The Secret of the Unity of Being: Sketching a

Theology of Multiplicity from Ibn ‘Arabi’s Sufi

Metaphysics

By

Collins I. Aki

Islamic Sufi Mysticism

Professor McGregor

Introduction: Towards a Reconnaissance of Metaphysics for the

Unity of Multiplicity

Jacque Derrida, in his essay, Structure, Sign, and Play, levies his well-

known indictment on the so-called metaphysics of presence as the

philosophical turn “towards the lost or impossible presence of the

absent origin.” This “event” in discourse was to him the full

inheritance of the “Nietzchean affirmation…of the play of the world,”

a world he describes that is without truth, origin, and presence.1 Most

postmodern thought has followed unquestionably along this similar

line of descent from the classical theories of metaphysics and the

Unity of Being towards variations of a free-play/will-to-power/micro-

physics under the auspices of liberation, difference, and parody (See

Judith Butler’s final chapter in Gender Trouble).

The classical theories of the Unity of Being, which is now often

simply called, Oneness or the Center of structure, has been

characterized by many a postmodern polemic as the work of “the

theological [to lay] claim to ‘depth’, ‘subjectivity’, and

‘unrepresentability’, in order to shield transcendence from the

1 Jacques Derrida, Writing and Difference (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1978), p.292.

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progress of enlightenment and to return to it the dimension of the

inaccessible.”2 Theology, and particularly the theology of monotheism,

in its claim of a Divinity that is unified, eternal, and transcendent, the

One who is the giver and source of being, has been labeled as the

culprit behind, as Derrida described, a “centered structure…[that] is

contradictorily coherent.”3 For Derrida, the problem of Oneness or the

Center was a problem for the free-play of signs,4 for his predecessors

like Maurice Blanchot, Oneness was a problem for the freedom and

space of singularity, and for process theologians like Laurel

Schneider, Oneness is a problem for multiplicity. All of these

criticisms draw their animus for a certain liberation of the individual

as a freedom from Oneness.

While several manifestations of religion have predicated its

stakes upon a particular identity that brooked little to no variation

(which is not unlike any other manifestation of a power structure or a

structure for power, e.g., rebellion), there have been alternative

religious narratives subversive to power structures and rigid

orthodoxies that have articulated unity and difference in a way less

intolerant and often more robust then mere variations of bald

2 Maurice Blanchot, The Infinite Conversation (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota Press, 1993), p.256. Quoted in “Singularity, Relationship, and the Oneness of Being: Maurice Blanchot and Ibn ‘Arabi” by Hossein Moradi, p.1763 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 2794 Ibid., pp. 278-280

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liberalism or opaque5 models of anarchy (even the acclaimed

rhizomatic “crowned anarchies” of Gilles Deleuze’s ontological

model). The 12th century Sufi mystic, Ibn Al ‘Arabi is an example of

such thought.

In this essay we shall revisit the monotheistic theology of

multiplicity in the work and thought of Ibn ‘Arabi, and attempt to

sketch from his Fusus Al-Hikam (“Bezels of Wisdom”), an outline for a

metaphysics of multiplicity that is founded on the chief principle that

anchors ‘Arabi’s thought, namely, the unity of Being. Drawing from

the ‘Arabi’s Bezels and Ronald L. Nettler’s incisive Sufi Metaphysics

and Qur’anic Prophets we shall put ‘Arabi’s thought in conversation

with Laurel Schneider’s work in theologies of multiplicity (Beyond

Monotheism) and Jacque Derrida’s critique of metaphysics of

presence. We will make the case that a mystical metaphysics6as an

5 In Alain Badiou’s critique of Gilles Delueze, he summarizes his philosophy as a “mannerism.” The idiosyncratic nature of a mannerism makes it a very obscuring model for ontology or politics. Indeed, as we see how we get the word “idiot” from the definition of “a private person who is ignorant” of pubic affairs, the individuality of mannerism proves a difficult model for sociality. 6 A mystical metaphysics will be defined as a return to the science of being qua being that is not presumed in a so-called concept of being as an abstraction. It is the knowledge of being in its act, which makes it knowledge of something beyond the self that is contemplated upon the self. As such, it does not think being as an abstraction but from the contemplation and encounter of being it draws existential judgments about being—“about,” in both its prepositional and adverbial sense (often times, such “judgments about being” take the form of poetry or hymns; the former keenly expressed in the thought of the Spanish mystic Saint John of the Cross, the latter in the writer of the Mystical Theology, Pseudo-Dionysius and Ibn Al ‘Arabi). Knowledge of this nature is closer to the notion of intimacy or

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intimacy-cum-science of the act of being is not so easily discounted as

intolerant or exclusivist as many anti/post metaphysical polemics

presume.

In order to make our case and sketch out a metaphysics of

multiplicity, we will first define the “mystical” dialectic that is the

method of ‘Arabi’s thought, and from there draw out of Arabi’s

thought three main themes that challenge the usual indictments

against metaphysics and Oneness (Non-Oppositional Duality,

Multiplicity with Individuality, Non-Totalizating Universality), and

from these three themes articulate a metaphysics of multiplicity that

survives the criticisms of exclusivity and provides a way towards

thinking multiplicity with unity. We will demonstrate that the thought

of Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics of the Oneness of God, is not only a

transformative vision of the variegated multiplicity of the world that

constitutes the world, but that such a robust multiplicity is only

possible by a metaphysics of a Divine Oneness or a Unity of Being.

intimation of being than the capture of being in a concept. Gilson’s corrective against the pure and individualistic existentialism of Kierkegaard provides a pithy account of the upshot of a mystical metaphysics: “If, on the contrary, actual being is the existential actualization of an objective essence, knowledge not only can, but must, be at one and the same time both objective and existential.” (Gilson, Etienne. Being and Some Philosophers. Toronto: Pontifical Institute of Mediaeval Studies, 1952, p.188)

As we will demonstrate in this essay, while mystics may be prone to individuality because existence happens individually, the mystical thought we shall consider individually contemplates being in its unity. This is the prospect of mystical thought we wish to expound upon.

