From the Tesseract to the Dot: Analogies of Manifestation

Abstract

This essay interprets Waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of being) through analogies of manifestation, linking classical Sufi imagery with modern geometric insight. Drawing on Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Qūnawī, and Ahmed Avni Konuk, it explains how divine reality unfolds through graded levels of existence. Using Edwin Abbott’s Flatland and the tesseract as analogies, it illustrates how the divine essence projects into lower dimensions of being—spiritual, imaginal, and sensory. Creation thus appears as a continuous self-disclosure (tajallī) of God, and spiritual realization as the return from the visible surface to the hidden depth—from the dot to the tesseract.

Keywords

Waḥdat al-wujūd, unity of being, Ibn al-ʿArabī, al-Qūnawī, Sufism, tajallī, tesseract, manifestation, Islamic metaphysics

Introduction

Among the many concepts that emerged from the Akbarī school (School of Ibn al-‘Arabī), few have provoked as much reflection and debate as Waḥdat al-wujūd (the unity of being). It has been debated for centuries, often because of what people thought it implied rather than what its early exponents, especially Ibn al-ʿArabī, actually meant.[1] While a full exploration of this doctrine lies beyond the scope of this essay, certain key aspects are essential for understanding its philosophical and spiritual framework.

At its core, Waḥdat al-wujūd expresses the conviction that existence belongs properly and absolutely to God alone; all other beings exist only by way of manifestation. Creation, in this view, is not an independent reality but a gradational unfolding of the divine presence. When I speak of Waḥdat al-wujūd in what follows, I mean the hierarchical manifestation of the Divine Being through successive levels of existence—a cascading process of self-disclosure (tajallī) that unfolds from the level of pure divine essence down to the world of sensory experience.

The Ontological Levels

Closely related to Waḥdat al-wujūd is the concept of ontological levels or divine presences (al-ḥaḍarāt al-ilāhiyya), one of the Akbarī School’s most distinctive teachings. In essence, the theory holds that the single divine essence reveals itself through an ordered hierarchy of realities—comparable to the Neoplatonic idea of emanation, yet articulated through distinctly Qurʾānic and Islamic terminology.

Ibn al-ʿArabī’s writings often describe these levels in diverse ways but without formal systematization. It was his foremost disciple, Ṣadr al-Dīn al-Qūnawī, who first organized them into a coherent framework of five presences:[2]

1. The Divine Presence (al-ḥaḍrat al-ilāhiyya)
2. The Spiritual Presence (al-ḥaḍrat al-rūḥāniyya)
3. The Imaginal Presence (al-ḥaḍrat al-mithāliyya)
4. The Sensory Presence (al-ḥaḍrat al-ḥissiyya)
5. The All-Comprehensive Human Presence (al-ḥaḍrat al-jāmiʿa al-insāniyya)[3]

Later Akbarī thinkers sometimes extended these levels to six or seven. Turkish commentator Ahmed Avni Konuk (d. 1938), in his gloss on the Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam, interprets the variation not as contradiction but as a reflection of scale. He argues that these numbers represent “general categories (kulliyyāt),” while the actual degrees of being are innumerable.[4] Each ontological level, therefore, contains within it countless sub-levels of manifestation. Existence unfolds through a hierarchy that is both structured and infinitely expansive.

Classical Analogies of Manifestation

Throughout Akbarī literature, various analogies have been employed to express this vision of descending reality. None is perfect, yet each illuminates a facet of the mystery.

One frequent image is that of an object reflected in multiple mirrors. The mirrors differ in shape, size, and clarity, but the reflected image always refers to the same object. In this analogy, the mirrors represent the diverse levels of existence, while the single object symbolizes the divine essence whose image appears differently in each reflection.

Another analogy likens divine manifestation to the sun and its rays: the sun is the one source of light, while the rays are differentiated expressions of the same luminosity. Likewise, the seed and plant analogy describes the development of a plant from a seed—the seed standing for the divine essence, and the sprout, stem, and fruit corresponding to successive stages of unfolding existence.

Ahmed Avni Konuk offers yet another image: ice, water, and vapor. These three states are distinct in form yet one in substance. Each represents a degree of density or subtlety within a continuum of manifestation.[5]

Still, these analogies fail to capture the full depth of the concept, for the ontological levels are not identical or equal expressions of a single reality; each is derived from and subordinate to the one above it, becoming progressively more limited and defined. Therefore, I will offer another analogy to emphasize this crucial point.

The Dimensional Analogy: From the Tesseract to the Dot

To help modern readers grasp this relationship between the transcendent and the manifest realms, Edwin Abbott’s nineteenth-century novella Flatland serves as a useful analogy, depicting a two-dimensional world encountering higher dimensions.[6] This narrative provides a compelling analogy for the progressive limitation of divine manifestation across ontological levels.

