The Divine Self in Ibn Arabi's Philosophy

"...To know one's ...own archetypeal essence is to know one's "Angel", that is to say, one's eternal individuality as it results from the revelation of the Divine Being revealing Himself to Himself.  In returning to his Lord: a man constitute an eternal pair of the servant and his LORD, who is the Divine Essence not in generality but individualised in off or another of His Names.  Consequently, to deny this individuation...is to deny the archetypal or theophanic dimension specific to each earthly being....No longer able to appeal to his Lord, each man is at the mercy of a single undifferentiated Omnipotence, from which all men are equidistant, lost in religious or social collectivity.  When this happens, each man tends to confound his Lord, whom he does not know...with the Divine Being as such, and to wish to impose Him on all....Having lost his bond with his specific Lord-archetype (that is, having lost his knowledge of himself), each ego is exposed to a hypertrophy that can easily degenerate into a spiritual imperialism; this know of religion no longer aims to unite each man with his own Lord, but solely to impose the "same Lord" upon all..."

[Henry Corbin, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn `Arabi (Princeton University Press) p.210]





From:



Kheper.net

Unknown Painter

From Anthology of 1398 in Bihbahan (near Shiraz)

Powered by ScribeFire.