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Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi
"Henry Corbin's works are the best guide to the visionary tradition.... Corbin, like Scholem and Jonas, is remembered as a scholar of genius. He was uniquely equipped not only to recover Iranian Sufism for the West, but also to defend the principal Western traditions of esoteric spirituality." —From the introduction by Harold Bloom
Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) was one of the great mystics of all time. Through the richness of his personal experience and the constructive power of his intellect, he made a unique contribution to Shi'ite Sufism. In this book, which features a powerful new preface by Harold Bloom, Henry Corbin brings us to the very core of this movement with a penetrating analysis of Ibn 'Arabi's life and doctrines.
Corbin begins with a kind of spiritual topography of the twelfth century, emphasizing the differences between exoteric and esoteric forms of Islam. He also relates Islamic mysticism to mystical thought in the West.
The remainder of the book is devoted to two complementary essays: on "Sympathy and Theosophy" and "Creative Imagination and Creative Prayer." A section of notes and appendices includes original translations of numerous Sufi treatises.
Harold Bloom's preface links Suufi mysticism with Shakespeare's visionary dramas and high tragedies, such as The Tempest and Hamlet. These works, he writes, intermix the empirical world with a transcendent element. Bloom shows us that this Shakespearean cosmos is analogous to Corbin's "Imaginal Realm" of the Sufis, the place of soul or souls.
Ibn 'Arabi (1165-1240) was one of the great mystics of all time. Through the richness of his personal experience and the constructive power of his intellect, he made a unique contribution to Shi'ite Sufism. In this book, which features a powerful new preface by Harold Bloom, Henry Corbin brings us to the very core of this movement with a penetrating analysis of Ibn 'Arabi's life and doctrines.
Corbin begins with a kind of spiritual topography of the twelfth century, emphasizing the differences between exoteric and esoteric forms of Islam. He also relates Islamic mysticism to mystical thought in the West.
The remainder of the book is devoted to two complementary essays: on "Sympathy and Theosophy" and "Creative Imagination and Creative Prayer." A section of notes and appendices includes original translations of numerous Sufi treatises.
Harold Bloom's preface links Suufi mysticism with Shakespeare's visionary dramas and high tragedies, such as The Tempest and Hamlet. These works, he writes, intermix the empirical world with a transcendent element. Bloom shows us that this Shakespearean cosmos is analogous to Corbin's "Imaginal Realm" of the Sufis, the place of soul or souls.
440 pages, Paperback
First published March 2, 1958
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About the author
Henry Corbin
102 books231 followersHenry Corbin was a philosopher, theologian and professor of Islamic Studies at the Sorbonne in Paris, France. As a boy he revealed the profound sensitivity to music so evident in his work. Although he was Protestant by birth, he was educated in the Catholic tradition and at the age of 19 received a certificate in Scholastic philosophy from the Catholic Institute of Paris. Three years later he took his "licence de philosophie" under the great Thomist Étienne Gilson. In 1928 he encountered the formidable Louis Massignon, director of Islamic studies at the Sorbonne, and it was he who introduced Corbin to the writings of Suhrawardi, the 12th century Persian mystic and philosopher whose work was to profoundly affect the course of Corbin’s life. The stage was then set for a personal drama that has deep significance for understanding those cultures whose roots lie in both ancient Greece and in the prophetic religions of the Near East reaching all the way back to Zoroaster. Years later Corbin said “through my meeting with Suhrawardi, my spiritual destiny for the passage through this world was sealed. Platonism, expressed in terms of the Zoroastrian angelology of ancient Persia, illuminated the path that I was seeking.”
Corbin is responsible for redirecting the study of Islamic philosophy as a whole. In his Histoire de la philosophie islamique (1964), he disproved the common view that philosophy among the Muslims came to an end after Ibn Rushd, demonstrating rather that a lively philosophical activity persisted in the eastern Muslim world – especially Iran – and continues to our own day.
Corbin is responsible for redirecting the study of Islamic philosophy as a whole. In his Histoire de la philosophie islamique (1964), he disproved the common view that philosophy among the Muslims came to an end after Ibn Rushd, demonstrating rather that a lively philosophical activity persisted in the eastern Muslim world – especially Iran – and continues to our own day.
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August 27, 2017
A profound and important book. Here's what I wrote in my blog about it:
I just finished reading Henry Corbin's 1969 book, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi. (This was the title of the earlier edition.) It had been sitting on my shelf for over two years. I'm glad it waited for me, because what I learned is something that I've always wanted to know--the imagination is REAL. It's not make-believe. We're not "just imagining" something, we're not making it up. Imaginary things actually exist. The Sufi's call the imagination the "middle world:
"For them the world is 'objectively' and actually threefold: between the universe that can be apprehended by pure intellectual perception and the universe perceptible to the senses, there is an intermediate world, the world of Idea-Images, of archetypal figures, of subtile substances, of 'immaterial matter.' This world is as real and objective, as consistent and subsistent as the intelligible and sensible worlds...The organ of this universe is the active Imagination..."
It's clear how we Westerners view the imagination, simply by listening to our talk: "It's only your imagination," we'll tell someone. How sad. But other cultures are much more wise than we are. Here is what South American shaman Ohky Simine Forest wrote in her book, Dreaming the Council Ways:
"Imagination is a powerful faculty that has been misunderstood by the Western mind. When you experience an extraordinary perception—let’s say you heard a bird talking to you—if you tell this to a scientist, he would probably tell you, ‘This is all in your imagination,’ as if it were nothing. But if you say this to a native medicine person, our answer would be, 'Oh, good! So what did it tell you?' "
Carl Jung actually considered the imagination to be the fourth domain of knowledge (the other domains are feeling, thinking, and sensing). Most references to his work use the term "intuition" as the fourth capacity, but scholars are now making the case that he really meant the imagination rather than intuition. This makes more sense to me as well. (See Eligio Stephen Gallegos' book Animals of the Four Windows: Integrating Feeling, Sensing, Thinking, and Imagery for the complete argument.)
In any case, if the imagination is actually a real world that exists, and imagining is our fourth way of knowing, then that means that we are not "making something up." It also means that to be full, balanced, whole adults, we actually need to use and develop our imaginative capacities. It's time to start giving the imagination its due. The imagination deserves as much honor in our classrooms, bookshelves, and work life, as our ability to think (or feel, or sense.) In my opinion, the new world that wants to be born, is asking us to honor our imagination. It's real.
I just finished reading Henry Corbin's 1969 book, Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi. (This was the title of the earlier edition.) It had been sitting on my shelf for over two years. I'm glad it waited for me, because what I learned is something that I've always wanted to know--the imagination is REAL. It's not make-believe. We're not "just imagining" something, we're not making it up. Imaginary things actually exist. The Sufi's call the imagination the "middle world:
"For them the world is 'objectively' and actually threefold: between the universe that can be apprehended by pure intellectual perception and the universe perceptible to the senses, there is an intermediate world, the world of Idea-Images, of archetypal figures, of subtile substances, of 'immaterial matter.' This world is as real and objective, as consistent and subsistent as the intelligible and sensible worlds...The organ of this universe is the active Imagination..."
It's clear how we Westerners view the imagination, simply by listening to our talk: "It's only your imagination," we'll tell someone. How sad. But other cultures are much more wise than we are. Here is what South American shaman Ohky Simine Forest wrote in her book, Dreaming the Council Ways:
"Imagination is a powerful faculty that has been misunderstood by the Western mind. When you experience an extraordinary perception—let’s say you heard a bird talking to you—if you tell this to a scientist, he would probably tell you, ‘This is all in your imagination,’ as if it were nothing. But if you say this to a native medicine person, our answer would be, 'Oh, good! So what did it tell you?' "
Carl Jung actually considered the imagination to be the fourth domain of knowledge (the other domains are feeling, thinking, and sensing). Most references to his work use the term "intuition" as the fourth capacity, but scholars are now making the case that he really meant the imagination rather than intuition. This makes more sense to me as well. (See Eligio Stephen Gallegos' book Animals of the Four Windows: Integrating Feeling, Sensing, Thinking, and Imagery for the complete argument.)
In any case, if the imagination is actually a real world that exists, and imagining is our fourth way of knowing, then that means that we are not "making something up." It also means that to be full, balanced, whole adults, we actually need to use and develop our imaginative capacities. It's time to start giving the imagination its due. The imagination deserves as much honor in our classrooms, bookshelves, and work life, as our ability to think (or feel, or sense.) In my opinion, the new world that wants to be born, is asking us to honor our imagination. It's real.
January 24, 2016
لولا الخيال لكنا اليوم في عدم * ولا انقضى غرض فينا ولا وطر
[ثلاثة أنماط من الحبّ]
بوصف الخيال الفعّال أو الخلاق هو الملكة الوسيطة التي يحددها ابن عربي كـ (حضرة خيالية) ، بواسطتها تبلغ جدلية الحبّ أوجها ، فبعد البحث عن المحب الحقيقي تفتح لنفسها سبيل البعد فيما وراء المحسوس كي تكتشف من هو المحبوب الواقعي.
