CONTEMPLATION, ACCORDING TO IBN ARABI 149

Ibn ‘Arabi goes on: “If you savour this (that the
being who contemplates never sees the very Essence but
sees his own ‘form’ in the mirror of Essence) then you
savour the utmost limit to which the creature can attain.
Do not aspire beyond this, nor tire your soul to pass
beyond this degree (in an ‘objective’ mode), for beyond
there is, in principle and definitively, only pure non-
existence...” But this does not mean the Essence
cannot be known : “Some among us are ignorant of the
direct knowledge of God and in this connection quote
the saying of the Caliph Abu Bakr: ‘To grasp that one
is powerless to know knowledge is a knowledge’ ;! but
there is among us one who really knows and who does
not express himself thus, because his knowledge implies
no powerlessness to know ; it implies the inexpressible”’
(from the chapter on Seth).

The master sums up all that has been explained
above in these words, also from the chapter on Seth:
“Thus God is the mirror in which you see yourself, as
you are His mirror in which He contemplates His
Names ; Now his Names are not other than Himself, so
that the analogy of relations is an inversion”,

1. In its deepest n':car:i_ng this saying is akin to the Vedantic discrimina-
tion between the pure *“‘subject”, 4rman, and its illusory “‘objectivation® as
the individual subject or jiva.