ABSTRACT
The fundamental degrees of Being can be divided into five planes of manifestation called the Universal Worlds. The five Presences are the books of God, which represent stationary degrees in existence while divine words refer to the manifestations within those degrees. These include: The first Presence is the Permanent Archetypes, the second is the world of spirits or immaterial intellects, the third the Imaginal World, the fourth the material world, and the fifth, the reality of the Perfect Human. The Perfect Human, a focal point in Ibn al-‘Arabi’s doctrine, is the final divine Presence. The Perfect Human exists in the Arc of Descent, which is man’s original state of pure potentiality and the Arc of Ascent, his final actualized state. The Perfect Human is one who actualizes the divine names latent within the human spirit, or specifically the human heart, which is the sovereign in relation to the rest of the body.
