A Phenomenological Interpretation of the

Mystical Theologies of Ibn Sina and Ibn al Arabi

Presented at The Society for Phenomenology and the

Human Sciences 2019 Annual Conference, Duquesne
University, Pittsburgh, PA., November 1st, 2019.

Dr. Anthony Lack and Mr. Jackson Korynta

 A Phenomenological Interpretation and Comparison
of Mystical Experience in the Works of Ibn Sina and Al Arabi
Jackson Korynta and Tony Lack Alamo College, San Antonio, TX.
Statement of the Questions:

(1) What are some persistent, general, problems in the study of mystical experience?

(2) How can a Heideggerian framework, derived primarily from Being and Time, address some of these
problems?

(3) What are some of the specific problems one encounters when studying mystical experience in the Islamic
tradition? These problems emerge because of the transcendent nature of God and the strong demarcation
between the reality and power of God, on the one hand, and the nature and capacities of humans, on the other.

(4) How might reframing the mystical theologies of Ibn Sina and Ibn Arabi along Heideggerian lines shed light
on some, or all, of the aforementioned problems?
Nils: "My parents are atheists. After my studies, I became a lawyer. When I was thirty, I found my spiritual calling i
addition to my profession. I did three hours of spiritual exercise daily. In November 1986 I had my first big
enlightenment experience. During a meditation while lying down, a warm column of energy slowly rose from my
lower belly. As the energy reached my head, my self-consciousness disappeared, I became one with the
all-encompassing love of the cosmos. I experienced extreme happiness. I was suddenly able to understand the
holy books written throughout mankind's history at a deeper level.

The high point of my spiritual experience was what I felt as the entrance of the Holy Spirit. A thick beam of energy
flew from the sky and into my crown chakra. The energy flowed through my body and filled it out completely. On m
head was a small flame of energy. This experience is comparable with the Pentecost event. On the heads of the
early Christians appeared small energy tongues. Spontaneously arose in me the thought that now I have been
blessed by the Holy Spirit. I felt the energy beam as a descent of the Holy Spirit. A short time later I had another
amazing experience. When I made my daily walk one evening, I suddenly had the feeling that I was seen from the
sky. It was as if at the sky there was a large eye that saw me. The message of this eye was: "You can go your wa
with trust. You are guided by God." I read the Bible thoroughly from front to back. Through my experiences of
enlightenment I could now understand the deep wisdom in the Scriptures. I also understood what the term "God"
did mean.

One day I layed on my bed and meditated. My thoughts always came to rest more and more. Suddenly Jesus
Christ stood as a great shining light in the middle of the room. Back then I lived for six years as a hermit in
seclusion. I knew immediately that this luminary was Jesus Christ. Jesus came to me and floated into me. I was
filled with bliss. I rested for some time in this unimaginably large energy of love, peace and light."
 Problems in The Study of Mysticism: The Pluralist-Constructivists vs. the Pure Consciousness
School

Pluralist-Constructivists include Wittgenstein, Steven Katz, Wayne Proudfoot, and

others

They stress the impossibility of unmediated, idiosyncratic, purely private experience

All experience is mediated by culture, language, memory, and anticipation, inter alia

“The forms of consciousness which the mystic brings to experience set structured and
limiting parameters on what the experience will be.” (Katz, Steven, Language, Epistemology, and
Mysticism, in Mysticism and Philosophical Analysis, 1978).

Example: If we anticipate an encounter with Christ, we will encounter Christ, in some

analogical form. Conversely, when we retrieve and interpret our encounter, it will be in
Christological terms.
 The Problem with the Pluralists
The Pluralist doctrine seems to rule out, ipso facto, many of the mystical traditions and doctrines.

“The assumption that there are no unmediated experiences negates the very foundation of yoga, most of
Buddhism, large segments of Hinduism, and philosophical Taoism.”

(King, Sallie, Two Epistemological Models for the Interpretation of Mysticism, Journal of the American Academy of Religion, 1988.)

But we can not be so sure that these traditions really advocate a pure unmediated experience, or that their
practitioners anticipate such an experience.

It seems more evident that there is an initial, negative moment in the teaching, for example the Buddha’s
persistent comments that Nirvana is “neither this, nor that” or the Taoist claim that “The Tao that can be named
is not the ineffable Tao.”

But this negative moment is almost immediately followed, in history and in practice, by visualizations,
anticipations, and expectations of “something,” not nothing - and even the nothingness is quickly filled in with
various spiritual forms, e.g., the Trikaya Doctrine or Sat Cit Ananda.
 The Pure Consciousness School of Thought
Mystical States are passive, not willed, they overtake us, and our will is in abeyance (William James)

W.T. Stace’s Introvertive Mysticism

(1) Unitary consciousness, all multiplicity has been excluded, there remains only a void and empty unity

(2) It is a non spatial and non temporal experience

(3) There is a sense of objectivity, reality, and truth or ‘trueness’ - being-in-truth

(4) Feelings of Bliss, Joy, Blessedness

(5) A sense that the experience is holy, sacred, or divine

(6) Paradoxicality

(7) Ineffability
 Problems with the Pure Consciousness School
There is a problem if we retain our intuitive notions of Intentionality and Directedness
of Consciousness

E.g., If we would construe pure consciousness as “consciousness of consciousness?”