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Mystical Analogy of Being

It must not go without being stated, that Ibn ‘Arabi’s thought, was and

still is, considered controversial. However, despite at stretches

running afoul of the orthodoxy of his time—indeed, seemingly courting

the challenge—the “Supreme Master” [ash-Sheikh al-ak-bar], as he

was titled, is regarded now as he was regarded then as one of the

most influential figures in the history of Islam. As R.W.J. Austin,

translator of ‘Arabi’s Bezels, described of ‘Arabi: “the contribution of

Ibn al-‘Arabi to Islamic mystical thought and devotion was great and

extensive…there is hardly a Sufi order or teacher since his time not

influenced by his perspective.”7 Indeed, we shall demonstrate that we

have a fine agent provocateur in Ibn Al ‘Arabi, all the better to engage

the problematic of identity, otherness, belief, and being.

Any metaphysical system must attempt to give an account of

being, whether as an abstract concept of non-contradiction or a

relationship between act and potentiality (or non-being and being). As

Ronald L. Nettler notes of Arabi’s Sufi metaphysics: “[The] question is

how a ‘mystical’, unitive presence and a correlative theoretical

universal oneness may be aligned with an empirical multiplicity.”8

7 Ibn Al-ʻArabī, Muḥammad Ibn ʻAlī Muḥyī Al-Dīn, Ibn Al ̕Arabi: "the Bezels of Wisdom, trans. Ralph William Julius Austin (New York: Paulist Press, 1980), p.16.8 Ronald L. Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics and Qurʼānic Prophets: Ibn ʻArabī's Thought and Method in the Fuṣūṣ Al-ḥikam (Cambridge: Islamic Texts Society, 2003), p.7.

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Most often, a mystical account of being, as opposed to a dialectical or

analytic account, will not seek to resolve or overcome the duality

between the esoteric (inner/determining knowledge) and the exoteric

(outer/determined knowledge) nature of knowledge. What usually

marks the mystical manner towards the practice or rhetoric of

knowledge of being is how it objectifies the suspension between

thought and being, or, in maneuvers that Austin has described of

Arabi as “perverse” (or, more to the context, as troublesome), is how

the mystic might hyperbolizes a vicious circle of logic that pushes to

“resolve” contrasts and opposition in the coincientia oppositorum.9 In

contrast to the mystic’s oblique manner towards the knowledge of

being, a dialectical account of being, while also accepting the instance

of opposites (antimonies), must resolve the duality between the

subject and the object, knowledge and being, whether by bracketing

what escapes logical accountability or by negating what negates

logic’s ability to absolutely determine its account (e.g., Kant’s

transcendental logic, Hegel’s Aufhebung). For Ibn ‘Arabi’s Sufi

metaphysics, a circle is maintained between knowledge and being

that is not necessarily vicious nor incoherent, but nevertheless admits

a paradox of the suspension or penetration between differences as the

movement towards unity. This movement to unify the con-fusion

between differences, which we will describe below as the “secret of

9 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p.19

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Being,” is the true goal of the principle of non-contradiction: the

principle that reveals non-contradiction as it unites so many different

dictions in order to transcend contradiction. This principle establishes

that unity is not based upon the principle of non-contradiction, but the

reverse: the principle of non-contradiction—uniting differences—is

based upon unity, which is opposed to defining non-contradiction

upon identity.10

‘Arabi’s metaphysics is fully aware that it is not a knowledge of

a conceptualized being, which would reduce the “truth” of existence

to the attributions of abstract concepts, but rather, knowledge to him

is a deep relationship of thought with being (or being’s unfolding to

thought in existence), that is impossible to catch entirely, yet the

contemplation of that impossible object is the subject of wisdom. As

we can see as ‘Arabi writes: “Thus, a [true] definition of the Reality is

impossible, for such a definition would depend on the ability to [fully]

define every form in the Cosmos, which is impossible….It is similar in

the case of one who professes the comparability of God without taking

into consideration His incomparability, so that he also restricts and

limits Him…”11

For Ibn ‘Arabi, his Sufi mystic metaphysics of multiplicity is not

merely an apophasis of not-saying, but rather, a certain contrary of

10 This notion is elaborated masterfully in the work of early 20th century German Catholic philosopher, Erich Przywara’s Analogia Entis. See especially pages 206-210.11 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p. 74

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that: an apophasis of saying the other-than,12 or seeing the other-than

in existence that leads one up to consider what can never be

considered entirely (this leading up, is also called analogy or the

anagogic interpretation of signs, from ana-[up]+logos). This is why

the suspension, or the circle between thought and being is so

important for mystical thought, and as we shall see, definitive for Ibn

‘Arabi’s metaphysics of multiplicity.

Non-Oppositional Duality

In Laurel Schneider’s indictment of monotheism’s logic of the One as

resistant to multiplicity, she argues for “a logic, or posture, that

resists reduction to the One and resists reduction to the Many while

affirming a more supple and effective (rather than absolute) unity.”13

Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics share a similar point of departure in the very

problematic of the One and the Many. However, his departure is more

a logic of re-turn to the One (a logic of eternal return, or eternal

turnings to) rather than a logic of resistance of the One (in both

senses of the genitive: the One as resistant to multiplicity or

12 I take “apophasis” to not simply mean a negative, not-saying, or a denial of saying positively, that is all the rave of postmodern quasi-nihilistic thinkers in the increasingly obscurantist legacy of Derrida’s deconstruction method (from Jack Caputo to Catherine Keller); but take apophasis to mean a saying of what is other-than. I derive this from the etymology of the word, apo- ‘other than’ + phanai ‘speak.’ I find this usage of apophasis more consistent with the thought of Ibn ‘Arabi. 13 Laurel C. Schneider, Beyond Monotheism: A Theology of Multiplicity, p.5., italics in original.

