explains:“He called the production from nothing of this creation, the word
(al-qalam), as is clear in the absolute (zawahir) sections of the Quran. Thus
in this tablet, were the realities (haqaiq) of that which was, or would be, or
is, until the day of judgement.”The wall painting represents realities for
man as embodied the created world. In nature, God inscribes the subtle
principle of the divine origin for man to discover.
Then God sawfit to let this creation of this tablet to sensible existence through a
progression in being...And as God had inscribed in nature this subtle principle of
divine origin which he wouldfind in the recognition and the science of the
profound reality of these created beings and the attributes of their creator.
Ibn Khaldun offers two‘inclinations’through which humans can know the
world. He recognizes that we can discover creation through information
which the senses extract and the intellect abstracts. Imagination and dis-
cursive thought organize this information through a signifying system. He
suggests an ideal in which we would discover the imprint of the divine
within the self because we are already part of creation. But this proves
difficult because both being human and having a body interrupt percep-
tion: they are the veil between the Tablet of creation and the subtle
principle of the divine embodied in nature.
If thus the veil is lifted through the purification and liberation of the impurities, this
produces the most advanced form of perception, and this perception is more
perfect than that which operates through the other inclination, since the senses
and the imagination are not assured to extract so well the forms and profound
realities of the sensible created beings that they can transmit as is; and discursive
thought, on the other side, is no more assured of being able to abstract them to
organize them in a meaning which enables their conceptualization (tasawwur).
The senses are the very instruments through which we can discover the
divine in nature, engage discursive thought, and give these signs meaning.
Yet they interrupt direct access to the divine, enabling yet marring vision.
The only solution is to discover the divine inwardly, in the mirror, without
the intervention of sensory or intellectual instruments.“In effect, the
former (senses and imagination), like the latter (discursive thought), are
two instruments, two intermediaries in the service of the subtle principle
which furnishes him with what he already possesses in his own essence...
for this reason, the perception that he has in this inclination is clearer.”
Plato becomes the model for this type of thinking. Like Nizami, ibn Khaldun
envisions Plato as transcending reason toward perception of the divine.
Ibn Khaldun and the Polished Mirror 157