Visions as ‘Good to Think’: A Cognitive Approach to Visionary Experience in Islamic Sufi Thought

This article explores one type of visionary experience described and interpreted by mystics within certain traditions, which may be termed a ‘cognitive’ or ‘gnostic’ vision. Such visions provide information or offer solutions to problems of theology or religious interpretation. A close textual analysis of a selection from the writings of an eighteenth century Indian Sufi, Shāh Walı̄ Allāh of Delhi, demonstrates this process of intensive thinking through superimposed grids which combine elements of religious symbol systems. This type of thinking triggers a mystical experience which is subsequently interpreted in a problem solving or divinatory mode.