The Futuhat Foundation

We consider the six-section structure of Ibn al-ʿArabī’s al-futūḥāt al-Makkīyah (The Openings Revealed in Makkah), and search for six-fold correspondences. We look at particular passages from the six sections.

This translation is to be in 19 volumes (about 13,000 pages). The editor is currently working on volume 6. The translator is preparing volumes 7 - 9 for final editing and publication

this year, God willing. Volume 2 is now in New York, ready for shipping (www.pirpress.com).

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

June 19th, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SmnqcYszXF8

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

Ibn al-ʿArabī asks us to consider state over movement. What

he describes may now be thought of as fractal state space

- non-Euclidean, non-intellect-based; and having a strange

numbering sequence.

Using the imagery of the grinding wheel and the waterwheel,

Ibn al-ʿArabī shows us that ‘things happen’ not by

movement in space and time, but by fluctuation in state

- which is centered on the heart (in Arabic qalb, because it

fluctuates, muqallaba).

This turns our attention to what is birthed (natījah), not to

what is moving.

‘I was hungry and you fed Me not.’ What happens when

someone calls out to God? What happens when people

make a ‘structure set together (with no gaps)?’

The dhikr of an assembly calling out will summon another

assembly. The body (individual or community) becomes

alerted and ‘becomes Present’, as a league (linking points on

a fractal state space).

Ibn al-ʿArabī explains why ‘Allāh Allāh’ preserves the universe

- and who the pivotal person is (or persons).

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

June 12th, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TLW4rv6ub1c

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

Without the Revelation, we would not know that the ‘single wellspring’

is the Divine; we would not know what God loves and does

not love. The lover loves what the beloved loves.

ʿayn waḥdah, the single well-spring

what God loves

what is apposite to us

what is for God’s sake

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

June 5th, 2020

youtube video:

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

With the known, Ibn al-ʿArabī says we are all ‘compelled in our free

will’. So then, what is the ‘final argument’ belonging to God? To

clarify our situation, and to fortify ourselves, we seek the ‘special

face’ in the foliating rays.

maʿlūm, the known

majbūr fī ikhtiyār, compelled in our free will

ḥujjat al-bālighah, the final argument

wajh al-khāṣṣ, the special face

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

May 29th, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=C1yYqtfkqoI

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

‘We have a special face toward God: we speak intimately with Him and He speaks intimately with us. And in this way each created being has a special face toward its Cherisher.’ Ibn al-ʿArabī tells us how to access this special place, and face, by having us consider mother-based knowledge, infants, animals, and direct perception of the

primary - actually, only - cause of everything.

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

May 22, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hh0-8FYulCk

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

Ibn al-ʿArabī’s chapter on thankfulness begins with a poem highlighting the company of helpers; God is ‘intensely thankful’ for them in their plurality, as they feed people – as in the langar described in the Qurʾān with ‘Work! Family of David, with thankfulness.’ Thankfulness in the Qurʾān is immensely complex – starting with the Divine names which tell us that God is thankful, and intensely thankful. Ibn al-ʿArabī says that he himself was perplexed about the situation – until he received a vision, toward the end of his life, which clarified matters for him.

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

May 15th, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1k4vpX2qqRw

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

Ibn al-ʿArabī uses the imagery of splitting to show how the integrated whole generates separate entities, which then find another level of integration. ‘The womb is a dense ramification of the Supremely Compassionate.’ We look at Ibn al-ʿArabī’s metaphors of the splitting of the ears to hear the primordial Be; the splitting of the birth canal; the splitting of the Moon; the splitting of the heavens and the Earth; ‘women and men are split halves of each other’; and the split of the first clay body into separate ‘split halves of each other’ – Adam and Eve.

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

May 8th, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EX_FuNSXJ5k&t

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

The imagery and metaphor of the shadow play is extended to the mirror, to speaking, and to writing. Letters and bodies have different shapes in order to reproduce projections of immense variation. Ibn al-ʿArabī describes spectra of sex and species, with categories separated by membranes (barāzikh). No two letters, bodies, or beings are the same, and so there is no normal curve. We look at two verses from the Qurʾān which Ibn al-ʿArabī uses to explore the deep hurt of the masculine and the deep hurt of the feminine.

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

May 1st, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZH49w1oQaf4

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

We explore the hyperbolic plane (a subject of Escher’s art) as an illustration for Ibn al-ʿArabī’s description of truths which the intellect finds impossible, such as the six cases of Dhūʾl-Nūn – including ‘the outflow of the large volume to the small volume, without the large growing smaller or the small growing larger’.

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

April 24th, 2020

youtuber video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=E4kclf-1Ag8

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.

Ibn al-ʿArabī develops the metaphor and imagery of a cut out pattern placed over material (cloth for clothing, leather for sandals), focusing on the statement ‘You have in Messenger of God a beautiful exemplar.’ The uswat (exemplar) is a pattern – and also the one someone grieving takes as an example for being consoled; hence the quality of the Prophet (ṣ) as someone of great compassion and kindness. Ibn al-ʿArabī shows us that qualities such as ‘thankfulness’ are Divine names, and so when God sees His creature displaying thankfulness, God is loving His own quality and name.

Insights from (Muhyiddin) Ibn Arabi

with Dr. Eric Winkel

April 10th, 2020

youtube video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DcAy_fUvPZ0

For more on The Futuhat Project , please visit www.thefutuhat.com.