Printed in the Summer 2024 issue of Quest magazine.
Citation: Sorkhabi, Rasoul "Henry Corbin’s Discovery of the Imaginal Realm in Sufism" Quest 112:3, pg 26-31
By Rasoul Sorkhabi
In Sufi philosophy, distinct words are used to denote the different meanings of imagination. Here I cite three strands of imagination, designated by different Arabic words. First is tasawwur, “picturing in the mind.” For example, when we read or hear the word elephant, we bring an image of elephant to our mind. This faculty, “the mind’s eye,” is a form of mental mechanics using sensory memories. Second is tawah’hum, “fantasy” (sometimes “hallucination”), which has no correspondence to reality. For instance, in a dark room a rope may appear to you as a snake, and you may be as frightened as if you had seen a real snake in daylight, but that imagination has no external reality. Third is takhayyul, which is difficult to translate. Although it is often translated as “imagination,” it is distinct from the two strands of imagination mentioned above.
In this article, I expound upon this particular mode of imagination, takhayyul, through the works and life journey of the French philosopher Henry Corbin, who discovered it in Sufi literature and philosophy and devoted his life to researching various facets of what he called “the imaginal world” (mundus imaginalis) to distinguish it from “imaginary” things as we normally conceive of them.
From Paris to Tehran
Henry Corbin (pronounced Kor-ban) was born on April 14, 1903, in Paris to Henri Arthur Corbin, a business executive, and Eugénie Fournier Corbin. His mother died a week after giving birth, and Henry was raised by his aunt (Arthur’s elder sister) and uncle, Amélie and Émile Petit Henry.
Corbin studied at Catholic schools and completed his secondary education at the Saint-Maur Abbey in Paris in 1922. He then joined the École Pratique des Hautes Études at the Sorbonne (University of Paris) and studied medieval philosophy under Étienne Gilson, a prominent Thomist scholar. Corbin graduated in 1925 with a dissertation on “Latin Avicenna in the Middle Ages.” He continued his studies at the Sorbonne, receiving his postgraduate degree in philosophy in 1926, followed by his doctoral diploma in 1928 with a dissertation on “Stoicism and Augustinianism in the work of Luis de Leon” (a sixteenth-century Spanish poet). While still a student, Corbin began working at the Bibliothèque Nationale in Paris, and in 1929, he received a diploma in oriental languages (Arabic and Sanskrit) from the École des Langues Orientales at the Sorbonne.
A chance meeting in 1928 with Louis Massignon, the director of Islamic studies at the Sorbonne, was life-changing for Corbin. After Corbin told Massignon about why he was interested in Islamic philosophy, Massignon handed him a copy of Hikmat al-ishrâq (“Philosophy of Illumination”) by the twelfth-century Persian Sufi master Shahab al-Din Suhrawardi (1154‒91).
Massignon had just brought this Arabic book back from a trip to Iran; it was a 500-page lithographed edition with commentaries. As Corbin recalled later, “Massignon said to me: Take it, I think there is something in this book for you” (Jambet, 39‒41). Although a dense text, Suhrawardi’s book fascinated Corbin. Suhrawardi, known as the Master of Illuminist Sufi philosophy, discussed how the philosophy of enlightenment was developed and handed down by various masters through the ages dating back to Hermes in ancient Egypt, Zoroaster in Persia, and spiritual philosophers like Pythagoras and Plato in Greece, and was later continued through Sufi masters until his own time. Charged with blasphemy for his unorthodox ideas, Suhrawardi, aged only thirty-six, was brutally put to death in 1159 in Aleppo (now in Syria).
In 1933, Corbin married Stella Leenhardt, daughter of the Protestant pastor and ethnologist Maurice Leenhardt. She remained Corbin’s lifelong companion and even helped him with his paperwork and publications. During the 1930s, Corbin intensively studied the works of German philosophers and spent much time in Germany. Through his lectures, articles, and translations, Corbin introduced the German philosophies of existentialism and phenomenology in France. (When Corbin read the existentialist philosopher Martin Heidegger’s Being and Time, published in 1927, he wrote on the margins notes and references to the writings of Sufi philosophers.) Jean-Paul Sartre, who later championed existentialism, learned about Heidegger through Corbin’s works.
By the end of the 1930s, Corbin had mastered and integrated several philosophical skills. These included hermeneutics or interpretive reading of medieval texts (from Gilson and Massignon); Edmund Husserl’s phenomenology (a transcendental-idealist understanding of theosophical notions as consciousness arising from direct lived experiences rather than historical, psychological, or sociological incidents); Protestant Christian theology from Martin Luther to Karl Barth; and existentialist philosophy from Søren Kierkegaard to Heidegger.
