ABSTRACT
This existence that we know in practice, is not like the existence that we know by unveiling. The mind does not know it, and thinking does not recognize it, but remembrance (dhikr) will show it, while the secret will hide it from the minds that are veiled by habits: that is why they do not recognize what the secrets 1 understand. (Dîwân: 229) As with most cosmological hypotheses, past and present, testing Ibn ‘Arabî’s cosmological model and his understanding of time is not easy. Although a preliminary test is simply its ability to resolve some of the standard paradoxes surrounding time, as we shall shortly see below, more credible tests may not be very easy to perform, and incontrovertible tests may be inaccessible – since Ibn ‘Arabî frequently reiterates, beginning with the very Introduction to the Futûhât, that his most distinctive cosmological insights are ultimately based on forms of inspiration, ‘unveiling’, and divine knowledge that are beyond the level of the ordinary human intelligence.
