Journal of Religion and Health, Vol. 40, No.

2, Summer 2001 ( 2001)

The Creative Imagination of the Sufi Mystic, Ibn Arabi

FREDRICA R. HALLIGAN
ABSTRACT: The 12th 13th century mystic, Ibn Arabi, was known as the Greatest Master among the Sufis. His insights into dreams, visions and prophetic processes may prove enlightening to our own more secular age. The findings of Carl Jung parallel some of the revelations of the mystic, but Ibn Arabi goes farther than Jung into the Active Imagination as both conscious willedand spontaneous, autonomous process. Through surrender and annihilation in the Divine, the mystic opens himself to receive theophanies, resulting in a life lived perpetually in awareness of Divine Presence. Union with the Divine is the aim of the mystic and Ibn Arabi shows us a detailed account of how that life is experienced. KEY WORDS: mysticism; Sufism; Jung; Islam.

My heart has become capable of every form: it is a pasture for gazelles and a convent for Christian monks, And a temple for idols and the pilgrims Kaba and the tables of the Tora and the book of the Quran. I follow the religion of Love: whatever way Loves camels take, that is my religion and my faith. (Ibn Arabi, cited in Mercer, 1996, p. i)

A vast body of scholarly discourse has been written about Ibn Arabi (1165 1240 C.E.), an important and complex Sufi mystic. This paper endeavors to take the flavor of Ibn Arabis thought and experience, making it accessible to the Western non-Islamic spiritual seeker. Coming to this research as a depth psychologist interested in spiritual issues, I write for the benefit of other psychologists, pastoral counselors and the lay public, who may not have the time to delve deeply into a tradition other than their own.1

Fredrica R. Halligan, Ph.D., is a clinical psychologist, who teaches psychology, religion and pastoral counseling at Fordham University, Blanton Peale Institute, and other training programs in the New York area. She has a consulting practice in Stamford, CT. 275
2001 Blanton-Peale Institute