Suhrawardi & The Philosophy of Illumination

It's finally time to talk about Suhrawardi, one of the most fascinating philosophers of the middle ages.

Sources/Suggested Reading:
Suhrawardi (1187). "The Philosophy of Illumination". Translated by John Walbridge & Hossein Ziai. Islamic Translation Series. University of Chicago Press.

Walbridge, John (2005). "Suhrawardi & Illuminationism". In "The Cambridge Companion to Arabic Philosophy" (ed. Peter Adamson & Richard C. Taylor). Cambridge University Press.

#Suhrawardi #Philosophy #Islam

[Reemmohammed]

I just wanted to let you know that I found your channel while doing research on religions for a fantasy novel I'm currently writing. I'm very impressed with your perfect Arabic pronunciation and your calm and soothing voice. Thank you for your hard work and your beautiful channel. I find it educational and inspirational.

[georgekhoury]

I live in Aleppo where there's the shrine and tomb of Suhrawardi just outside the walls of the old city and always wondered about his life when being in that area.
And this is an enlightening video about his life and writings, really insightful, keep up the good work.
Although I'm Christian still living in in the Middle East I enjoy all your videos about Islam, Christianity and all other religions.

[slappy]

It's a shame, nay, a _crime, _ that such wisdom is not commonly taught in our schools. We seem determined to remain as ignorant and closed-minded as possible.

[odettali]

im so grateful to be living in a time where people from all around the world can speak and communicate with each other freely through things like the comment section of this video and that we can relive the worlds and thoughts of figures like suhrawardi much more easily in ways that are near impossible in personal conversations and use this to dispel. perhaps only a few decades ago, only a handful of people outside the middle east would have known about him.

[mohammadbozorgnia]

I am Persian and this young genius philosopher Sheikh Shahab Sohrevardi is one of my favorite scholars and philosophers. I had the privilege of reading his Persian books and amazed how a person in such a young age (late twenties and early thirties) could have such a wast knowledge and personal experience.
I would like to thank you for this video clip and your wonderful introduction to this great man.
Well done and good job.

[Mohammadparvazi]

Everybody I'm from suhrevardi's hometown, suhrevard is a little village now with amazing Walnut trees I'm always amazed myself how this dude moved out from that village and became such a figure at that time

[Rebelwithacause]

This thought occurred to me as well. And as a muslim, I knew that famous light verse from the Quran, and I thought it made sense. I think, the ‘light’ is not just light made out of photons, Its more like waves of energy or information. Our consciousness is like a radio picking up the waves that it is most in tune with. We decide the station our consciousness tunes to. Just like we don’t know what exact song the RJ of our radio station might play next, we don’t know what life might bring about tomorrow, but we believe we have a pretty good estimation for that. We don’t always control the waves and the energy and the information that are immediately around us, but we can choose which ones we’d like to be around with. If our consciousness picks up the right waves, we can exert our energy for the right reasons and receive the right information to do the right thing. Like Rumi said, ‘You are not a drop in the ocean, you are the whole ocean in a drop’.

[zacharycurrie]

Suhrawardi, apparently without precedent, anticipated Kant's arguments on the transcendental unity of apperception and existential predication by hundreds of years. What an incredible mind.

[GoogleRescueGooglerescue]

I like the titles he chose for some his essays written in Persian. They show his creative talents: "The red intellect", " the song of Gabriel's feather", " the call of Simurgh", " on the state of childhood", " the language of ants", " on the reality of love" and "One day among Sufis". Also found his description of ecstasy (Halat) and etymology of the word Love ( Eshgh in persian/arabic) fascinating.

[faccafromklepp]

Your videos never fail to blow my mind. As spiritual aspirants we commit ourselves to one particular path and training. Yet nothing is more inspiring than to learn about an God-realized master from a totally different tradition. This transcendental knowledge we try to attain is beyond word and concept. Where it limited to one spiritual teacher we could doubt its validity. But when I come to your channel I know there can be no doubt.

[laylaoresme]

Looking forward to this. I don't know what took me so long but I've finally set notifications for your videos.