وبما أن الحبّ -في جميع أشكاله- محركه الأول هو الجمال ، يتمثل موضوعه هنا حصرا في الله والله "جميلٌ يحبّ الجمال" وانكشف لذاته فأنتج العالم كمرآة يتأمل فيها صورته وجماله كما يوحي بذلك الحديث المنتشر على ألسنة المتصوفة: "كنت كنزا مخفيا فأحبب أن أعرف فخلقت الخلق؛ فبي عرفوني" وقد جاء في القرآن الكريم:
"قُلْ إِنْ كُنْتُمْ تُحِبُّونَ اللَّهَ فَاتَّبِعُونِي يُحْبِبْكُمُ اللَّهُ"
فالله يحبّ نفسه فينا ؛ وإذا كان الأمر كذلك فكل حبّ يتضمن صفة إلهية بشكل أفتراضي
ومن الملائم التمييز مع ابن عربي بين ثلاثة أنماط من الحبّ باعتبارها ثلاثة أنماط من الوجود:
أ) ثمة حبّ إلهي باعتباره حبّ من الخالق لخلقه التي فيها يظهر ويتجلى، وحبّ من الخلق لخالقهم ؛ الذي ليس له غير شوق الإله المتجلي في الخلق وذلكم هو الحوار الأبدي الإلهي الإنساني.
ب) ثمة حبّ روحاني يجد مكانه دوما في الخلق الساعي إلى البحث عن الوجود الذي يكتشف فيه صورته او يكتشف أنه صورة له: إنه في الخلق ، الحبّ الذي ليس له من هم آخر، وليس له إرادة أو مطلب غير رضا محبوبه والإستجابة له والإمتثال لما يريد هذا المحبوب منه.
ج) وثمة الحب الطبيعي الذي يسعى إلى الامتلاك وتحقيق رغائبه من غير الأهتمام برضا محبوبه ويقول ابن عربي بهذا الصدد: "وعلى هذا أكثر حب الناس اليوم"!
فهذه الملكة الوسيطة -الحضرة الخيالية- تحول الصور المادية المحسوسة إلى صورة شهودية او صورة تجلٍ يدركها الخيال وحده من دون وساطة معطى محسوس لحظة المشاهدة
* * *
- [الخلق والخيال]
(!) يجب أن ننتبه أولا إلى أن الخيال الذي نتحدث عنه ليس هو الفانتازيا التي
تعتمد أساسا على لعبة الفكر كما لاحظ باراسيلسي . . ولا أساس لها في الطبيعة!
إن الفكرة الأصل لتصوف ابن عربي وكل الأفكار التي لها علاقة به ؛ ان الخلق
أساسا تجل، والخلق من حيث هو كذلك فعل للقوة الخيالية الإلهية؛ إذ أن الفعل الإلهي الخلاق مطبوع بالتجلي.
إن الخيال الفعال لدى العرفاني هو بدوره خيال يعتمد على التجلي . . والكائنات التي يخلقها تتمتع بوجود فريد ومستقل في العالم الوسيط الخاص بها . . إن الإله الذي يخلق بعيد على أن يكون الجانب اللا واقعي فهو بدوره تجلٍّ . . ذلك أن الخيال الفعال لدى الكائن الإنساني ليس سوى عضو التخيل المطلق ؛ فمثلا الصلاة تجلٍّ بامتياز فهي بذلك خلّاقة، فالحق الذي تسبح وتبتهل له هو الإله الذي يتجلى لها في ذلك الخلق.
هكذا فإن الخلق عبارة عن تجل إلهي، فهو مرور من حالة الحجب والكمون إلي حالة الظهور النورانية وباعتباره كذلك فهو خيال أصلي وليس الخيال بمعنى الفانتازيا كما أشرنا . . وإنما قوة الخيال باعتبارها قوة متخيلة؛ فلا شئ كان سيظهر مما نظهره لأنفسنا ؛ وهنا تتوطد العلاقة بين خلق متواتر ويتجدد في كل لحظة وخيال مترابط بتجلي متواصل أي فكرة تجدد التجليات التي من خلالها يتم الصعود المستمر للموجودات.
يتسم هذا الخيال بإمكانين وبما أنه لا يمكن الكشف عن المحجوب إلا بحجبه أكثر فهو يمكنه أن يكون حجابا من الكثافة بحيث يستعبدنا ويسقطنا في شرك الوثنية . . بيد أن الحجاب يمكن أن يخف كثافة ويتسم بشفافية متنامية ذلك لأنه لم ينشا لكي يحقق بواسطته المتأمل معرفة الوجود كما هو ؛ أي المعرفة التي تخلص بانها عرفان خالص، فالحق المتخيل أي المتكشف بواسطة الخيال والتجلي والحق المخلوق في الإعتقادات فالحق متجلي بقوة الخيال.
- [وحدة الوجود وعالم الخيال]
يلعب التجريد في خيال نظرية وحدة الوجود لـ "ابن عربي" دورا رئيسيا : فهو يبدو المصدر الخلاق للتجلي ، والسبب القوي الذي يمكننا من البقاء بحالة تواصل مستمر مع المطلق . وقد نجح ابن عربي عبر مفهوم الخيال أن يميز بين آليتي الخلق الالهي والخلق الانساني، الاختلاف الذي استخدمه لحل التناقض بين قدم وحدوث العالم.
يلعب الخيال دورا رئيسيا في نظرية وحدة الوجود عند ابن عربي. فهو يبدو كمصدر خلاق للتجلي ، والسبب الفعلي لوجودنا ، والوسيط القوي الذي يمكننا من البقاء بحالة تواصل مستمر مع المطلق يعتبر ابن عربي الخيال وسيلة معرفية أساسية وأن "ذلك الذي لا يعرف منزلة الخيال ، خال من المعرفة "
* * *
تركز دراسة كوربان في الخيال بشكل أساسي على الدور المتعدد الأبعاد في تحقيق التجربة الباطنية : عملها في البحث في أصل الألهة وفي نشأة الكون ، ودورها المعرفي في التجلي ، وتوسطها في الحوار بين الاله والانسان ، المعبود والعابد ، المحبوب والمحب . كما يؤكد كوربان على الفرق بين الخيال والخيال الجامح . حيث يستمد الخيال قوته الخلاقة من امتيازاته الوجودية ، أما الخيال الجامح (الفانتازيا) فهو ممارسة الفكر بدون وجود أساس له في الطبيعة ، إنه "حجر زاوية المجنون ".
* * *
قرائتي للكتاب كانت لبحثٍ أعددته عن الخيال ولذلك ركزت في المراجعة على أهم النقاط التي شغلتني ، وقرأت بجانب هذا الكتاب (الإنسان الكامل) لفليسوف الصوفية الجيلي صاحب المقولة الشهيرة:
"ألا إن الوجود بلا محال . . خيال في خيال في خيال"
وهو البيت الذي شرحه عبد الغني النابلسي كما أشار دكتور يوسف زيدان.
* * *
عند فليسوف الصوفية
الخيال هيولي العوالم (الإنسان الكامل) يقول الجيلي في كتابه
الإنسان الكامل في معرفة الأوائل والأواخر:
-ليس الوجود سوى خيال عند من * يدري الخيال بقدرة المتعاظم
- أعلم وفقك الله أن الخيال أصل الوجود والذات الذي فيه كمال ظهور المعبود ألا ترى إلى اعتقادك في الحقّ وأن من له الصفات والأسماء ما له هو أين محلّ هذا الاعتقاد الذي ظهر لك فيه الله سبحانه إنما هو الخيال ؛ فلأجل هذا قلنا إنه الذات الذي فيه كمال ظهوره سبحانه وتعالى، فإذا عرفت هذا ظهر لك أن الخيال أصل جميع العوالم لأن الحق هو أصل جميع الأشياء وأكمل ظهوره لا يكون إلا في محل هو الأصل وذلك المحل هو الخيال فثبت أنه أصل جميه العوالم . . ألا ترى النبيّ يقول: (الناس نيام فإذا ماتوا أنتبهوا.
بالنسبة للجيلي فالخيال أصل جميع العوالم وأنه المحل الذي تظهر بالاعتقادات تجليات الله وبصورة مختصرة نفهم هذا البيت للجيلي:
ألا إنَّ الوجود بلا محال * خيالٌ في خيالٍ في خيال
في ضوء تلك الرؤية فالخيال أصل العوالم به تظهر تجليات الحق تعالى خلال الكون في ثلاثة مجالٍ، هي مجال الجمال الإلهي والجلال الإلهي والكمال الإلهي فتكون هذه المجال في جملتها هي مظاهر الذات الإلهية في عالم الخلق
* * *
فالخيال عند الصوفية عموما له مكان خاصة، وليس المقصود به الفانتازيا -لعبة الفكر- ولكنه الملكة التي تضفي الوجود على الأشياء فهو عالم وسيط تتمتع في الأشياء بوجود مستقل وقد أبان هنري كوربان في دراسته عن حضرة ابن عربي الخيالية.
