Sufism / Wahdat al-Wujud

Time is emergent and infinite — it is a created veil over the eternal, timeless reality of God (al-Haqq). In mystical experience (fana), the Sufi dissolves temporal boundaries and tastes the eternal present of divine unity. Time is continuous and cyclical in its cosmic aspect, reflecting the perpetual divine self-disclosure (tajalli) through which God continuously creates and recreates the world at each instant. It is non-directional because in unity with God, past and future lose their distinction.

Space is emergent and infinite — it is the arena of God's self-manifestation (tajalli), not an independently existing container. In the experience of wahdat al-wujud (unity of being), spatial distinctions dissolve: "Wherever you turn, there is the Face of God." Space is non-local because God's presence pervades all locations equally, and curved in the sense that all spatial paths ultimately lead back to the divine center.

Matter is emergent and finite — it is one of the outward forms through which God's infinite reality manifests. Ibn Arabi's doctrine of perpetual creation (khalq jadid) holds that matter is continuously recreated by God at every instant. Matter is non-conserved in the deepest sense: nothing persists independently; only God endures. It is non-local because every material form is a theophany revealing the same divine reality.

At the deepest level, there is only one true observer — God, the sole reality (al-Haqq), whose Being is the substance of everything that appears to exist. The individual observer is a mirror reflecting the divine light, not an independent entity. Through mystical practice and annihilation of the ego (fana), the Sufi realizes that the apparent multiplicity of observers is an illusion; all seeing is God's seeing, all knowing is God's knowing. The observer transcends ordinary spatial and temporal limits — mystic experience dissolves the boundaries of here and now. Total knowledge is accessible because the mystic participates in divine omniscience, and this realized knowledge is permanently retained as spiritual transformation. The observer is both embodied and more than embodied — the body is a vessel for divine self-disclosure.

Finite and emergent — energy, like all created phenomena, is a tajalli (self-disclosure) of God with no independent subsistence; it exists only because God continually wills it into being. Conservation: Non-conserved — God is free to create, sustain, or annihilate energy at each moment; what appears as conservation is divine habit (sunna), not ontological necessity. Dispersibility: Irreversible — the flow from divine unity into manifest multiplicity moves in one direction; the mystic's return to God reverses the spiritual journey but not the physical dispersal of energy.

All information is a manifestation of divine knowledge — God is the ultimate informational ground. The multiplicity of worldly information is a surface expression of God's infinite, unified knowledge. Information is emergent from the divine self-disclosure. It is conserved because God's knowledge is perfect and eternal. It is continuous because the divine knowledge is an undivided ocean. The framework places this as conserved at both scales: divine knowledge eternally preserves cosmic information, and the soul's pattern is conserved in its return to God — what was a manifestation of the divine is reabsorbed without loss in the unity of being.