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This work also reexamines the concept of “mystical experience” with regards to the Islamic mystics’ approach toward the concepts of cosmos, nature and environment especially in the thoughts of great masters, such as Ḥallāj, Bāyazīd Basṭāmī, Ghazālī, Rūzbihān Baqlī Shirāzī, Ibn ‘Arabī, Rūmī, and Mullā Ṣadrā.
In this pioneering work, Seyyed Shahabeddin Mesbahi offers a new methodologyfor approaching Islamic mystical concepts by examining the importance, place and manifestation of the concepts of cosmos, nature and environment in Islamic mysticism.
The study presents a framework for understanding the exoteric and esoteric dimensions of these concepts, within selected stations (maqāmāt) of the mystical path (ṭarīqa), and how, in a reciprocal interaction, they weave a “symbiotic whole.”
Islamic mysticism, most of which is crystallized in Sufism, possesses both an active and a passive aspect, both a preparing oneself to “wait upon God” and a journey with one’s whole being to Him. Therefore, in its totality it involves a method, in both a philosophical and a practical sense, a method that is in fact central to Sufism and gnosis or ‘irfān. It is this nexus between method and mysticism as it involves not only man but also nature, both in relation to God, that constitutes the theme of this short but important work...this significant book, which must be considered as a very valuable addition to the literature in the English language on Sufism and gnosis as well as on comparative mysticism.
This book presents a new paradigm and creative approach to the study of Islamic spirituality . . . This very important book . . . is an original and welcome addition to the contemporary scholarship on Islamic mysticism.