Reflections on ISAAC (AS)- Chapter 6 of Ibn ʿArabi’s Fusūs al-Ḥikam
IIsaac, peace be upon him, carries a wisdom that whispers, not shouts.Ibn ʿArabi calls his station: “The Wisdom of the Truth (al-Ḥikmah al-Ḥaqqiyyah) in the Word of Isaac.” But what kind of truth is t
When angels visit Sarah and Abraham with a message that overturns the natural order.
“Shall I give birth while I am an old woman…?” (Qur’an 11:72)
“Do you marvel at God’s command?” (11:73)
Ibn ʿArabi reads this not as joy, but as a sign that Divine mercy enters where human expectation ends. Where the mind halts, the Real continues.
Isaac is the mirror of al-Ḥaqq — The Real, The Absolute. He does not bear divine truth through struggle or warning, but through presence, truth that simply is, quiet, unwavering, and whole.
He is a prophet of stillness, a sign that truth does not need to assert itself to be sovereign.
Isaac teaches us how to behold the Real without trying to possess it.
In one of the most luminous passages, Ibn ʿArabi writes:
“If you say, ‘This is God,’ you speak the truth. But when you affirm anything else,
you have begun to interpret.”
Everything we see is a form of the Divine, but our reason resists what the heart already knows.
True seeing, Ibn ʿArabi says, is not through logic, image, or symbol, but through direct unveiling (kashf), when the veils fall and the Real is witnessed without distance.
Ibn Arabi quotes Abu Yazid al-Bastami:
“If the Divine Throne were placed 100 million times in one corner of a believer’s heart, the heart would not even feel it.”
Why?
Because the heart is not spatial, it is made to reflect what has no limit.
And Ibn ʿArabi adds:
Even if all of existence, every form, every name, every possibility, were gathered in a corner of the believer’s essence, the heart would still remain vast enough to contain it.
For it is said: the heart contains God.
Isaac’s gift is not proclamation, but perception. He reminds us that the Real does not always arrive with force; sometimes, it arrives as silence in the moment when the soul surrenders its reasoning.
The deeper truth does not demand to be seen. It invites us to become still enough to recognize it when it passes through.
With love,
Farrah