A Review of Love as an Influential Factor in Man’s Godlikeness in Meister Eckhart and Mullā Ṣadrā

Like Eckhart, Mullā Ṣadrā also emphasizes the element of the lovers becoming similar to the beloved and maintains that divine love is intertwined with the essence of Man’s existence. Here, given the mentioned similarities and relying on a descriptive-analytic method, the authors have tried to clarify the effects of love on Man’s becoming Godlike with reference to the works of Eckhart and Mullā Ṣadrā.
Eckhart and Mullā Ṣadrā refer to love as one of the influential factors in Man’s Godlikeness. Eckhart equates the essence of the soul with the Essence of God and concludes that the love of God resides in Man’s essence. By emphasizing these two features of love, that is, monopoly and simulation, he maintains that love of God makes other kinds of love to be forgotten and reduces all of them to itself; in fact, the only existing love is the love of God. He also views love as an internal stimulus which creates a kind of drive and attraction in the spirit which, ultimately, make it restless and compels it to become the same as its beloved.