.