5th Asia Pacific Conference on Philosophy of Science , Seoul ( 25-26 August 2015) –final draft

Sufi and Quantum Knowledge : Some convergence

By

Shahidan Radiman

School of Applied Physics

Fac. Of Science and Technology

UKM Bangi 43600 , Selangor DE

Malaysia

“The problem of the continuum or the issue of the emergence of spacetime and geometry remains open. We cannot but agree with Huggett and Wutrich on the need to perform philosophical investigations in parallel with the formal development of the theory , rather than arrive on the stage after the show has taken place , only to elaborate on it , while theoretical physicists are then struggling with preparing a new one “

– Daniele Oriti , Albert Einstein Institute, 2013.

Introduction

According to Ibn Arabi there is no goal beyond knowledge as citedin his Futuhat al Makiyya ““There is no level more eminent(ashraf) than the level of knowledge”(III 448.7). He also statedthat “ There is no blessing (ni’mah) greater than the blessing ofknowledge , even though God’s blessings cannot be counted”(II620.9). In fact he defined knowledge as “ knowledge is simplythe perception (idrak) of the essence (dhat) of the sought object(matlub) as it is in itself , whether it be an existence or a nonexistence, a negation or an affirmation ; an impossibility , apermissibility or a necessity” (IV.315.11). Of course for IbnArabi and in fact all Sufis and all Muslims , the object ofknowledge is God Himself as stated by Ibn Arabi “ Human beings

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have no eminence save their knowledge of God. As for theirknowledge of other than God this is a diversion (ulala) throughwhich veiled human beings diverted themselves. The right thinkingman (al munsif) has no aspiration save toward knowledge of “ (IV129.5).

In the Islamic tradition the Learned (ulama’) are the “heirs ofthe Prophets” (according to the sayings (hadith) of Muhammads.a.w) - they are referred to in another hadith (narrated by AlBaihaqi) as the Just (‘udul) and their duties are outlined as :

“this knowledge will be held in every generation by those who arejust and they shall protect it against the falsification of theextremists (tahrif al galin) , the fabrications of the deceivers(intihal al-mubtilin) and the misinterpretations of the ignorant(ta’wil al-jahilin)” .

Al Attas (1) once wrote that “ Science and philosophy ( i.ehikmah as contrasted with falsafah) have always found coherentexpression within a basic metaphysical structure formulatedaccording to the tradition of Sufism and founded upon theauthority of revealation, Tradition , sound reason , experienceand intuition “. It is for this reason that we discuss in thispaper some aspect of Sufism with some philosophy derived fromquantum mechanics and their correlations , so that this willbring coherent knowledge (not necessarily metaphysical) forfurther exploration of new and definitive ideas e.g causality andcausal sets , atoms of space-time and emergent time et cetera.

Rationale for the points raised in this paper : First , in thespirit of the continuation of the Kalam Jadid (New IntellectualDiscourse) as originated by Al-Ghazali and Fakkr al Din Al-Razi,that is philosophising in the domain of Islamic knowledge in thiscase specifically on some aspect of Sufi knowledge. Manyresearchers and the general public thought that philosophy isdead under the handwriting of Al-Ghazali especially with the

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publication of Tahafut al-Falasifah (The Incoherence of thePhilosophers) , but Afifi al-Akiti in his Phd work (Oxford Univ.2008) found that ( as mentioned by Langermann (2)) : Afifi al-Akiti detects , uncovers and displays three level of writings inal-Ghazali’s approach to falsafa (Hellenistic philosophy)particularly as formulated for the Muslim public by Ibn Sina. Hepresents this philosophy as ugly in his Maqasid (Intentions ofthe Philosophers) : it appears ugly because he includes withoutcomment teachings that are clearly unacceptable. However,in hisTahafut (Incoherence of the Philosophers) this same philosophy ispresented as merely bad : specific faults are identified andcriticised. Finally in the corpus of text known as the Madnun(restricted) , philosophy is seen to be good ; soundphilosophical doctrines are exploited in order to formulate keyMuslim beliefs.”

Secondly, there are similarities between positivistic QuantumMechanics with aspects of nature as first proposed by Ibn Rushd(who embattled Al-Ghazali in the great debate on causality ). IbnRushd alludes that knowledge based on nature must be “fixed”- itmust always be the case that nature cause a proper effect by thevery definition of “nature”. He insists that miracle are not evensomething we can rationally discuss. Supernatural events, as thevery name implies , are beyond any knowledge we have of nature ,and therefore are not properly to be included in any discussionof causality or philosophy in general. This view was unacceptableto al-Ghazali since supernatural events are observed by humanbeings too and must be incorporated into the same corpus of“knowledge” and Reality of the observer. After all things orevents that are “supernatural” could be due to lack of knowledgeand information about the events and its cause and effects. This,in modern times is reflected in many surprises and paradoxesfound in Quantum Mechanics. In fact al-Ghazali imself raises thequestion of why miracles do not prevent our knowledge of theempirical world , admitting that if they did , a man who left a

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book in his home would have to say “I do not know what is in thehouse now , an the extent of what I know is only that I left abook in the house , and perhaps now it is a horse “.

