A Study of the Idea of Mystical Perceptions and Interpretations as Eisegesis, Focusing on Mulla Sadra’s Views

Interpretation is a profound form of thinking seeking to discover the underlying layer of the text through human perceptual abilities. Interpretations of mystics and theologians have been sometimes criticized and considered as the eisegesis and spiritual distortion of Quran, or tasteful interpretations without rational logic. This article aims to examine the mentioned idea by providing a logical inference from text interpretation and the extraction of some interpretational rules based on Mulla Sadra’s Views. The research method is describing, analyzing, and inferring the rules, focusing on the effect of the bases of cognition on interpretation. The two rules of authenticity of all the words of God, the theory of spirit of meaning, the ontology and the conformity of the worlds of existence, the authority of the form (in addition to its content) of revelation, the rule of changing the context of the text, reconstructing the words in the parallel context, the originality of existence and the levels of existence, the rule of attention to the credits of the world of wisdom, the epistemology of human perceptual powers, and the need for standardized interpretation are the rules that shapes the logic of interpretation in understanding religious lessons. Attention to these rules can mostly remove the charge of eisegesis, tasteful interpretations, and scientific disregard to the interpretations and contribute to a deeper understanding of religious teachings.