Persian mystical metaphysics (ʿIrfān) and Avicennian philosophy (Ibn Sīnā), though often presented as opposites, they also intersect and influence one another, especially in later Persian thought.

1. Ontology: What Is Ultimately Real?

Avicennian Philosophy

• Reality is structured around the distinction between:

  • Necessary Being (wājib al-wujūd) → God

  • Contingent beings (mumkin al-wujūd) → the cosmos

• God’s essence is existence; all other beings receive existence.

• Existence is real and multiple, though dependent.

👉 Multiplicity is ontologically real, even if hierarchically ordered.

Persian Mystical Metaphysics

• Based on Unity of Being (waḥdat al-wujūd).

• Only God truly exists; creatures are manifestations or self-disclosures.

• Multiplicity is phenomenal, not ultimately real.

👉 Multiplicity is epistemic appearance, not independent reality.

Key Contrast

2. Essence and Existence

Avicenna

• Introduced the famous essence–existence distinction.

• In all contingent beings:

  • Essence ≠ existence

• God alone has no distinction between the two.

This distinction became foundational for later Islamic philosophy.

Persian Mysticism

• Shifts focus from essence to existence itself.

• Essence is seen as a mental abstraction.

• What truly matters is the intensity of existence.

This anticipates later thinkers like Mullā Ṣadrā, who synthesizes both traditions.

3. Cosmology: How Does the World Emerge?

Avicennian Emanation

• Creation occurs through necessary emanation.

• From the One proceeds:

  • Intellects → Souls → Spheres → Matter

• God does not choose; emanation is logical necessity.

The cosmos is orderly, rational, and fixed.

Mystical Tajallī (Self-Disclosure)

• Creation is continuous divine self-manifestation.

• Not logical necessity, but divine love and knowledge.

• Cosmos is fluid, symbolic, and alive.

Contrast

4. Epistemology: How Is Truth Known?

Avicenna

• Knowledge is primarily rational.

• Intellect abstracts universals from sensory data.

• Highest knowledge achieved through the Active Intellect.

Mystical experience is acknowledged but subordinate.

Persian Mysticism

• True knowledge comes through unveiling (kashf).

• Rational thought is preparatory, not decisive.

• Knowledge is transformative, not merely conceptual.

One becomes what one knows.

5. God: Transcendence vs Immanence

Avicenna

• God is absolutely transcendent.

• Knows particulars only universally.

• No direct involvement in temporal events.

Persian Mysticism

• God is both transcendent and immanent.

• Present in every moment and every being.

• Known intimately through the heart.

6. The Human Being

Avicenna

• Human soul is an immaterial substance.

• Goal: intellectual perfection and immortality.

• Salvation through knowledge and virtue.

Persian Mysticism

• Human is the microcosm.

• Goal: realization of Insān al-Kāmil (Perfect Human).

• Salvation through love, annihilation (fanāʾ), and subsistence (baqāʾ).

7. Language and Method

Avicenna

• Technical, logical, demonstrative prose

• Philosophy for trained intellects

Persian Mysticism

• Poetic, symbolic, paradoxical language

• Philosophy through metaphor and experience

8. Historical Synthesis: Where They Meet

Later Persian thinkers did not choose between them—they integrated:

• Suhrawardī: Critiques Avicenna, introduces illumination

• Ibn ʿArabī: Deepens mystical ontology

• Mullā Ṣadrā:

  • Accepts Avicenna’s rigor

  • Embraces mystical unity

  • Develops Primacy of Existence and substantial motion

He famously said:

Philosophy without unveiling is blind; unveiling without philosophy is mute.

In One Sentence

• Avicenna explains how reality must be.

• Persian mysticism reveals what reality is experienced to be.