ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Sohravardi and the Question of Knowledge Illuminative Knowledge The sixth step in Sohravardi’s epistemology is achieving illuminative knowledge. As mentioned above, according to Sohravardi, we know the material world through our external senses. We know mental and abstract phenomena through reason and on the basis of self-evident truths, universal concepts and logical rules. How then can we know immaterial and spiritual realities?

Sohravardi holds that we can know these realities through internal vision. On the basis of knowledge by presence and through the purification and cleansing of the heart one can attain this kind of vision. Knowledge by presence in mystical knowledge and internal vision plays a similar role to self-evident truths in speculative knowledge; purification and piety has a function comparable to the laws of logic.

In a sense, mystical knowledge of immaterial realities is the expansion and deepening of knowledge by presence. In Illuminationist Philosophy knowledge is light. This accords with the hadith that says: “Knowledge is a light that God puts in the heart of whomever He wills.” Light is evident in itself and illuminates other things (2/113). Nothing is clearer than light, therefore, light does not need any definition (2/106).

As light has different degrees of intensity, so knowledge is of varying degrees. Sensory perception is one degree of this light, and discursive knowledge and mystical knowledge are other degrees. The human soul is an immaterial light due to its own self-knowledge, for whatever has self-knowledge is an immaterial light (2/110). Therefore, the soul, like any other immaterial being, is light; and this is the reason why it is fascinated by seeing light and hates darkness.

To the Illuminationist philosopher mystical vision is the best path to the truth, even though discursive method is valid in its own right. In Sohravardi’s visionary dream, Aristotle told him that people of vision such as Plato, Bayazid Bastami and Sahl al-Tusturi were true sages and that he preferred them over rationalistic philosophers (1/70-74).

Sensory data is the basis for scientific theories (astronomers, for example, use sensory data to study the stars), and the spiritual observations of mystics are likewise valid and serve as the foundation for illuminative wisdom and mystical knowledge of trans-physical realities.