How is it possible? Perhaps by some form of reduction or active elimination, a
successive peeling away of intentional objects? But then each action is a conscious
bracketing or reduction and it has an aim, which would seem to entangle us in an
infinite regress, even if the aim is “nothing” or emptiness

On the other hand, if the mystical experience is just overwhelming us and we are
“seized” or “overtaken” without any will or intent, then the problem of intentionality
and directionality shifts its locus - to something other than us - but ‘it’ does not
disappear entirely
There is another problem:

If we retain our intuitive sense that all experience involves some form of subject/object dualism,
or some form of awareness of a relation between subject and object, then language, concepts and
thoughts fail us when trying to describe or discuss a non-dual experience.

Even words such as “absorption” or “Unity” seem to gain their meaning from their opposites.

This is not to say that we must be able to describe or refer to a mystical experience to confirm that
we’ve had one, but most people end up doing so, and most mystical theologies seek to do so as
well, in their own ways, as mentioned above.
 Actual Accounts of Mysticism Include the Constructivist and Pure Consciousness Modes of
Description

“In my Mind’s eye, I felt myself instinctively taking on the posture of prayer in my head. I was on my knees,
hands clasped in front of me and I bowed to this force. I wasn’t scared or threatened in any way. It was more
about reverence. I was showing my respect. I was humbled and honored to be in this presence.

This presence was a feeling, not something I saw or heard. I only felt it, but it felt more real than any reality I
have ever experienced. And it was a familiar place too. One I had felt before.

It was when I surrendered to this that I felt like I let go. I was gone, or should I say this earthly part of me was.
It was still on the couch in some sort of suspended animation awaiting my return. I

was in the void. This void had a strange and indescribable quality to it in that there was nothing to it but this
feeling of unconditional and undying Love. It felt like my soul was basking in the feeling of this space. I have
no Idea how long this lasted. Time and space did not exist there . . .it was all different manifestations of this
Love feeling I felt myself wrapped in.” (Roland Griffiths on "The Mystical Experience and Psilocybin Research" at Johns Hopkins
University)
 Between Constructivism-Pluralism and Pure Consciousness: A Heideggerian Approach

We tend to agree with the pluralists that there is no unmediated experience.

However, we think that the CONTENT of the mystical experience is LESS likely to
reflect or involve doctrinally specific imagery and MORE likely to consist of
archetypes

Moreover, we think that STRUCTURE of mystical experience differs from everyday

consciousness, but it does not escape the structure of experience, or “the conditions of
possibility” for experience, which we explore here with reference to categories in
Being and Time.
 The Relational Approach
The Relational Approach - The “what” of mystical experience is the relation itself

DASEIN is always-already thrown into a world, a set of situations, a number of structures, a collection of
people, a network of meaning.

DASEIN doesn't stand apart from the world and then rush forward into it, or escape from it, or ‘merge
with it'

DASEIN is caught up in the world, constantly being influenced, positioned, determined, affected, by all of
its 'entanglements.’

There is no 'freedom from' the world, because DASEIN IS what it is only BECAUSE it is in the world.

It is in the nature of DASEIN to be in the world. In this sense Dasein is its world.
 The Relational Approach

Before the metaphysical idea of Being was subsumed under the Aristotelian ‘Ousia’ or
substance, and then reified as ‘God’ - it was related to modes of emergence, disclosure,
and concealment; growing, showing, and hiding

There is no Being, nor are there any beings, beyond the world of beings in the world.

If ‘God’ or Brahman, or the Absolute is encountered, the encounter must be some form
of relation of beings-within-a-world.
 Mood and Receptivity

The German word for attunement is Befindlichkeit, "how do you find yourself?"

We are always attuned, or tuned in, to any experience, through moods.

Moods are 'disclosive'. Moods are inescapable. Moods are public. Moods are relations.

Moods bring the Being of entities to light in a certain way, they affect the shining forth of Being.

Moods are part of our grip on reality, part of the way we 'see' things.

On a 'good' day, everything comes to light differently than on a 'bad' day.

Moods are not only private interior mental experiences. To be depressed is to be in-the-world in a different way
than to be joyful, or indifferent. And what is it to be in a mystical mood? One can only imagine, and anticipate,
and in this way perhaps prime the mood.

Entering a mystical state involves being abruptly relocated to a different mood

 Intentionality in Mystical Experience

The basic model of knowing subject and knowable object causes more problems - even in construing everyday
experience - than it solves.

