The Self-Disclosure of God offers the most detailed presentation to date in any Western language of the basic teachings of Islam’s greatest mystical philosopher and theologian. It represents a major step forward in making available to the Western reading public the enormous riches of Islamic teachings in the fields of cosmology, mystical philosophy, theology, and spirituality.
The Self-Disclosure of God continues the author’s investigations of the world view of Ibn al-ʿArabī, the greatest theoretician of Sufism and the ‘seal of the Muhammadan saints.’ The book is divided into three parts, dealing with the relation between God and the cosmos, the structure of the cosmos, and the nature of the human soul. A long introduction orients the reader and discusses a few of the difficulties faced by Ibn al-ʿArabī’s interpreters. Like Chittick’s earlier work, The Sufi Path of Knowledge, this book is based primarily on Ibn al-ʿArabī’s monumental work,
al-Futūḥāt al-Makkīyah ‘The Meccan Openings.’ More than one hundred complete chapters and subsections are translated, not to mention shorter passages that help put the longer discussions in context. There are detailed indices of sources, Koranic verses and hadiths. The book’s index of technical terminology will be an indispensable reference for all those wishing to delve more deeply into the use of language in Islamic thought in general and Sufism in particular.
İçerik tablosu
Introduction
Knowledge of the Cosmos
Ibn Basic Themes
The Principles of£ Ibn Cosmology
The Breath of the All-Merciful
Cosmic Language
The Translator’s Dilemmas
A Note on Format
I. God and the Cosmos
1. Wujud and the Entities
Signs, Marks, and Proofs
Selves and Horizons
Wujud
From Chapter 73: The One Hundred and Third Question
Causality
God’s Knowledge
Chapter 475: God’s Waymarks
Chapter 411: The Precedent Book
God’s Form
The Nonexistent Entities
From Chapter 463: The Third Pole
Chapter 493: New Arrival
From Chapter 369: The Storehouse of Lights
The Entities and the Names
Chapter 406: Nothing Has Become Manifest
Chapter 451: The Stairs
Thingness of Fixity
2. Perpetual Self-Disclosure
Creation
From Chapter 73: The Thirtieth Question
From Chapter 558: The Presence of the Creation and the Command
Self-Disclosure
Unending Renewal
From Chapter 558: The Presence of Bringing Back
Infinity
From Chapter 198: The All-Merciful Breath
Chapter 524: God’s Infinite Words
The One Entity
From Chapter 360: The Ninth Deputyship
From Chapter 198: The Twenty-First Tawhid
Bewilderment in the Many and the One
Chapter 507: Shame
Chapter 542: Blindness
Chapter 391: The Quick-Flowing Course
Chapter 430: Bewilderment in Arrival
From Chapter 369: Annihilation and Subsistence
Chapter 473: Your God Is One God
From Chapter 72: Trotting around the Kaabah
3. The Face of God
The Face
Perishment
Chapter 165: Realization
From Chapter 73: The Ninety-Seventh Question
Discerning the Face
From Chapter 351: Yielding
Chapter 527: Desiring the Face
The Veil
Chapter 254: The Curtain
Revelation
Chapter 384: Mutual Waystations
4. Veils of Light
The Veil of Self
Occasions
From Chapter 198: The Twenty-Fifth Tawhid 127/From Chapter 198: The Third-Second Tawhid
The Identity of the Veil and the Face
From Chapter 370: The Path of Exaltation
Chapter 514: Trust in God
The Specific Face
From Chapter 198: Depending on What Falls Short
Witnessing the Specific Face
From Chapter 379: The Servant of the Praiseworthy
Chapter 265: The Arriver
Chapter 396: The Veils of Knowledge
From Chapter 369: The Storehouse of Teaching
Glories
Chapter 458: The Facial Glories
From Chapter 558: The Presence of Light
Chapter 100: The Station of Fear
Chapter 101: The Station of Abandoning Fear
II. The Order of the Worlds
5. The Roots of Order
The Unity of Manyness
Unity and Totality
The Even and the Odd
From Chapter 558: The Presence of Bringing Together
Ranking in Excellence
God’s Choices
From Chapter 73: The Fifty-First Question
From Chapter 72: Eating the Forbidden
From Chapter 198: The Twenty-Third Tawhid
Order
From Chapter 360: The Sixth Deputyship
From Chapter 369: The Storehouse of the Servant’s Posteriority
6. Divine and Cosmic Relations
The First and the Last
From Chapter 558: The Presence of Firstness
From Chapter 558: The Presence of Lastness
The Manifest and the Nonmanifest
From Chapter 558: The Presence of Manifestation
From Chapter 558: The Presence of Nonmanifestation
Chapter 256: The Shining of the Full Moon
Witnessing the Nonmanifest
Chapter 472: Following the Most Beautiful
Chapter 400: Manifest Mercy
Chapter 394: Arrival through Courtesy
The Center and the Circumference
Chapter 410: The Circle of Mercy
Circles of Wujud
The Two Arcs
Chapter 427: Two Bows’ Length
Modalities of Wujud
7. The Worlds of the Cosmos
Absent and Witnessed
Chapter 492: Knowledge of the Absent
From Chapter 369: The Storehouse of Nature
Command and Creation
Heaven and Earth
From Chapter 73: The Forty-Third Question
From Chapter 558: The Presence of the Food-Giver
Two and Three Worlds
From Chapter 69: On the Mysteries of the Night Salat
III. The Structure of the Mocrocosm
8. Spirits and Bodies
Self and Soul
Chapter 267: The Soul
The Divine Spirit
Governance
Chapter 447: Essential Governance
The Spirit from the Command
Chapter 268: The Casting of Knowledge
Bodies
Corporeous Bodies
The Rationally Speaking Soul
Chapter 216: The Subtlety
From Chapter 373: The Wisdom of the Inheritors
Chapter 397: The Soul’s Ascent
9. The Natural Constitution
Spirit and Nature
Chapter 225: Increases
The Light of Guidance
From Chapter 71: Fasting on Sunday
Chapter 418: Understanding
From Chapter 73: The Twelfth Question
Chapter 52: Weakness
Constitution
From Chapter 558: The Presence of All-Embracingness
10. The Imaginal Barzakh
Imagination
Appetite
Imagination and Understanding
Bodies Forever
From Chapter 360: The Tenth Deputyship
The Trumpet
Chapter 302: The Spirit’s Subsistence
From Chapter 369: The Storehouse of the Final Issue
From Chapter 369: The Storehouse of Humanity
From Chapter 198: The Real Situation
Appendix I: Ibn Views on Certain Sufis
Appendix II: Translation of Technical Terms
Notes
Bibliography
Index of Sources
Index of Koranic Verses
Index of Hadiths and Sayings
Index of Proper Names
Index of Arabic Words
Index of Terms
Yazar hakkında
William C. Chittick is Professor of Comparative Studies at State University of New York, Stony Brook. He has published numerous books, among them, Imaginal Worlds: Ibn al-Arabi and the Problem of Religious Diversity; Faith and Practice of Islam: Three Thirteenth-Century Sufi Texts; The Sufi Path of Knowledge: Ibn al-Arabi’s Metaphysics of Imagination; The Sufi Path of Love: The Spiritual Teachings of Rumi; and A Shi’ite Anthology, all published by SUNY Press.