 In several passages, Ibn ‘Arabî describes the ascent of the soul on the ladder (mi‘râj) to God. One of these is Chapter 167 of the Openings, called “On the true knowledge of the alchemy of happiness”. Here he contrasts the parallel ladders of a philosopher and a prophet’s follower. In each stage, the follower meets what Muhammad met in his Night Journey, but the philosopher finds only what his knowledge of the natural world allows him to find; in short, when seekers pass through the ascending realms of the mundus imaginalis, they gain what accords with their own cognitive preparation. In the first heaven, for example, the follower meets the prophet Adam, whom God had “taught all the names”, and he benefits from Adam’s omniscience, but the philosopher meets only the moon. In each successive level, the follower encounters a prophet and assimilates his knowledge, but the philosopher finds the celestial spheres (Ibn ‘Arabî, al-Futûhât, Chapter 167, 1997, 2019). It is worth noting that Avicenna himself had written an interpretation of Muhammad’s night journey in philosophical terms that runs parallel to what Ibn ‘Arabî ascribes to the philosopher here, but the text was in Persian, so Ibn ‘Arabî would not have seen it (Heath 1992).