A Critical Review of Shaykhiyya with Regard to the Coincidence of Hurqalya and the Imaginal World

Shaykhits consider hurqalya as a one level of existence which is more transparent and more subtle than the physical world. Although they believe that there exist objects in hurqalya, for them these objects are more transparent and subtler than their corresponding objects in the physical world. For them, hurqalya is the discontinuous imaginal world. Due to the inconsistency in Shaykhiyya’s thought system, hurqalya sometimes wavers between the spiritual and the physical world and at some other times between the physical world and the world of pure intelligence. Making a distinction between the body and the corpse, Shaykhits postulate four bodies for man; some belonging to the physical world and some to the imaginal world. The second body which belongs to the imaginal world is the one referred to in Hadiths as ajb-u-zanab and in Mulla Sadra’s philosophy as the imaginative power. The present article is an attempt to examine Shaykhits’ views on hurqalya and the imaginative mind and to check the accuracy of their application to the continuous and discontinuous world.