Bāṭin is the inward: what stands to an outward (ẓāhir) as its hidden and intended reality, not a region spatially inside it. In the philosophical lexicon the pair also names the inner and outer faculties of perception; in this treatise the inward is a level of reality — the higher world is the inward of the lower — and the domain the soul enters as it ascends.
In ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī’s Works
The inward of a lower reality
In al-Manāmāt, ʿAllāmah Ṭabāṭabāʾī uses bāṭin relationally: the higher world or higher matter is the inward — the inner reality — of the lower one. The world of immateriality is the inward of the imaginal world, the imaginal world the inward of the world of nature, and universal luminous matters the inward of particular ones. The inward is not something spatially inside the outward; it is the deeper level of reality on which the outward level rests and through which the outward is disclosed, so that whoever rises to a higher world apprehends the lower without obstruction.
Used as a substantive, al-bāṭin names the inward realm itself: the domain the soul penetrates as it ascends, in which it becomes apprised of the connections that govern the sensible world, and along whose ranks both the felicitous and those who take the path of evil may advance. It is the same inward level of reality taken as a place to be entered rather than as the inward of some particular outward.
Source: Risālat al-Manāmāt wa-l-Nubuwwāt
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