This model of intentionality, where we always seem to be imagining an arrow running from one direction to the
other, is replaced with a model of engagement and immersion that utilizes a number of relational metaphors in
which one sees Dasein as embedded in its worldly concerns.

Mitwelt (with world or around world) Umwelt (surrounding environment) Umsicht (circumspection or around
sight)
 Intentionality and Mystical Experience

Our dealings with the world take the form of being surrounded
by what we know and by knowing what we are surrounded with -
the relations are what produce our intentionality and our
intentionality is involved with - rather than pointed at - our
situation
 Bodily States and Transformations In and Through
Mystical Experience
LEFT BLANK -

WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE IMPORTANCE - And note that

addressing this will involve borrowing some themes from
Merleau-Ponty and relating them to findings in neuroscience

AND WILL RETURN TO THIS AS WE DEVELOP OUR

THESIS FOR TODAY IT IS OUTSIDE THE SCOPE OF
THIS PRESENTATION
 Temporality and Mystical Experience
Regardless of whether we are in a mystical state or not, our most fundamental temporal experience manifests as
a sense of pastness, en-presenting, and futurity in human experience, which happens all at once.

Temporal experience does not consist of a sequence of ‘nows’, nor does it have a distinct past, present, and
future.

As a condition of experience, the structure of our fundamental temporality is invisible to conscious reflection.

In reflection we can extract a series of nows that are connected to experiences.

We can rearrange and reorder our past ‘nows’ and make them present to conscious reflection as future
possibilities that we can act upon.

We can also imagine possibilities, future nows.

But when doing so we always inhabit a temporality characterized by pastness, en-presenting, and futurity

We “come toward ourselves in our “ownmost possibility to be.” (Heidegger, BT)

 Temporality and Mystical Experience II

If we consider the account of mystical experience mentioned previously, it does

manifest as pastness, en-presenting, and futurity.

There is a sense of pastness, en-presenting, and futurity.

From the account of mystical experience: “It was a familiar place . . one I had felt long
before . . .the earthly part of me was still on the couch in suspended animation . .
.waiting for my return. . .I have no Idea how long this lasted . . .Time and space did not
exist here”
 The Disclosure of Being and the Impossibility of Full Unconcealment of Being.

Experiences appear to us in different light, depending on our attunement to them.

Experiences reveal themselves through concealment of other possible experiences. The full
unconcealment and disclosure of Being is impossible because being is only accessible
through particular beings in some spatio-temporal situation, and even these particular beings
only show themselves in a certain light, depending on DASEIN'S relatedness to them.

In this sense a mystical experience is not a matter of absorption, pure consciousness, correct
or incorrect mirroring of the world, unification with God, or even being overtaken by God.

Mystical experience is a matter of experiencing the being of ‘X’ in-and-through our

relatedness to X. The experience is not “of X” but of the relation - the encounter what there
is and all there is
 Suggestions in the Quran that Every Revealing is also a Concealing

God states in the Quran:

“We are nearer to [humans] than their jugular vein” (50:16).

Heidegger also says,

“The Being of beings is the most apparent; and yet, we normally do not see it—and if
we do, only with difficulty.”

The Sufi poet Niyazi Misri says:

“Nothing is more apparent than God—He is hidden only to the eyeless.”

 Communicating Knowledge of Mystical Experience
Understanding and interpretation takes place within a particular ‘horizon’ that is
determined by our situatedness in history, tradition, language, culture, moods, memory,
and anticipation.

These features of our experiential horizon are part of what Heidegger calls ‘modes of
disclosure,’ (1) attunement, (2) understanding, and (3) discourse - and temporal
experiences which structure our sense of possibility.

The world we inhabit and the experiences that it makes possible come pre-interpreted
for us. Yet understanding is not imprisoned within the horizon of its situation.

In extreme circumstances especially, such as mystical experiences, our horizon of

understanding is susceptible to radical shifts and ruptures.
 Fusing Horizons and Experiencing the Relations
Being in a mystical state as well as understanding or communicating about it involves a very abrupt and
dramatic ‘fusion of horizons’

When in the mystical experience itself, it must be the case that the familiar and the alien are fused in a way that
affects the meaning of both, creating a new relation, and hence a new experience. The new relation ‘is’ the
experience.

When one ‘looks forward to’ the mystical experience, there is a fusion of the subject’s existing stock of
knowledge a kind of symbolic prehension of the anticipated experience.

When one communicates or ‘talks about’- the mystical experience one has had, there is a fusion of the memory
or impression of the mystical experience with the subject’s existing stock of knowledge.

If we look again at the account of a mystical experience discussed earlier, we can see that it exemplifies this
type of fusion of horizons.
“In my Mind’s eye, I felt myself instinctively taking on the posture of prayer in my head. I was
on my knees, hands clasped in front of me and I bowed to this force. I wasn’t scared or
threatened in any way. It was more about reverence. I was showing my respect. I was humbled
and honored to be in this presence.

