2.4.3.21 - His Last Visit to al-Ureybi

Shaykh Muhyiddin remembers the last time he entered upon Shaykh al-Ureybi, saying: On my last visit to him, may God have mercy on his soul, I was with a company of my fellows. We entered his house to find him sitting, and we greeted him. It happened that one of our company was intending to ask him a question on some matter or other, but as soon as we had entered, he raised his head to us and said: Let us all consider a point which I have previously put to you, O Abu Bakr (meaning me), for I have always wondered at the saying of Abu al-Abbas Ibn al-Arif: “So that those who had never been shall perish, and that who is still will subsist.” We all know that: that which had never been passes away and that He Whoever is subsists, so what does he mean by it?

Ibn al-Arabi adds that: None of the others in our company were prepared to answer him so he offered the question to me. As for me, though I was well able to deal with the question, I did not do so, being very restrained in speaking out. This the Shaykh knew, so he did not repeat the question.

Further Shaykh Muhyiddin adds that when the Shaykh retired for sleep he did not remove his clothes and when he experienced Audition he did not become disturbed, but when he heard the Quran being recited his restraint broke down and he became very agitated.

We find Shaykh Muhyiddin later using this same phrase in his prayers, where he says in the Emanation Prayers (al-Salawat al-Faydiya): “(Oh God, I ask you) to pray on our Lord Muhammad with prayers that will clear my insight with the light splashed in eternity, to allow me to witness the decease of that which is not and the endurance of that who is, and I see things as they are in their original lack of existence and that they did not even smell existence as well as being.” [GR 702].

In fact, Ibn al-Arabi’s knowledge of this matter, which he did not permit himself to comment on it at the time, is the basis of his immense knowledge in the Meccan Revelations and other books, namely that creations are actually living in the realm of imagination, or the isthmus. This theory, which was founded by Ibn al-Arabi has great philosophical dimensions that formed the bases of the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos and Duality of Time Theory. In particular this is the reason behind the Re-creation Principle which renders to the fact that the world is alternating between existence and non-existence, so the entities of the world exist in God Almighty, and not the apparent independent and continuous existence as we are deceptively witnessing. Hence this is the same view of Ibn al-Arabi that is also termed as the “Oneness of Being”, which we will discuss again in the final chapter of this book, God willing.