In Flatland, a creature confined to two dimensions cannot conceive of a third; when a three-dimensional cube enters the plane of its world, the flat creature perceives only a square. By extension, a cube within our three-dimensional world could be seen as the projection of a four-dimensional object: a tesseract.[7] The tesseract, when perceived in lower dimensions, successively appears as a cube, a square, and finally a single point.

This analogy captures, with mathematical precision, the Akbarī understanding of manifestation. The divine essence (dhāt) corresponds to the unconditioned the highest dimension, while the successive levels of being—spiritual, imaginal, sensory—represent its projections into lower dimensions. Each level retains something of the higher reality yet appears more limited and more defined.

In this perspective, the physical world we inhabit is not a separation from divine reality but its outermost projection. What is invisible and infinite in the higher dimensions becomes visible and finite here. Spiritual realization, then, is the reverse process—a movement of perception from the surface back toward the depth, from the dot to the tesseract. By this metaphor, I do not mean to describe the Divine Essence itself, which remains beyond all representation, but rather to illustrate the process of manifestation through which the abundance of the Divine Reality unfolds across the levels of existence. The tesseract symbolizes the infinite dimensionality and inexhaustible richness of being, while the dot represents the lowest level of manifestation where that plenitude becomes most condensed and limited. Each level of existence reflects traces of the higher but in progressively restricted forms, revealing the cascading nature of divine self-disclosure (tajallī). Yet this ascent does not bypass the material world; it must pass through it, for the sensory realm is the necessary starting point for perceiving higher dimensions. The Qurʾānic phrase “We shall show them Our signs on the horizons and within themselves until it becomes clear to them that it is the Truth” (41:53) may be read as an invitation to this ascent through the layers of manifestation. Viewed from this angle, reverence for the natural environment appears as an essential dimension of spiritual awareness, for the material world itself shares in the unfolding of the Divine. That, however, is a reflection that belongs to another essay.

Conclusion

The analogies of manifestation, whether drawn from premodern cosmology or modern geometry, serve as bridges between metaphysics and perception. They remind us that reality is layered rather than fragmented, that every form conceals a formless depth, and that the journey of understanding mirrors the very structure of being.

In the language of the Akbarī mystics, to know God is to recognize that all things are His self-disclosures, each bearing the sign of its source. Just as the tesseract projects into the cube, the square, and the dot, the divine reality unfolds into spirit, image, and matter. To move from one level to another—through thought, imagination, or spiritual insight—is to witness the unity that sustains all existence.

Such witnessing does not abolish distinction; it transforms it into a mode of disclosure. The aim of these analogies, and of metaphysical reflection itself, is not to explain God but to awaken awareness to the presence of al-Ẓāhir and al-Bāṭin (the Manifest and the Hidden) who is hidden precisely within His manifestations.

[1] William C. Chittick, ‘Waḥdat al-shuhūd’ in The Encyclopaedia of Islam: New Edition. Ed. P.J. Bearman et.al. (Leiden; Brill, 2002), vol. XI, pp. 37-39.
[2] William C. Chittick, ‘The five divine presences: From al-Qūnawī to al-Qaysarī.’ The Muslim World 72 (1982): 109.
[3] Chittick, ‘The Five Divine Presences’, p. 115.
[4] Muhyiddin Ibnu’l Arabī, Fusûsu’l-hikem Tercüme ve Şerhi, tr. Ahmed Avni Konuk, (Istanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Vakfı, 1999), p. 10.
[5] Ibid. p. 9.
[6] Edwin A. Abbott, Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. London: Seeley & Co., 1884.
[7] A tesseract (or “hypercube”) is the four-dimensional analogue of a cube, just as a cube is the three-dimensional analogue of a square. It offers a way to imagine how higher realities project into lower ones: what seems finite or flat from below may, from a higher perspective, belong to an infinitely richer structure. In this essay, the tesseract serves not as a geometric description of the Divine but as a symbolic illustration of the layered unfolding of being.

References

1. Abbott, Edwin A. Flatland: A Romance of Many Dimensions. London: Seeley & Co., 1884.
2. Chittick, William C. “Waḥdat al-shuhūd.” In The Encyclopaedia of Islam, New Edition, edited by P. J. Bearman et al., vol. XI, 37–39. Leiden: Brill, 2002.
3. ———. “The Five Divine Presences: From al-Qūnawī to al-Qayṣarī.” The Muslim World 72 (1982): 109–121.
4. Ibn al-ʿArabī, Muḥyī al-Dīn. Fuṣūṣ al-Ḥikam: Tercüme ve Şerhi. Translated and annotated by Ahmed Avni Konuk. Istanbul: Marmara Üniversitesi İlahiyat Fakültesi Vakfı, 1999.