Disclaimer:
These writings are personal reflections, not religious instruction or authoritative teaching. They are shared only in the spirit of learning and seeking. Any benefit is from Allah, and any mistake is my own..
🌌 1. Death as a Veil Lifted — Not an End
For Ibn ʿArabi, death is not the opposite of life — it is the disappearance of one form so that Life can reveal another.
“Death is the unveiling of the face of the Beloved.”
He teaches that existence is one and continuous.
The form changes — the clay returns to the earth, the breath returns to the Spirit — but what is truly alive never dies.
The Qur’an says:
“Think not of those who are slain in the path of God as dead.
Nay, they live, finding sustenance in the Presence of their Lord.”
(3:169)
To Ibn ʿArabi, every soul is “slain” in this path — not by a sword, but by Love.
Death is the final fanaʾ, the final self-effacement, when all illusion of separateness dissolves into Unity.
🌙 2. “Whoever Knows Himself Knows His Lord”
This famous saying — which Ibn ʿArabi often repeats — is the key to understanding death.
If you have realized your essence as Spirit,
then physical death reveals nothing new — it only removes what veiled the Truth.
He writes in the Futuhat al-Makkiyya:
“When the knower dies, he simply moves from seeing the Real through a mirror to seeing Him face to face.”
For such a person, death is not departure — it is arrival.
The fear of death comes only to those who still identify with the body and its temporary story.
💠 3. The Two Deaths
Ibn ʿArabi distinguishes between two kinds of death:
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The voluntary death (al-mawt al-iradi) — when you die to your ego, desires, and illusions before the body perishes.
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The natural death (al-mawt al-tabi‘i) — when the body itself returns to dust.
He says:
“Die before you die, so that when death comes, it finds nothing to take from you.”
This is the meaning of the Prophet’s ﷺ saying:
“Die before you die.”
If you have already surrendered your “I,” then death has no sting — only sweetness, as the lover meeting the Beloved.
🌿 4. The Body as a Garment
For Ibn ʿArabi, the body is a divine robe — woven from the elements, worn for a time, and returned to the earth when its purpose is complete.
The Spirit never ceases; it merely dons another form according to the Divine Wisdom.
He likens death to the sun setting in one horizon and rising in another.
To those on the western shore, it appears gone — but on another world, dawn has begun.
“The world of spirits is the world of permanence;
forms perish, but meanings endure.”
🌺 5. The Meeting in the Barzakh
Between this life and the next lies the barzakh — the isthmus or interval between two oceans of being.
Ibn ʿArabi calls it the imaginal realm (ʿalam al-mithal), the world where forms of meaning appear.
It is not “heaven or hell” in the ordinary sense,
but a mirror of consciousness — each soul beholds what it has formed inwardly during life.
“In the barzakh, every soul tastes what it has sown of its own imagination.”
The pure heart sees Light,
the troubled heart sees its own shadows.
Each vision is a mercy — a chance for the soul to recognize itself.
🔥 6. Hell and Heaven as States of Awareness
For Ibn ʿArabi, the ultimate mercy of God extends even into what we call Hell.
No being is eternally cut off from the Divine Presence;
even punishment is a form of purification and eventual return.
He writes:
“The Fire is God’s mercy disguised,
for through it, the veils are burned and the soul is made pure.”
Heaven and Hell are states of consciousness,
reflecting whether one perceives the Divine Light with love or with resistance.
But in the end, all return to Him,
for there is nowhere else to go — and no “else” to go to.
🌤️ 7. The Resurrection as Realization
On the Day of Resurrection, says Ibn ʿArabi,
the world does not “end” — it is transfigured.
Every hidden truth becomes manifest, every soul sees its own essence clearly.
“The Resurrection is the unveiling of the Real within the mirror of creation.”
For the awakened, this unveiling has already begun here and now.
Each time the heart awakens from heedlessness, a small resurrection occurs.
He writes:
“Every dawn is a resurrection;
every breath, a return to the One.”
🌸 8. The Eternal Return to the One
Ultimately, death is not a journey away — it is a return inward.
From multiplicity to unity,
from form to formlessness,
from the story of “I” to the silence of “He.”
“All things return to Him,
for they never truly departed.”
For Ibn ʿArabi, this is not poetry — it is reality.
You have never been other than the Divine Self expressing Itself through the face called “you.”
Death simply erases the name so the Face may shine more purely.
🌈 9. The Joy of Meeting
In his writings, Ibn ʿArabi often speaks of the Meeting (liqā’ Allah) — the moment of direct beholding of the Real without veils.
For the lover, this is not dreadful, but bliss beyond all comparison.
“The lover dies with a smile,
for he is going to none other than the One he has always loved.”
This is the mi‘raj (ascension) of every soul —
the return to the Source,
the merging of the drop with the ocean.
🌹 10. In Simpler Words
To live wisely is to die before dying.
To die consciously is to awaken into eternal life.
For there is only one Life —
the Life of God moving through all beings,
appearing as birth and death,
but in truth, never ceasing.
“From Him we come, to Him we return —
yet we have never been apart.”
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