This presence was a feeling, not something I saw or heard. I only felt it, but it felt more real than
any reality I have ever experienced. And it was a familiar place too. One I had felt before.

It was when I surrendered to this that I felt like I let go. I was gone, or should I say this earthly
part of me was. It was still on the couch in some sort of suspended animation awaiting my return.

I was in the void. This void had a strange and indescribable quality to it in that there was
nothing to it but this feeling of unconditional and undying Love. It felt like my soul was basking
in the feeling of this space. I have no Idea how long this lasted. Time and space did not exist
there . . .it was all different manifestations of this Love feeling I felt myself wrapped in.”

(Roland Griffiths on "The Mystical Experience and Psilocybin Research" at Johns Hopkins University)
 The “ineffable” and the inability to speak of it.
There is only the relation in the mystical experience, and in all experience, that is the
only ‘it’ we experience. But when we describe it after the fact, or anticipate it, we are
stuck in the language of subject and object (which is of course a relation nonetheless).

Shifting the discourse about mysticism toward relationalism will help shed light on
what is really happening, but then we must return to our everyday awareness, so we
are, in a real sense, in a different world of concept and thought when we are thinking
about mysticism.

Changing our own mode of dwelling and thinking may prepare us for a much wider
range of possibilities.

A change in the mode of being results in a change in the mode of knowing.

 Islamic Theology and the Limits on Mystical Experience

Islam demands the absolute oneness of God (Tawhid). Tawhid is repeatedly communicated in the Quran:

“Say: He is God alone: God the eternal! He begetteth not, and he is not begotten; and there is none like unto
Him” (Sura 112, called The Unity).

“He is Allah, the One, the Absolute” (39:4).

“Say (unto them, O Muhammad): I am only a warner, and there is no God save Allah, the One, the Absolute”
(38:65).

Shirk, the sin of associating other beings with God is in Islam an unpardonable sin: “Allah forgiveth not that a
partner should be ascribed unto Him… Whoso ascribeth partners to Allah, he hath indeed invented a
tremendous sin” (4:48).
The prohibition against shirk becomes a problem for mysticism in Islam, as identifying oneself with God
becomes the heresy of incarnationalism (Baldock, Essence of Sufism, 118).

For example, the classical mystical teaching of Al-Arabi is very easily condemned as heretical by orthodox
Islam:

“When the mystery--of realising that the mystic is one with the Divine--is revealed to you, you will understand
that you are no other than God… you will see all your actions to be His actions and all your attributes to be His
attributes and your essence to be His essence”
(Smith, Readings from the Mystics of Islam, 68-69- emphasis mine).

Contrast with the orthodox statement: “Allah is One, without any partners. He has no sharers in His essence,
attributes, actions, or rulings.”

(https://archive.islamonline.net/?p=21117 - emphasis mine)

 An Alternate Approach
“The Koran has an exterior and an interior, and the interior up to seven interiors.”
(In his Masnavi, 4:237, Rumi mentions a version of this Tradition.)

The exterior, or apparent, meaning of the Koran can be understood by everyone. The
first interior level, the immediate metaphorical sense, can also be grasped by most.

The remaining interior meanings are understood according to the station, or level of
being, one is in.

Hence hermeneutics is a function of one’s mode of being: “Like can only be known by
like; every mode of understanding corresponds to the mode of being of the interpreter.”
(Henry Corbin, Man of Light, p. 145n3.)
 The unveiling of that which is hidden

The term Kashf al-mahjûb, “the unveiling of that which is hidden” is precisely the activity of the
phenomenologist…

Kashf is the unveiling which causes the true meaning itself, initially occluded by that which is the apparent, to
emerge into manifestation…

The Arabic term that corresponds most closely to the term “hermeneutics” [is] the term ta’wîl.

Etymologically, the word ta’wîl means “to re-conduct something to its source, to its archetype”.
 Avicenna - (980-1037 CE)
Avicenna was a rationalist with certain mystical tendencies working within the tradition of Neoplatonism.

Avicenna clearly knew that Suras in the Quran dovetailed with Neo-Platonist and Aristotelian philosophy, but
they demanded their own interpretation as well:

“God is the Outward and the Inward” (57:3).

“He for whom wisdom is given, he truly has received abundant good” (2:269).

“God is the Light of the heavens and the earth, the likeness of His light is as a niche wherein is a lamp, the
lamp is a glass, the glass as it were a glittering star kindled from a blessed tree, an olive that is neither of the
East nor of the West, whose oil well-night would shine, even if no fire touched it; light upon lights;

God guides to His light whom He will. And God strikes similitudes for man, and God has knowledge of
everything.” (24:35)
Avicenna employed the emanationist philosophy derived from the Neo-Platonists, combined with an
Aristotelian Cosmology and philosophy of Mind to understand the relationship between divine unity and
mundane multiplicity.

