Experiencing union

Muhyi-d-Din ibn 'Arabi, in his Wisdom of the Prophets:

(Paraphrased: Supreme Union is the mutual interpenetration of Divinity and man;) God, as it were, takes on human nature, while the Divine nature (al-Lahut) becomes the content of human nature (an-Nasut)... From another angle, man is absorbed and, as it were, enveloped by Divine Reality. God is mysteriously present in man and man is obliterated in God...

In the first mode God reveals Himself as the real Self which knows through the faculties of perception of man and acts through his faculties of action. In the second and inverse mode man moves, so to speak, in the dimensions of the Divine Existence, which in relation to him is polarized so that to each human facutly or quality there corresponds a Divine aspect.
(p. 77)

(Paraphrased: Regarding the mutual penetration of the Divinity and the perfect man,) Ibn 'Arabi compares this penetration to the assimilation of food, which (symbolizes) assimilation by knowledge. God 'feeds' on man and for his part man 'feeds' on God; he 'eats' God... And this recalls the Hindu proverb that 'man becomes food for the Divinity he adores'... (and) the Christian Eucharist clearly symbolizes the same aspect of Union.
(p. 81)

Muhyi-d-Din ibn 'Arabi:

(Paraphrased: He who receives the 'revelation' of the Essence (Tajalli dhati) sees in the Divine Mirror only his own archetypal 'form'. However he understands that it is only by virtue of this Divine Mirror that he sees his 'form'.)

Commentary:

... The reflected 'form' does not essentially hide the mirror, since the mirror manifests the form and we know implicitly that we see it only by virtue of the mirror. The spiritual point of view inherent in this symbolism is analogous to that of the Vedanta (of Hindusim). This impossibility of grasping the mirror 'objectively' at the same time as we contemplate our image in it expresses the ungraspable character of Atman, the Absolute 'Subject', of which all things, including the individual subject, are only illusory 'objectivations'. Like the expression 'Divine Subject', the symbol of the mirror evokes a polarity whereas the Essence is beyond all dualism such as that of 'subject' and 'object'...
(pp. 111-112)

©1999 by Deb Platt