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multiplicity as resistant to the One). Nettler describes how important

unity and the One is for ‘Arabi’s metaphysics: “the One and the many,

unity and diversity, may be seen as the bedrock of Ibn ‘Arabi’s sufi

metaphysics. From here all else issues and to this all returns.”14 While

Schneider’s allergy to unity as reductions that tend to, as she reads

the movement, smuggle in binaries and totalizations,15 ‘Arabi’s entire

metaphysics is based on a bold “linking and identification of the One

with the many, unity with diversity, absolute being with conditional

being, the remote God with the manifest God, God as essence and God

as manifest (‘created’) in attributes and names.”16For Arabi, there is

no problem of unifying the One and the Many, even while there is

most certainly a difference between the two. In fact, as we will show

below, the most robust ethics is only possible by this very unification,

and without it, the worst and most base forms of ethics remain

unenlightened.

Postmodern thought, particularly of the continental variety, in

its reaction to Hegelian dialectics, has well accepted the presumption

that universality as such is not a thing nor is there any such

intentionality of universality, for there is neither an originary cause

nor an eschatological terminus for history (“History has no meaning,”

to quote Foucault). Therefore, any system that presumes unity in

14 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, p.7.15 Schneider, Beyond Monotheism, p.13816 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, p. 10

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differences or an intention of universality in particulars reduces

differences to identity and liberty to totality. This violence that is

assumed inherent in metaphysics, is, as Derrida writes, “coherence in

contradiction…the force of desire…a fundamental

immobility.”17However, regarding the truth and nature of being,

nothing could be more to the contrary for ‘Arabi.

According to the thought of ‘Arabi, the very drama of

metaphysics, its science of being, circles around unity; as a point of

fact, it is only a circle of unity. But this doesn’t mean that he denies

difference, in fact, as a monotheist, he must affirm difference, the

most radical of differences. Yet ‘Arabi’s unity is not a negation of

negation or a univocity of being based upon non-contradiction (which

smuggles in the principle of identity through the logical backdoor),

but this unity is a secret of Being that is shared (here we are playing

with the word secret fully aware that it is a back-formation of the

word, secretion). The secret of Being that is the drama of reality in

‘Arabi’s thought, is a secret in two senses: ontically, it is secret, as an

“organic” discharge of Being for the reality of beings—a secretion of

Being as the act of existence; noetically, it is a secret, as an intimate

revelation of Being to thought regarding the essence of the act of

existence: a secretion of Being towards multiplicity. In this secret,

17 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 279

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God and creation, “are as18 one, in another [sense] they are not—and

cannot—be reduced to the oneness of total identification.”19Although

for ‘Arabi’s critics, he was alleged as reducing God and creation to the

same thing, Nettler describes ‘Arabi’s move more as a “subtle

interweaving, on different levels and from various perspectives…a

dialectical tension…in a fluid synthesis.”20

In order to maintain this dialectical tension within a fluid

synthesis, Nettler notes that the principle of ‘Arabi’s Sufi metaphysics

is made up of two faces, or facets, that imply a hierarchy of power and

order that nonetheless composes a relationship of Being and beings:

Wujud serves Ibn ‘Arabi as the main concept in the expression and formulation of his metaphysics; in this role, wujud has two faces, that of absolute being (wujud mutlaq) and that of conditional being (wujud muqayyad). Wujud mutlaq is the unitive principle, the fundamental undifferentiated oneness of things; it alone represents true being. The differentiated world of multiplicity (wujud muqayyad, conditional being) seems by contrast to indicate a ‘less real’ real of being.21

Here we see ‘Arabi founds the relationship between God and creation

upon an ontological hierarchy that gives an account of the order of

the distribution of being. Absolute being is an undifferentiated remote

18 Let the reader note the analogical upshot of “as one” as opposed to the monistic “one” simpliciter. And yet, as analogical, it doesn’t simply mean “as” as if regarding only a figure of speech that denies a real thing. But rather, “as” here connotes a preposition of a spatio-temporal nature of concretion: God and creation are as one, and as such, a oneness between their differences really experiences an actual concrescence. We shall return to the importance of this qualification of oneness in our conclusion regarding the idiom of love and being. 19 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, p. 820 Ibid.21 Ibid., p.9, italics in original

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entity (wujud mutlaq) that serves as the equal and impartial source

and revealer (or distributor) of all differentiated-being of multiplicity

(we can imagine this exchange as the secret of Being in its double

form of the ontic giving of being and the noetic revealing of being to

thought). However, as the implication that the effect is of a lower or

secondary quality of a cause, ‘Arabi re-characterizes the logical

relationship between cause and effect, or even the mythical

relationship of Creator and creation, with a mystical language of

intimacy that con-fuses (both literally and figuratively) the hierarchy

of differences in a manner that doesn’t deny hierarchy while also not

degrading the relationship in this hierarchy.

To re-imagine hierarchy on more erotic terms, ‘Arabi turns to

the notion of friendship as an example of “rapturous love.” In the

introduction to the chapter on Abraham as the friend of God, in

‘Arabi’s Bezels, Austin notes that ‘Arabi gives a creative (and

provocative) reading of the phrase “al-khalil” (“the friend”) from the

root khalla, as an act of permeation or penetration. For Arabi,

Abraham wasn’t just the friend of God in the most commonplace way,

he was the friend of God in a way more desirous, a way of one who is

permeated or penetrated by God. As Austin writes of this shift in the

connotation of friend: “The friendship, therefore, is of the most

intimate kind; indeed it is, as the title of the chapter suggests, more

like rapturous love by which the lover is wholly permeated by the

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beloved.”22 From taking the notion of “the friend of God” to a more

desirous-level of one permeated or penetrated by God—a lover of God,

‘Arabi is able to re-characterize the hierarchy between God and

creation as a drama between the desire of differences united as a

togetherness of two, that is, in ‘Arabi’s reading of the text, a

togetherness that is utterly reciprocal. ‘Arabi provocatively describes

this togetherness-as-reciprocity in a way not as usual of many

monotheists:

The Essence, as being beyond all these relationships, is not a divinity. Since all these relationships originate in our eternally unmanifested essences, it is we [in our eternal latency] who make Him a divinity by being that through which He knows Himself as Divine. Thus, He is not known [as “God”] until we are known.23

