'Arabî and the Mi'râj - Muhyiddin Ibn Arabi Society

50Heart), which (alone) encompasses Him, 171 in "seventy thousand veils of light and darkness." 172Thus He manifests Himself to the Heart of His servant through those (veils)--for "if He were" tomanifest Himself without them, "the radiant splendors of His Face would burn up" the creaturelypart 173 of that servant.Here--where the meaning of this House as the "Heart" is his primary concern--Ibn 'Arabi clearlyimplies a connection between these "70,000 angels" and the "70,000 veils" mentioned in another famoushadith (see following notes), where both numbers can be seen as symbols of the infinite, never-repeateddivine theophanies, whether they are considered in the world or in their "reflections" in the Heart of thePerfect Man. In his earlier discussion of the Mi'raj hadith (III, 341; an untranslated part of section II),however, he interprets the saying cosmologically: the angels' "entry is through the door of the rising of thestars, and (their) departure is through the door of the setting of the stars." (This latter interpretation is alsoapparently assumed in his remarks at this point in chapter 167 of the Futuhat.)171 (As usual, al-Haqq could also be translated as "the Truth," "It," etc.) This translation assumesthe inner connection between God and the Heart (qalb) that is expressed for Ibn 'Arabi in the famoushadith qudsi--in this case, one not recorded in the canonical collections--to which he alludes throughouthis writings: "My earth and My heaven do not encompass Me, but the heart of My servant, the man oftrue faith, does encompass Me"; see his citation of this saying in a key opening passage of this chapter, atn. 37 above. Concerning Ibn 'Arabi's conception of the "Heart" more generally, see the key chapter on the"Wisdom of the Heart" (Shu'ayb) in the Fusus al-Hikam (I, 119-126; Bezels, pp. 147-155) and theextensive references in Hakim, Mu'jam, pp.916-921.For the Shaykh, following a number of Koranic indications, the phrase "My servant"--i.e., the"servant" ('abd) of the divine "I"--is understood as a reference to the very highest spiritual state, in whichthe saint perfectly mirrors the divine Will: see n. 198 below on Ibn 'Arabi's own self-realization as a "pureservant" and Hakim, Mu'jam, pp. 773-776.172 The rest of this paragraph partially cites a celebrated hadith (one of the main subjects ofGhazali's famous Mishkat al-Anwar; see the excellent translation by R. Deladriere, Le Tabernacle desLumieres, Paris, 1981), usually given according to the version recorded in Ibn Maja, I, 44: "God hasseventy [or 700, or 70,000] veils of light and darkness: if He were to remove them, the radiant splendorsof His Face would burn up whoever was reached by His Gaze." (Muslim, iman, 291 cites a similar hadithwhich mentions simply a "veil of Light," without any specific number.) Ibn 'Arabi interprets this hadithin greater detail in chapter 426 (IV, 38-39), focusing on the question of how "light" can be a "veil"; ch.73, question 115 (II,110), on the meaning of "God's Face"; and in his K. al-Tajalliyat (ed. O. Yahya,Beirut, 1967), VI, 728. Other discussions, usually mentioning the different versions of this hadith, can befound in the Futuhat at II, 80, 460, 488, 542, 554; III, 212, 216, 289; and IV, 72.Here, by choosing to mention the number 70,000--although the canonical hadith, as just noted,include several possible numbers (or none at all)--, Ibn 'Arabi clearly implies an intimate connection withthe "angels" of the "Inhabited House" mentioned at the beginning of this section (see preceding notes), sothat both the 70,000 "veils" and "angels" are understood as symbolizing the infinite range of theophanies(tajalliyat). For Ibn 'Arabi's typical understanding of the divine "veils" as an expression for thosetheophanies (in this and many other contexts), see the references in Hakim, Mu'jam, pp. 313-318.173 literally, "the world of creation" ('alam al-khalq): i.e., the realm of existence constituted bythose "veils" or the divine Self-manifestation in all created being--as opposed to the primordial, "internal"Self-Manifestation or noetic differentiation of the Names and Realities within the divine Essence, the faydal-aqdas and the "world of the Command," 'alam al-'amr (which is the site of the final, purely noeticstages of the Ascension described in chapter 167).