We will see that there are two different standpoints here whichare at odd ( a similar situation can happen in QuantumInterpretation) : For al-Ghazali , the habit of knowing broughtabout by experience is not knowledge of what is necessary ; onlya knowledge produced by God (in human) is certain ( this is atypical Sufi view). For Ibn Rushd , the situation is preciselyreversed: if God creates a knowledge in us , that knowledge isproperly designed as knowledge only if it corresponds to a realnature ( this is basically the positivistic quantum mechanicalview of Bohr).

In fact for al-Ghazali revelation or prophesy ( as shown by Quranand life of Prophet Muhammad s.a.w) is the paradigmatic form ofknowledge for humans. His goal in the Tahafut ( see Adamson (3))is not to show the “incoherence” of the philosphers , if this istaken to mean that all of philosopy is incoherent . His goal israther to show that philosophy must be subsumed within anintellectual enterprise which includes revelation and furtherthat revelation must be regarded as the most superior kind ofknowledge. Adamson further remarked that “ The Al-Ghazali of theTahafut should be classed not with the anti-rationalists but withthose concerned to keep philosopy in its proper place , foranalogous position in medieval Europe happen with St. ThomasAquinas. “

In fact in Question 12 of the Prima Pars, Thomas Aquinas argues that human reason by itself is unable to know God , so that humans require the supernatural assistance of grace to achieve their perfection.

Since the time of Al-Ghazali and later Fakhr al Din al-Razi themovement of new Kalam (Kalam Jadid or New Intellectual discourse)

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had begun into transforming the old Mutakallimun school. In thisparadigm shift in Islamic knowledge Adia Setia (4) wrote “ Notonly were Kalam and Falsafah fused together in this long processof intellectual appropriation and naturalization (of Hellenisticsciences) but that all four mainly mutually autonomousintellectual systems namely Kalam, Falsafah , Usul al-Fiqh andTasawwuf were fused together into a single, enlarged moreencompassing and self-consciously integrative orthodoxy whichthereby , thoroughly embedded all the intellectual or discursivesciences (aqliyyat) into the firm ambit of divine revelation andprophetic tradition (naqliyyat/sam’iyyat). “

Further he wrote:

The new Kalam ( Kalam Jadid or new dialectics) intellectualmovement started by Al-Ghazali and matured by Fakhr al-Din alRazi succeeded in putting all the Hellenising philosophical andnatural sciences within the theological and epistemological ambitof tradition. This historical success provides pertinent lessonsfor Muslim scholars and intellectuals today to formulate what canbe called a kalam al-‘asr or the Dialectic of the Age, in orderto bring tradition to engage creatively and evaluatively with thechallenge and allure of contemporary westernising sciences.

So this paper is in the same spirit of comparing and laterattempting to fuse the knowledge of Sufism (strongly naqliyyat)with that of modern views or findings in Quantum Mechanics(strongly aqliyyat) into a knowledge that will lead toexploration and guided endeavor for more beneficial knowledgeguided by religious duties and humane purposes. This tradition offusion of knowledge has been the key aspect of Kalam Jadid whichstarted from harmonizing and later fusing Kalam theology withSufi metaphysics and ontology which we think is possible tocontinue into modern quantum physics. After all there arecurrently already many other “fusions” that QM has undergone in

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the modern sciences stretching from social, economic and evenpsychological sciences (Haven and Krennikov (5) )

Knowledge in Sufism and quantum physics

Knowledge that is useful stays and comes from the heart. This canbe schematically described in the table below , for Moses a.ssays “ open up my breast “ (Q.S 20:25) and Prophet Muhammads.a.w (in a tradition) made the supplication “ O God, increase myknowledge” :

Division ofthe heart

Light fromGod

Manifestation

Enemy ofknowledge

Maqam(station)of thebeliever

sadr Nur al –Islam(light ofIslam)

Syariah( Islamiclaws) – ilmal masmu’

Ammarahdesire

Muslim

qalb Nur al-iman(light offaith)

Ilm alnafi’ orusual alilm

Mulhamahdesire

Mukmin

fuad Nur almakrifah(light ofunderstanding)

Ru’yah( seeing)

Lawwamahdesire

Arif(knower)

lubb Nur altawhid( light ofOneness) ornur al-tafrid

Tajalli(theophany)

Mutmainnahdesire

Muwahhid

For the Sufi, the genuinely worthwhile knowledge comes only byway of bestowal (wahb) and witnessing (musyahadah) –its is notsomething that can be acquired by thinking or reading books, but

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it can be started by contemplating the holy book (Quran). “True”knowledge is not acquired (husuli ) but rather presential(hudhuri) so that the “knower and the known becomes one”. Thisis the idea of “huruf” (alphabet) becomes one with the “ayat”(sentence) in Ibn Arabi view of the Universe being built from“huruf” which represents the Names of God.

