CONTEMPLATION, ACCORDING TO IBN ARABI 147

comprehendeth (all) vision” (Quran, VI, 103). The
Divine Witness cannot be ‘“‘grasped,” because it is He
who “‘grasps’” all things.! In the same way spiritual
identification with the Divine Subject proceeds from
that Subject. This Ibn ‘Arabi expresses by saying it is
realised ‘“‘by virtue of a certain content of the immu-
table essence of that being, a content he himself will
recognise as soon as God makes him to see it.”” This
is as much as to say that knowledge of oneself flows
from the ““Self.”” Spiritual identification with the Divine
Subject has, however, intellectual prefigurings, which
anticipate its actual realisation, and realisation itself
can have degrees of actualisation in man although in
itself essential identification allows of no gradations ; at
every one of these degrees the relative subject is “objec-
tivised”” more or less perfectly.?

“The Essence (adh-Dhat),” says Ibn ‘Arabi, “reveals
Itself” only in the ‘form’ of the predisposition of the
being who receives this ‘revelation’; it is never other-
wise. Thenceforward he who receives the ‘revelation’
of the Essence (Tajalli dhati) sees in the Divine Mirror
only his own ‘form.” He will not see God—it is impos-
sible that he should see Him—though knowing that he
sees his own ‘form’ only by virtue of this Divine Mirror.
This is wholly analogous to what takes place in the

1. In Vedantic doctrine too the Absolute Subject is called the “Witness”’
(Sakshin).

2. The methodic objectivising of one’s relative subject—the empirical
ego—and its identifying in essence with the “point of view” of the Divine
Subject is indicated in this definition of spiritual virtue (al-iks@n) in the Aadith
Jibril already quoted : ‘‘Adore God as if thou didst see Him, and, if thou dost
not see Him, none the less He sees thee,”