Our phenomenological interpretations of his principal themes and ideas foreground some of the complexities of
combining these paradigms, but more importantly, they point to a nascent relational ontology in Avicenna’s
work
Reality proceeds from the Light of Lights and unfolds via the First Light and all
the subsequent lights whose exponential interactions bring about the
existence of all entities. As each new light interacts with other existing lights,
more light and dark substances are generated. Light produces both immaterial
and substantial lights, such as immaterial intellects (angels), human and
animal souls. Light produces dusky substances, such as bodies.
 God as Light: Verses from the Koran

“God is the Light of the heavens and the earth… Light upon light (nûrun alâ
nûrin)!” (24:35) Here, “the Light” (al-Nur) is one of the 99 Beautiful Names of
God.

The Prophet said: “God first created my Spirit, my Light, the Pen (of light), the
Mind (Intellect). And He created everything else from that.”
Avicenna and the Mystical Experience
 Avicenna: The Relational Approach
The Relational Approach - The “what” of mystical experience is the relation itself - and this can be thought of
as Being, defined as follows:

Being is not object or subject, neither essence nor existence, nor should it be thought of as the final goal,
greatest good, or God. Being is the encounter . . .Dasein is "being-there-in-the-world."

DASEIN is always-already thrown into a world, a set of situations, a number of structures, a collection of
people, a network of meaning. DASEIN doesn't stand apart from the world and then 'rush forward into it,
or run away from it, or merge with it'

DASEIN is caught up in the world, constantly being influenced, positioned, determined, affected, by all of
its 'entanglements.’

There is no 'freedom from' the world, because DASEIN IS what it is only BECAUSE it is in the world.

It is in the nature of DASEIN to be in the world. In this sense Dasein is its world.
 Avicenna: The Relational Approach
There is no Being, nor are there any beings, beyond the world of beings in the world. If God is to be
encountered, the encounter must be some form of relation of beings within a world

Before the metaphysical idea of Being was subsumed under the Aristotelian ‘Ousia’ or substance, and then
reified as ‘God’ - it was related to modes of emergence, disclosure, and concealment; growing, showing, and
hiding

God and being is not identical. … being and God are not identical, and I would never attempt to think the
essence of God through being. … If I were yet to write a theology—to which I sometimes feel inclined—then
the word ‘being’ would not occur in it. (p. 259/383.)

(Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012).
 Avicenna: Mood and Receptivity

The German word for attunement is Befindlichkeit, "how do you find yourself?"

We are always attuned, or tuned in, to any experience, through moods.

Moods are 'disclosive'. Moods are inescapable. Moods are public. Moods are relations.

Moods bring the Being of entities to light in a certain way, they affect the shining forth of Being.

Moods are part of our grip on reality, part of the way we 'see' things.

On a 'good' day, everything comes to light differently than on a 'bad' day.

Moods are not only private interior mental experiences. To be depressed is to be in-the-world in a different way
than to be joyful, or indifferent. And what is it to be in a mystical mood? One can only imagine, and anticipate,
and in this way perhaps prime the mood.

Entering a mystical state involves being abruptly relocated to a different mood

 Avicenna: Intentionality in Mystical Experience

The basic model of knowing subject and knowable object causes more problems - even in construing everyday
experience - than it solves. The solutions, range from Hume’s skepticism, to Descartes’s quest for certainty, to
Kant’s epistemology (which is a move in the right direction) to Hegel’s phenomenology (which is also a move
in the right direction - albeit on a more grandiose scale, hindered by his teleological commitments. This linear
model of intentionality, where I am always imagining an arrow running from one direction to the other, is
replaced by Heidegger with a model of engagement and immersion that utilizes a number of relational
metaphors in which one sees Dasein as embedded in its worldly concerns.

Mitwelt (with world or around world) Umwelt (surrounding environment) Umsicht (circumspection or around
sight)

Our dealings with the world take the form of being surrounded by what we know and by knowing what we are
surrounded with - the relations are what produce our intentionality and our intentionality is involved with -
rather than pointed at - our situation
 Avicenna: Bodily States and Transformations In and Through Mystical
Experience

LEFT BLANK -

WE ACKNOWLEDGE THE IMPORTANCE -

AND WILL RETURN TO THIS AS WE DEVELOP OR THESIS FOR TODAY IT IS OUTSIDE THE SCOPE
OF THIS PRESENTATION
 Avicenna: Temporality and Mystical Experience

It is always-already the case that our most fundamental temporal experience is originary temporality. Originary
temporality does not consist of a sequence of ‘nows’, nor does it have a distinct past, present, and future. It is a
manifestation of a sense of pastness, en-presenting, and futurity in human experience, which happens all at
once.
 Avicenna: The Disclosure of Being and the Impossibility of Full Unconcealment of Being.

Experiences appear to us in different light, depending on our attunement to them.

Experiences reveal themselves through concealment of other possible modes or aspects of experience.

In this case that which one calls a mystical experience is not a matter of absorption, pure consciousness, correct
or incorrect mirroring of the world, unification with God, or even being overtaken by God.

