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UNION IN THE DOCTRINE OF MUHYI-D-DIN
IBN ‘ARABI

IN his Wisdom of the Prophets Muhyi-d-Din ibn ‘Arabi

describes supreme Union as a mutual interpenetra-
tion of Divinity and man ; God as it were takes on
human nature ; the Divine nature (al-Lahiut) becomes the
content of human nature (an-Nasit), the latter being
considered as the recipient of the former, and, from
another angle, man is absorbed and, as it were, envelop-
ed by Divine Reality. God is mysteriously present in
man and man is obliterated in God. All this must
be understood only from the spiritual point of view, or
in other words according to a perspective, not of pure
doctrine, but related to spiritual realisation. In setting
side by side these two reciprocal modes of the interpene-
tration of God and man Ibn ‘Arabi adds, in the chapter
on Abraham, that ‘“‘here are two aspects of one and the
same state, which are neither merged together nor yet
added one to the other.”

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 polarised so that to each human faculty or quality
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