‘Arabi later says, that while it is true that God in his undifferentiated

primordial essence is beyond relationship, as only such, God couldn’t

be considered a divinity. For the undifferentiated to be divinity, it

must be differentiated in multiplicity: “It is true that a primordial

eternal essence can be known, but it cannot be known as a divinity

unless knowledge of that to which it can be related is assumed, for it

is the dependent who confirms the independence of the

Independent.”24As Nettler notes, what is behind all this is ‘Arabi’s

main thesis that “the One and the many inevitably meet….the One

22 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p.9023 Ibid., p. 9224 Ibid., p. 93

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may reveal itself in certain particular forms in the world of the many,

thereby showing its omnipresence or ‘immanence.’”25

We can now see that for ‘Arabi, the transcendence of the Divine

without immanence is only an undifferentiated Essence, and it is not

divine, for to be divine is to be revealed, just as to be is to know

Being, and as we can, the utter difference between the two must

meet, or their identities of themselves are impoverished. Thus ‘Arabi

writes, “You are His nourishment as bestowing the contents of His

Self-Knowledge, while He is yours as bestowing existence, what is

assigned to you being assigned also to him.”26

Oneness for Ibn ‘Arabi is, of itself, an undifferentiated Essence

that is beyond relationship, and as such, is a Oneness that is truly and

really distinct. However, it is the fact of existence that gives truth not

only to the Essence qua Divinity and creation qua multiplicity, but the

fullness of Being qua unity. Or said another way: Being of Reality is

the permeation of the undifferentiated with the differentiated in a

relationship of differentiation. This is how we see ‘Arabi lyrically

express this in a poem that ends his chapter on “The Wisdom of

Reality in the Word of Isaac:”

We are His as has been shown,As also we belong to ourselves

He has no other becoming except mine,We are His and we are through ourselves.

I have two aspects, He and I,

25 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, p.1026 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p. 94

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But He is not I in my I.In me is His theater of manifestation,

And we are for Him as vessels.27

Multiplicity as Real Radical Difference

“Process theology,” writes Laurel Schneider, “represents another

important move to restore embodiment to theology, this time through

a mechanics of evolutionary change in which divinity is conceived as

accompanying the ‘particularities of the actual world’ without

becoming conflated with it.”28 The evolutionary model for change,

according to Schneider, “allows, in Whitehead’s thought at least, for

plurality in divine expression in ‘the multiplicity of the primordial

character.’” Schneider draws from this process thought of divinity and

embodiment a way to emphasize “concretion, change, and ‘fluency’”

in reality.29 We shall demonstrate in this section, that the metaphysics

of ‘Arabi’s monotheism answers Schneider’s concerns without having

to resort to a non-radical evolutionary model.

Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics is not merely about contemplating

abstracts concepts—indeed, it is not about contemplating abstracts

concepts at all, but rather, his metaphysics, just as he defined divinity,

is about the unfolding of undifferentiated and remote concepts in

creation: seeing the phenomenal and manifested as the expression

27 Ibid., p. 9528 Schneider, Beyond Monotheism, p.140.29 Schneider, Beyond Monotheism, p. 140-141

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and manifestation of the Divine’s creativity. As such, his metaphysics

is more than just a science of the concept of being, but a mystical

aesthetics of the unity of Being’s multiplicity in creation. This is the

organic multiplicity of ‘Arabi’s theology, a multiplicity that is not an

abstraction parodied or performed through agency or play (think of

Derrida’s statement that “Play is a disruption of presence”30), but an

actual, existing multiplicity qua multiplicity that is only possible from

a source undifferentiated enough (in its transcendence and esoteric

originality) to give multiplicity, namely, the Remote Essence of

Absolute Being (wujud mutlaq) that makes infinite variations of

conditional being (wujud muqayyad). As Nettler writes, ‘Arabi brings

the distance of God to creation as “the transcendent and esoteric […]

made manifest and [having] presence in the phenomenal and the

exoteric. From this angle, God and His creation are as one, the

multiplicity and diversity in creation expressing God’s individual

names.”31

The multiplicity of God’s names is another way ‘Arabi describes

the multiplicity of God’s expression in creation. “He states that He is,”

writes ‘Arabi about God, “in his Identity, the limbs themselves that are

the servant himself, even though the Identity is One and the limbs are

many.”32This understanding of God as identified with multiplicity is

30 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 29231 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, p. 3632 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p. 130

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‘Arabi’s arithmetic of difference as the multiple expressions of the

One multiplying God. This putative immanence as multiplicity out of a

remote One that is really distinct might present a problem for ‘Arabi’s

metaphysics: for how can a thing be relatable to a thing that is

supposed to be infinitely different or remote from it? We can almost

hear Derrida’s same question to Levinas’s absolute other when he

says, “how can alterity be separated from negativity, how can alterity

be separated from the ‘false infinity’?”33 ‘Arabi, characteristically,

welcomes this challenge. As Nettler comments, “[T]he formulation [of

real distinction between wujud mutlaq and wujud muqayyad) seems

one of stark difference…[But] The ‘contrast’ for him, in fact, serves

then as the main vehicle of its own overcoming.”34 In other words, for

‘Arabi, it is because of the impossible contrast, something radical has

to happen. This implies what monotheists have called the function of

creation ex-nihilo. To overcome such an impossible contrast, it is

argued, is only possible by radical creation: an act out of nothing, as

opposed to an act as a process or evolution.35 We see ‘Arabi set this up

33 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 11934 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, pp.9-1035 It can be argued that an overemphasis on creativity and newness in process thought might possibly be as deleterious of a thought on the “depth” of being as the practice of obsolescence in progressive capitalistic market theory, or even the Social Darwinism thought of Herbert Spencer’s “survival of the fittest.” While the notion that being must be progressive as opposed to radically related excludes a theological metaphysics of being, an evolutionary process (a meta-morphism of being) ends up excluding the possibility of “impossible being” that is very nature of creativity as art. We can see this metaphysics of art in even the work of Oscar Wilde when he says that

