Pervading

(Quotations from Titus Burckhardt)

Ibn 'Ata'illah al-Iskandari, in his Hikam:
Behold what shows to thee His Omnipotence, (may he be exalted):
It is that He hides Himself from thee by what has no existence apart from Him.
(p. 58)

...The world is essentially the manifestation of God to Himself. Thus it is expressed in the sacred saying (hadith qudsi) which brings back the idea of creation to the idea of Knowledge: 'I was a hidden treasure; I wished to be known (or to know) and I created the world.' In the same sense Sufis compare the Universe to a combination of mirrors in which the Infinite Essence contemplates Itself in a multiplicity of forms, or which reflect in differing degrees the irradiaiton (at-tajalli) of the One Being.
(pp. 59-60)

Muhyi-d-Din ibn 'Arabi, in his Fusus al-Hikam in the Chapter on Jacob:
In truth all possibilities are principially reducible to non-existence('udum) and there is no Being (or, Existence) other than the being of God, may He be exalted, (revealing Himself) in the "forms" ... which result from possibilities as they are in themselves...
(pp. 60-61)

©1999 by Deb Platt


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