Structural comparison epistemology of religious experience and mystical intuition in Islamic mysticism

Religious experience and mystical intuition share common elements—such as reception by the heart, removal of negligence, concentration on God, and attaining perdition and presence—yet they differ in key respects. Mystical intuition requires suffering austerity and effort over time, while religious experience can occur without such preliminaries and is accessible even to those without religion. Mystical intuition is thus considered superior and holds an outstanding position in public belief. Divine lights and unseen secrets are essential constitutions of both.

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Abstract

Religious experience and mystical intuition are neither equal, nor synonym and on the other hand, they are not contradictory at all. With respect to structure and constitutions, they have common and different elements. Being intrinsic is one of the common elements of the experience and intuition and consequently, one of the common elements of them is heart. Process of reception by heart is such that someone must detract his attention from outside and get out of negligence and completely concentrate on god so that he can achieve the stage of perdition and presence. Hence, removal of negligence, attending god, stage of perdition and presence are common elements of experience and intuition. In this case, human heart accepts divine lights and person gets access to unseen affairs which were once covert to him. Taken this trend together, it can be concluded that divine lights and unseen secrets are essential constitutions of religious experience and mystical intuition. Differentiated elements of experience and intuition are based on the fact that they are necessity of suffering austerity and attempt. However, in attaining religious experience, such an issue is not necessary. But it is achieved without such preliminaries. Therefore, intuition is not attained rapidly. But it takes time and requires suffering austerities by the mystic. These are right people who took steps in the way of mysticism. But, mystical intuition is not a comprehensive issue but religious experience is comprehensive and includes those having no religion. For this reason, mystical intuition is superior over religious experience and has an outstanding position in public belief