Thus an ideal being or a being in the Imaginalis sense has a substance, which is usually, depicted symbolically as light. This substance differs from that of another being only in respect to the degree of its intensity, which is in a continuous state (muttasil) of, being connected to its substance or light-monads. Secondly, being part of the continuum, which is the Illuminationist cosmos. The being also has a shape, which is Imaginal, or ideal. Motion is a category and is an attribute of substances as well. Light entities in this realm move, and their movements are in relation to their degrees of intensity or luminosity.
What enables the novice to gain such knowledge is the guide figure of this realm who serves a similar function as that of the Peripatetic �nous� poietikos. While Active Intellect of Ibn-Sina is stationary and discreetly distinct from other nine intellects above it in rank, the guide in this clime (al-nur al-isfahbad in Hikmat al-ishraq) � which is equated in activity with a dator spiritis (rawan bakhsh) or dator scientis (wahib al-ilm) and a dator formarum (wahib al-suwar) � is a light entity which is continuously moving and propagating in essence, meaning one can derive knowledge in spiritual, scientific or artistic form.
The visionary experience is directly related to the essence of knowledge regarding the required discipline or subject. It may differ in both quality and quantity as lights are in constant transubstantial motion, though not changing their singularity. Thus Suhrawardi explains that vision of al-�Isfahbad al nasut� may appear as Gabriel to one, as Surush to another. Here comes the role of cultural archetypes, but the exercise the same moving constantly in a singular direction in the history of intellectual evolution of Man, called by Ibn-Sina as �connection with Active Intellect � the knowledge of the unseen", leading to illumination, culminating in becoming a knowing-creating subject.
Suhrawardi�s Philosophy employed a new and different technical language and revived many popularly held views concerning wisdom. It also included references to characters, themes, and sentiments of Persian mythological and religious beliefs, as well as Qur'anic decrees never discussed to such an extent in Islamic Peripateticism. It is where Greek mythology, Qur'anic dicta and other Islamic religious sentiments and Persian popular beliefs converge. Thus Illuminationist to follow like Qutb ud Din Shirazi and Shahzuri paved the way for the prevalent Iranian and Indian view of a world animated by spirits. It has influenced the Shi`ite theology the most. |