Current trends in quantum physics tend to push the boundary ofresearch towards “information based “ principles i.e “hurufiah”(alphabetic) in their modes : holographic principles, entropicquantum gravity, causal set-based and topos –based physics .

Ibn Arabi - The Great Master in Sufism has been compared withmany philosophers. A brief list is given now:

Ibn Arabi andKierkegard

M Hasan Askari “ Ibn Arabi andKierkegaard ( A study in Method andReasoning)

Ibn Arabi and Whitehead Recep Alpyagil “Trying to understandWhitehead in the context of Ibn Arabi”

Ibn Arabi and MeisterEckart

Book1 : Logos and Revealation : IbnArabi and Meister Eckart and MysticalHermeneutics by R.J Dobie , TheCatholic Univ. of America Press (2009)Book2 : Oath to Transcendence accordingto Shankara , Ibn Arabi and M.Eckart byReza Shah Kazemi , Bloomington WorldWisdom (2006)

Ibn Arabi and Derrida Book 1: Sufism and deconstruction : acomparative study of Derrida and IbnArabi by Ian Almond , Routledge 2009.

Ibn Arabi and Modernthoughts

Book : Ibn Arabi and Modern thoughts byPeter Coates , Anqa Pub (2002)

Ibn Arabi andWittgenstein

Ibrahim Kalin “ Ibn Arabi andWittgenstein on the limit ofphilosophy” – Daily Sabah Nov. 1, 2014

David Bohm and IbnArabi

Kyle J Shuebrook : Science and Sufism :a discussion of David Bohm and Ibn

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Arabi – Islamic Mysticism Term Paper(Temple University)

Ibn Arabi and MullaSadra

Ibrahim Kalin : Ibn Arabi and MullaSadra – from temporal time to eternalnow , J. of Religious Thought , ShirazUniv no.10 (2006)

Ibn Arabi and Cosmology Book: Ibn Arabi , Time and Cosmology byM. Haj Yousef , Routledge (2011)

In fact there is the Ibn Arabi Society founded in Oxford andwhich held yearly meetings and published the Ibn Arabi Sufijournals. An important research program would then be to relateSufi understanding of knowledge and concepts with those recentlyfound in Quantum Physics e.g decoherence, entanglement etc withthe corresponding principle in quantum field theory exemplifiedby holographic principle etc.

On Reality

Ultimate Reality is the aim and end of Sufism and that Reality ,being Absolute is by definition altogether independent of therelative and not subject to anything in any way. One mode ofbeing subject to something is to be accessible to it orattainable by it. The relative has, in itself no means whatsoeverof reaching the Absolute. In other words it would be in vain forman simply to decide of himself to approach Ultimate Reality witha view to attainment. The Absolute must first as it were hold outa hand or throw out a life-line. It must offer a power fromitself , for the means of approach , in order to prevail , musthave something of the Absolute about it. It must be no less thana loan from the Absolute and that loan is precisely what is meantby Revealation , whatever form it may take (Lings (6))

In fact Lings (6) emphasized about the “survival of Islam” onthis sense of Ultimate Reality that Sufism defends by noting that“Islam has stood the test of time and to do so –or even , we

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might say , to survive – a way of worship must be capable ofappealing to the wisest and deepest elements in the collectivitywhich practices it , capable of enlisting those souls which aremost imbued with a sense of Ultimate Reality . For this it musthave the dimension of mysticism and if Sufism is not Islam’smystical dimension , what is? Without Sufism , Islam would be astrange anomaly. “

This question about ultimate reality can be understood fromallusions by various Sufis for e.g Abu Yazid Bistami (x) said “Ifa single atom of the Prophet (Muhammad) were to manifest itselfto creation , naught that is beneath the Throne could endure it”.Similarly , al Hallaj (x) said about Prophet Muhammad s.a.w that“he is the first in Union (with God) and that all sciences are asa drop from his ocean and all wisdoms as a sip from his river “.So, this union is a kind of observer-and – the observed union inthe Universe as exemplified by several quantum viewpoints. Inmany ways , this is also compatible with the cosmologicalAnthropic Principles since from Islam and Sufi viewpoint Godcreated the Universe for man and man is the Viceregent of God inthis Universe.

On the origin of time and causality

This is a very important topics discussed by al-Ghazali in hisTahafut Al Falasifah . Being one of the leading masters of Sufismand Kalam ( following the Assharite school) , al-Ghazali proposedoccasionalism to explain causality. He did not discussed directlyabout time but we can say that one of Sufism basic principle isto be the “son of time” = ibn waqt , meaning the now is of utmostimportant. Let us put it in a clearer modern relevance of thisview. The block universe view is not compatible with Sufism , forit is not dynamic . Even though Sufis undergoing “unveiling” cantravel back and forth in time (like in the block universe wherepast, present and the future are of equal status) , takingdynamism into context we will see that the “passage view of time”

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= becoming , becomes much more relevant and compatible with the“stages paradigm” of Eakins and Jaroszkiewicz (7) who uses Haasediagrams to show this dynamism of the causal sets. Splitting andparallel universes are also not strange to Sufis since theirinner self can also split into finite forms travelling into otherdimensions or Universes (this is the essence of the soulexemplified by the experience of the first well-known sober Sufinamed Junaid al Bagdhadi , which reminds us of some sort ofparallel universe ramifications.

