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Rooflight, Mahan, Iran.

Ibn al-'Arabi was born in Murcia, Spain, in AH 560 [AD 1165]. At the age of twenty he was initiated into Sufism. From the 1190s he engaged in three decades of travels as a wandering scholar, poet and mystic, visiting the Maghreb, Egypt, Arabia, Syria and Asia Minor. In 1223 he finally settled in Damascus.

One source of Ibn al-'Arabi's panentheism is Sufism, which seeks to efface the self in mystical union with God.

The other is Islamic theology. Panentheism is already strongly present - in the Quran: "Wheresoever you turn, there is the face of God." [Quran, II.115.] And in Islam shirk - association - is one of the gravest sins: "God does not forgive anyone for associating something with him." [Quran, IV.48] This bans the linking of other divinities with God, as in polytheism and the Christian trinity.

But Ibn al-'Arabi applies it more rigorously. To associate anything at all with God would be shirk. Therefore nothing can exist except God.

However, Ibn al-'Arabi believed that God had a transcendental as well as an immanent aspect. He was manifested in, but also extended beyond the material universe. He had a hidden, veiled side.

The texts are from The Bezels of Wisdom [BW], translated by R.W.J Austin, Paulist Press, New York 1980, and The Treatise on Being, [TB] translated by T. H. Weir, Beshara Publications, London 1976.

The true authorship of the Treatise on Being is not known. It was probably written by a disciple of Ibn Al'Arabi. It reflects his thinking, but perhaps in a more ecstatic, intense and uncompromising way.

Selected statements from The Bezels of Wisdom and The Treatise on Being.

Oneness and uniqueness of God.

For He will not have anything to be other than He. Indeed, the other is He, and there is no otherness.[TB]

God is all things.

The eye perceives naught but Him. We are in His presence at all times, in all states. [BW X]

God is essentially all things. He permeates through all beings created and originated. [BW X]

He is Being itself, the Essence of Being, He is the Preserver of all. In preserving all things, He is preserving His form, lest anything should assume a form other than His Form, which is not possible. [BW X]

The existence of all created things is His existence. Thou dost not see, in this world or the next, anything beside God. [TB]

God is observer and observed.

The knower and that which he knows are both one, and he who unites and that with which he unites are one, and seer and seen are one. [TB]

Identity of self and God.

Thou art not what is beside God. Thou art thine own end and thine own object in thy search after thy Lord. [TB]

He who knows himself understands that his existence is not his own existence, but his existence is the existence of God. [TB]



SCIENTIFIC PANTHEISM is the belief that the universe and nature are divine.

It fuses religion and science, and concern for humans with concern for nature.

It provides the most realistic concept of life after death,

and the most solid basis for environmental ethics.

It is a religion that requires no faith other than common sense,

no revelation other than open eyes and a mind open to evidence,

no guru other than your own self.

For an outline, see Basic principles of scientific pantheism. Top.

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