Mystical experience is a matter of experiencing the being of things as they show themselves to us through our
relatedness to them.

The full unconcealment and disclosure of Being is impossible because being is only accessible through
particular beings, and even these particular beings only show themselves to us in a certain light, depending on
DASEIN'S relatedness to them. At the other end of the continuum lies the extreme superficiality of the average
everyday mode of relating to things. Both ends of the continuum represent ways of being in the truth.
 Avicenna: Communicating Knowledge of Mystical Experience

Understanding and interpretation takes place within a particular ‘horizon’ that is determined by our situatedness
in history, tradition, language, culture, moods, memory, and anticipation.

These features of our experiential horizon are part of what Heidegger calls ‘modes of disclosure,’ (1)
attunement, (2) understanding, and (3) discourse - and temporal experiences which structure our sense of
possibility.

The world we inhabit and the experiences that it makes possible come pre-interpreted for us.

Yet understanding is not imprisoned within the horizon of its situation.

In extreme circumstances especially, such as mystical experiences, our horizon of understanding is susceptible
to change.
 Avicenna: Fusing Horizons and Experiencing the Relations
Being in a mystical state as well as understanding or communicating about it involves a very abrupt and
dramatic ‘fusion of horizons’

Given that a fusion of horizons is a new structure of meaning that enables integration of what is otherwise
unfamiliar, strange or anomalous.

All experience and understanding involves a process of mediation between what is familiar and what is alien.

In the mystical experience itself it must be the case that the familiar and the alien are fused in a way that affects
the meaning of both, creating a new relation, and hence a new experience.

When one wants to ‘look forward to’ or ‘talk about’ that experience, the same process is at work. In the first
case, ‘looking forward to’ - there is a fusion of everyday experience with anticipated experience. In the second
case, ‘talking about’- there is a fusion of the memory or impression of the mystical experience with everyday
experience. If we look again at the account of a mystical experience discussed earlier, we can see that it
exemplifies this fusion
 Avicenna: The “ineffable” and the inability to speak of it.
There is only the relation in the mystical experience, that is the only ‘it’ we experience.
But when we describe it after the fact, or anticipate it, we are stuck in the language of
subject and object.

Shifting the discourse about mysticism toward relationalism will help shed light on
what is really happening, but then we must return to our everyday awareness, so we
are, in a real sense, in a different world of concept and thought when we are thinking
about mysticism.

Changing our own mode of dwelling and thinking may prepare us for a much wider
range of possibilities.

A change in the mode of being results in a change in the mode of knowing.

 Al Arabi - A Brief Overview
Ibn Arabī (1165–1240 CE) was a master of gnostic and philosophical Sufism, whose “Doctrine of the Unity of Being” (wahdat
al-wūjūd), is the prototypical formulation of Sufi doctrine. Ibn Arabi’s approach is much closer to modern phenomenological
perspectives than Avicenna’s. For example, the Unity of the world reveals itself to those who develop the ability to engage in a
form of spiritual hermeneutics which gradually transforms the practitioner’s understanding from an exoteric and everyday
understanding of the universe to an esoteric or symbolic awareness. The process and the result of this understanding, which for
Arabi involves becoming a “Universal Man”

resembles the move from inauthenticity to authenticity as described by Heidegger in Being and Time.
 Al Arabi- Brief Overview
Arabi has also been accused of pantheism, because he claimed that God dwells in the world in the form of Divine Breath,
but this unity and dwelling is not permanent, the existence of the world depends on constant momentarily renewed divine breath
that issues from the fuller, more permanent Being of God.

A Heideggerian interpretation of the concealment and unconcealment of the world can shed some light on the Doctrine of Divine
Unity, and a phenomenological analysis of temporality in Arabi’s philosophy has helped us to understand the relationship between
the now of ordinary time and the now of eternity.
Ibn Arabi says,

It is for this that the Reality created me,

For I give content to His Knowledge and manifest Him. …

In me is His theater of manifestation,

And we are for Him as vessels.
(Bezels of Wisdom, tr. Ralph Austin, chapter on Abraham.)

Human being, and especially the Perfect Human,

is as the pupil is for the eye through which… the Reality looks on His creation and bestows the Mercy [of existence] on them… It
is by his existence that the Cosmos subsists…
(Bezels of Wisdom, tr. Ralph Austin, chapter on Adam.)