مقالة توضح بعض الجوانب من هذا الكتاب المرهق
http://www.nizwa.com/%D8%B9%D8%A7%D9%...
September 9, 2015
After reading this book, I felt like a great secret had been kept from me by present-day religious scholars. Corbin gets full marks as a scholar; he recognizes he is dealing with a specific type of knowledge that has been both accepted and rejected by different parts of the surrounding faith community. While he conveys this "social" information to the reader, what is more important to him is to initiate the reader into what Ibn 'Arabi saw, and the result is an amazing, passionate encounter with the divine. As other reviewers have noted this book's translation is excellent and makes many other translations from the French (including, sadly, some of the works of René Guénon) look quite miserable in comparison. Corbin is both available and inviting to any reader willing to begin a great adventure.
October 23, 2019
After reading large parts of a couple of his works, I've had to conclude that Henry Corbin is a bit of a crank, and substantially overrated as an intellectual historian. His boundless personal enthusiasm for Shia esotericism systematically distorts his accounts. In the case of this volume, which is not without its remarkable qualities, Corbin reads Ibn 'Arabi through the lens of Iranian Isma'ilism so consistently that one would hardly know from reading it that Ibn 'Arabi was a Sunni.
I can understand why many readers are taken in by his approach. He speaks with confidence and erudition, promising to take us on a guided tour of the profound and exceedingly voluminous writing of one of the world's least-understood religious geniuses - at least in Èurope and America. But that tour comes at a price.
I would assume that the degree to which one is interested in Islam as a whole is inversely proportional to the degree to which one goes along for his exciting, idiosyncratic ride. The depth psychologist or esotericist is likely to derive more value than the general student of religions. In general, I find the system that he presents is not Sufism, but Corbinism, and in that I simply don't have much interest.
I can understand why many readers are taken in by his approach. He speaks with confidence and erudition, promising to take us on a guided tour of the profound and exceedingly voluminous writing of one of the world's least-understood religious geniuses - at least in Èurope and America. But that tour comes at a price.
I would assume that the degree to which one is interested in Islam as a whole is inversely proportional to the degree to which one goes along for his exciting, idiosyncratic ride. The depth psychologist or esotericist is likely to derive more value than the general student of religions. In general, I find the system that he presents is not Sufism, but Corbinism, and in that I simply don't have much interest.
August 27, 2019
What I learned Imagination is, besides through experience so far, was mostly through reading this book - if that is praise enough for it.
I think it really began with George Macdonald when I was 16. He would go into soliloquy’s on imagination then disappear into it fantastically and take you along for the ride.
Next it was a simple quote that inspired me further, a quote the Doors named themselves after - which few people know they took from Huxley (and even fewer that Huxley got it from William Blake). It goes:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”
This book though as the next step for understanding imagination, it definitely took me to such that essential key step. Simply put, Ibn El Arabi says the imagination “is” the doorway to the soul and to the next dimension or mansion interpenetrating ours.
That imagination could be the doorway into finer, more vivid, greater dimensional reality - interpenetrating this 3-dimensional one - was a revelation to me.
Then I knew if I could cleanse it and use it, it would assist me in awaking into greater, more vivid, dimensionality while here on earth, a quickening of time into higher time by my vibration going fast enough in me to experience it.
[formal book review over, read on only if interested]
There is one, and only one other source, I finally learned further from on the imagination after this work though and which I must mention here too, to sum up all my thoughts on imagination, as it put it all together. Perhaps I even learned more from this source than from this book, if possible: Ouspensky.
Ouspensky, in his writings, shows Imagination is a mountaineous continuum that extends into all our centers - sex, physis, mental and emotional - as man. It is the worst possible thing on it’s passive low end in our lower parts of these centers and the best possible thing, the magic of an eternal I of true doing, on the highest active end atop them (so far from most we historical humans’ conceptions or abilities).
So he basically shows it as a mantle or mountain-like continuum with the low end being where are our many I’s in our collective unconscious are in lower parts of centers in us to get out of. It lies there as passive imagination merely mechanically regurgitating physical impressions automatically like rubbish in a near worthless way in us there, mundane phenomena below the noumena and our apperception.
That low end is chthonic, keeps us asleep inside the collective unconscious where our personality is locked inside, identified with materializing life where the Bi-ing or Being is stuck in embryo, in utero. There imagination is the enemy as it keeps on daydreaming in us during pre-conscious walking around life we have here and rehashes in a worthless jumble in our non-R.E.M. lighter sleep a mess too.
One sees it in everyone’s eyes. Who really pays attention when you are talking to them, isn’t there a drift? It must be cleansed, this is associated with cleansing the astral body to make it ready to ascend. If our starry essence is trapped in such lower personality daydreaming in the pre-conscious walking about life, effecting our interpretation of it, what to do? And if who we truly are is not able to come to us as our guide in sleep either (until we go deeper than those regurgitations to where assimilation of such daily impressions and impressions from other times in dream begin to be assimilated so as to speak messages to us of what our destiny is and what we are to do next) then what to do if we keep forgetting this every morning we get up?
Ouspensky shows we have to first go midway up the continuum of imagination in us. As we begin to become more self-conscious and practice disidentifying from thoughts, we are able to initiate active imagination in ourselves which is associated with the higher intellectual part of our emotional center (where symbolism occurs) and with our upper soul where the higher parts of our intellectual center are associated with (called the Kaba not the Ba as commonly thought in Egyptian religion). This is the part of our soul that is the Buddha’s “thread that passes through the beads of our reincarnations recurring” - Rodney Collin’s “Long Body,” Pythagoras’ thumia (upper) in one’s epithumia (lower wills desire body).
Our Work I starts off in our personality or per-zonal of many I’s, lower than a soul we start. Then by disidentifying and becoming more vivid in our consciousness in it we begin to see we can focus on anything and enter into transcendent directed imagination which reveals many things in this otherwise pre-conscious life of ours that pre-consciousness never will. The astral body starts to be cleansed, Theosophy goes into great detail on all the phases of that.
We become more able to re-member what was given us by our more real I waiting as djinn passenger behind our work I driver; in our deep R.E.M. moments at night also. Gurdjieff taught Ouspensky and others to grab on to just one memory in one’s dream upon waking then reel it backwards to the moments that were most important in it. The Seth material is right, there your Guardian Angel (Real I) is instructing you. Such an I is the Mage in your nation, the I Mage in Nation if you will. It would come-to in life if one began continually being in de ja vue premonitional self remembered state for more than minutes or hours during our walking around fake conscious day periods.
But such Active imagination available deep in the buried divine subconscious of the super ego is so far from us usually. We are in an ever mechanically changing state of I’s (“id” so to say) here in lower ego, the unconscious directing our pre-conscious preenings here in walking about life (which we mistake for consciousness and real imagination directed, no, the pre-conscious hypnotically directs self-consciousness and the self-consciousness as the beginning of consciousness proper is a third intermediary state of consciousness before “cosmic consciousness of the two higher centers in us” - something I will not go in to here).
We must start at first things first until self-consciousness comes, he says, from practicing divided attention, which leads to the manifestation and use of active imagination where all psychic powers really begin (without which the psyche is basically non-existent; what moderns call the psyche is mostly just useless rolls of recorded impressions - thus psycho-analysis without psychic effort ever shall prove itself worthless).
Well that is a pretty complete summary of Ouspensky’s teaching on Imagination.
I can testify one can get results from such. I was in Greece for six months and near their symbolic Mt Olympus (not the true Hyperboreal One of old called Meru in the Vishnu Purana and mentioned by Hesiod and Pindar) when, after meeting up with some “people of longstanding,” I was searching around in rocks looking on them for glyphs of an ancient civilization when I came across an experience.
I realized my imagination passive was playing tricks on me showing me things on the rocks that weren’t there but when I became self-remembered I could actively use that same imagination and see into the cosmically-law-conformable lines that form on rocks in general to use them to envision all kinds of faces and lands and symbols that began telling a story on the rocks; to use them as mediums, scrys, to see pictorially what will happen in the future to man and what happened in long ages past just by slowly turning it and letting the images quickly appear to be replaced by others - as sort of a bouncing board for my higher self to teach me through (as it is on a higer time that sees all times like a picture book already before it).
When one looks into Nostradamus and “Sarapis”/Yaya the builder (Joseph) one finds they used just such bouncing boards as well to achieve what they did.
I’m glad most people will feel I’m pulling their leg here at this point in this summary on imagination given their own imagination...if they have even been the 1% who are actively reading this far. I think that hilarious or maybe sad - either way, for the 1% among *that* 1% who actually would believe such a “mad hatter’s” tale, I will tell you this too: Active Imagination is real and works and is just barely being tapped into in man when creating songs and poetry and painting and inventions (which all is mostly done in a state of pre-conscious sleep). It is vast and central and I hope we all come to find it more.
