To engage in philosophy without experiencing the truth of...

To engage in philosophy without experiencing the truth of its content confines the philosopher to a world of essences and concepts, while mystical experience without the intellectual discipline of philosophy can lead only to an ineffable state of ecstasy. When the two go hand in hand, the mystical experience of reality becomes the intellectual content of philosophy.

The characteristic features, or rather objectives of Mulla Sadra's 'transcendental philosophy' are thus described by James Morris: [A] condition of intrinsic finality, completion, fulfillment, and inner peace (compatible with the most intensive activity); a unique sense of unity, wholeness, and communion (with no ultimate separation of subject and object); a distinctive suspension (or warping or extension) of our actual perceptions of time and space; where nature is involved, a vision of all being as essentially alive (in a way quite different from our usual distinction of animate and inanimate entities); a sense of profound inner freedom and liberation (or, negatively stated, the absence of anxiety, guilt or regret); a perception of universal, nonjudgmental love or compassion, extending to all beings; a paradoxical sense of 'ek-stasis' or standing beyond and encompassing the ongoing flow of particular events (including the actions of one's 'own' body).13 Sadra appears to be a man 'fundamentally concerned both with the dialectical interplay between experience and transcendence and a journey towards it, a journey which not just Muslims were making, but the whole of humanity14 .

M He was not only the one who brought about a synthesis of traditional and rational knowledge and so was the most notable among the philosophers of the Shiraz school, but he was in effect, a reviver of rational sciences.

In the words of Nasr: [Mulla Sadra], by coordinating philosophy as inherited from the Greeks and interpreted by the Peripatetics and Illuminationists before him with the teachings of Islam in its exoteric and esoteric aspects succeeded in putting Gnostic doctrines of Ibn 'Arabi in logical dress.

He made purification of the soul a necessary basis and complement of the study of Hikmat, thereby bestowing on philosophy the practice of ritual and spiritual virtues which it had lost in the period of decadence of classical civilization.