Among quantum physicists we also have a great debate that betweenOperationalists (or positivists) and Realists as summarized byWiseman (8) below which basically reflects the “two” Bell’stheorem which says that quantum phenomena rule out at least oneof :

Bell (1964) -Operationalists Bell (1976) -RealistsMacroreality MacrorealitySpace-time SpacetimeArrow of time Arrow of timeFree choice Free choiceRelativistic causality Relativistic causalityCausal efficacy (very vague) Common causeDeterminism

Summarising the implications of this is the following (assuming 4axioms- which will not be discussed here):

CausalPrinciples

Commoncause

Causalefficacy

Manifestcausalefficacy

Relativistic Causality

Localcausality

Locality Signallocality

Classicalphysics

Yes Yes Yes

EPR 1935 Orthodox QM No Yes YesBell’s Any quantum No Yes Yes

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theorem1976

theory

Bell’stheorem1964

Any quantumtheorywhereoutcomesarepredetermined

No No Yes

Masanes,Acin andGisin 2006

Any quantumtheorywhereoutcomesarepredictableinprinciple

No No No (inprinciple)

The atoms of the Kalam cosmologists

Fay Dowker (9) once wrote “ there is a long-standing andpersistent disagreement between those –let us call them“Blockheads” –who claim that our sense-experience of the passageof time can be adequately accounted for within a theory in whichthe physical world is a spacetime Block , and those who contendthat there is something essential about our sense-experiencewhich corresponds to nothing to be found within such a Blockuniverse picture” . These other guys are causal set people –whosehypothesis is that spacetime is fundamentally granular or atomicat the Planckscale and this atomicity opens the door to newdynamical possibilities for spacetime and hence , to a newperspective on the dichotomy of Being and Becoming. It is not toofar off to say that the atom of the Kalam cosmologists might aswell be the spacetime atom itself for they contend that it is“jawhar” and not “ a’rad” and that everything depends on it.However, since spacetime itself is the atom, quantizing it means

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it must be background dependent. Secondly, everything else isembedded in it , meaning that it must be of higher dimensionsthan 4.

The spacetime atom at the Planckscale are fluctuations with thesame magnitudes as the background metric so that smooth spacetimemanifold of classical physics breaks down into quantum foam ofvirtual gravitational bubbles or “extendons” or p-branes.Physical spacetime emerges from a mapping of p-cells into atarget manifold . Thus the role of “time” in such mapping isplayed by the proper volume distance between two extremalconfigurations of the world history of the p-brane (T Eguchi(10)).

A new type of Occasionalisme

Peter Adamson (3) wrote “ few passages in Arabic philosophy haveattracted as much attention as Al-Ghazali’s discussion ofcausality in the 17th discussion of Tahafut Al-Falasifa , alongwith the response of Ibn Rush in his Tafafut al-Tahafut. Aquestion that is typically tried to be address was to what extental –Ghazali can be called an occasionalist : whether he strictlyfollow other Kalam thinkers in restricting causal agency sole toGod? It was clear that the difference between the two thinkerswas that for Ibn Rushd , the paradigm of human knowledge isdemonstrative science – much like the positivist quantumphysicist like Bohr who do not talk about what cannot be measured, whereas for Al-Ghazali , the paradigm of human knowledge mustinclude God’s revealation. It’s easy to see that the contentionbetween the two thinkers can easily be resolved if by“revelation” it could be the Sufi version of Quran takwini( God’s creation) and Quran tadwini ( God’s message through theprophets). However , here we are going to resolve by invoking theDivine template , a well- known and accepted principle in Islamicfaith. For according to Quran takwini , the phenomenal world isthe world of cause and effect , whereas in Quran tadwini , God’s

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theophany is manifested not only Muslims believe that the Quranis the ever-living miracle , but its contents too, detailedmiracles performed by many messengers of God (prophets).

Wiitgenstein , during his early years was a positivist too ,where he said famously “ whereof one cannot speak , thereof onemust be silent”. So, if logical positivism cannot make sense oflove or faith or miracles , philosophy must not say anythingabout it – an attitude also taken by Ibn Rushd. Later of course,Wittgenstein began to work with ambiguities, familyresemblances , language games and the mysteries of the ineffable.His new outlook liberated philosophical thinking from theshackels of atomism and reduction. In almost similar but notexactly the same way, Al Ghazali , being initially a philosopherhimself , developed a broader view on matters that cannot bearticulated with demonstrative reasoning alone – and he saw logicand language as part of a larger reality that need to be graspedwith different epistemological tools. This was his approach tounderstanding causality . Al-Ghazali’s view on causality morethan just refute the philosophical view of Aristotle , Ibn Sinaand Ibn Rushd on causality also did so in response to theMuktazilite rationalism which led among other things, a denial ofthe reality of Divine Attributes with the consequence that Godwas viewed more as a philosophical concept than a Reality who isthe fountainhead of revealed religion.

