Section:
Some statements of Ibn Arabī that clarify what we have described of his doctrine, which most people may not understand.

In the chapter on Joseph—after likening the world’s relation to Allah to a person’s shadow, and contradicting himself in the analogy—he said:

“Everything you perceive is the existence of the Real in the entities of possible beings. In respect of the Real’s identity, it is His existence; in respect of the different forms within it, it is the entities of possible beings. Just as the diversity of forms does not deprive it of the designation ‘shadow,’ so the diversity of forms does not deprive it of the designation ‘world’ or ‘other than the Real.’ In respect of the oneness of its being a shadow, it is the Real, for He is the One, the Unique; in respect of the multiplicity of forms, it is the world. Pay careful attention and fully grasp what we have explained to you.

If matters are as I have described to you, then the world is imagined and has no real existence. This is the meaning of imagination: you are made to imagine that it is something additional, existing independently and outside true existence, whereas in reality it is not so. Do you not perceive it through the senses as joined to the person from whom it extends, unable to sever that connection? For a thing cannot be separated from its own essence. Know, then, your own entity, who you are, and what your identity is. What is your relation to the Real? In what respect are you the Real, and through it a knower, something other and different?”

And other expressions of this kind.