According to the Sufis, moreover, in order for God to manifest Himself, one must empty oneself of everything-other-than-God,
which finds its parallel in Heidegger’s “releasement” or detachment.
 Is Al-Arabi A Pantheist or a Panentheist?
In pantheism, God is equated with the universe, or in other words, God is wholly immanent. In panentheism, God is seen as
pervading the universe but also outside of space and time and as such greater than the universe, i.e., both immanent and
transcendent. Panentheism means “all-in-God”, the universe exists within God. At first glance, Al-Arabi may appear pantheistic.
Citing the Prophet, he said: “There is no existence save [God’s] existence… ‘for God is the world.’ Now when this is admitted, it is
acknowledged that this existence is His existence and that the existence of all created things… is His existence” (Smith 68).
However, Al-Arabi makes it clear that true knowledge of God is recognizing that He is both transcendent and immanent; asserting
that God is purely one or the other imposes limitations on Him, whilst “[whoever] unites in his knowledge of Deity both
transcendence and immanence… knows Him” (Seals of Wisdom, in Baldock 162-163). Using a common panentheistic analogy,
Al-Arabi describes the relation of God to the world as one of spirit to body: “you are His form and He is your Spirit. You are in
relation to Him as your physical form is to you… as the governing spirit is to your physical form” (ibid. 163). Spirit can and does
exist apart from or outside the body and is superior to it, yet they are intimately connected. Al-Arabi barely saves himself from
complete heretical departure from orthodoxy, although he can still easily be accused of shirk as his panentheistic model requires
“the idea of a necessary creation” and the world as the mirror of God and the manifestation of His thoughts (Frazee 233). Light
(consciousness, or the indwelling God-nature) is the means of perceiving and knowing God, which light is God Himself.
“Everyone who perceives must have some relationship to the light, by which he is made able to perceive, and everything which is
perceived has a relationship with God, Who is Light, that is, all which perceives and all which is perceived” (Smith 67). “By
Himself He sees Himself and by Himself He knows Himself” (ibid. 68).
 The Perfect Man
In Al-Arabi’s thought, the Perfect Man (al-Insan al-kamil) is the fully realized human being, who “embodies
the Real and thus serves as a bridge or isthmus (barzakh) between the two worlds: heaven and earth, or Divine
and human” (Baldock 161). Becoming a realized mystic through the Sufi path, “you will understand that you
are no other than God” and that your actions, attributes, and essence are those of God (Smith 68-69). Al-Arabi
says, “The Perfect Man is such a pure, clean, absolute mirror that God, who is Absolute Beauty, sees His Ipseity
[Selfhood] unconditionally therein” (The Kernel of the Kernel, in Baldock 165). Muhammad is seen as the
sublime type of the Perfect Man, fulfilling the role of the Logos in Neo-Platonism and that of Jesus Christ in
Christianity as “a being that stood intermediately between God and creation” (Frazee 234). In Sufism, “the
Ascension of the Prophet was the prototype of the mystic’s own spiritual ascension to Allah” (Danner, The
Islamic Tradition, in Baldock 24).
 Al-Arabi: The Relational Approach
The Relational Approach - The “what” of mystical experience is the relation itself - and this can be thought of
as Being, defined as follows:

Being is not object or subject, neither essence nor existence, nor should it be thought of as the final goal,
greatest good, or God. Being is the encounter . . .Dasein is "being-there-in-the-world."

DASEIN is always-already thrown into a world, a set of situations, a number of structures, a collection of
people, a network of meaning. DASEIN doesn't stand apart from the world and then 'rush forward into it,
or run away from it, or merge with it'

DASEIN is caught up in the world, constantly being influenced, positioned, determined, affected, by all of
its 'entanglements.’

There is no 'freedom from' the world, because DASEIN IS what it is only BECAUSE it is in the world.

It is in the nature of DASEIN to be in the world. In this sense Dasein is its world.
 Al-Arabi: The Relational Approach
There is no Being, nor are there any beings, beyond the world of beings in the world. If God is to be
encountered, the encounter must be some form of relation of beings within a world

Before the metaphysical idea of Being was subsumed under the Aristotelian ‘Ousia’ or substance, and then
reified as ‘God’ - it was related to modes of emergence, disclosure, and concealment; growing, showing, and
hiding

God and being is not identical. … being and God are not identical, and I would never attempt to think the
essence of God through being. … If I were yet to write a theology—to which I sometimes feel inclined—then
the word ‘being’ would not occur in it. (p. 259/383.)

(Martin Heidegger, Contributions to Philosophy, (Bloomington, IN: Indiana University Press, 2012).
 Al-Arabi: Mood and Receptivity

The German word for attunement is Befindlichkeit, "how do you find yourself?"

We are always attuned, or tuned in, to any experience, through moods.

Moods are 'disclosive'. Moods are inescapable. Moods are public. Moods are relations.

Moods bring the Being of entities to light in a certain way, they affect the shining forth of Being.

Moods are part of our grip on reality, part of the way we 'see' things.

On a 'good' day, everything comes to light differently than on a 'bad' day.

Moods are not only private interior mental experiences. To be depressed is to be in-the-world in a different way
than to be joyful, or indifferent. And what is it to be in a mystical mood? One can only imagine, and anticipate,
and in this way perhaps prime the mood.