Summation of all I know on the Imagination at this point and on Corbin’s work on Ibn El Arabi’s view of it: done.
I think it really began with George Macdonald when I was 16. He would go into soliloquy’s on imagination then disappear into it fantastically and take you along for the ride.
Next it was a simple quote that inspired me further, a quote the Doors named themselves after - which few people know they took from Huxley (and even fewer that Huxley got it from William Blake). It goes:
“If the doors of perception were cleansed everything would appear to man as it is: Infinite. For man has closed himself up, till he sees all things through narrow chinks of his cavern.”
This book though as the next step for understanding imagination, it definitely took me to such that essential key step. Simply put, Ibn El Arabi says the imagination “is” the doorway to the soul and to the next dimension or mansion interpenetrating ours.
That imagination could be the doorway into finer, more vivid, greater dimensional reality - interpenetrating this 3-dimensional one - was a revelation to me.
Then I knew if I could cleanse it and use it, it would assist me in awaking into greater, more vivid, dimensionality while here on earth, a quickening of time into higher time by my vibration going fast enough in me to experience it.
[formal book review over, read on only if interested]
There is one, and only one other source, I finally learned further from on the imagination after this work though and which I must mention here too, to sum up all my thoughts on imagination, as it put it all together. Perhaps I even learned more from this source than from this book, if possible: Ouspensky.
Ouspensky, in his writings, shows Imagination is a mountaineous continuum that extends into all our centers - sex, physis, mental and emotional - as man. It is the worst possible thing on it’s passive low end in our lower parts of these centers and the best possible thing, the magic of an eternal I of true doing, on the highest active end atop them (so far from most we historical humans’ conceptions or abilities).
So he basically shows it as a mantle or mountain-like continuum with the low end being where are our many I’s in our collective unconscious are in lower parts of centers in us to get out of. It lies there as passive imagination merely mechanically regurgitating physical impressions automatically like rubbish in a near worthless way in us there, mundane phenomena below the noumena and our apperception.
That low end is chthonic, keeps us asleep inside the collective unconscious where our personality is locked inside, identified with materializing life where the Bi-ing or Being is stuck in embryo, in utero. There imagination is the enemy as it keeps on daydreaming in us during pre-conscious walking around life we have here and rehashes in a worthless jumble in our non-R.E.M. lighter sleep a mess too.
One sees it in everyone’s eyes. Who really pays attention when you are talking to them, isn’t there a drift? It must be cleansed, this is associated with cleansing the astral body to make it ready to ascend. If our starry essence is trapped in such lower personality daydreaming in the pre-conscious walking about life, effecting our interpretation of it, what to do? And if who we truly are is not able to come to us as our guide in sleep either (until we go deeper than those regurgitations to where assimilation of such daily impressions and impressions from other times in dream begin to be assimilated so as to speak messages to us of what our destiny is and what we are to do next) then what to do if we keep forgetting this every morning we get up?
Ouspensky shows we have to first go midway up the continuum of imagination in us. As we begin to become more self-conscious and practice disidentifying from thoughts, we are able to initiate active imagination in ourselves which is associated with the higher intellectual part of our emotional center (where symbolism occurs) and with our upper soul where the higher parts of our intellectual center are associated with (called the Kaba not the Ba as commonly thought in Egyptian religion). This is the part of our soul that is the Buddha’s “thread that passes through the beads of our reincarnations recurring” - Rodney Collin’s “Long Body,” Pythagoras’ thumia (upper) in one’s epithumia (lower wills desire body).
Our Work I starts off in our personality or per-zonal of many I’s, lower than a soul we start. Then by disidentifying and becoming more vivid in our consciousness in it we begin to see we can focus on anything and enter into transcendent directed imagination which reveals many things in this otherwise pre-conscious life of ours that pre-consciousness never will. The astral body starts to be cleansed, Theosophy goes into great detail on all the phases of that.
We become more able to re-member what was given us by our more real I waiting as djinn passenger behind our work I driver; in our deep R.E.M. moments at night also. Gurdjieff taught Ouspensky and others to grab on to just one memory in one’s dream upon waking then reel it backwards to the moments that were most important in it. The Seth material is right, there your Guardian Angel (Real I) is instructing you. Such an I is the Mage in your nation, the I Mage in Nation if you will. It would come-to in life if one began continually being in de ja vue premonitional self remembered state for more than minutes or hours during our walking around fake conscious day periods.
But such Active imagination available deep in the buried divine subconscious of the super ego is so far from us usually. We are in an ever mechanically changing state of I’s (“id” so to say) here in lower ego, the unconscious directing our pre-conscious preenings here in walking about life (which we mistake for consciousness and real imagination directed, no, the pre-conscious hypnotically directs self-consciousness and the self-consciousness as the beginning of consciousness proper is a third intermediary state of consciousness before “cosmic consciousness of the two higher centers in us” - something I will not go in to here).
We must start at first things first until self-consciousness comes, he says, from practicing divided attention, which leads to the manifestation and use of active imagination where all psychic powers really begin (without which the psyche is basically non-existent; what moderns call the psyche is mostly just useless rolls of recorded impressions - thus psycho-analysis without psychic effort ever shall prove itself worthless).
Well that is a pretty complete summary of Ouspensky’s teaching on Imagination.
I can testify one can get results from such. I was in Greece for six months and near their symbolic Mt Olympus (not the true Hyperboreal One of old called Meru in the Vishnu Purana and mentioned by Hesiod and Pindar) when, after meeting up with some “people of longstanding,” I was searching around in rocks looking on them for glyphs of an ancient civilization when I came across an experience.
I realized my imagination passive was playing tricks on me showing me things on the rocks that weren’t there but when I became self-remembered I could actively use that same imagination and see into the cosmically-law-conformable lines that form on rocks in general to use them to envision all kinds of faces and lands and symbols that began telling a story on the rocks; to use them as mediums, scrys, to see pictorially what will happen in the future to man and what happened in long ages past just by slowly turning it and letting the images quickly appear to be replaced by others - as sort of a bouncing board for my higher self to teach me through (as it is on a higer time that sees all times like a picture book already before it).
When one looks into Nostradamus and “Sarapis”/Yaya the builder (Joseph) one finds they used just such bouncing boards as well to achieve what they did.
I’m glad most people will feel I’m pulling their leg here at this point in this summary on imagination given their own imagination...if they have even been the 1% who are actively reading this far. I think that hilarious or maybe sad - either way, for the 1% among *that* 1% who actually would believe such a “mad hatter’s” tale, I will tell you this too: Active Imagination is real and works and is just barely being tapped into in man when creating songs and poetry and painting and inventions (which all is mostly done in a state of pre-conscious sleep). It is vast and central and I hope we all come to find it more.
Summation of all I know on the Imagination at this point and on Corbin’s work on Ibn El Arabi’s view of it: done.
September 16, 2017
Interesting expose on the theosophy of Ibn Arabi. Delves into Ibn Arabi's idea of the role of the Creator's creative imagination in the creation of our reality both psychical, and physical. I found the book to be enlightening, especially when it came to the manifestation of higher truths in symbolic physical form. Like the vision of the ideal youth as a psycho spiritual manifestation of Ibn Arabi's higher nature or (angel) initiating Ibn Arabi to deeper truths. The vision of his Sophia (the epitome of wisdom presented to him as a beautiful, wise, and righteous woman) as a young woman whom he met early on in his life. A great read that shed light on my own personal prayers and what it means to have achieved a vision of oneself performing one's prayers. The contemplation of God leading to (3rd person perspective vision) the inspirational vision of God contemplating you. The explanation of the 5 hadarat (presences) alone was worth the time it took to read this book. Highly recommended if you are searching for deeper spiritual guidance. P.S. I do not agree with all of Ibn Arabi's views. I especially have a dislike for his views on one becoming God when in the union of praying or meditating on God. I understand that he did not mean it to be blasphemous and Henry Corbin does a good job of explaining this idea so that it doesn't come off as blasphemous. However, I feel that Ibn Arabi became carried away in his spiritual ecstacy. In the same way that a Shakespearean character would be considered "carried away" if he or she would exclaim "I am Shakespeare!".