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when he states, “The Reality, in Its Essence, is beyond all need of the

Cosmos.”36 And then, out of nothing, without need, ‘Arabi describes

“the Reality begins to describe Itself as the bestower of

compassion…”37 From nothing, without any necessity, reality bestows

itself out of compassion, and creates a relationship by expressing

itself, or by expressing its goodness. In this expression that freely

creates out of compassion, a real and radical difference is possible—is

made possible, because this difference is not simply an evolution of a

source, nor a formal distinction from a source, but a fresh creation of

difference. We see this when ‘Arabi describes the freshness of

creation: “How wonderful are the words of God concerning the

Cosmos and its transformation according to the Breaths ‘in a new

creation’ in a single essence.”38 And he pursues on: “God is manifest

in every Breath and that no Self-manifestation is repeated…every Self-

manifestation at once provides a [new] creation...”39

Thus we see, ‘Arabi is able to define the drama of reality as a

creation of relationship; not a relationship out of need or transaction

or even determination, but free, fresh, out of compassion, and as such,

“art doesn’t mirror nature [which would be micro-physics or meta-morphisms], but it is nature that mirrors art [metaphysics].” ‘Arabi uses this “mirror” analogy as well, with regard to Adam as mirroring the Divine. See also William Desmond’s Art and the Absolute regarding the metaphysics of art. 36 Arabi, Bezels, p.14837 Ibid.38 Ibid., 15339 Ibid., 155

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a real relationship of difference that is expressed fully as a unity of

Being. As Nettler writes:

Absolute being is close to what later writers termed the unity of being…Absolute being is ‘God’ conceived non-theistically, as first principle or ultimate fount of all. Conditional being or phenomenal being—theistic ‘multiplicity’ as opposed to ‘unity’—expresses and reflects ‘God’s’ nature in all its facets…The tension between these ‘two Gods’ is the relationship between absolute and conditional being, between ‘monism’ (oneness) and monotheism (multiplicity).40

We see from ‘Arabi, that multiplicity is a theological concept and not

an evolutionary one (if only, what evolves is a result of multiplicity and

not the cause of it). His monotheistic multiplicity (particulars in

relation) avoids an indifferent multitude of ones (particulars in

negation), by imagining differences in relation as the fundament of all

creation. ‘Arabi describes it as such: “For each limb or organ there is

a particular kind of spiritual knowledge stemming from the one

source, which is manifold in respect of the many limbs and organs,

even as water, although a single reality, varies in taste according to

its location…”41

But this multiplicity, again, only serves a greater purpose for

‘Arabi. It is not so much that ‘Arabi is a philosopher of difference in

and of itself as extension, like, say, a thinker like Gilles Deleuze, nor is

he a philosopher of essence or substance, like Plato or Aristotle, but in

a sense he is all three of these in one: the extension of difference as

40 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, p. 92-9341 Arabi, Bezels, p. 131

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the essence of substance (“subsistence being what is given…”42), but

substance that is given as a manifestation of the Divine expression is

the very unity of Being. If unity is one that is rich and diverse, and the

divinity is one that is truly absolute but fully expressive, then the

knowledge of being finds it most perfect moment in the Unity of

Being. In this sense, the particular expressions we call the multiplicity

and flux of creation are the embodiment as a relationship of the Divine

with and in creation.

From here ‘Arabi then sets up this multiplicity towards its

ethical upshot: “So, beware lest you restrict yourself to a particular

tenet [concerning the Reality] and so deny any other tenet [equally

reflecting Him], for you would forfeit much good, indeed you would

forfeit the true knowledge of what is [the Reality].”43 Here we see

Arabi translating the multiplicity of God not as a matter of modality or

variable play of forms, or even a force for change from an overriding

process of evolution, but as the very reality of God’s expression in

creation as an expression with creation. From a real, organic

multiplicity united in Being, ‘Arabi provides an ethics for this unity

that treats the usual postmodern allergies for totalization and

intolerance without succumbing to the usual antidotes of relativism,

agonistics, and anarchy.

42 Ibid., p. 15543 Ibid., p. 137

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Unity in Multiplicity

Laurel Schneider, in Beyond Monothiesm, tries to imagine multiplicity

beyond the agonistics of “essential separation” and the totalization of

“essential wholeness, or oneness”44 She states that one can only

overcome this philosophical Sophie’s Choice if they can do three

things, two of which we shall take the time to consider: “to risk

meaningful contradiction; and finally, to consider with Miguel de

Beistegui the possibility that ‘the ontology of the multiple can only be

locally circumscribed’”45Unfortunately, Schneider follows Heidegger’s

questionable genealogy of metaphysics, and specifically his borrowing

of Kant’s term “onto-theology,” to conclude that theological

metaphysics, in their “grandiosity” have harbored violence in their

“religious metaphysical claims about God’s ‘Being’ over against the

world of difference.”46

As we have demonstrated in the religious metaphysics of Ibn

‘Arabi, being is a drama of unity and not one of contradiction or

“coherence in contradiction.” More to the point, we have

demonstrated ‘Arabi’s courting of stark contrasts to only perform a

union between such contrasts with a mystic’s union of differences as

radical love of permeation. Now we shall demonstrate how being is

expressed as a multiplicity that is locally circumscribed and

44 Schneider, Beyond Monotheism, p. 14245 Ibid., 14546 Ibid., p. 146

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ontologically unified without being existentially identified as one. For

‘Arabi, the Unity of Being is the possibility of ethics.