Osman Bakar (11) once wrote “ The particularity of Kalamtheological perspective stems from the fact that out of so manyDivine Names and Qualities , it chose to concentrate on just oneof them for the purpose of constructing a religious world view.Kalam seek to depict the unlimitedness of Omnipotence almost tothe point of ignoring all other Divine Qualities. Theoverwhelming motive for God’s action to th Ashaarite theologiansis “what He wills” and “ because He wills’. The Quran says “ Heis busy at every instant “. Applied to God’s activity in nature ,

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this perspective give rise to an important idea known asOccasionalism which has been defined as the belief in theexclusive efficacy of God, of whose direct intervention theevents in nature are regarded as the overt manifestation oroccasion. Occasionalism implies that all things and all events innature are substantially discontinuous by nature. The Universe isa domain of separate concrete entities which are independent ofeach other. There is no connection whatsoever between them, savethrough the Divine Will ( which is autonomous with the Divinetemplate – see discussion below). Atomism is therefore a directconsequence of this principle of substantial discontinuity ofthings. Since space and time at the fundamental level arediscrete , they are the atom that Kalam seek or causal set in thelanguage of modern quantum theory. Atomism was taken seriously bythe Mutakallimun because it was inseparable with their theology ,so much so that in Ashaarite kalam, its doctrinal status wastransformed by al-Baqillani and others to being an essentialpart of the Islamic creed.

It is suprising that the great debate on causality between Al-Ghazali ( who wrote the Tahafut Al-Falasifa) and Ibn Rushd (whowrote back a backlash Tahafut Al-Tahafut) does not touch ormention at all the role of the Divine Template (Lawh Mahfuz) ,when the believe in its existence is an article of faith ( thereare 6 article of faith in Islam). The Divine Template is in manyways “Anthropic” for in it are “written what is the future” andfate of all human beings ( so this is a kind of Block Universe).In this template the logic of action is that of God, for only Godknows its content and in this sense “all cause if God as thefirst and final cause” in line with the Occasionalisme of Al-Ghazali. However, the role of Divine Template will make theOccasionalisme of Al-Ghazali more scientific – this is a new viewon Al-Ghazali’s occasionalisme : first , annihilation andcreation operations can be operated via this template since itsaction is directly with the Universe (see fig.1 below ) just like

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annihilation and creation operators acting on a wavefunction inQM. There is an aspect of ontic-epistemic role here, fordepending on the observer or thinker , one might say that theDivine Tempate is ontic in the sense that everything, everyinformation about anything in the universe is there , but theepistemic part is that not all human beings (except prophetsperhaps) has the knowledge about its content. So, we can concludethat different people will have a different “sense” of the degreeof causality of events as being caused by God. Those who knewmore about the Divine Template or has stronger believe in Godwill obviously says that God is the total cause and it’s theother way round for those who has lesser believe in the role ofGod. The Asharite kalam scholars proposes that God is the solecause of all things and of all events negating the role ofsecondary causes in nature- so this refer to ontic stand andstrong belief.

Asharite kalam state that there is no connection between onemoment of the atomized space-time –matter existence and the next.This is shown as discrete operations between the Universe (intime slices) with the Divine Template (see fig.1). This discreteversion of space-time corresponds to recent modern thought oncausal sets and its dynamics via Haase diagram or connectivitydiagrams.

Creation and annihilation operators acting at

every instant

Time flow (whether in a block-universe or otherwise)

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Divine Template

Fig.1 Interactions of the Universe with the Divine Templategiving a time-flow picture (arrow of time) with no obviouscausality diagram.

From the interaction between the Divine Template with theUniverse as continuous operations, in this way time can beconsidered as “emergent” , in the same way that causal setcosmologist and most quantum gravitationist think. In fact thereis some modern proposals to say that matter itself is emergentfrom emergent space-time.

It is suprising that after the last of the great Asharitecosmologists of Al-Ghazali and Fakhruddin al Razi no Muslimphilosophers or scientists proposed the discrete nature ofspace-time until the modern birth of Loop Quantum Gravity andmost recently causal set theory. The modern onslaught onMuktazilism by Dr. Yasir Qadhi for e.g is more of a reaction todefend Islam against Muktazilite rationalism which leads todenial of the reality of Divine Attributes with the consequencethat God was viewed more as an abstract Being than as a Realitywho is the fountainhead and basis of revealed religion. It’sabout time that more younger Muslim scientists embarked ondiscrete space-time studies starting at the Planckscale and makethis fundamental research a continuation of the Asharitetheological tradition.

Quantum gravitationists do believe in emergent space and time butnow there is a theory which says that matter is emergent fromspace and time as well . This means that space and time andmatter are all “nothingness” and what we perceived as real wasbecause we were equally “nothing” (or "emergent") -in Sufi termsthese are all “wujud majazi” (relative existence).

