Mystical experience and inner intuition

Mysticism as a kind of knowledge is the outcome of an inner experience which is usually called "discovery" and "intuition" in the Islamic tradition and in the Modern Western tradition it is usually called "mystical experience. In the contemporary "philosophy of religion", too, many speak of a "religious experience" that is close to the mystical experience. The issues raised in these two titles are similar and in some cases overlapping. Sometimes they consider
religious experience as a general and mystical experience as a part of it, in which case their relation is general and particular. Sometimes they consider them to be two different types of experience. In this usage mystical experience is a direct witnessing of the unity of being, whereas religious experience is the experience of the Holy without the element of unity of being. What is common in all these considerations is a higher kind of inner and spiritual experience. In order to know the essence and reality of mystical experience, first I deal with the most important characteristics of this phenomenon from the viewpoints of  ome Western scholars. Then I mention some points about the essence of the mystic experiences, especially intuition and its different types in Islamic mysticism.