Step in twice : report

Sammanfattning: || ‘Na-koja-Abad’ does not occur in any Persian dictionary, and it was coined, as far as Iknow, by Sohravardi2 himself. [---] It signifies the city, the country or land (abad) of Nowhere(Na-koja).[---] That is, the transition of the physical cosmos to what constitutes the first level of thespiritual universe. [---] Sohravardi states precisely that this region begins ‘on the convexsurface’ of the Ninth Sphere, the Sphere of Spheres, or the Sphere that includes the whole of thecosmos. This means that it begins at the exact moment when one leaves the supreme Sphere,which defines all possible orientation in our world (or on this side of the world), the ‘Sphere’to which the celestial cardinal points refer. It is evident that once this boundary is crossed, thequestion ‘where?’ (koja) loses its meaning, at least the meaning in which it is asked in thespace of our sensory experience. Thus the name Na-koja-Abad: a place outside of place, a‘place’ that is not contained in a place [...].It surely cannot relate to a change of local position, a physical transfer from one place toanother place, as though it involved places contained in a single homogeneous space […] it is amatter of entering, passing into the interior and, in passing into the interior, of finding oneself,paradoxically outside, or, in the language of our authors, ‘on the convex surface’ of the NinthSphere in other words. [---] This step is made in order for the Stranger, the gnostic, to returnhome or at least to lead to that return.But an odd happens: once this transition is accomplished, it turns out that henceforth thisreality, previously internal and hidden, is revealed to be enveloping, surrounding, containingwhat was first of all external and visible, since by means of interiorization, one has departedfrom that external reality. Henceforth, it is spiritual reality that envelops, surrounds, containsthe reality called material. That is why spiritual reality is not “in the where.” It is the ‘where’that is in it. Or, rather, it is itself the “where” of all things; it is, therefore, not itself in a place,it does not fall under the question ‘where?’ || Corbin, Henri . “Mundus Imaginalis,or the Imaginary and the Imaginal.”