that on which the shadow may appear, since if it were possible that that whereon it
appears should cease to be, the shadow would be an intelligible and not something
sensible, and would exist potentially in the very thing that casts the shadow.
The thing on which this divine shadow, called the Cosmos, appears is the
[eternally latent] essences of contingent beings.^53
For ibn Arabi, Reality is as God. The Cosmos is as his shadow, providing a
sensible substrate enabling the perception of reality. As in Plato’s allegory
of the cave, ibn Arabi considers materiality as a necessary deception, for
without the substrate of the cosmos, the Real could not be seen: it requires
the very quality of presence which its non-being obviates. This leads ibn
Arabi to describe the divine as being/non-being (wujud/la-wujud). His
thought resembles Plato’s intertwining of materiality and divinity. In
Phaedrus, Socrates describes the region above heaven as“occupied by
being which really is,”as“without color or shape, intangible, observable
by the steersman of the soul alone, by intellect, and to which the class of
true knowledge relates.”^54 The discussion comes not, however, as part of a
disavowal of materiality, but as part of the palinode which recognizes
physical love as the inextricable manifestation of a divine madness difficult
to distinguish from premises informing the Sufiquest.
Likewise, ibn Arabi aligns shadow with the ephemerality of color:
Have you not observed that shadows tend to be black, which indicates their
imperceptibility [as regards content] by reason of the remote relation between
them and their origins? If the source of the shadow is white, the shadow itself is still
so [i.e. black].
Do you not also observe that mountains distant from the observer appear to be
black, while being in themselves other than the color seen? The cause is only the
distance. The same is the case with the blueness of the sky, which is also the effect of
distance on the senses with respect to nonluminous bodies...
The Reality is, in relation to a particular shadow, small or large, pure or purer, as
light in relation to the glass that separates it from the beholder to whom the light
has the color of the glass, while the light itself has no [particular] color. This is the
relationship between your reality and your Lord; for, if you were to say the light is
green because of the green glass, you would be right as viewing the situation
through your sense, and if you were to say that it is not green, indeed it is colorless,
by deduction, you would also be right as viewing the situation through sound
intellectual reasoning.^55
(^53) Austin, 1980 : 123.
(^54) Plato, 2005 : 27. Among the works of Plato summarized by al-Farabi in hisPhilosophy of Plato,
Phaedruswould have been familiar to many Muslim intellectuals. Mahdi, 1962 : 62.
(^55) Austin, 1980 : 123–124.
Jalal al-Din Rumi between the Mirrors and Veils of ibn Arabi 151