abdolreza mazaheri

The human mind, in the general sense, is the inspiration of the world of imagination, which is the way of God's knowledge. But innumerable questions in this category may come to mind, such as whether this imagination does not find a connection with God? Is there no such thing as imagination apart from man? If it exists, what is the position of this imagination? Is everything that finds its way in the world of imagination, is it right and should be accepted? And is this imagination the same as revelation? The purpose of this article is to examine the separate and connected imagination from the Arabic point of view. The research method is library and analytical. The results of the research showed that according to Ibn Arabi, God has made imagination a light with which the image of anything or matter can be perceived. Its light penetrates into nothingness and depicts it as existence. Imagination is the mostworthy of all creations called light, its light is not like other lights. The manifestations of the truth are perceived with it, and that light is the light of the eye of imagination, not the light of the eye of sense.

In his works, Ali Ibn Rabban Tabari has criticized the doctrine of Trinity and Incarnation in Christianity by referring to the Testaments. He was born in a Christian family and his father and uncle were prominent Christian scholars. He himself was a devout Christian until the age of seventy; therefore, he knew the text of the Bible and Christian teachings. By referring to the Gospels, he tries to validate the Holy Quran's description of Jesus Christ. So, he calls Jesus the prophet and messenger of God and rejects the Christian belief in the Trinity and incarnation. Regarding the Trinity, he argues that the Father and the Son cannot be regarded as ancient together, because in this case the father-son relationship will be meaningless. Regarding the belief in the incarnation of God in the body of Christ, he also says that according to the Gospels, we can see that Jesus had human characteristics. If we consider him as God incarnate, we must attribute those human attributes, such as eating, drinking, sleeping, etc., to God as well. According to these arguments, Ibn Rabban considers the doctrines of Trinity and Incarnation to be contrary to pure monotheism and therefore rejected.

Henry Corbin, a philosopher and interpreter of spiritual wisdom, has uniquely engaged with phenomenology, recognizing and integrating Iranian-Islamic philosophical texts. His primary approach delves into topics within Islamic philosophy that were often overlooked or confined to a traditional circle of wisdom and knowledge before him. In Islamic philosophy, particularly in the works of Mulla Sadra, a crucial topic that Corbin addresses is the issue of the authenticity of existence. It refers to the separation of existence from its essences, recognizing the reality of things independently of their essences. This proposition is then extended to the realm of art, where artistic works are considered as emanations from their source. According to Mulla Sadra, these artistic works are perfection-seeking and transcendent, revealing the characteristics of the artist in their pursuit of excellence.Corbin, while describing the transcendent realms beyond human experience, considers the interpretation of these realms as a central and serious theme. He regards various approaches to the world beyond as valid, emphasizing the accumulation of interpretations by scholars of mystical illuminations. Based on this foundation, he introduces his unique approach in the search for sparks of light in artistic works, suggesting that these sparks manifest in the human soul and have roots in the higher light and the sacred essence of the divine. From this perspective, an artist, in creating an artistic work, presents an image and representation of a transcendent and metaphysical place and time, connecting their audience with the Creator of the universe.

Peerless essence of the God, Almighty, “Hoviat” exists in the soul of respect, greatness and magnanimity of power. The Almighty owns seventy thousands of veils of light and murk. If such veils are removed, the light of splendor of the Almighty shall burn whatever, but him. The first manifestation of the Almighty is manifestation of the great name of “ALLAH”, which appears in the form of reality of Prophethood of Mohammad (Peace Be upon Him). His holy essence is the bright modesty of right. From among the names and traits of the Almighty, four names of “Alaval”, “Alakhar”, “Alzaher”, “Albaten” are the initial veils and the seven names of “Hai, Ghader, Morid, Sami, Basir, Alim and Motekalem” are of the second place and other names, are the other veils of the God Almighty. The worlds existed in the arc of descent. Respectively, the world of intellects, the world of souls and the world of essence, are the samples of bright veils and the world of materials may be credited as the dark veil of the Almighty.

