ادبیات عرفانی (Mar 2022)
A Comparative Study of Methods of Presenting Details in the Context of Sufi Mystical Experiences in the Texts of Revelation and Intuition School, Based on “Ideational Metafunction”
Abstract
Mystical experiences, which are also referred to as “religious experiences”, are obtained in the form of non-acquired and direct knowledge through self-cultivation, meditation, and negation of thoughts within the framework of religious rules and teachings. The main factor in the occurrence of these experiences is the removal of physical veils from the eyes of the mystic. "Indescribability", "passive state", "epistemological quality", and "transience" have been mentioned as common features of most of these experiences. This research, by adopting a descriptive-analytical method and relying on ideational metafunction in Halliday’s functional approach, has comparatively examined the ways of presenting details in the textual context of Sufi mystical experiences in the selected texts of revelation and intuition school. Each of Sufis, in the position of "experiencer", under the domination of one of language functions, has directly or indirectly represented their mystical experiences in different states, including waking, sleeping, and a state between sleep and waking. "Details or contextual elements" as one of the sub-elements of the sentence, play a prominent role in transferring the author's thought to the audience, depicting the context of experiences, and involving the audience in the flow of the narrative. Most of these experiences were written based on the request of a group of disciples from Sufi elders. Hence, it seems that in the process of writing these experiences, what is important in the first place is "the audience's viewpoint on the text"; in the next stages, factors such as "content and stages of experiences" and " narrative point of view" have great effect on how these elements are used. The authors' method of presenting details directly affects how language processes are utilized in the narration of mystical experiences; in the sense that some processes have more potential to express details. Compared to relational processes, material and mental processes provide the author with more opportunities to present the details of events. In the textual context of mystical texts of the revelation and intuition school, among the functions of language, the "persuasive role" and "referential role" are the most determining factors in the way of representing mystical experiences and presenting their details.
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