Time and the Timeless in Islamic thought
Have you ever wondered whether there is more to time than seconds ticking on a clock?
Most Muslims are aware that Islamic tradition speaks of the divine and the eternal, but few realize just how deeply classical Islamic philosophers and mystics explored the notion of realms existing beyond our ordinary sense of time.
These influential thinkers laid out sophisticated, nuanced visions of cosmic layers—some of which closely resemble what other traditions (like Gnostic Christianity) call an “Aeon.” Similar ideas also exist in Hinduism and Eastern traditions.
Some (prominent) examples include:
Al-Farabi
Ibn Sina (Avicenna)
Ibn ‘Arabi
Mulla Sadra
Al-Farabi, in his influential philosophical work On the Perfect State laid out the conceptual basis for a thriving, just and beautiful society guided by humanity’s Active Intellect in communion with heaven. In this work, Al-Farabi explained the concept of God’s emanations and the hierarchy of intellects this brought about.
His works, which influenced and were influenced by Neo-Aristotelian thought, influenced generations of Muslim thinkers especially from the 10th century onward. Maimonides, an prominent Jewish religious and political philosopher who lived in Muslim Spain and Egypt, read and incorporated Al-Farabi’s thinking in his own philosophical inquiries.
Ibn Sina, known in the West as Avicenna, developed in his treaties The Book of Healing the concept of diving time into three categories:
Zamān (physical time)
Sarmad (absolute eternity)
Dahr (Aeon)
One can see how our material world falls under the power of physical time, and that heaven is under absolutely eternity and therefore outside the concept of “time.” But our relation to the Dahr, which in English is often called “Aeon” from the Greek, is less clear cut.
As my attempt, a Dahr can be thought of as a: A broader meta-time that holds entire cosmic cycles, often associated with angelic or divine realms. In light of this, a Dahr can be understood to contain the perfect essence of something and is not influenced by the material world’s conception of time.
We can use Ibn Sina’s Dahr to help us understand mathematics at a deeper level. Think of the fraction 3/8 and read this explanation by Roger Penrose:
The idea of a fraction such as 3/8 is simply that it is some kind of an entity which has the property that, when added to itself 8 times in all, gives 3. The magic is that the idea of a fraction actually works despite the fact that we do not really directly experience things in the physical world that are exactly quantified by fractions – pieces of pie leadingly only to approximation.
The Road to Reality: A Complete Guide to the Laws of the Universe Wouldn’t math class be much more interesting if they taught patterns like this? More evocative and meaningful. I am moved by the insight that this fraction is never perfectly rendered in the physical/material world, but yet its pattern shows up without fail in mathematics.
The essence, perfection, and continuation of the pattern 3/8 is therefore held somewhere else. With the angels and with God :)
So why does this matter? Aside from a cool math example, the idea that the perfection or essence of something is held in a plane beyond our material plane of existence is one that shows up frequently in Muslim religious thought as well as those of other religions. Understanding this idea can help you deepen your religious literacy and and engage in richer inter-faith dialogue.