Quotes from Ibn Al 'Arabi: The Bezels of Wisdom

Ibn Al 'Arabi: The Bezels of Wisdom

by Ibn Al'Arabi, translated by R.W.J. Austin 

Paulist Press, Mahwah, New Jersey   © 1980   320 pp.

                            Love is the creed I hold: 

                            wherever turns His camels, 

                            Love is still my creed and faith.

For those who [truly] know the divine Realities, the doctrine of transcendence imposes a restriction and a limitation [on the Reality], for he who asserts that God is [purely] transcendent is either a fool or a rogue, even if he be a professed believer. For, if he maintains that God is [purely] transcendent and excludes all other considerations, he acts mischievously and misrepresents the Reality and all the apostles, albeit unwittingly. He imagines that he has hit the truth, while he has [completely] missed the mark, being like those who believe in part and deny in part.

It is known that when the Scriptures speak of the Reality they speak in a way that yields to the generality of men the immediately apparent meaning. The elite, on the other hand, understand all the meanings inherent in that utterance, in whatever terms it is expressed.

The truth is that the Reality is manifest in every created being and in every concept, while He is [at the same time] hidden from all understanding, except for one who holds that the Cosmos is His form and His identity. This is the Name, the Manifest, while He is also unmanifested Spirit, the Unmanifest. In this sense He is, in relation to the manifested forms of the Cosmos, the Spirit that determines those forms.  (p. 73)