Skip to main content

Soherwardi the Great Islamic Mystic: His doctrine of Illumination


Soherwardi
According to the illuminationist doctrine, started by famous Islamic mystic Soherwardi, knowledge can only be acquired if God gives you " taufiq"  or an opportunity to know.
Knowledge comes to a person when active intellect illumines the passive intellect of a man. These two concepts of Active and Passive intellect are taken from Aristotle's De Anima, or On Soul  . In this book Aristotle discussed about different faculties of human soul and how they work.
In discussing the faculties of knowledge Aristotle describes both sense perception and intellection. 
Intellection means to know an idea, or form, or concept. Object of intellection is always something that is intelligible, and not given to perception.
There are two types of intellects in human soul, these are passive and active intellects.
Passive intellect receives ideas; on it ideas and forms or anything intelligible is imprinted. 
Passive intellect cannot know anything by itself; it is only the receptive instrument. 
It is the active intellect that illumines the ideas, forms and any intelligible stuff present or imprinted on the passive intellect.
To understand clearly the relationship between passive and active intellect , one can use the analogy of light, eye , and objects.
Human cannot see anything if there is no light. It is the light that enables the eye to see things. In the absence of light human eye cannot function.
Similarly passive intellect is like human eye and ideas are objects. To understand something is like seeing an object with the eye.
Active intellect is like the light that illumines every object , so that eye can behold them.
According to some mystics and philosophers active intellect that allows you to know something, is the divine light, that shines to illumine human intellect if God wishes so. Active intellect is the messenger of God, Gabriel.
So, when one knows something- to know means to know that something exists and why it exists- it is the providence, God himself , that shone the light to illumine human intellect.
Some people considered this understanding part , the rational soul, as eternal and indestructible.
Soherwardi's community, he and his disciples, used to celebrate each and every incident when they were able to know something.  They believed that when they knew something, it was because the active intellect shone in their souls and illumined it on a certain issue; active intellect enlightened them on certain issues.
Since active intellect , or the illuminating light, the divine light comes only from the God himself, therefore, it is the highest human achievement to get illumined on any issue.
To know something is to relate oneself with the God.
That is why whenever the followers of Soherwardi knew something they celebrated it , for they thought that they were in communion with God. 


By.
Khalid Jamil Rawat

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Shah Hussein: A Great Mystic and Liberal Personality

A Tale of Two Generations: A Story from the Ancient Indus Valley Civilization Imagine the suffocation that can prevail in a religious society and the audacity with which people view any transgression of the moral or religious law.After imagining this suffocation and repression think about a person who has resolved to act against the morality and religious dogmatism and yet has registered himself as a great champion of the people and their faith. Shah Hussain was one such great religious personality who created new values in the society and challenged the older ones. Shah Hussein was a saint who lived during the sixteenth century in the Punjab province. The Punjab is a province which is divided between India and Pakistan and both these countries have parts of this province as their territories. The word Punjab is formed with two words,' Punj' meaning 'five' and 'Aaab' , meaning water. Thus Punjab is the land of five rivers, Ravi, Jhelum, Sutlej, Beas and Chena...

Kashmiri Sapphire: A gem of gems

Kashmiri Sapphire: A gem of gems     A Tale of Two Generations: A Story from the Ancient Indus Valley Civilization People already know the story of the unfortunate gem called" Kohinoor" , whose story bears similarities with  that of Helen of Troy, for whom Greeks sailed in thousand ships to sack the city of Troy. Kohinoor so much attracted the British crown that they captured India for it. Indian subcontinent is famous for its rich deposits of precious stones . From the early Vedic periods , gemology has remained a great important art to learn , and there are thousands of years old texts on this subject . Right from the beginning , three stones are ranked as the highest among the gems of the subcontinent; these are Ruby, Sapphire and Emerald. Out of these Ruby being affiliated with the Sun god, is considered as the most precious , and Sapphires come next. Kashmiri Sapphire, in the word of Keats,  is famous for its " sapphire regi...

Sheikh Chilli : A Person who Does not Understand the Law of Gravity

A Tale of Two Generations: A Story from the Ancient Indus Valley Civilization Sheikh Chilli, a famous character among children in the subcontinent of India, is notorious for his follies and simplicity. One thing that people of the subcontinent always attribute to sheikh chilli is that he never cared about laws of nature. He built castles in the air and in his imagination established great businesses, empires, became a prince, married a princes-and in the end of the story the castle in the air vanished and Sheikh Chilli found him surrounded by the people laughing at him. One day, Sheikh Chilli, needing a few logs of wood, went to the woods with an axe in his hand, along with his friends. He climbed a tree and sat on a bough. Looking at the tree and the woods he started fancying, as usual.  He closed his eyes and thought that he would cut a log from the tree and sell it in the market. In return he will earn some money and save it somewhere. He will work day and night and save som...