"Dark night" serves as a metaphor for the soul’s progression towards God, as utilized by John of the Cross. He employs this metaphor to illustrate the various stages of the soul’s journey towards God, akin to mystical stages in other spiritual systems. The findings of this article suggest that, according to John of the Cross, the "dark night" symbolizes the soul's transformative path toward God. It serves as a means to elucidate the soul’s transformative journey, marked by spiritual transcendence and union with God. John delves into two aspects of the soul’s journey: humanity's quest for God and the divine pursuit of humanity, presenting an overarching activity-passivity dichotomy in each dimension of the journey. This transformation unfolds through a four-part structure: first, the active night of the senses, ascending Mount Carmel; second, the active night of the soul, also ascending Mount Carmel; third, the passive night of the senses; fourth, the passive night of the soul within the "dark night." In Book I, John delineates the "negative" state of deprivation. The dark night represents a crucial step in relinquishing attachments and embarking on a path toward divine reunion, involving a journey on a dark path shrouded in indistinct elements. The soul's connection during this night occurs independently of sensory aid, and the dryness and vacuums within the night are viewed as a means to comprehend both God and the soul

The types of love are one of the concerns of Ghazali and Augustine, the investigation of which is a step in the study of love, conducted with descriptive and comparative methods. The findings show that both scholars considered love as one of the sources of knowledge belonging to the truth and non-truth (God and non-God). Augustine considers the love of the truth and everything along the truth to be the love of God, but he rejects the love of non-truth, except for the loves that are in line with divine love. In Augustine's view, love for untruth is divided into two types; directed to God, such as love for neighbors and self (unequal to selfishness), and non-directed to God. Ghazali considers the types of love (divine and human) as love for the truth lacking Qiblah (direction towards the Kaaba) and does not divide it into real, virtual, accepted, and rejected. Both scholars, while believing in the authenticity of love for the truth, disagree on how it should be; Ghazali, unlike Augustine, considers the figure of speech to be a part of the truth but also of divine love and a non-uniform concept. Regarding the flow of love in existence, Augustine considers it to be inside man having the mode of intentionality and to be a part of human duties, a cause of happiness, a part of the advice of saints, and acquirable. Ghazali, however, considers it to be inside and outside lacking the mode of intentionality and nature. In addition, Ghazali introduces God as the lover and teacher of the first love. From Augustine's point of view, the lack of love for the good or the fear of loss is its justification. Moreover, the love of virtue is conditional on avoiding selfishness, self-admiration, sinful desires, ambitious will, and the rule of human pride, but Ghazali considers virtue to be equal to knowledge (connected to the shore of the sea of love) and knowledge to be immersed in the sea of love.

In Islamic mysticism, revelation has been and is an important issue. When the mystic, as a result of the purification of the soul and the austerity instilled in him by the mentor and the old man, attains positions and authorities, he has in fact made revelations. Ruzbihan Baqli is one of the great mystics of the sixth century AH, who is undoubtedly one of the two tendencies in Islamic Sufism, which known for two obvious tendencies in Islamic Sufism known as drunkenness and awareness (or in the words of Hafiz Masti and Masturi), Ruzbihan is undoubtedly in the first one. New perspectives on religion and religious beliefs and the emergence of new topics and issues in this regard have long been on the attracted religious thinkers, including the discussion of religious experience. William James considers religion to be the effects, feelings, and events that occur to every human being in loneliness, and considers emotions to be the inherent concept of religion. In his view, religious experience is the essence of religion, in the sense that the truth of religion is the feelings and emotions that arise in man when confronted with the ultimate truth, and other matters, such as the beliefs of deeds and rituals, are later than this experience. The present survey, after dealing with Ruzbihan's revelations, will examine whether Ruzbihan’s revelations can be analyzed according to the model of William James, and if so, what the commonalities and differences between Ruzbihan’s revelations (mystical experience) and religious experience of existence are and what the characteristics of religious experience and mystical experience from the point of view of William James are also, whether the four characteristics that William James put forward in connection with mystical experiences apply to Ruzbihan's revelations. The method of the present study is descriptive-analytical and the method of data collection is library method and books, articles and software are used and also the data collection tool is note taking.

The word "love" in literature in a general sense and in mystical literature in a special sense is one of the most frequent words in different religious traditions and contains various interpretations and analyses. In the epistemology of love, love is considered secondary knowledge. More attention has been paid to this type of investigation in the modern world. But a deep look at the works of the early scholars proves that despite the fact that they were centuries away from Kant's critique of reason and the emergence of epistemology, in their words and writings they addressed love as secondary knowledge and explored its dimensions. In the meantime, mystics such as Augustine in the Christian tradition and Ahmad Ghazali in the Islamic tradition had a significant impact on the epistemology of love, and in this field, they put forward their views not as lovers but as researchers of love. The findings of this research, which was carried out with a descriptive-analytical method based on library sources, show that despite the commonalities between Ahmad Ghazali's and Augustine's views on the epistemology of love, there are also some differences between them. Augustine analyzed the word "love" in detail, while Ghazali confined himself to general expressions. However, their views on the issue of the unity of love, lover, and beloved are so similar to each other that one can speak of the identity of their views. Both religious thinkers believed that "love" means will and desire and it is a covenant to return to God, however, Augustine considered the origin of this will and desire to be the man's will and Ghazali considered their origin to be the divine grace. At the same time, they had different and sometimes similar views on the types of love and their harm. Ghazali considered love to be single, whether divine or human, but Augustine only believed in the love of God. They completely disagreed on the damages or epistemic barriers of love; but they expressed common signs of love, such as faith, the lover's (man's) submission to the beloved (God), and the happiness of the lover.

