“Light” and “Fire”Status of Reason and Love in Spiritual Perfection in Mystical Viewpoints of Imam Khomeini

Much has been written about the nature of and relations between reason and love (compassion). Some believe in lack of any relation between reason and love and define the two as opposites. They say with the emergence of reason in man, there will be no chance for love to appear and also when love governs human heart and mind, there will be no place for reason. The author of these lines is of the opinion that although reason and love are the two instruments for cognition or the two means for human perfection, they are indeed manifestations of a single truth embedded in human nature. This inborn quality distinguishes him from other creatures, assuming different names at the time of emergence and in each stage of man’s existence. It is called “love” when considered from a creature perspective and “reason” when in the light of the zeal of love its creature perspective is overshadowed by something above love. Therefore, the dichotomy between the two is like the contradiction between unity and plurality, i.e. as plurality is manifestation of unity, love is full manifestation of reason. Although Imam Khomeini, like his predecessors, has written much about incapacity of reason for intuition of truth and proximity to the Absolute Being, in another aspect he considers reason as the first manifestation of the Absolute Volition that serves as the basis and starting point for human perfection. According to Imam Khomeini, man needs both the light of reason and the zeal of love to realize ascension from the material being specific to creatures to the non-material aspect as a perfect human.