ANTHROPOLOGICAL AND MYSTICAL TEACHINGS OF SHAMS TABRIZI
DOI:
https://doi.org/10.32461/2226-3209.1.2018.177665Abstract
Abstract. One of the significant topics in the school of Shams Tabrizi is the attention paid to the high status and importance of human beings in the creation. Such emphasis is in a way we can refer to Shams’s school of mysticism as an anthropological one. He regards the human being as the goal of creation and more important that the whole existence. According to Shams, merely being a human being is of high value and privilege and because of his heart, the human being is the supreme universe whose perfection and salvation is in hands of truthfulness. Human being, and more importantly the perfect human being, is the mirror of all names and features of God. Such a high
status can be achieved through having a pure self or training. In the relationship of human beings with their God, Shams puts emphasis on the mutual love. According to Shams, the goal of creation is for the human beings to be informed of their beginning and end. In the school of Shams, knowing the self is a prerequisite to know God. Thus, in his writings he attempts to make human beings familiar with the value of the existence. The mystic person in his view has not been isolated from the society and sees his own salvation related to the salvation of all the others. Shams emphasizes the importance of nature and aptitude in the upbringing of human beings and believes that prophets have 615
been sent by God in order to make people conscious of their aptitude and goodness and provide the grounds for the actualization of such features. Confronted by the world and death, the human being portrayed in the school of Shams is faced with a paradox. On one hand, Shams portrays the world as a jail, cage, and a burden on the back of the person, while on the other, he refers to it as a garden and argues against the hadith “the world is the jail of the pious”.
Keywords: mysticism, anthropology, the perfect human being, love, writing of Shams Tabrizi.
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