Ayatollah Javadi Amoli on Theoretical Mysticism

Ayatollah Javadi Amoli, following his polymath professor, Allameh Tabatabai, and Mulla Sadra’s transcendental Wisdom, by means of an analysis of the relational existence of effect in respect to its cause, establishes the foundations of the mystical unity of existence. According to this analysis, essence refers to concept, and the ontological mechanism and logic of existence in this view refer to the division of the object into "existence" and "concept". Therefore, what has filled the realm of being is the existence alone which the mystic is aware of it by an intuitional, inner knowledge, and everything other than that is merely a concept that constitutes the science of theoretical mysticism and provides the business of reasoning, cognitions, and mystical logic. On the other hand, this very division becomes a logical basis for the dichotomy between “reality and appearance”, which is superior to the gradation of existence view that considers the essence as the truth of low-grade and confined existences. In this mystical view, except the absolute essence of the God, which is absolutely unconditional and above any gradation, every other levels of existence are only appearances and shadows of this super-transcendent truth. With this original mystical monotheism, the definition of "monotheist man" also changes. It won’t be any more possible to talk, like philosophers, about the positivity of mystic’s self and his perceptual powers as independent means for understanding the external being, and the identity of man, in the light of his mystical monotheism, is questioned as to how is justifiable against the truth of monotheism. It is here that this guiding question leads to the discussion of mystical annihilation in its proper manner.