With these experiences and a passion for Suhrawardi’s theosophy, Corbin embarked on his path of “uncovering the veiled” teachings of his favorite Sufi masters and philosophers. (The term “uncovering the veiled,” kashf al-mahjub, was used by some Sufi masters as their book titles, and Corbin edited and translated one of them, written by the tenth-century mystic Sajestâni.) During 1933‒35, Corbin translated two treatises from Suhrawardi into French, and his first paper on the Sufi philosopher came out in French in 1939. Corbin’s prolific and original studies contributed to a renaissance in Persian Sufism in the twentieth century.
In October 1939, Corbin and his wife went to Istanbul. Corbin wanted to study the original manuscripts of Suhrawardi at libraries and museums in Istanbul. A trip that was meant to be for a few months lasted six years as World War II engulfed Europe. During these years, Corbin served as the sole member of the French Institute of Archaeology in Istanbul.
In September 1945, as a new person was appointed for Corbin’s position, the Corbins took a train for Iran. In the capital, Tehran, Corbin gave an impressive lecture on Suhrawardi. He was appointed by the French Ministry of Foreign Affairs as the head of Iranology at the Institut Français de Recherche en Iran, a position he kept until 1970. The Corbins returned to Paris in October 1946.
In 1949 Eranos conferences, led by Carl Jung, were launched in Ascona, Switzerland. Corbin was a regular participant in these annual gatherings, where he befriended Jung, Mircea Eliade, Gershom Scholem, among other noted scholars. Some of Corbin’s major works were presented at Eranos and initially published in the yearbook Eranos-Jahrbuch; they were later translated into English and published in the Bollingen Eranos series by Princeton University Press.
In 1954, Corbin succeeded Louis Massignon (at the latter’s suggestion) in the chair of religious and Islamic studies at the Sorbonne. Each year until the late 1970s, Corbin would spend autumns in Tehran, doing research and teaching at Tehran University; he would then spend winters and springs in Paris, and summers at Ascona. In 1973, Corbin retired but still continued his research work, and in 1974 began a position at the newly established Royal Iranian Academy of Philosophy in Tehran.
Corbin died on October 7, 1978, at age seventy-five, in Paris, and was buried in the cemetery of Champeaux in Montmorency, north of Paris. Corbin’s wife, Stella, helped with the posthumous publication of Corbin’s works until she passed away in 2003. The Corbins had no children. “Our children,” he once said in an interview in Tehran, “are these books.”
On the Shoulders of Giants
Corbin devoted his life to Suhrawardi’s philosophical project of integrating “discursive or verbal philosophy” (hikmat bah’thi) with “experiential mysticism” (hikmat dhouqi); the idea of the imaginal realm arose from this integration. What is perhaps most remarkable about Corbin’s work is that he did not limit his research to Suhrawardi; he studied, translated (into French), and commented on the works of all major Sufi masters and Islamic philosophers who had, in one way or another, contributed to the concept of imaginal realm (Corbin 1994, 2014). These included Avicenna (Ibn Sina, 980‒1037), Ruzbehan Baqli (1128‒1209), Ibn ‘Arabi (1165‒1240), and Mulla Sadra (1571‒1635), thus spanning six centuries of philosophical work, which Corbin masterfully synthesized.
Avicenna was a renowned philosopher, physician, and psychologist. His Canon of Medicine in Latin translation was a major medical textbook in Europe for six centuries until the eighteenth century. Avicenna also wrote several allegorical Sufi stories which Corbin analyzed in his book Avicenna and the Visionary Recital.
Ruzbehan Baqli, whose two main works Corbin translated, highlighted two teachings. First, love and beauty can be seen and sensed only if “veils” of ignorance, greed, and arrogance are removed from our hearts. Second, mystical findings or secret teachings can be only expressed in metaphors and symbols.
Corbin, who used to call Suhrawardi “my Master” (shaykh), collected and translated all of the Master’s Arabic and Persian works in three major volumes published in 1945, 1952, and 1970.
Corbin’s work on Ibn ‘Arabi, translated into English under the title Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination of the Sufism of Ibn Arabi, is one of the best works on the teachings and thoughts of this Andalusian theosophist, whose original works in Arabic are indeed dense and complex.
