The Theoretical Foundations of “Self-Annihilation” in the Views of Imam Khomeini and Meister Eckhart

Imam Khomeini and Meister Eckhart are two well-known Muslim and Christian mystics, respectively. In their mystical views, the spiritual traveler’s soul will finally be annihilated in God’s being. In this article, we are concerned with whether the doctrine of annihilation (fanā’) has the same intellectual foundations in their views? Their views are comparatively considered in analytic-inferential terms in order to learn about the nature of the soul’s annihilation. One common assumption made by both is the soul’s immateriality, which prepares the ground for an account of the soul’s epistemic annihilation. The soul’s journey begins with love in the views of Imam Khomeini and Eckhart. For the former, the annihilation and transformation occur in the traveler’s soul through a manifestation of divinity at the stage of Oneness (Aḥadiyya), while for the latter, annihilation occurs at the stage of Unity (wāḥidiyya) which is higher than the stage of divinity and existence. At any rate, the manifestation of divinity and the intuition of the Lord occur at the stage of divinity or Eckhart’s stage of Unity, which is for Imam Khomeini the stage of divine determination. For this reason, annihilation is the soul’s epistemic and existential transformation and its being affected by divine names and attributes, rather than the destruction of the soul. For both of these intellectuals, the major accomplishment through the soul’s annihilation is the “intuition of the unity of existence,” in addition to the soul’s emptiness from anything but God.