February 28, 2015
الكتاب مترجم من الإنجليزية ونقله للعربية فريد الزاهي. كبداية الترجمة واضحة وسلسلة لكن الكتاب ملئ بالأخطاء المطبعية. يقدم كوربان في كتابه السيرة الذاتية لابن عربي وفي نفس الوقت يحلل الأفكار الصوفية ويوضح كيف تتشابه مع أفكار التشيع. يقوم بعدها بمقارنة هذه الأفكار في الباطنية ومايقابلها من باطنية في المسيحية. يبدأ الكتاب باستهلال يقدم فيه الكاتب لسيرة ابن عربي والرموز التي أثرت فيه بعدها ينفسم الكتاب لفصلين مكونين من عدة أبواب. الفصل الأول ” التناسب والمألوهية” وفيه باب الإلهي بين الانفعال والرحمة الانفعال الرباني والرحمة الإلهية، وباب التصوف الحكمي والعبادة التفاعلية. الفصل الثاني “الخيال الخلاق والصلاة الخلاقة” وفيه باب الخلق باعتباره تجليا، قوة الخيال في التجلي والنشاط الخلاق للقلب، صلاة الإنسان وصلاة الله، و باب صورة الحق
موضوع الكتاب شيق ولكنه صعب في نفس الوقت. الكتاب موجه لقارئ مُلم بالموضوع الذي يطرحه الباحث. يعيب الكتاب الإسهاب والنكرار (بشكل ممل جدا !) . الفصل الأول من الكتاب يعالج الموضوع بشكل رائع والطرح ممتاز، لكن في بداية الفصل الثاني التكرار جعلني أتوقف كثيرا….معظم المعلومات مكررة ! واللغة تميل للصعوبة شئيا ما
الكتاب بشكل عام أشبه بملاحظات تم جمعها بدون تنقيح، لا يعني أن الكتاب ليس جيد. لكن برأي لا يستحق الوقت الذي قضيته في قراءته
موضوع الكتاب شيق ولكنه صعب في نفس الوقت. الكتاب موجه لقارئ مُلم بالموضوع الذي يطرحه الباحث. يعيب الكتاب الإسهاب والنكرار (بشكل ممل جدا !) . الفصل الأول من الكتاب يعالج الموضوع بشكل رائع والطرح ممتاز، لكن في بداية الفصل الثاني التكرار جعلني أتوقف كثيرا….معظم المعلومات مكررة ! واللغة تميل للصعوبة شئيا ما
الكتاب بشكل عام أشبه بملاحظات تم جمعها بدون تنقيح، لا يعني أن الكتاب ليس جيد. لكن برأي لا يستحق الوقت الذي قضيته في قراءته
April 18, 2008
Henry Corbin breathes life and depth into his subject matter. There are more interesting revelations in this book than in any dozen mass market pop spirituality books. Ibn Arabi was an informed Universalist who found the common threads between Islam, Judaism and Christianity while living in Moorish Spain. Breathtaking book on Sufi mysticism.
January 2, 2009
Actually i am rereading this as most of Corbin's books are impossible to get it all first time out. Corbin is great at capturing the poetic qualities of his subject and is attentive to how these ideas are often interpreted in the west. He will pose the original idea -how, what these ideas mean to us , then explain that this is not what is meant and slowly unveil what he finds at the core. This one examines one of the prominent figures of Sufism that was eclipsed by the philosophical schism between Europe and the mid east. There is now some actual translations of 'Arabi that are also worth looking at.
December 10, 2022
"...to recognize God in each form revealing Him, to invest each being, each faith, with a theophanic function—that is an essentially personal experience, which cannot be regulated by the norms common to collectivity." Good stuff
July 21, 2018
Reading this book has been a seminal event in my intellectual development. I don't know how anyone else might take it, but I have been wrestling with various ontological questions for years that he answers succinctly, blending rigorous thought with deep passion. Here is a balm for our spiritually devastated times.
February 8, 2014
I read the Bollingen paper edition of 1981 and was hurled into new worlds (and parallel) worlds.
April 18, 2015
بما إن ترجمة الكتاب معقدة ولا أدري ما السبب، اضطررت لقراءة الكتاب قراءة صوفية، الكتاب مهم ولولا الترجمة لكان الموضوع أكثر متعة. وأنقص نجمتين من الكتاب لما سهوت بالترجمة والقراءة.
March 29, 2025
This is a book I'll be revisiting often. I am glad I got through the rather long introduction. It takes work, but worth it.
Read
July 13, 2022Already looking some time for this title. After reading Catafalque.
On 2022 July 3 I found a pdf copy 435 p. - https://archive.org/details/HenryCorb...
Through the first French edition was published in 1958,
Parts One and Two were originally published in French (in a slightly different form) in
Eranos-Jahrbücher XXIV ( 1955) and XXV ( 1956) by Rhein-Verlag, Zurich.
This solves my search at the pre 1958 edition(s) [1955 & 1956].
2022, July 13
On 2022 July 3 I found a pdf copy 435 p. - https://archive.org/details/HenryCorb...
Through the first French edition was published in 1958,
Parts One and Two were originally published in French (in a slightly different form) in
Eranos-Jahrbücher XXIV ( 1955) and XXV ( 1956) by Rhein-Verlag, Zurich.
This solves my search at the pre 1958 edition(s) [1955 & 1956].
2022, July 13
December 18, 2020
Henry Corbin is by far the best interpreter of Ibn Arabi. Chittick faithfully renders the words of Ibn Arabi and provides commentary but Corbin provides an original perspective on Ibn Arabi’s theosophy.
Corbin’s theory, the one he expounds in ‘Alone with the alone’ centres heavily on the term: ‘Theophanic imagination’. Theophanic imagination means a Deity manifested in your imagination. So the orthodox Muslim would shudder in disbelief and investigate no further. If he were to actually investigate, he would find nothing heterodox in the ideas of Ibn Arabi.
Ibn Arabi in his works gives the following schemata for the manifestation of God. The primordial existence of God is depicted in the form of a Cloud. From this Cloud manifestation of all reality (hidden and seen) occurred in a new dimension which is described as Unbounded Imagination, this can be thought of as a Divine Epiphany.
So far there is nothing sacrilegious in this, if viewed from the perspective of a Gnostic or a Mystic. The Quran frequently exhorts us to look around and see the evidence of God through his signs and symbols. So if we were to transfer this quest into the realm of mystical experience, we realise that the only we can perceive the existence of God is through our Imagination, hence the term Divine Epiphany.
Theophanies in the form of light feature prominently in the works of Mystics such as Suhrawardi and Al-Ghazali. Other Mystics such as Junayd concurred with Ibn Arabi that Mystical perception is unique. The experience is always configured by the mentality of the person. Or as Junayd says: ‘The water is always coloured by the cup.’
So the concept of a Theophanic Imagination can now be broadened. The manifestation of God in an ‘imaginal form’ need not invoke accusations of blasphemy. A sceptic may recall the words of Moses when he asked to see God and was told ‘Vision cannot contain me’. But if you were to ponder the request of Moses you would understand that Moses had a unique connection to God; not through an Angel or intuition but through a voice, so you could concur that he quite reasonably assumed that a voice must come from mouth and a mouth must come from a face. Hence the request. But also, Moses asked to see God in the real world. The world through which a Mystic traverses is in a different dimension. The dimension of the ‘Unbounded Imagination.’
In this dimension God reveals himself just as in the observable ‘real’ world through signs and symbols. And the only way to see those signs and symbols is to use our God-given faculty: the imagination.
The theory Corbin advances regarding the imagination is unique. Western science has a rather dismissive view of the imagination, a tool of fantasy common amongst creative people. Ibn Arabi’s ideas are far more profound.
The Active Imagination is an organ of the soul. It receives information from the ‘Qalb’ which is the spiritual centre (heart) of the soul. The Active Imagination interprets the information from the Qalb in the form of images, much like the way we interpret images from the sensory data of our physical senses. The ‘physical’ aspect of the imagination is conjoined with the Active Imagination. In the physical imagination the image is transient, but in the Active imagination the images are sustained by the spiritual data received by the Qalb. So the images present in the Active Imagination are constantly updated because the Qalb is continually refreshed by God.
Corbin expands on the term ‘Himma’. This is a term which I have come across in Chittick’s books and has been described as ‘Aspiration’ or ‘the power of concentration through which the seeker focuses on the Real.’ Corbin gives a deeper meaning to ‘Himma’. A psycho-spiritual organ (part Qalb, part Active Imagination) through which the Mystic can objectify images. In other words, the power through which a Mystic can make objects appear in reality, by focussing upon them as they exist as possibilities in the Barzakh.
This explains the issue of ‘Forms’ which I encountered earlier in Chitticks books. In a lot of Ibn Arabi’s writings he states that these ‘Forms’ come and go. But what are they? Chittick didn’t really explain, but Corbin does so brilliantly. These ‘Forms’ are apparitions, they can be seen by the Mystic but not by others. They just like the images in the Active Imagination. A cipher which represents a message or a mystery from God. They can even take on the form of women in fact Ibn Arabi appeared to have a romantic connection with one such apparition called Sofia!
Another fascinating insight given by Corbin is the ‘Intermediary world’ which he calls the ‘Alam-al-mithal’, a portal between the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ world, another realm of Barzakh.
The Active Imagination empowers the Mystic to travel through this portal and meet other Mystics irrespective of the time they lived in and their physical proximity. In other worlds, a portal through which the Mystic can travel as an apparition or even as symbolic image. Through this portal Ibn Arabi was able to converse with Mystics who had died centuries ago. In fact, Ibn Arabi’s mentor is reputed to be the eponymous Khidr.