Nettler writes that ‘The particular perspective on God immanent

leads Ibn ‘Arabi to expand on his notion of the multiplicity of religious

beliefs, their mutual competiveness and their ‘pluralistic’ open

relationships, from the angle of the gnostic’s awareness.”47 Nettler

continues, this time quoting Arabi when he writes, “One who posits

God in an exclusivist belief…will reject Him in anything other than his

own fixed conception [of God], as God is made manifest [to him in this

way]”48 In other words, God’s multiplicity is particularized,

differentiated, and distinguishing. We know God in a particular way, a

diversified way, which is not the same thing as knowing God

equivocally, ambiguously, indeterminately, or indecisively. Multiplicity

for ‘Arabi doesn’t deliquesce the substance of God’s multiplicity but

gives account to the manifold substances of God’s oneness. This is

how Arabi can make sense out of monotheism and the universalism of

God’s multiple perfections. And as such, for ‘Arabi, an ethics follows

that frees

God from [this sort] of fixed conception [that] will not reject Him…[but] rather, affirm Him in every form in which He is pervasive and he will take Him from himself in the form in which He appears to him, infinitely. For the forms of divine self-manifestation have no limit at which they cease…Thus the

47 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, pp. 126-12748 Ibid.

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matter is infinite from both sides. This, you may say, is God and creation.49

As Nettler comments on this unusual pluralism in ‘Arabi’s

monotheistic metaphysics:

Religion from this angle—the deeper gnostic conception—transcends its exoteric exclusivist form, due to its particular understanding of the infinite forms of God’s self-manifestation. On the exoteric side, then, one who sees only his belief as true is missing that deeper reality of this ‘pluralism’ of beliefs…a ‘pluralism’ which bespeaks the validity of all beliefs, if not their equality.50

From Nettler’s account of ‘Arabi’s Sufi metaphysics, the paradox of

the Many and the One as an ethic for the Many of the One keeps

particularity within unity by a religious fundament. As ‘Arabi

expresses it in poetic form:

Who is here and what there?Who is here is what is there

He who is universal is particularAnd He Who is particular is universal.

There is but one Essence…51

From this we see ‘Arabi is able to imagine that being can be

circumscribed locally because being is given from God, or said

another way, God’s expression to creation is both radical and free, in

a way that is beyond totalization, and as such, is particularized

because it is transcendent (as ‘Arabi writes: “He who truly

understands what we are discussing here is not confused. Even if his

49 Ibid., 12750 Ibid., italics in original.51 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p.150

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knowledge is extended, the extension is only the result of the

determination of the location…”52). It is because the transcendence of

God always implies a remainder or a reserve in its expression or

incarnation (the difference between presence as participation and

presence as process or extension) that it is luxurious enough in its

gratuity to particularize its communication equally and uniquely, and

as such, variably and locally. As Arabi writes, “God says, Everyone of

them knows its own way of prayer and exaltation, which is to say its

degree of tardiness in worshipping its Lord, as also its mode of

exaltation by which it affirms God’s transcendence according to its

eternal predisposition.”53

Recovering a True Oneness

Laurel Schneider, as she begins to conclude a way beyond

monotheism, she states “…monotheism frames a picture of ultimate

reality that passively renders other possibilities false…” And again she

pursues: “The logic of the One has worked well for the expansionist

political dreams, particularly of Christians and Muslins.” And again:

“[T]oo many wars have been fought in the name of the One God…”54

In the end, Schneider makes her claim to land beyond her problem

with monotheism and oneness in the idiom of love:

52 Ibid., p. 8753 Ibid., p. 28354 Schneider, Beyond Monotheism, p. 189

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As the conceptual shape of divinity, multiplicity is therefore the embodiment of love. And love is what divinity is because love cannot be One…Love, necessitating the existence of others, of difference, gravity, and encounter, is the divine reality of heterogeneity even among those usually classed as “same.”55

We also must turn to note Jacque Derrida’s claim to land beyond a

metaphysics of presence as his embracing of being as an absence for

play: “Being must be conceived as presence or absence on the basis of

the possibility of play and not the other way around…This affirmation

then determine the noncenter otherwise than as loss of the

center.”56To both proposals of multiplicity beyond metaphysics, we

must respectfully decline. We shall simply acknowledge that Derrida’s

multiplicity is, as he frankly calls it, a différance, and is not a

multiplicity as such, but a performed “difference” out of absence, or

out of infinite chances for supplementation because of an absence that

allows not difference, but reoccurrence. As such, ontologically, it is

the play of the same, just repeated non-identically. This essay will

stipulate that such a criticism of metaphysics is unanswerable, since it

is one that wholly resolves itself privatively. Privative schemes are

fundamentally individualist schemes; we shall see below how a

privative scheme to overcome Oneness is only a counterfeit-oneness.

Now as we turn to Schneider’s rejection of a monotheistic

metaphysics for a divinity that is conceptually a multiplicity, we are

55 Ibid., p. 20556 Derrida, Writing and Difference, p. 292

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more sympathetic with her resolution, even if we do not entirely

agree. Despite this essay’s concerns for “process” as presence, we

find a familiar ground with Schneider’s idiom of love. However, by

drawing from Ibn ‘Arabi’s metaphysics of the Unity of Being, we shall

maintain that Schneider is mistaken to say that love can not be “one.”

Or rather, we might say to Schneider: love, indeed, cannot be one,

because love is always a being as-one. If multiplicity is an embodiment

of love (i.e., love represented or expressed), as Schneider maintains,

and what is loved in love is difference, then multiplicity cannot be

difference, if, qua itself, it is love-embodied, or love embodied as

multiplicity. Love is not a love of itself (even if it is defined as

multiplicity), but love is a love of something different than itself (to go

beyond itself). This is why difference is understood as multiplicity, and

love is understood as the act of relating differences as multiplicities

together.

Therefore, we maintain that love is not a thing that embodies

things (e.g., “multiplicity as the embodiment of love”), and that

multiplicity is not the representation of love’s embodiment, but that

love, as an act of relating differences, is an act of relating different

things as-oneness. And so now, to agree with Schneider’s critique of

Oneness we must disagree with her usage of love as multiplicity; or to

agree with her desire to resolve multiplicity with love, we must then

disagree with her desire (or, presumption) to define Oneness non-

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prepositionally. For if love is not a thing,57 it can not have an object,

but is rather the act of two things in relation (i.e., the function of the

preposition), and as such, love is not the subject that embodies things,

nor is multiplicity the object that love embodies, but love is the act of

a preposition—the positioning together—between two different things.