The nature of quantum state and the quantum state of nature

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The nature of the quantum state has been debated ever since theformulation of quantum theory. It is a state of knowledge orinformation (an epistemic state) or is it a state of physicalreality (an ontic state)? Surprisingly many phenomena of quantumtheory are easily explained in terms of epistemic view for e.gnon-orthogonal quantum states cannot be perfectly distinguishedeven if they correspond to distinct states of reality but fromepistemic view , a quantum state is represented by a probabilitydistribution over ontic states and thus non-orthogonal quantumstates merely corresponds to overlapping probabilitydistributions. The requirement of ontic quantum states is so farthe strongest constraint on hidden variable theories and itimmediately implies preparation contextuality (in the sense ofSpekkens) and the ontic state space must be infinite since theparameters increases exponentially with the Hilbert spacedimensions. This contrasting ontic-epistemic view in quantumphysics is reflected in the still debated Wihdatul wujud (Onenessof being) and Wihdatus syuhud (Oneness of observation) in theSufi world.

Bell’s theorem imply that no hidden variable model can reproducethe predictions of quantum mechanics and at the same time satisfylocal causality. Pienaar (12) showed that the separability anddynamical locality are not enough to imply Bell’s notion of localcausality. In fact one need the additional property offactorization which roughly speaking requires the probabilitiesof space-like separated measurement outcomes to be independentconditional on the joint ontic state prior to measurement. Infact (given the basic assumptions of the framework of ontologicalmodels) dynamical locality and factorization alone are sufficientfor local causality. Spekkens (13) point to a fundamentalabsurdity in treating separability and dynamical locality asdistinct concept – and need to be replaced by a causal structure( surprisingly this is the approach already started by quantumcosmologists). In fact this was the main contentions in Tahafut

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Al Falasifa oleh Al-Ghazali which mainly focusses on causalityand its structure . In fact in modern times the westernphilosopher , Hume also denied necessary causality. In recentyears incorporating quantum ideas given the correlations betweenjust two classical variables, it is impossible to determinewhether they arose from a causal influence of one on the other ora common cause influencing both. Randomised trials can settlethis indistinguisihability. Suprisingly for quantum variablesone can sometimes infer the causal structure from observationsalone – this is because entanglement and quantum coherenceprovide advantage for causal inference (Ried et al, 14)

Objectivisation in Sufism vs Quantum Mechanics

Based on purely dynamical picture , the Sufi ibn waqt principlewill lead to a causally connected wavefunction:

now = past + future , where past is deterministic and future isprobabilistic. Rather than reflecting an ontic-epistemicduality , this “passage of time “ view combines two diverginginterpretations, the deterministic Bohmian trajectories and theprobabilistic branching multiverses . In other word the“blockhead” Universe conjoined with the emergent time , so thatcausality can be seen in terms of causal set running along aHaase diagram creating the dynamics. We have not formalize thissynthesis in a rigorous mathematical way yet but at least here wesaid that this should be the course of action to understandingquantum mechanics from Sufi viewpoint. From Sufi viewpoint , thequantum-classical divide is not necessary since the person /observer/thinker is himself both quantum and classical. He ismade of atoms and his organs and senses are classical. This bringus to the idea of objectivisation and the relevance of quantumbroadcast structures since in objectivisation we need to relateBell’s theorem at the quantum level with Leggett –Garg theorem atthe classical level . It must be stress that (as found byHorodecki et al) the basic structure within QM that leads to

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perceived objectivity is the so-called quantum broadcaststructure. It is this structure which gave the distributedcharacter of information and make it essentially classical.

On the nature of Reality

If we can assume that the Universe is a kind of video-game, the-ontic view holds that the wave funcrion is the source code sothat from this perspective , the wave function does indeedcorrespond directly to the physical reality containing a completedescription of what philosophers call “ the furniture of theworld”. By contrast , the alternative -epistemic view holdsthat wavefunction represent at most our limited knowledge of thestate of the system –not the source code but just what you canlearn about the source code if it exists from a particular roundof the video game. Some -epistemologist however, believe thatan actual ontic state still exist even if the wave function isjust a convenient tool that does not capture all of theunderlying reality. In a similar fashion, in Sufism the wihdatulwujud stand (from Ibn Arabi) affirmed that by being together withGod we attained the knowledge of Reality through knowledge aboutourselves (self-knowledge) for we are the microcosmos whichrepresent the macrocosmos. Being “together with God” via fana’baqa’ billah (annihilation and persistence in God) means to be inan ontic state so that finally it becomes clear that themacrocosmos has the same “content” (information-wise) with themicrocosmos (the Self) . On the other hand Wihdatus Syuhud ( fromthe Naqshabandi Sufi , Ahmed Sirhind view) is coming togetherinto witnessing the theophany of God rather than with God , forGod is unfathomable , so that this is an epistemic state – yougain knowledge through witnessing the theophany and not being“immersed” into the Reality (the theophany itself).

