For Knowledge and Love : The Mystical Experience of Suhrawardi and San Juan de la Cruz

Mystical experience maintained an enigmatic prominence among certain theologians and philosophers during the medieval era of Western Europe and the Near East. These theologians and philosophers, who were ensconced in traditional monotheistic religions, sought something extraordinary to explain the pertinent questions which they felt their particular religions had not fully answered. Such intellectuals questioned the contemporaneous understandings of spiritual devotion, metaphysics, ontology, epistemology, and even cosmology since the incontrovertible labels of traditional monotheistic religions no longer were able to vindicate these concepts. Therefore, many of these intellectuals endeavored into the past to verify the textual concepts and understandings of the ancients. In particular, Suhrawardi and San Juan de la Cruz believed ancient philosophies and religious practices to be an essential foundation for mystical experience because it provided the essential pre-experiential virtues and technologies that ultimately, could provoke this phenomenon.