Mulla Sadra, who like Ruzbehan Baqli came from the city of Shiraz in Iran, was probably the last major philosopher of medieval Islam. Like Suhrawardi before him, Sadra attempted to reconcile rational and spiritual philosophies. In fact, the copy of Suhrawardi’s book that Massignon had given Corbin in 1928 contained commentaries by none other than Sadra.
The Imaginal Realm
To better understand the concept of imaginal realm, we need to situate it in Sufi cosmology. Sufi philosophers conceptualized the existence of several realms (âlam). Sometimes these are translated as “worlds,” but the word for “world” in Arabic, dunya, means the physical world, while âlam denotes a more general sense of “realm.”
The idea that existence has several modalities or realms is not new. In the third century AD, the Neoplatonist philosopher Plotinus suggested four realms: the One, nous (or intellect), psyche (soul), and the corporeal world (nature). This categorization served as a basis for later Islamic philosophical thinking.
Muslim philosophers believed that the divine realm (âlam lâhut) is “absolutely concealed” (ghayb mutlaqa) and cannot be conceived by the human intellect. Avicenna regards God as “necessary (causeless) being,” while Suhrawardi describes God as the Light of Lights (nur al-anwâr), implying that the entire creation is an emanation or illumination of lesser lights (anwâr) at various levels and degrees. The created world (âlam khalq) has four realms: (1) the realm of intellects (âlam jabarut); (2) the realm of pure souls (âlam malakut); (3) the imaginal realm (âlam mithâl or âlam khayâl); and (4) the physical realm (âlam mulk or âlam nâsut): the lower corporeal world.
The imaginal realm is the bridge between the physical body and the higher realms. Therefore it is neither physical nor purely spiritual: it is both tangible and abstract. It is imaginal—an image sourced in the beyond and yet perceptible here. To describe the imaginal, Suhrawardi uses the analogy of steam, which is neither water nor fire yet has qualities of both in itself. In fact, the Sufi term mithâl, translated as imaginal, actually refers to an image that exemplifies or symbolizes an ideal model. But this ideal model is different from Plato’s universal Ideas, which are fixed, perfect models of physical objects. The imaginal realm consists of “ideas or images in suspension” (suwar mu’allaqa). They are similar to images on the mirror: reflected and visible and yet not existing on the mirror. These images incarnate in the physical realm through our creative or active imagination (khayâl fa’âll).
Creative imagination in Suhrawardi’s teachings involves a journey from “the sunset on the west” toward “the sunrise on the east.” Here the words “west” and “east” should not be considered as geopolitical divisions. They indicate that in every location and in every human body, there is the darkness of sunset as well as the light of sunrise. “The adventure of a mystical philosopher is essentially seen as a voyage which progresses toward the Light” (Corbin 1998, 140). Avicenna and Suhrawardi liken this journey of the soul to the flight of a bird from its cage to the open sky or to its forest home.
The imaginal realm is also the bridge to the realm of angels, which, according to Suhrawardi, populate the realm of intellects. Suhrawardi uses Zoroastrian terminology for beings (Lights) in the realm of intellect, the first of which—that is, the closest light to God—is Vohu Mana: “Good Mind” (Avens).
Creative or active imagination is the faculty of connecting to the imaginal realm; it is like a ladder on which one ascends from bottom to top. Corbin believed that the imaginal realm is the source of creative art, inspirations, prophetic revelation, spiritual dreams, mystical visions, and myths. Corbin was fond of Persian arts—the architecture of mosques, gardens, and colorful geometric designs on ceramic, tiles, ceramic and pottery—and considered them to have come from the imaginal realm.
Corbin suggested that many mystical stories, or what he called “visionary narratives,” were inspired by the imaginal realm. He translated and commented on such narratives by Avicenna and Suhrawardi. For instance, one of Suhrawardi’s stories is based on a quote from the Sufi master Abu Ali Fârmadi (1016‒84) saying that our spiritual perceptions are like hearing the “sound of Gabriel’s wings.” Corbin suggested that even though such stories do not make sense rationally or physically, they symbolize observations and experiences of what takes place in the imaginal realm but cannot be put into words.
Where is the imaginal realm? Here Corbin uses various metaphorical terms found in Sufi literature, including “the eighth clime” (based on the ancient idea that the earth had seven climes or zones); the land beyond the mythical mountain of Qâf, the axis mundi in Sufi thought, which connects the earth to the heaven; the emerald cities of Jabulqa on the east and Jubulsa on the west; or the land of Hurqaliyâ or Nâkojâ-âbâd (“Nowhereland”). These names, although apparently geographic, refer to a realm which is not found on maps. Rather it is the place visited by the enlightened person, who, like Joseph Campbell’s “hero,” returns to society and shares the images and consciousness of Light.