I was not convinced by Corbin’s idea that the Divine Names of God experience anguish and sadness. Admittedly in Ibn Arabi’s theosophy the Divine Names and the Mystic letters (the Muqataat) are entities but the notion of them having emotions did seem a little far-fetched.
Towards the latter part of the book Corbin mention an episode narrated in the Quran, that of the Prophet Suleiman causing the thrown of Bilqis to appear. He concludes that was due to Prophet Suleiman invoking the power of ‘Himma’, not the involution of physical space which caused the thrown to be transported, now this is the conclusion you get from reading the episode in the Quran. But how Prophet Suleiman used the power of ‘Himma’ was left unexplained. Especially when in the Quran it states that one of his servants who had ‘knowledge of the book’ was responsible for the bringing the throne.
This being the only flaw in this brilliant book, which so far gives the clearest insight into the idea of Ibn Arabi.
Corbin’s theory, the one he expounds in ‘Alone with the alone’ centres heavily on the term: ‘Theophanic imagination’. Theophanic imagination means a Deity manifested in your imagination. So the orthodox Muslim would shudder in disbelief and investigate no further. If he were to actually investigate, he would find nothing heterodox in the ideas of Ibn Arabi.
Ibn Arabi in his works gives the following schemata for the manifestation of God. The primordial existence of God is depicted in the form of a Cloud. From this Cloud manifestation of all reality (hidden and seen) occurred in a new dimension which is described as Unbounded Imagination, this can be thought of as a Divine Epiphany.
So far there is nothing sacrilegious in this, if viewed from the perspective of a Gnostic or a Mystic. The Quran frequently exhorts us to look around and see the evidence of God through his signs and symbols. So if we were to transfer this quest into the realm of mystical experience, we realise that the only we can perceive the existence of God is through our Imagination, hence the term Divine Epiphany.
Theophanies in the form of light feature prominently in the works of Mystics such as Suhrawardi and Al-Ghazali. Other Mystics such as Junayd concurred with Ibn Arabi that Mystical perception is unique. The experience is always configured by the mentality of the person. Or as Junayd says: ‘The water is always coloured by the cup.’
So the concept of a Theophanic Imagination can now be broadened. The manifestation of God in an ‘imaginal form’ need not invoke accusations of blasphemy. A sceptic may recall the words of Moses when he asked to see God and was told ‘Vision cannot contain me’. But if you were to ponder the request of Moses you would understand that Moses had a unique connection to God; not through an Angel or intuition but through a voice, so you could concur that he quite reasonably assumed that a voice must come from mouth and a mouth must come from a face. Hence the request. But also, Moses asked to see God in the real world. The world through which a Mystic traverses is in a different dimension. The dimension of the ‘Unbounded Imagination.’
In this dimension God reveals himself just as in the observable ‘real’ world through signs and symbols. And the only way to see those signs and symbols is to use our God-given faculty: the imagination.
The theory Corbin advances regarding the imagination is unique. Western science has a rather dismissive view of the imagination, a tool of fantasy common amongst creative people. Ibn Arabi’s ideas are far more profound.
The Active Imagination is an organ of the soul. It receives information from the ‘Qalb’ which is the spiritual centre (heart) of the soul. The Active Imagination interprets the information from the Qalb in the form of images, much like the way we interpret images from the sensory data of our physical senses. The ‘physical’ aspect of the imagination is conjoined with the Active Imagination. In the physical imagination the image is transient, but in the Active imagination the images are sustained by the spiritual data received by the Qalb. So the images present in the Active Imagination are constantly updated because the Qalb is continually refreshed by God.
Corbin expands on the term ‘Himma’. This is a term which I have come across in Chittick’s books and has been described as ‘Aspiration’ or ‘the power of concentration through which the seeker focuses on the Real.’ Corbin gives a deeper meaning to ‘Himma’. A psycho-spiritual organ (part Qalb, part Active Imagination) through which the Mystic can objectify images. In other words, the power through which a Mystic can make objects appear in reality, by focussing upon them as they exist as possibilities in the Barzakh.
This explains the issue of ‘Forms’ which I encountered earlier in Chitticks books. In a lot of Ibn Arabi’s writings he states that these ‘Forms’ come and go. But what are they? Chittick didn’t really explain, but Corbin does so brilliantly. These ‘Forms’ are apparitions, they can be seen by the Mystic but not by others. They just like the images in the Active Imagination. A cipher which represents a message or a mystery from God. They can even take on the form of women in fact Ibn Arabi appeared to have a romantic connection with one such apparition called Sofia!
Another fascinating insight given by Corbin is the ‘Intermediary world’ which he calls the ‘Alam-al-mithal’, a portal between the ‘seen’ and ‘unseen’ world, another realm of Barzakh.
The Active Imagination empowers the Mystic to travel through this portal and meet other Mystics irrespective of the time they lived in and their physical proximity. In other worlds, a portal through which the Mystic can travel as an apparition or even as symbolic image. Through this portal Ibn Arabi was able to converse with Mystics who had died centuries ago. In fact, Ibn Arabi’s mentor is reputed to be the eponymous Khidr.
I was not convinced by Corbin’s idea that the Divine Names of God experience anguish and sadness. Admittedly in Ibn Arabi’s theosophy the Divine Names and the Mystic letters (the Muqataat) are entities but the notion of them having emotions did seem a little far-fetched.
Towards the latter part of the book Corbin mention an episode narrated in the Quran, that of the Prophet Suleiman causing the thrown of Bilqis to appear. He concludes that was due to Prophet Suleiman invoking the power of ‘Himma’, not the involution of physical space which caused the thrown to be transported, now this is the conclusion you get from reading the episode in the Quran. But how Prophet Suleiman used the power of ‘Himma’ was left unexplained. Especially when in the Quran it states that one of his servants who had ‘knowledge of the book’ was responsible for the bringing the throne.
This being the only flaw in this brilliant book, which so far gives the clearest insight into the idea of Ibn Arabi.
January 17, 2014
Corbin is fascinating, though not an easy read. Well worth the effort though.
This book is primarily about the Islamic Sufi, Ibn Arabi, and his writings about the sufi experience of a metaphysical reality as experienced in the practice of prayer, meditation and what Corbin refers to as Active Imagination.
The book describes the modes of being, from our physical world on up to the God that is indivisible and at the same time includes the other three modes of being. Through the Sufi practice, one engages their Angel, which is a truer self whose being exists in another mode other than our physical one, but can be known through Active Imagination.
You can read more of my review here: http://ptero9.com/2014/01/12/the-name...
This book is primarily about the Islamic Sufi, Ibn Arabi, and his writings about the sufi experience of a metaphysical reality as experienced in the practice of prayer, meditation and what Corbin refers to as Active Imagination.
The book describes the modes of being, from our physical world on up to the God that is indivisible and at the same time includes the other three modes of being. Through the Sufi practice, one engages their Angel, which is a truer self whose being exists in another mode other than our physical one, but can be known through Active Imagination.
You can read more of my review here: http://ptero9.com/2014/01/12/the-name...
July 3, 2015
هناك كتب تعرف أثناء قرائتها وقبل أن تنهيها أنها ستكون من النقاط المحورية المحوِّلة لحياتك، وهذا الكتاب رغم الأخطاء المطبعية وصعوبات الترجمة المتكررة فيه إلا أنه أحد هذه الكتب بالنسبة لخط سير حياتي
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September 4, 2016الترجمات المخيبة للآمال
152 صفحة فقط
152 صفحة فقط
June 9, 2017
Yes, yes, and then yes. This book is a perfect introduction to Ibn Arabi.
February 15, 2020
The year 2019 marks the fiftieth anniversary not just of the moon landing, but of the publication of a book whose arrival in the English-speaking world could be described as a visitation from another planet – or, to use its author’s own phrase, from a lost continent.
Henry Corbin (1903–1978) was a French philosopher and mystical theologian (or, to use another of his favourite terms, a ‘theosopher,’ a seeker of divine wisdom) who devoted much of his scholarly life to the exegesis of esoteric Islamic texts. But his impact outside of that somewhat rarefied field spread when he started lecturing at Eranos, an annual symposium held in Switzerland from the Thirties onwards to continue the work of the psychotherapist C.G. Jung in studying the relationship of spirituality to the soul. There he met and engaged with other like-minded scholars such as the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, the scholar of Kabbalism Gershom Scholem and the post-Jungian archetypal psychologist James Hillman, among others.
In 1958 Corbin published L’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ’Arabī, a study of the thirteenth century Andalusian mystic, based on lectures he had given earlier at Eranos. The English translation appeared eleven years later; and constitutes a giant leap for (western) mankind’s understanding of the relationship between mind, matter and the imagination.
