ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Knowledge and the Sacred Chapter Four: Scientia Sacra The Good Religion is Innate Wisdom: and the forms and virtues of Innate Wisdom are of the same stock as Innate Wisdom itself. Dēnkard A fund of omniscience exists eternally in our heart. Tipiṭaka Sientia sacra is none other than that sacred knowledge which lies at the heart of every revelation and is the center of that circle which encompasses and defines tradition.

The first question which presents itself is, how is the attainment of such a knowledge possible? The answer of tradition is that the twin source of this knowledge is revelation and intellection or intellectual intuition which involves the illumination of the heart and the mind of man and the presence in him of knowledge of an immediate and direct nature which is tasted and experienced, the sapience which the Islamic tradition refers to as “presential knowledge” (al-‘ilm al-ḥuḍūrī).1 Man is able to know and this knowledge corresponds to some aspect of reality.

Ultimately in fact, knowledge is knowledge of Absolute Reality and intelligence possesses this miraculous gift of being able to know that which is and all that partakes of being.2 Scientia sacra is not the fruit of human intelligence speculating upon or reasoning about the content of an inspiration or a spiritual experience which itself is not of an intellectual character. Rather, what is received through inspiration is itself of an intellectual nature; it is sacred knowledge.

The human intelligence which perceives this message and receives this truth does not impose upon it the intellectual nature or content of a spiritual experience of a sapiential character. The knowledge contained in such an experience issues from the source of this experience which is the Intellect, the source of all sapience and the bestower of all principial knowledge, the Intellect which also modifies the human recipient that the Scholastics called the potential intellect.

Here the medieval distinction between the active and passive or potential intellect3 can serve to elucidate the nature of this process of the illumination of the mind and to remove the error of seeing the sapiential and intellectual content of spiritual experience as being the result of the human mind meditating upon or reasoning about the content of such an experience, whereas spiritual experience on the highest level is itself of an intellectual and sapiential nature.