As we had mentioned above regarding the use of “as” as a

preposition, for example, when someone is said to have a job as a

cook, the person is both a cook and not only-a-cook, and what

connects those two different things (the individual and the job as a

cook) as-one is the preposition “as.” And this is the reason why

multiplicity cannot be defined as love-embodied, for it is because of

multiplicity that love is possible (‘Arabi’s notion that Divinity cannot

be Divinity with creation) and it is because of love that relationships

in multiplicity are possible (the Unity of Being as the act of being),

and as such, the two are not the same, but in point of fact, because

57 To say “love is not a thing” is to be well aware that this move prevents the elision of God and love. This is another problem with process thought that would make God identical with the “principle of concretion” as oppose to the cause of it. While love can be defined, in a certain way, as the “act of concretion,” which we have demonstrated with the prepositional usage of “as,” it loses its radical and gratuitous nature of relation when the act and the cause are conflated together as a self-caused act or an evolutionary act, as we see process thought’s inheritance of Spinoza’s causa sui. To understand love as a radical act between things as opposed to a thing that acts for things is to allow it its greatest freedom of expression (gratuity) and its most personal of involvement (reciprocity). This again is why we maintain that being is the act of existence (the object of metaphysics) as opposed to being-in the existence of acts in time (ontology as process).

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the two are not the same the two are possible for each other in an act

of relationship. This act of relationship again is the act of the as-

oneness of differences. Therefore, multiplicity is not the embodiment

of love, no more than creation is the embodiment of divinity, but

rather, since the two are truly different, a pre-position—Being’s

position in the fore (to-be-fore), which we call “presence,” enables an

act of love to happen as a oneness of the two differences. And here we

can agree with Schneider that love cannot be one, because, as we

push Schneider’s idiom of love further, love is an act of as-oneness

between differences. This again, is love: radical relation.

The absence of the “as one” in Schneider’s reading of Oneness

causes, what we think, is a misstep in her reading of “love can not be

one.” But this is because she has, from the outset of her book, defined

Oneness as what is ultimately a privative Oneness, which is simply

individuality on a larger scale. As a result, she has made multiplicity

an abstraction or an exaggeration with very little meaning to grasp in

substance or distinction, since, if multiplicity is both essence and

existence, its act of concrescence—“love”—is redundant or

superfluous (the chimera of difference behind a certain meta-

morphism). A Oneness that is exclusive and privative is equal to

Derrida’s individuality that is disruptive of presence: an individuality

as a dis-rupture from the presence of others (individuals, gods, God’s,

etc.). And as we can see, as a result, for Derrida, being must be

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conceived only on the basis of the possibility of play (indivisibility) and

not relation (refer-ability), and thus, contrary to Schneider’s idiom of

love (which presumes relation), and ‘Arabi’s Unity of Being (which is

definitive of relation). Therefore, Schneider is not prosecuting a

Oneness that is equal to ‘Arabi’s Unity of Being (and a host of other

Christian theological notions of Oneness), but in fact, a Oneness that

is equal to Derrida’s being as the free play in absence as infinite

supplementation. And her commitment to process thought allows no

room for radical ambiguity, because her divinity is already part of

multiplicity, to the extent that she wishes to define the concept of

divinity as multiplicity. So we must conclude that Schneider is arguing

against a One that is a Derridian One of dis-rupture of Oneness as

presence, and arguing for a divinity that is a multiplicity of

multiplicity as a process. In both accounts, the principle of non-

contradiction out of the principle of identity reigns supreme

(1:1=1x1). And this is precisely because, as both Schneider and

Derrida want to think of being without metaphysics, they are not

capable of thinking of the relationality of being beyond individuality (a

being the is non-divisible, and hence, non-radically-relatable).

For Ibn ‘Arabi, real multiplicity is only possible because of a real

One that radically creates to radically relate. As such, Ibn ‘Arabi is

able to imagine the relationality of being as a difference that is a real,

organic, and ontic thing. But again, all this comes back to the Oneness

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of Being, its expression as unity. As Nettler notes: “The qualified

separation [between the One and the Many] is for Ibn ‘Arabi essential

in its function of maintaining the tension between the One and the

many, between God as unitive principle.”58

For ‘Arabi, if divinity is multiplicity then multiplicity that is not

divinity cannot be a thing, and as such, no relationship then exists

between the two (“…since no two similar things can have unity,

otherwise there would be no distinction.”59). Therefore he must affirm

the opposite: which is, that multiplicity is from the oneness of divinity,

so that the unity and particularity of multiplicity can be the expression

of divinity’s creativity and love.

We see this line of thinking in several instances in ‘Arabi’s

chapter on “The Wisdom of Holiness in the Word of Enoch.” Writes

‘Arabi: “The Essence is Unique while the determinations are various,”

“The realities are mingled”; “The numbers derive from the one…Thus

the one makes numbers possible only because of the existence of that

which is enumerated”; “Therefore there must be number and that

which can be numbered”; “All this is One Essence, at once Unique and

Many, so consider what it is you see.” 60Therefore, as ‘Arabi restates

again, “His Unity integrates all in potentiality.”61

58 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, P. 11759 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p. 10860 Ibid., pp.86-8761 Ibid., p. 106

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Conclusion: The Secret of the Secret of Being

And yet after all this, we still must return to the secret of Being. For

Ibn ‘Arabi, this secret reveals a unity, the unity of Being: the unity of

Being’s multiplicity. For him, the ultimate move towards the secret of

being, which has historically been theologically controversial, is the

move of gnosis [what he calls ma’ rifah]. The gnostic understanding of

the secret of Being in a way beyond an individualizing and exclusivist

sense (i.e., the traditional sense), is a way that understands the

diversity of its Being’s unity and the equality of Being’s diverse giving.