In Ibn Arabi's thought, sleep and dream is important. He has distinguished between connected and disconnected imagination and brought the place of dream in the connected imaginary world and revelation in the disconnected imaginary world. He considers the dream’s interpretation to be related to the connected imaginary world. Therefore, Qur'an cannot be just a dream, because it lacks Shari'at and its rules do not have a grammatical aspect. The dream is one of the divine annunciators and the sincere dream is a part of revelation. Ibn Arabi considers the imagination as a force of the heart, and love is the excess of affection whose manifestation is within the heart. The heart has seven stages as seven layers of the sky, which is in one stage, the mine of affection, love, and compassion for the people, and in the higher stage, the mine of love of the divinity, and finally, the mine of the manifestations of the divinity’s attributes. Therefore, by expressing the position of dream and its relation with revelation, we discuss about calling Qur'an a dream letter and the relationship between sleep, dream, and love in order to determine the secret of man's superiority over other creatures.

The term "Immutable entities" is considered to be as one of the most important terms in Ibn Arabi's terminology. There are some other concepts in the Islamic tradition which are similar to this term. However, Ibn Arabi compiled the term for the very first time by himself. Ibn Arabi's commentators and Sufis in following of him used this term and then shared it in case of ontological explanation. Gheysari is the most important commentator of Ibn Arabi who has explained his thoughts delicately. Therefore this article was formed in the light of Gheysari's thoughts. In ibn Arabi's perspective, immutable entities are presuppositions of Divine's Names and Attributes and immutable knowledge of God. Contemplation mysticism is not to be understood without understanding the mediatory role of immutable entities in universe epiphany, given its specific purpose, so it is a very significant concept in the mystical ontology. This paper explains this state in the Ibn Arabi's ontology in the unity of being which is based on the disclosure of God and illustrates its manifestation.

Among mythologists, Ibn Arabi, in his ontology, expresses some sort of Trinity in the creation of God, from which it is possible to explain the phenomenon of the proliferation of unity. Ibn Arabi, in addition to teaching subjects such as the truth of Muhammadyya and love, uses logical propositions such as Soghra and Kobra and the middle one to explain creation. Therefore, besides the subject, he can pay attention to one and make half of the creation dependent on his willingness. Knows To illustrate this, it refers to various examples, such as science and the universe. But in the Christian Trinity of Jesus, the agent of human salvation and the spirit of Alcudus is the agent of salvation with nature (Father). However, the belief in the divinity of all three entities in Christianity cannot be combined with Abrahamic monotheism, as it is explicitly rejected in the holy text of the Qur'an and belief in the divinity of Jesus (PBUH) is considered to be disbelief.

One of the important subjects which Ibn Arabi has tried to explain based on his own gnostic principles is the relationship between unity and plurality or the mode of the emanation of the plural from the one. While dealing with the levels of the world and referring to the place of presences and the degrees of being, he discusses the names and attributes of the Truth. Then, through explaining the emanation of names from essence and the relationships among them, he tries to explain the quality of the emanation of multiple names and the creation of existence from the simple essence of the one under the two titles of “community” and “opposition”. Given the depth and range of the discussion, the present paper shortly examines the problem of the community of names in Ibn Arabi’s philosophy following a descriptive method and under the subcategories of the meaning and plurality of names, community of names, and types of community and finally ends with a conclusion section. It is hoped that this endeavor can cast a light on the discussed issue.

To prevent the cultures and religions conflicts, western societies have raised religious pluralism and political liberalism in global village whereas n mystical texts with "love" entering the Islamic mysticism, the discussion of peace and love of people is raised. And also, contradictory phenomena of the developing world are prone to the peace and hospitality; also, the Holly Quran recommends peace among believers. The reason for the Tolerance of Mystics is the magnitude of the creation and the diminutiveness of the human thinking against it. This tolerance does not mean disorganization against Sharia; Rather, it is a trust for divine forgiveness and covering protection that after building the absorption capacity for guilty Muslims, He turns to other religious disciples such as Jews and Christians and provides the capacity for their reception in society so that the geographic, skin color and racial boundaries are not considered and the sufferings and pain of humanity are healed, and there comes a concern over public affairs and an exodus for other religious disciples are kept open, and thus, such a compassion for public and hospitality to becomes a reason for peace and calmness and the development of Islam in other countries like India and Africa.