From mathematical physics viewpoint Prati (15) showed via theGelfand-Naimark-Segal construction of the representation ofclassical and quantum abstract C*-algebra the impossibility of

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building a unified domain for both microscopic (quantum) andmacroscopic observables , something which decoherence and discordtheory would like to connect and for which classical-quantumanalogues are available e.g Leggett-Garg vs Bell’s theorem.

There is another kind of complimentarity in nature namely theHolevo quantity and quantum discord. The maximum amount ofaccessible information about an observable is given by the Holevoquantity that sets an upper limit on the capacity of a quantumchannel to transmit classical data. The information that is therein principle but cannot be found out from the environment alone(for.e.g quantum superpositions) is given by the quantum discord.Quantum Darwinism recognizes that the same environment that isresponsible for decoherence serves also as a channel throughwhich information about systems reaches an observer.

On various quantum interpretations and the interpretation ofGod’s words (kalamallah)

Wikipaedia list down at least 23 different interpretations ofQuantum Mechanics. God’s words in the Quran for example has alsobeen interpretated by various methods:

Methods of Quranicinterpretation

Comments

Isyari (sufi ) AllusionsMaudu’i ThematicSemantic Language constructionFiqhi Laws in Quran

Ibn Arabi noticed that in Arabic all terms/words indicatingorigin and cause are feminine. Indeed the term “haqiqa” isfeminine – meaning the Reality . In fact he wrote as quoted byCorbin (16)) “ whatever may be the philosophical doctrine towhich we adhere, we observe , as soon as we speculate on theorigin and cause , the anteriority and the presence of the

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Feminine”. This we can define as beauty or symmetry which becamethe passion of the theoretical physicist PAM Dirac. We could askwhy Ibn Arabi stuck strongly to doctrine of Wihdatul Wujud-because he said that “ “Things” have no existence in themselves(this is called wujud majazi in Kalam theory) except as places ofmanifestation (mazhar) or reflections of primordial Unity.”

The primordial Unity is the origination of existence from Essenceto Light of God (Nurullah) to Light of Muhammad (Nur Muhammad)via the 6 levels of being (taayunat ) which in total bring to 7levels of being . For Ibn Arabi the Universe is 3 fold –(i) atthe highest level there is the Universe of Cherubic intellectwhich can be apprehended by pure intellectual perception , than(ii)at the intermediary level there is the Universe of angel-souls which governs the active imaginations , the place oftheopanic vision and (iii) the lowest level is the physicalUniverse perceptible to the sensed. For him knowledge is by Godthrough God so that the journey towards (absolute ) knowledge isthe journey towards God when man discovers “the angel” whoilluminate his path. All future knowledge must be spirituallyexperienced so that the intensity of the spiritual experiencedepends on the degree of reality invested in the Image ( a kindof representation – whether visionary or mathematical) which isperceived by the active Imagination . Through this image the Suficontemplates the entire perfection of God and experience Hispresence within himself. The Image is the form of the DivineName which the person represent. To achieve the Cherubicintellect or to use it one must be united with the MuhammadanReality (Haqiqa Muhammadiyah) to achieve “insanul kamil” (theperfect Man).

Topological Quantum Field Theory and Sufism – the parallelism

A topological quantum field theory (TQFT) is an assignment without closed spaces (or manifolds) and time evolution between them (called bordism). Visually we can think of a number of

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circles with tubes between them , so that the circles are called boundary. These bordism can be thought as a model or representation of space-time. The TQFT assigns to such spaces certain algebraic data. Thus if we were to follow Ibn Arabi’s Sufism , the bordism corresponds to “ayat” – sentence or signs whereas the algebraic data corresponds to “huruf” or alphabet , all representing the Names of God. This classification and parallelism can be tabulated as follows:

TQFT SUFISMBordisms: unquantised (classical space-time)

“Ayat” : sentence or signs

Algebraic data: quantised quantum physics

“ Huruf” : alphabet representaing the names of God

Space-time atoms or qubits (causal sets from quantum gravity)

Spacetime atoms which build the Universe (from Kalam theology)

Qubit algebra from field creation and annihilation operators

Qada’ and qadar (measure formeasure) in the interactions between events (emergent time) in the Universe and Lawh Mahfuz (Divine Template)

Sufism , causal sets and time

The theory of quantum gravity which is approached by causal settheory which marries the two concept of discreteness (atomicity)and causality will bring within itself no fundamental division inprinciple between observer and the observed (equivalenceprinciple) which is Sufism is called fana’ baqa’ billah( annihilation into God or from God to God) which makes theobserver united with the observed. Current quantum gravitationistthinking hypothesis that the deep structure of spacetime is adiscrete poset (shortname for partially ordered set)characterises causal set theory at the kinematical level. However

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kinematics requires dynamics and this requires particles or“matter” in space-time . Recently Linden et al (17) found thatobjects reached equilibrium or reach the state of uniform energydistribution within an infinite amount of time by becomingquantum mechanically entangled with their surroundings, somethingwhich was actually proposed by Seth Lloyd (MIT) in his Phd thesisat the University of Cambridge 30 years ago . He proposed thatentanglement led to increasing correlations and give the arrow oftime. In fact he pointed out that “the universe as a whole is ina pure state but individual pieces of it are in mixtures becausethey are entangled with the Universe.” Perhaps these two viewsled to the different Sufi viewpoint – merging or identifyingoneself with the rest of the Universe led you to Wihdatul Wujudwhereas, seeing oneself as within one piece or part of theUniverse led one to the Wihdatus Syuhud viewpoint . From theseSufi viewpoints we can say that to become One with the Universemeans maximizing one’s entanglement with the Universe which willlead you to know God who created it in the first place.