How can one tell mental fantasy (tawah’hum) from spiritual vision of the imaginal realm (takhayyul)? According to Suhrawardi, the imaginal realm links to the realm of intellects and angels, so the images or ideas arising from it have angelic qualities of intelligence, benevolence, and beauty. Fantasy, however, can be proven to be unreal, and if it persists in the person’s mind can even lead to destructive feelings and demonic thoughts.
Corbin adds that the imaginal realm brings about a certain quality of consciousness that has been expressed by various mystics in different cultures and ages. In this sense, the imaginal realm is suprahistorical. For this reason, Corbin disliked attempts to explain away mystical texts and arts merely through historical, social, or psychological analyses. If mental imagination, tasawwur, is “the mind’s eye,” creative imagination, takhayyul, is the “heart’s eye.” Hence Sufis emphasize that in order to contact creative imagination and spiritual vision, the heart should be awake and pure.
Corbin’s Influences on Modern Thought
Corbin is less known than Carl Jung, Joseph Campbell, Mircea Eliade, and other mystical scholars of his generation, probably for two main reasons. For one thing, he wrote in French, not English, and then often in a technical language that is less accessible to the public. Moreover, although his thoughts have wider implications, he articulated them in the domain of Sufism, which would be of interest chiefly to certain groups of readers.
Nevertheless, as Corbin’s books have become available in English, his works and thoughts are gaining increasing attention. The concept of the imaginal realm has a special appeal to Jungian psychologists because of its applications in dream analysis, mythology, religious experience, and archetypal psychology. The American psychologist James Hillman (1926‒2011) in particular was fascinated by Corbin’s ideas. In recent years, Tom Cheetham has published a number of books on Corbin from the viewpoints of Jung’s and Hillman’s psychology. The literary critic Harold Bloom is another major thinker influenced by Corbin. He not only wrote an introduction to the 1997 edition of Corbin’s Alone with the Alone but also published an entire book, Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection (1996), that is rooted in Corbin’s ideas and works.
Corbin’s wife, Stella, reported that days before his death, Corbin had asked his doctor if he would live enough to finish a work in progress. His doctor had replied: “If you had hundred years more, you would ask me the same,” to which Corbin had said: “Maybe! Nevertheless, through my books I am fighting against the same thing as you. Each in our own way, you the doctor, I the historian of religions, we are fighting the same struggle, we are fighting against death.” In Corbin’s vision, death meant darkness, and life is light of consciousness from the imaginal realm.
Sources
Avens, Roberts. “Henry Corbin and Suhrawardi’s Angelogy.” Spring, 1988: 3‒20.
Bloom, Harold. Omens of Millennium: The Gnosis of Angels, Dreams, and Resurrection. New York: Riverhead, 1996.
Cheetham, Tom. The World Turned Inside Out: Henry Corbin and Islamic Mysticism. Thompson, Conn.: Spring Journal Books, 2003.
Corbin, Henry. Avicenna and the Visionary Recital. Translated by Willard Trask. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1960.
Corbin, Henry. Alone with the Alone: Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn ‘Arabi. Translated by Ralph Manheim. Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1969, 1998. (The earlier edition was published under the title Creative Imagination in the Sufism of Ibn Arabi.)
———. History of Islamic Philosophy. Translated by Liadain Sherrard. London: Routledge, 2014.
———. The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism. Translated by Nancy Pearson. New Lebanon, N.Y.: Omega Publications, 1994.
———. The Voyage and the Messenger: Iran and Philosophy. Translated by Joseph Rowe. Berkeley, Calif.: North Atlantic, 1998.
Jambet, Christian, ed. Henry Corbin. Paris: Éditions de l’Herne, 1981.
Sorkhabi, Rasoul. “Henry Corbin and the Renaissance of Persian Sufism.” Interreligious Insight 8, no. 3 (Dec. 2010): 26‒37.
Rasoul Sorkhabi, PhD, is a professor at the University of Utah. His life spans both East and West, as he has lived and studied in Iran, India, Japan, and the U.S. This is his sixth contribution to Quest.
PHOTO CREDIT: Photo by courtesy of L’Association des amis de Henry et Stella Corbin: www.amiscorbin.com.