Nettler describes this Sufi-Gnosticism as Ibn Arabi’s

metaphysics of God’s mercy: “In Ibn ‘Arabi’s redefinition [of God’s

mercy] all beings have received mercy because they exist, while God’s

mercy is itself existence of being (wujud).”62But the postmodern

individualist thinker might not find the idea of existence as a gift of

mercy a becoming ontology. This, of course, is because we only think

of mercy in the context of relief or pity. But the word mercy has in its

etymology the notion of “reward,” from which we get the idea of

“regard” (from Old French merci ‘pity’ or ‘thanks,’ from Latin merces,

merced- ‘reward,’ in Christian Latin ‘pity, favor, heavenly reward;

“reward” from variant of Old French reguard ‘regard, heed,’).

Therefore, with this understanding of “mercy” in mind (compassionate

62 Nettler, Sufi Metaphyiscs, p. 158

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regard), we are better able to appreciate ‘Arabi’s idiom of mercy as

Nettler describes it, “in its universal application [as] both the agent of

existence-giving (wujudan) and the process whereby existence-giving

is governed (hukman).”63

When we consider ‘Arabi’s understanding of the act of

existence, or the giving of existence in his idiom of mercy, we are able

to understand even more this secret of being in a manner more robust

than a static, run-of-the-mill substantialist metaphysics. The idiom of

mercy characterizes the whole act of existence as an act of desirous

call-and-response. As Nettler observes:

Ibn ‘Arabi then introduces his general metaphysical notion of the ‘fixed essences’ (al-a ‘yan al-thabita)64 which are things in pure form, awaiting their ‘descent’ into conditional being in the phenomenal world. These essences, says Ibn ‘Arabi, in poetic metaphor, ‘seek’ and ‘desire’ their phenomenal existence; and the mercy then fulfills [think, regards] that desire. As there is an essence (‘ayn) for every thing (shay), the mercy, as ‘existentiating force’, of necessity touches everything.65

The touching of everything as mercy as the equality of ontology in

‘Arabi’s metaphysics is both the reason for multiplicity and unity. But

again, this brings us back to the secret of Being that only the gnostic

63 Ibid.64 Nettler has a very helpful footnote on this word that explains what would be an Aristotelian understanding of act and potency for ‘Arabi’s notion of the condition for one to be: “ Generally for Ibn ‘Arabi, the a ‘ yan thabita remain in their state of potentiality (thubut) which is the realm of non-existence (‘adam); when they pass over into the real of phenomenal (conditional) being (wujud muqayyad) they adopt that form which constitutes a new and different state.” (159) 65 Ibid., p. 159-160

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perceives beyond traditional, exclusivist beliefs. It is this final turn of

Gnosticism and Universalism that most defines ‘Arabi’s thought. As

Nettler writes:

Ibn ‘Arabi asserts further that the ‘twofold’ nature of God’s mercy—the conventional and the metaphysical—has its correlative in a corresponding ‘two-tier’ human understanding of mercy. Thus the deep metaphysical mercy (‘the essent’ bi’ l-dhat) is known to be the true mercy by the ahl al-kashf (gnostics), while the conventional, personal mercy is that which the ‘unenlightened’, still-veiled people, al-mahjubun, think is the true mercy. The veiled folk, then, simply ‘ask God to be merciful to them in their belief…’ But ahl al-kashf ‘…ask mercy to inhere in them…”66

The gnostic understanding of existence, while it may appear elitist

and reclusive, actually gives an understanding for the reverse, namely

a way to think beyond exclusivity that still appreciates individuality.

We see the ethical upshot in the rich doubleness of this thought in

Arabi’s chapter on “The Wisdom of Singularity in the Word of

Muhaammmad” when he writes:

The owner of this private object of worship, however, is usually ignorant, in that he is wont to object to what someone else believes concerning God. If he were to understand what Al-Junaid said regarding the color of the water being that of its container, he would allow to every believer his belief and would recognize God in ever form and in every belief.67

Earlier in that chapter, ‘Arabi writes of the one who is “elevated” in

mind, that they enjoy “that [complete] perfection in which all realities

and relationships, determined or undetermined, are immersed, since

66 Ibid., 164-16567 Ibid.., p. 283

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none of the attributes can possibly apply to other than He.”68 The

Gnostic understanding, or the elevated understanding is able to think

of reality in a way that is all-embracing without being totalizing or

exclusionary. This again, is only possible from the secret of Being that

understands multiplicity unified under the giving of Being. This again,

is only possible with a metaphysics of Being that understands

ontology as given radically, freely, and equally. This again, is only

possible from a (monotheistic) theology that understands the giving of

being from a source that is truly different and thus truly radical and

free in its giving. And this again, this brings us back to the Unity of

Being in ‘Arabi’s thought which Nettler describes as where “the

‘paradox’ of the reciprocality—God and man, the One and the many,

the odd and the even---…is ‘the quintessential esoteric knowledge’

(lubab al-ma ‘rifa).”69 This is the secret of Being, the giving of Being as

reality and knowledge, that gives each their particular difference and

allows each a part in the universal unity of Being. This is only possible

by a Oneness that is not merely a multiplicity (as to be identical to

itself in others), but a Oneness that gives multiplicity (as to be related

to others in itself), as ‘Arabi understands it to be the “[all-embracing]

totality inherent in the Name ‘God’…which is at once not He and not

other than He.”70

68 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p.8869 Nettler, Sufi Metaphysics, p.21670 ‘Arabi, Bezels, p.88

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In the thought of Ibn ‘Arabi’s Sufi metaphysics, we can trace an

account of a God who transcends human resolutions and an account

of humanity and creation that beholds the manifold perfections of this

God in so many ways. In a sense, there is no One without the Many,

and the possibility of harmony among the Many is the secret of

Being’s unity given by the perfectly, infinite, compassionate One.

“If you insist only on His transcendence, you restrict Him,

And if you insist only on his immanence you limit Him.

If you maintain both aspects you are right…

Beware of comparing Him if you profess duality,

And, if unity, beware of making Him transcendent.

You are not He and you are He and

You see Him in the essences of things both boundless and limited”71

71 Ibid.

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