Most of these introductory articles are exracted from Volume I of the Single Monad Model of the Cosmos: Ibn al-Arabi's View of Time and Creation... more on this can be found here.
World Formula and the Kaaba
This “splitting” of the homogeneous dimensions of space into orthogonal arrows of time is referred to as the splitting of the seven heavens, or skies, from (the seven) earth(s), which produced the seven days of the week, that are the six spatial and one temporal directions, which together form the local space-time geometry. This same theory of creation can be found, with numerous variations, in most religions and ancient civilizations, but it is most complete and well preserved in Islamic texts, though it is greatly abbreviated in many short and interconnected Quranic verses and related prophetic narrations. Nevertheless, many Muslim sages and philosophers have frequently elaborated on these inspiring accounts in their innumerable books and other mystical discourses, and the purpose of this book series is to renovate these dispersed illuminations into precise model of cosmology with comprehensive theory of complex-time geometry.
The splitting of heavens and earth is breaking the otherwise perfectly symmetrical sphere, of infinite and homogeneous space, into two hemispheres containing the universe and anti-universe pairs, or the physical and psychical realms, so each part has a natural tendency to re-unite again into the initial harmony. This love, or passion, for unification is the most fundamental cause of motion, that we call the “Principle of Love”. All parallel particles are naturally “seeking” each other. In trying to overcome the barriers and obstacles, they are continuously and sequentially annihilating into their original unity that forms the homogeneous flat space, and separating back again into opposite arrows of time, at every instance of time.
If it were only for these two super-symmetrical pair of physical and psychical worlds, they would remain in their eternal unity, with which there would be no further motion, and no time, but only abstract homogeneous space, like what happens in the state of terminal death, or relatively in deep sleep, and even at the time of rest, when one is isolated in a calm place and doing “nothing”. That’s why this state is often desirable and required, but then here it comes the role of the spiritual world, which acts from one higher dimension that make the level of hyper-symmetry, which mirrors the previous two levels together, such that: X=1/X^2, so we can write the complete “world formula” as:
X^3=1 (1)
From this simple cubic equation, that describes the whole world as well as every single space-time point in it, we can deduce the laws of super and hyper symmetry, including the Lorentzian invariance of Relativity. In Islamic cosmology, this “trinitarian world”, composed of the spiritual, psychical and physical worlds, is represented by the Kaaba, as illustrated in Figure VI.2 of Volume II.
Without the spiritual world, all motions will stop instantly, because the physical and psychical worlds would annihilate and remain in this state of vacuum or absolute rest. The spirit is exciting this ground state of vacuum by inducing the “personal desire” for further motion, in order to achieve certain goals that may not be in the immediate reach. This personal desire is what we call “free will”, but it can be generalized, with relative contexts, to all animate and inanimate beings, and it is directly related to consciousness, as we shall explain in Chapter III.
Therefore, whereas the physical and psychical worlds have the natural tendency to unite, as they are doing at every instance of time, the spiritual world is breaking their super-symmetry by causing the individual entities to move further according to their own –relative– free will, though it is significantly constrained by the surrounding environment. As a result, although everything is returning to rest at every instance of time, motions continue because of the conflicts between the various opposing desires of individual entities. In more scientific terms, due to the hyper-symmetry of complex-time geometry in the spiritual world, free will is the ability to control the collapse of wave-function into a specific state, whereas this collapsing is completely nondeterministic in super-symmetry.
In contrast with the previous description of super and hyper symmetries, the ultimate symmetry of the absolute oneness of God does not act from any higher level of space, but from within all these levels of creation. This is represented by number “one” in the previous world formula X^3=1, which means that God exists everywhere within all entities, but without any reference to spatial dimensions, as we shall explain further in Chapter IV. The existence of God is always manifested in every individual entity of creation, and that is because this number “one” in the previous formula is the dimension of time, which exists only as one single indivisible instance, at a time, whereas the three dimensions of space are composed from the recurrence of these complex-time instances.