In this book, Mohamed Haj Yousef attempts to demonstrate that Ibn Arabi’s cosmological model can help unravel some paradoxes of modern physics. Yousef’s presentation is based on two main concepts from Ibn Arabi’s writings. The first concept is the model of monads, i.e., imaginal units that contain templates of all things existing in space-time. The monads are derivatives of the Single Monad, i.e., the Source of all created things. The second concept on which Yousef has based his presentation is the perpetual re-creation of all physical objects. According to this second concept, all created things cease to exist right after the instant of their creation, and then they are re-created again. This means that any perceived changes that we associate with the passing of time are an illusion because “there is no real motion in the sense that the object gradually leaves its position to a new one, but rather it is re-created in ever new positions so that we imagine it moving between these places. (Just like images on a tv screen where there is only a succession of different frames).”
Yousef claims that applying these two concepts makes it possible to explain the paradox of quantum entanglement that has been experimentally observed with photons and electrons. Here is Yousef’s explanation of quantum entanglement:
“Now if we take that theory of cosmic re-creation into account, we can simply say that the two entangled particles in these experiments, like any two entities in the world, never existed together at the same time. Rather, the Single Monad … causes this particle to exist; then this unique Single Monad itself wears other forms … until it comes to wear or create the form of the second particle. ... This process is instantaneous; no matter how far apart the two particles are, because only one particle really exists at a time, and during the interval between creating the two particles they were both out of existence, encountering no time.”
In the above explanation, Yousef telescopes the view from the perspective of the Single Monad onto an experiment performed in an earthly laboratory, and by doing that, he ignores the “70,000 veils” that separate the Divine from an earthly experimenter. Also, it seems that he has also forgotten his own observation that “We can therefore say that the photon of light, being the fastest in nature, does not undergo any re-creation.” This is contradiction because it is impossible to have two entangled photons “out of existence” without the process of “re-creation.”
Let’s put aside Yousef’s cosmological model and look closely at Ibn Arabi’s writings. It may help to understand the overall situation to realize that the purpose of Ibn Arabi’s writings was to agglomerate and elucidate medieval science within the framework of Islam. In other words, he used Koranic verses and Mohamed’s teaching to present a cosmological model that included astrology, astronomy, geometry, the science of letters, and Greek philosophy. And this was quite an extraordinary achievement. It summarized the state of science and metaphysics at that time, i.e., at the beginning of the 13th century. However, Ibn Arabi’s presentation of metaphysics was not quite complete. Namely, his Single Monad model lacked critical details about its more subtle structure that was needed to explain the nature of an interface between physical and imaginal. These details were implemented in developmental techniques made available only some 400 years later, and their implementation marked the beginning of the 2nd spiritual millennium. These techniques were nearly immediately projected in their allegorical and secular form into Western literature. It is these details of the Monad structure that are needed to resolve the challenges of today’s science. Only recently has such an approach of using the fine monadic structure to advance modern cosmology been described.
In summary, Yousef’s book helps to understand some aspects of Ibn Arabi’s cosmological model. At the same time, this book further underlines the magnitude of challenges that today’s physicists are faced with.
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