Entering a mystical state involves being abruptly relocated to a different mood

 Al Arabi: Intentionality in Mystical Experience

The basic model of knowing subject and knowable object causes more problems - even in construing everyday
experience - than it solves. The solutions, range from Hume’s skepticism, to Descartes’s quest for certainty, to
Kant’s epistemology (which is a move in the right direction) to Hegel’s phenomenology (which is also a move
in the right direction - albeit on a more grandiose scale, hindered by his teleological commitments. This linear
model of intentionality, where I am always imagining an arrow running from one direction to the other, is
replaced by Heidegger with a model of engagement and immersion that utilizes a number of relational
metaphors in which one sees Dasein as embedded in its worldly concerns.

Mitwelt (with world or around world) Umwelt (surrounding environment) Umsicht (circumspection or around
sight)

Our dealings with the world take the form of being surrounded by what we know and by knowing what we are
surrounded with - the relations are what produce our intentionality and our intentionality is involved with -
rather than pointed at - our situation
 Al-Arabi: The Disclosure of Being and the Impossibility of Full Unconcealment of Being.

Experiences appear to us in different light, depending on our attunement to them.

Experiences reveal themselves through concealment of other possible modes or aspects of experience.

In this case that which one calls a mystical experience is not a matter of absorption, pure consciousness, correct
or incorrect mirroring of the world, unification with God, or even being overtaken by God.

Mystical experience is a matter of experiencing the being of things as they show themselves to us through our
relatedness to them.

The full unconcealment and disclosure of Being is impossible because being is only accessible through
particular beings, and even these particular beings only show themselves to us in a certain light, depending on
DASEIN'S relatedness to them. At the other end of the continuum lies the extreme superficiality of the average
everyday mode of relating to things. Both ends of the continuum represent ways of being in the truth.
 Al-Arabi: Communicating Knowledge of Mystical Experience

Understanding and interpretation takes place within a particular ‘horizon’ that is determined by our situatedness
in history, tradition, language, culture, moods, memory, and anticipation.

These features of our experiential horizon are part of what Heidegger calls ‘modes of disclosure,’ (1)
attunement, (2) understanding, and (3) discourse - and temporal experiences which structure our sense of
possibility.

The world we inhabit and the experiences that it makes possible come pre-interpreted for us.

Yet understanding is not imprisoned within the horizon of its situation.

In extreme circumstances especially, such as mystical experiences, our horizon of understanding is susceptible
to change.
 Al-Arabi: Fusing Horizons and Experiencing the Relations
Being in a mystical state as well as understanding or communicating about it involves a very abrupt and
dramatic ‘fusion of horizons’

Given that a fusion of horizons is a new structure of meaning that enables integration of what is otherwise
unfamiliar, strange or anomalous.

All experience and understanding involves a process of mediation between what is familiar and what is alien.

In the mystical experience itself it must be the case that the familiar and the alien are fused in a way that affects
the meaning of both, creating a new relation, and hence a new experience.

When one wants to ‘look forward to’ or ‘talk about’ that experience, the same process is at work. In the first
case, ‘looking forward to’ - there is a fusion of everyday experience with anticipated experience. In the second
case, ‘talking about’- there is a fusion of the memory or impression of the mystical experience with everyday
experience. If we look again at the account of a mystical experience discussed earlier, we can see that it
exemplifies this fusion
 Al-Arabi: The “ineffable” and the inability to speak of it.
There is only the relation in the mystical experience, that is the only ‘it’ we experience.
But when we describe it after the fact, or anticipate it, we are stuck in the language of
subject and object.

Shifting the discourse about mysticism toward relationalism will help shed light on
what is really happening, but then we must return to our everyday awareness, so we
are, in a real sense, in a different world of concept and thought when we are thinking
about mysticism.

Changing our own mode of dwelling and thinking may prepare us for a much wider
range of possibilities.

A change in the mode of being results in a change in the mode of knowing.

 Primary Texts
Ibn Sina

Avicenna's Essays
Essay on the Secret of Destiny
A Treatise on the Truth and Quality of the Hierarchy of Beings and Concatenation of Causes and Effects.
A Treatise on the Truth and Quality of the Hierarchy of Beings and Concatenation of Causes and Effects.

Ibn Arabī

The Bezels of Wisdom

Futuḥāt al-Makkiyah
 Suggested Readings

Laurence Paul Hemming, “Heidegger’s God,” in Heidegger Reexamined, Vol. 3: Art, Poetry, and Technology (New York:
Routledge, 2002), pp. 249-294.

John D. Caputo, The Mystical Element in Heidegger’s Thought (New York: Fordham University Press, 1986).

Henry Corbin, “From Heidegger to Suhrawardi: An Interview with Philippe Némo.”

Sonya Sikka, Forms of Transcendence: Heidegger and Medieval Mystical Theology (Albany, NY: SUNY Press, 1997).

William J. Richardson, “Heidegger’s Way Through Phenomenology to the Thinking of Being,” in Thomas Sheehan (ed.),
Heidegger: The Man and the Thinker (New Brunswick, NJ: Transaction Publishers, 2010 [1981]), pp. 79-93.