Corbin argues that, whereas in the West the predominant religious orthodoxy is that God created the world out of nothing, there is an alternative esoteric tradition that God imagined the world into being “from within Himself, from the eternal virtualities and potencies of His own being”; so that creation is a ‘theophany,’ a revelation of the divine: “As such, creation is an act of the divine imaginative power: this divine creative imagination is essentially a theophanic Imagination.”
The theophanic creation is also threefold: between the spiritual and material worlds there is an intermediate world of archetypal images, which can be perceived by those who seek to know other worlds (‘gnostics’) with the faculty that Corbin, following Jung, calls Active Imagination, a reflection in the human being of the divine imaginative power: “The Active Imagination in the gnostic is likewise a theophanic Imagination”; but in our ‘laicised’ world its power has become so degraded that the term ‘imaginary’ has come to mean an unreal fantasy.
For this reason Corbin would eventually coin a new word – ‘imaginal’ – to describe those forms which subsist in the intermediate world; and that world itself he would call in Latin the mundus imaginalis, translating directly the Arabic term ’ālam al-mithāl. In his book on Ibn ’Arabī, however, he use the neologism Imaginatrix to designate the imaginative Dignity or Presence with which a human being can be transmuted into “a theophanic figure” in the eyes of the lover; so that the beloved becomes the means by which we can see God, the ‘real’ Beloved. It is also the means for God to manifest Himself: “He can do so only in the figure which at once reveals Him and veils Him, but without which He would be deprived of all concrete existence, of all relatedness.”
The Imaginatrix thus “opens the way to the transcendent dimension”. It is the faculty “which at once produces symbols and apprehends them” – and here Corbin makes a crucial distinction between allegory and symbolism: “allegory is a rational operation, implying no transition either to a new plane of being or to a new depth of consciousness; it is a figuration, at an identical level of consciousness, of what might very well be known in a different way. The symbol announces a plane of consciousness distinct from that of rational evidence; it is the ‘cipher’ of a mystery, the only means of saying something that cannot be apprehended in any other way; a symbol is never ‘explained’ once and for all, but must be deciphered over and over again”.
Corbin’s ‘theophanism’ is as far removed from the allegorical approach to images and figures (explaining them away) as it is to literalism (“the anthropomorphism that attributes human predicates to the Godhead”): Theophanic visions have their place in an intermediate world, which can only be perceived by the Imaginatrix: one “in which occur visions, apparitions, and in general all the symbolic histories which reveal only their material aspect to perception or sensory representation”. These symbolic histories include the sacred stories of the prophets, “which have meaning because they are theophanies; whereas on the plane of sensory evidence on which is enacted what we call History, the meaning, that is, the true nature of those stories, which are essentially ‘symbolic stories,’ cannot be apprehended.”
For Sufis such as Ibn ’Arabī, as for Islam in general, Jesus is the penultimate prophet; but Corbin, though a Protestant Christian, always seeks within the Abrahamic faiths those mystical or esoteric traditions which enable him to find an inner harmony within what are otherwise irreconcilable differences of dogma (“To the gnostic all faiths are theophanic visions in which he contemplates the Divine Being”). This leads Corbin to one of his most important insights, contrasting the mainstream interpretation of the Incarnation (“a unique material fact situated among the chronological facts of history”) with the mystical conception of God appearing to us in the only form that we can recognise, “an Apparition which is a shining of the Godhead through the mirror of humanity, after the manner of the light which becomes visible only as it takes form and shines through the figure of a stained-glass window.”
We see this divine apparition with “the theophanic Imagination” which is invested in “the consciousness of the individual believer”; and it leads us each to our own “celestial assumption.” For the divine is always descending to Earth; and we are always yearning to ascend to Heaven: “That is why the other world already exists in this world; it exists in every moment, in relation to every being.”
The theophanic Imagination or Imaginatrix also sees God in the beauty of the Beloved, who is no less a “concrete person,” but one transfigured by “the light of another world” – an angelic world: “Beauty is the supreme theophany, but it reveals itself as such only to a love which it transfigures. Mystic love is the religion of Beauty, because Beauty is the secret of theophanies and because as such it is the power which transfigures. Mystic love is as far from negative asceticism as it is from the aestheticism or libertinism of the possessive instinct.”
This mystic love also extends to the beauty of the natural world which is far from being merely a ‘material world,’ with its implication of consumerism destroying the environment:
“Salvation does not consist in denying and doing away with the manifest world, but in recognizing it for what it is and esteeming it as such: not a reality beside and in addition to essential divine reality, but precisely a theophany, and the world would not be theophany if it were not Imagination.”
If it enables us to love the manifest world and the manifest beings in it, the Imaginatrix also “enables us to understand the meaning of death, in the esoteric as well as the physical sense: an awakening, before which you are like someone who merely dreams that he wakes up.” For dreaming, like dying, is also an imaginative, intermediate state between our everyday waking consciousness and the true, mystical awakening: “It would be difficult to situate the science of the Imagination any higher.”
It would be equally difficult, therefore, to over-estimate the devastating consequences of the gradual loss in the West of this intermediate realm and the degradation of its organ of knowledge, the Imaginatrix. Corbin has shown elsewhere in his writings how it corresponds to the loss of the threefold model of the human being – as made of body, soul and spirit – and its replacement by a dualistic model of body and soul, or mind and matter. We know that we perceive material things with our physical senses and abstract ideas with our intellect; but we no longer recognise the creative power of prayer as “the highest form, the supreme act” of the Imagination.
The degradation of the Imaginatrix means that we lose sight of the realm that bridges Heaven and Earth, which becomes a lost continent: “The magnitude of the loss becomes apparent when we consider that this intermediate world is the realm where the conflict which split the Occident, the conflict between theology and philosophy, between faith and knowledge, between symbol and history, is resolved.” The consequences of this “metaphysical tragedy” are the profanation of human love (dramatised in that great medieval story of Tristan and Isolde) and the desecration (because of its de-sacralisation) of the natural environment: when the soul becomes a Waste Land, its effects spread into the material world; but we see only the physical symptoms, not the metaphysical cause.
If you enjoyed this review, you might also be interested in my blog: Myth Dancing (incorporating the Twenty Third Letter)
Henry Corbin (1903–1978) was a French philosopher and mystical theologian (or, to use another of his favourite terms, a ‘theosopher,’ a seeker of divine wisdom) who devoted much of his scholarly life to the exegesis of esoteric Islamic texts. But his impact outside of that somewhat rarefied field spread when he started lecturing at Eranos, an annual symposium held in Switzerland from the Thirties onwards to continue the work of the psychotherapist C.G. Jung in studying the relationship of spirituality to the soul. There he met and engaged with other like-minded scholars such as the historian of religion Mircea Eliade, the scholar of Kabbalism Gershom Scholem and the post-Jungian archetypal psychologist James Hillman, among others.
In 1958 Corbin published L’Imagination créatrice dans le soufisme d’Ibn ’Arabī, a study of the thirteenth century Andalusian mystic, based on lectures he had given earlier at Eranos. The English translation appeared eleven years later; and constitutes a giant leap for (western) mankind’s understanding of the relationship between mind, matter and the imagination.
Corbin argues that, whereas in the West the predominant religious orthodoxy is that God created the world out of nothing, there is an alternative esoteric tradition that God imagined the world into being “from within Himself, from the eternal virtualities and potencies of His own being”; so that creation is a ‘theophany,’ a revelation of the divine: “As such, creation is an act of the divine imaginative power: this divine creative imagination is essentially a theophanic Imagination.”
The theophanic creation is also threefold: between the spiritual and material worlds there is an intermediate world of archetypal images, which can be perceived by those who seek to know other worlds (‘gnostics’) with the faculty that Corbin, following Jung, calls Active Imagination, a reflection in the human being of the divine imaginative power: “The Active Imagination in the gnostic is likewise a theophanic Imagination”; but in our ‘laicised’ world its power has become so degraded that the term ‘imaginary’ has come to mean an unreal fantasy.
For this reason Corbin would eventually coin a new word – ‘imaginal’ – to describe those forms which subsist in the intermediate world; and that world itself he would call in Latin the mundus imaginalis, translating directly the Arabic term ’ālam al-mithāl. In his book on Ibn ’Arabī, however, he use the neologism Imaginatrix to designate the imaginative Dignity or Presence with which a human being can be transmuted into “a theophanic figure” in the eyes of the lover; so that the beloved becomes the means by which we can see God, the ‘real’ Beloved. It is also the means for God to manifest Himself: “He can do so only in the figure which at once reveals Him and veils Him, but without which He would be deprived of all concrete existence, of all relatedness.”
The Imaginatrix thus “opens the way to the transcendent dimension”. It is the faculty “which at once produces symbols and apprehends them” – and here Corbin makes a crucial distinction between allegory and symbolism: “allegory is a rational operation, implying no transition either to a new plane of being or to a new depth of consciousness; it is a figuration, at an identical level of consciousness, of what might very well be known in a different way. The symbol announces a plane of consciousness distinct from that of rational evidence; it is the ‘cipher’ of a mystery, the only means of saying something that cannot be apprehended in any other way; a symbol is never ‘explained’ once and for all, but must be deciphered over and over again”.