Where two opposite meets : some hypotheses

Current quantum studies show that there are at least 3 types ofquantum mechanical contextuality : the Klyachko-Can-Binicioglu-Shumovsky , EPR-Bell and Suppes-Zanotti-LG type. It is possiblethat this contextuality type actually determine the 3 types offamilies in the fundamental particles (lepto-quark family). Infact Maroney and Timpson (18) also found 3 species ofmacroscopic realist positions on which only one of these can berefuted by LG inequality violation. Still ,LG theorem is weakenedby the assumption of non-invasive measurability as Maroney et alconclude “ ontic noninvasiveness would be required to rule outmacroscopic realism and its presence cannot be established in amodel-independent way”.

Recently , pentaquark was detected at the LHCb collaborations.The process can be considered as colliding MIT Bags with quantum

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discord. This is the only reasonable explanation withoutviolating asymptotic freedom of the quarks . From anotherviewpoint we can see this “emergent quantum discord” inpentaquark occur because both the scale for charge screeningbetween QCD and QED matches at this energy allowing bothasymptotic freedom and non-asymptotic freedom to merge viadiscord mechanism. Afterall , quantum discord which quantifiesthe quantumness of correlation between particle A and B isdefined as the difference between total correlation and theclassical correlation meaning that pentaquark phenomena occurwhen both quantum and classical regimes are manifested ( semi-classical).

In a similar situation “where two opposite meet” , we have thesedescriptions of observables versus be-ables dynamics ( Blasone ,Jizba and Scardigli, 19) who showed Quantum Mechanics as anemergent phenomena via t’Hooft prequantisation : at theprimordial level EP( Planck scale energy) both quantum mechanical(QM) and classical physics (CP) description are equivalent but asthe energy scale lowers information loss led to coarse-graining ,so that operational and deterministic descriptions are coarse-grained together giving a perceived Quantum Mechanics and SAD( spooky action –at-a distance) or non-local imprint of be-abledynamics. In Sufi language the SAD dynamics is called the alammithal (imaginary world) whereas both QM and CP are called alamajsam (material world). Thus, Reality in this sense are gettingrid of the coarse graining to perceive the non-locality thatprovides the loophole in Bell inequalities realized by (in thiscase one possible mechanism is viable) the t’Hooft pre-quantisation .

Conclusions

It is interesting to state that while Al-Ghazali (and Hume ,several centuries later) denied necessary causality (necessarycausality is the idea that the relation between a cause and its

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effect is necessary and always true) a similar debate incurrently occurring in the quantum physics community. In factrecently , Oreshkov et al (20) found quantum correlations withno causal order . This is in line with generally accepted maximthat “correlations does not imply causation” . Also, the line ofargument used by Al-Ghazali to deny necessary causality and thatby quantum physicists are similar . In fact if one assumes thatquantum mechanical laws can be applied to causal relations , onemight have situations in which the causal order of events is notalways fixed but is subjected to quantum mechanical uncertainty ,so that it could corresponds to superpositions of situationswhere “A is in the past of B” and “B is in the past of A” jointlyi.e leading to retrocausality. We still remember the paradoxcaused by closed time-like curves (CTCs) which was discovered byKurt Godel in 1949 to be one of the solution of generalrelativity solutions. Whereas quantum physics is now more andmore oriented towards information-theoretics (or epistemics) ,the Sufi world has been enclosed with the “mutasyabihat ayat andhuruf i.e “ambiguous” sentence and letters in the Quran as theirsource of allusions and knowledge (so it is also an epistemicmove). In fact Kempf (21) recently proposed an information-theoretic spacetime which represent current thinking in quantumgravity .

In conclusion , Sufism and Quantum Mechanics have a lot to sharein their approach towards understanding nature and Reality . Inclosing I would like to state that the Great Master (SheikhAkbar) , Ibn Arabi mentioned in his Futuhat Al-Makiyyah that theUniverse and whatever is inside it came into existence from atype of cloud ( al ‘ama ) with allusions in the Quran as one ofthe chapter which is Ad-Dukhan (cloud) – we wonder whether thisis dark matter i.e can dark matter be the origin of the Universeand if so , why its remnant (which covers more than 70% of themass of the Universe) stays inside the Universe? It is alsointriguing to wonder the Quranic statement that “every living

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things come from water “ to mean that “emergent space-time mightbe a kind of superfluid”, by alluding water as a kind ofsuperfluid.

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank The Korean Philosophical Society for localhospitality and Prof. Chunghyoung Lee for inviting me to givethis talk in Seoul.

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