[qp.il]

متابعك من العراق
One of your fans form Iraq
معجبك بقناتك واتمنى لك كل الخير
I love your channel, and I wish all good to you

[lucius]

God… this blew my mind. I can’t get over it. The philosophy of illumination is literally everything I learned during my first mushroom trip summarized and explained. All of it. Please read on before you call me names 😂 So during my first mushroom trip, which was so transformative spiritually for me, I had these “realizations”, a knowingness if you will. I was “perceiving” certain truths. That’s as close as I got to describing it in the aftermath (words in any of the 4 languages I speak proved inadequate every time I tried to describe what I experienced). But now listening to this wonderful explanation that I stumbled upon totally by accident (never heard of these concepts before), I believe that what happened to me that day in terms of “perceiving” could perhaps be described as “intuitive knowledge” and the “unveiling” that this philosopher talked about. I can relate to the way it’s described in this way on a profound level. And that’s not even the best part… funny enough, one of the things I “perceived”, was the “order of the universe”. I’m using quotation marks because it’s impossible to describe these experiences and concepts with words, as I said. But what I perceived or grasped was this light that’s talked about here and “God” being at the very top of this, on the top level, so incredibly bright. I could see this with my “mind’s eye” except I couldn’t in that this “Light of Lights” was so bright and so incomprehensible to me, a mere human, that my mind just couldn’t process it. But I “perceived” also that it’s on the “top level”… and then there were all these other levels below it. I perceived 7-ish I’d say, and later someone told me Islam talks about these levels or spheres. And it was a humbling experience in that it made me realize how far, far away we are from this Light of Lights, the Source. The comment about how our human souls are the “dimmest” of these lights describes it perfectly. And what it helped me see is how trivial our existence is in that we get caught up in things that are not even real and yet we remain blind to our true nature, souls getting lost in this material world and our material problems when pure Divine Light and Divine Love is all there is. When we should be trying to get closer to It… our human existence is organized so that we basically do everything to get further away from this Light. And most of us can only hope to “ascend” a little bit… we’ll never truly get anywhere near it. Or idk. All I know is we’re damn far and we have opportunities every day to come closer to It because God is in all things, in all of us. God, Light, Sourcr… call it what you want. I’m not a religious man, though I was raised Catholic. But I am someone who considers himself very spiritual and quite attracted to these “mystical” ideas and philosophers. I’m in awe of the fact someone described what I experienced in circa 2012 centuries ago. There is indeed an intuitive knowledge we all posses, a “universal consciousness” new age folks talk about but that has its origin in the pre-Socratic era (both Plato and Aristotle apparently rejected the idea but I don’t know much of the background). Ive only taken psilocybin once after that, or any psychedelic for that matter. But I think “magic” mushrooms are a wonderful tool of “illumination” and a gateway to truths that are simultaneously intuitive to us yet beyond our comprehension. And all I can add is that I have the most profound respect for men such as this, who were so tuned into the rhythms of the Universe and the true nature of reality that most people such as myself can access only through altered states of consciousness, when the ego is dissolved and we can be free of out “filters” temporarily and see beyond the veil. See things for what they are. I’m so in awe right now I could cry. Neither from joy nor sadness. Just awe. There’s truth in all religions and all traditions. Thank you for sharing your knowledge with us.

[Endmorphin]

This gentleman’s breadth of knowledge and delivery is more than satisfactory.

[jasemalhammadi]

I am glad I came cross your channel.
You are a genius. You pronounce the Arabic words very accurately without seemingly to have an accent. Incredible that someone finally covers topics in philosophies, mysticism, Sufism and their influences on religions which determined the paths of people and their ethos and their values in the way forward.

[JobayerJisan]

Outstanding❤. Iran was full of gems, what a country!

[ardypangihutan]

Truly enlightening. Im not a religious person, but Suhrawardy's school of thought opened my mind to dig about Druze, pantheism, gnosticism and Ismailism. Different religious teachings have much in common, hence it needs to be discussed with compassion rather than fighting each other. May peace be upon us.

[esotericpilgrim]

Great information, keep it up, we sufis are eager to know more & more from you. May Allah bless you with more knowledge & information.with lots of love from India🇮🇳❤️

[markdpricemusic]

Wonderful presentation: lucid and conversational and historically responsible. Many thanks for this

[pravgulati]

He was really radical for his time. I am amazed that his knowledge has survived and not burnt as was being done elsewhere in contemporary world.