Corbin’s ‘theophanism’ is as far removed from the allegorical approach to images and figures (explaining them away) as it is to literalism (“the anthropomorphism that attributes human predicates to the Godhead”): Theophanic visions have their place in an intermediate world, which can only be perceived by the Imaginatrix: one “in which occur visions, apparitions, and in general all the symbolic histories which reveal only their material aspect to perception or sensory representation”. These symbolic histories include the sacred stories of the prophets, “which have meaning because they are theophanies; whereas on the plane of sensory evidence on which is enacted what we call History, the meaning, that is, the true nature of those stories, which are essentially ‘symbolic stories,’ cannot be apprehended.”
For Sufis such as Ibn ’Arabī, as for Islam in general, Jesus is the penultimate prophet; but Corbin, though a Protestant Christian, always seeks within the Abrahamic faiths those mystical or esoteric traditions which enable him to find an inner harmony within what are otherwise irreconcilable differences of dogma (“To the gnostic all faiths are theophanic visions in which he contemplates the Divine Being”). This leads Corbin to one of his most important insights, contrasting the mainstream interpretation of the Incarnation (“a unique material fact situated among the chronological facts of history”) with the mystical conception of God appearing to us in the only form that we can recognise, “an Apparition which is a shining of the Godhead through the mirror of humanity, after the manner of the light which becomes visible only as it takes form and shines through the figure of a stained-glass window.”
We see this divine apparition with “the theophanic Imagination” which is invested in “the consciousness of the individual believer”; and it leads us each to our own “celestial assumption.” For the divine is always descending to Earth; and we are always yearning to ascend to Heaven: “That is why the other world already exists in this world; it exists in every moment, in relation to every being.”
The theophanic Imagination or Imaginatrix also sees God in the beauty of the Beloved, who is no less a “concrete person,” but one transfigured by “the light of another world” – an angelic world: “Beauty is the supreme theophany, but it reveals itself as such only to a love which it transfigures. Mystic love is the religion of Beauty, because Beauty is the secret of theophanies and because as such it is the power which transfigures. Mystic love is as far from negative asceticism as it is from the aestheticism or libertinism of the possessive instinct.”
This mystic love also extends to the beauty of the natural world which is far from being merely a ‘material world,’ with its implication of consumerism destroying the environment:
“Salvation does not consist in denying and doing away with the manifest world, but in recognizing it for what it is and esteeming it as such: not a reality beside and in addition to essential divine reality, but precisely a theophany, and the world would not be theophany if it were not Imagination.”
If it enables us to love the manifest world and the manifest beings in it, the Imaginatrix also “enables us to understand the meaning of death, in the esoteric as well as the physical sense: an awakening, before which you are like someone who merely dreams that he wakes up.” For dreaming, like dying, is also an imaginative, intermediate state between our everyday waking consciousness and the true, mystical awakening: “It would be difficult to situate the science of the Imagination any higher.”
It would be equally difficult, therefore, to over-estimate the devastating consequences of the gradual loss in the West of this intermediate realm and the degradation of its organ of knowledge, the Imaginatrix. Corbin has shown elsewhere in his writings how it corresponds to the loss of the threefold model of the human being – as made of body, soul and spirit – and its replacement by a dualistic model of body and soul, or mind and matter. We know that we perceive material things with our physical senses and abstract ideas with our intellect; but we no longer recognise the creative power of prayer as “the highest form, the supreme act” of the Imagination.
The degradation of the Imaginatrix means that we lose sight of the realm that bridges Heaven and Earth, which becomes a lost continent: “The magnitude of the loss becomes apparent when we consider that this intermediate world is the realm where the conflict which split the Occident, the conflict between theology and philosophy, between faith and knowledge, between symbol and history, is resolved.” The consequences of this “metaphysical tragedy” are the profanation of human love (dramatised in that great medieval story of Tristan and Isolde) and the desecration (because of its de-sacralisation) of the natural environment: when the soul becomes a Waste Land, its effects spread into the material world; but we see only the physical symptoms, not the metaphysical cause.
If you enjoyed this review, you might also be interested in my blog: Myth Dancing (incorporating the Twenty Third Letter)
April 24, 2025
Corbin begins his examination of Ibn ʻArabī's philosophy through what he calls a "brief spiritual topography" "between Andalusia and Iran," recapitulating the debate between Ibn Sīnā's Neoplatonism and Ibn Rushd's Aristotelianism, with Ibn ʻArabī situated as more in line with the former, though we also receive a description of a conversation between him and the latter. We also trace his aforementioned move from Andalusia to Iran, ostensibly for a more receptive climate for the transmission of his ideas. Speaking of which, we can roughly delineate a split between Sunnism on the one hand and Shi'ism/Sufism on the other, corresponding to that between legalist doctrinarianism (sharī'a) and mystical truth/esotericism (ḥaqīqa), the dead letter and the living spirit. Corbin wants to elevate a distinctly Iranian philosophy into the Western pantheon of the East, alongside the Arab world, India, China, and Japan, conceiving of Iran as an "intermediary" between Arab and Indian thought. Considering the geographic transmission of ideas in the time period covered, this cannot but be correct. Given the fact that Islamic philosophy has been so heavily intertwined with Greek thought, one could not dismiss this work as Orientalist precisely because there is no Orient cut off from the wider world. This interchange provides Corbin with a "neutral" medium through which to interface with Ibn ʻArabī's thought, at the level of theological discursivity. Corbin posits a Sufist ontology in which Imagination, through its organ, constitutes a third domain of reality, against (Western) phenomenological presuppositions. In this sense, there's a certain "Hegelianism" to his reading. He goes on to read Ibn ʻArabī as positing a distinction between Allah as a generic God and Rabb as a personalized God, and then a relation between worshipper and worshipped in which a certain dialectic unfolds: the secret of the Names of the Lord, sirr al-rubūbīya, is the "suzerainty" actively posited by the Lord through His worshipper as passive vassal. Through this discussion, he moves to a reading of Sophiology, while being attendant to the substitution of an Iranian woman for a Greek figure. He reads "the feminine" in relation to the act of Creation, a Creativity which he has already linked to Imagination, positing Maryam as the Virgin Mother of Jesus as an inversion of the Adam-Eve relation, but this works in a Christian context where it doesn't in the Islamic one, for in Islam Eve is not of Adam born (I wonder if, as the references to Massignon might indicate, Corbin suffers from a certain "Christianization" of the Islamic content he is working with, even if he takes care to distinguish al-Ḥallāj's "anā’l Ḥaqq" from the Sufi "anā sirr al-Ḥaqq"). In any case, his reading of Sophia is decidedly from the masculine perspective, for he reads it as a sort of "androgenizing" procedure for the mystic's passive Creative Imagination, a partial "feminization" of the male worshipper. Ultimately though, the distinction between worshipper and worshipped is at least partially blurred, for the former is simply an instantiation of the latter, a conception which has its corollaries in Christian, Hindu, Buddhist, Leibnizian, etc., thought. This is where the "Hegelianism" returns: God "externalizes" Himself through the act of Creation only to be reflected back into Himself through the worship of his followers, a self-same movement internal to God Himself. In this sense, "mysticism" in the Islamic context becomes rather similar to all other mystical traditions, though with its own cultural antecedents. Overall, Corbin provides a "strong" (idiosyncratic) reading of Ibn ʻArabī, not a mere summary of his texts, not hesitating to editorialize, and one must evaluate Corbin's reading on its own merits, separately from the texts upon which it works.
April 11, 2023
Difficult but surprisingly accessible with some serious effort.
sepertinya-menarik
April 12, 2010judulnya menarik..dan ratingnya banyak yg kasi 4 & 5. boleh jadi ini buku mangstaabb..jadi pengen..Ibn Arabi tea-lah..
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February 16, 2010buku yg sy cari-cari..
June 17, 2010
One of Corbin's most amazing works.
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November 5, 2014بسیار کتاب خوبی است
April 17, 2017
In the last six weeks, I've read half a dozen rip-roaring SF novels, a quantity of poetry and this. Alone with the Alone is probably the densest book I've read in about 10 years. I'd say I've understood about one word in eight. But passage after passage stick and cling and I suspect I'll be returning to it often. The subject - the creative imagination in the Sufism of Ibn 'Arabi - is a misnomer and might be more accurately phrased "the religious imagination" or "the sacred imagination". This wouldn't be a limitation. A key theme of the book is to demonstrate the religious or sacred potential of all acts of imagination, including that most radical of religious acts, the imagining of the encounter with the divine at the heart of so much in the arts. As I say, a lot to process and I've probably misunderstood or misrepresented the text already. As a side note, also of interest in terms of its links, derivations from and intertwinings with Gnosticism, Neoplatonism and the Kabbalah.
Displaying 1 - 28 of 28 reviews