According to Shaykh Najm al-Din Kubra, “true life” is the same “spiritual life”; a life which entails leaving the outward and moving towards the inward, annihilating in Truth, surviving in the survival of the Truth, and retrieving the Truth from anything that has a sign of being and life. He is a wayfarer of the path of Sufism who, relying on his findings in this spiritual life wrote the treatise al-Usul al-‘asharah in order to guide other wayfarers. In this treatise, through drawing on revealed teachings and employing the traditions of the prophets and the friends of the Truth, he provides some instructions for those wayfarers who intend to reach this stage of life. He calls his voluntary path the “path of Shuttar”. This path is based on voluntary death and relies on 10 major principles: repentance, piety, trust, contentment, retreat, remembrance, attention, patience, vigilance, and satisfaction.
The voluntary death of the wayfarer commences with repentance. This principle is not only the “beginning of a second birth” but also the “necessary condition for continuing spiritual life”. Here, after performing the duties required by each station, the wayfarer will leave all abodes and stations behind through repentance until reaching the station of true Oneness. Such a wayfarer, who has managed to have a “second birth” through Almighty Truth’s providence, his mentor’s spiritual guidance, and his own endeavors, is reborn ornamented with divine morality after traversing various spiritual stages. Then, in the climax of this life, he attains the “station of union with and annihilation in the Truth”, which is the most supreme meaning of Oneness.
The fact that “voluntary death” stands at the basis of this treatise, in addition to from Shaykh’s initial acknowledgement, is clearly inferred from his insistence on the use of the word “exit” when explaining the 10 principles as well as from a comparison of this type of exit with “natural death”. Therefore, regarding the union of voluntary death as the basis of the path of Shuttar with the above-mentioned 10 principles, we can say that, based on the teachings of the treatise al-Usul al-‘asharah, Shaykh Najm al-Din has spoken of not only one voluntary death and birth but also of several other voluntary deaths and births each corresponding with one abode and station.

All Divine Attributes, regarding their referent, are the very essence of God and the same as other names, but concerning their meanings, they are different from the essence of God and His other names. Thus, each name has two significations: one signifies the essence; the other signifies a specific attribute which differentiates it from other names. Thus, God, the Unified Truth, has multiple attributes due to His manifold qualities. For instance, because He has created the creatures, He is the “Creator” and for His all-embracing knowledge, He is the “Knowing”; since He manages the universe, He is the “Director” and for His affection and mercy, He is “the Compassionate, the Merciful”. Then, from among the ninety-nine or according to another estimate, a thousand and one attributes ascribed to Him, we want to know which one is the Supreme Name of God and based on what criterion it is considered supreme. Some have deemed “Allah” the Supreme Name, have set out reasons for their choice and have attributed certain functions and characteristics to it. Some others believe that “in the Name of God, the Compassionate, the Merciful” is the Supreme Name and still another group vote for yā hayyu yā qayoum (“the Eternal Live”) and dhul-Jalāl wal ikrām (“the Lord of Majesty and Generosity”). Some refer us to the Holy Qur’an for the indicators of the Supreme Name and mention a few names; prayers of invocation have also been mentioned to contain a number of functions for the Supreme Name.

Imam Khomeini has criticized Qeysari’s division of the stages of the world, and considered it as consequents of quiddity not existence. He considers the name “All- compassionate” as the place of manifestation, and the name “the Merciful” as the place of depression, and the name “Allah” as the composite of the two. Therefore, he, as the other philosophers, does not consider “the compassionate” as the Master of the First Intellect and the Merciful as the Master of the Universal Soul. Imam Khomeini considers the Making as the object of quiddity and in relation to the Omniscience Presence and the rest he does not make any distinction between existence and quiddity. He, in the subject of Thingness pertaining to existence, mentions that the archetype of a being does not acquire the place of existence at all, and that the individual unified Existence is an ascription which is multiplied due to the names, attributes and name images. He also attributes the differences between differential substances to differentia and not to being-a- universal phenomena. With regard to kinds of Praise, Imam Khomeini considers the agent praise as a manifestation of the perfection of the praiseworthy with action and Allah’s praise in His descriptive realm. He takes all kinds of praise as a whole which only differ by their plurality of names and attributes.