Customer Reviews

Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth

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This book is perhaps the best place to begin exploring the Marvellous Land of Henri Corbin. Corbin was a treasure, an intrepid scholar who did more than anyone to open Western eyes to the spiritual world of Iran: poetic, visionary, Sufi, Shi'ite, seamed with ancient Zoroastrian and Gnostic ideas, a world with which the West has so much in common (Plato, Monotheism, Utopia, Redemption,) yet which remains so exotic and veiled.

Corbin abandoned Western philosophy, believing it had gone astray way back in the 14th century when William of Ockham introduced Nominalism. Iranian philosophy went the opposite way, towards an extreme Realism, a Platonism that would have startled Plato. Plato's Realm of Ideas is mainly an epistemological shortcut: its Shi'ite equivalent, the "Alam al-Mithal," (remember that from Frank Herbert's "Dune?") is far more substantial and habitable, like the higher worlds visited by shamans.

This book is a guide to that "Imaginal" world: not the concrete sensory world but not imaginary either, perfectly real, perceived in visionary states with the eyes of the spirit. Corbin's long introduction supplies the philosophical and historical background, and his anthology of texts offers opalescent travellers' tales, streaked with Suhrawardi's Light mysticism, the intricate theosophy of Ibn `Arabi and Shi'ite themes of concealment and transfiguration.

Corbin does himself no favours as a writer, a true French intellectual in preferring to express the profound by means of the impenetrable. But anyone who can struggle through the viscous prose and discover what an astonishing tale he has to tell, will surely want more. "Alone with the Alone" and "The Man of Light" are still more opaque, but go even further in revealing one of the most fascinating worlds of thought in existence.

"Spiritual Body and Celestial Earth" was a true pleasure to read. Very deep... it's not something you can read through in a hurry you have to take your time and ponder each page. This book presents some really fascinating insights into Zoroastrian Angel-ology, Shi'ite esoterism and Iranian Sufism. You can't go wrong with any of Henry Corbins books but this one and " The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism" are his two best by far.

This (the first of Corbin's books that I've read) is certainly an intriguing volume. After taking a couple of classes on Islamic civilization, history and religion, I thought I had at least a decent grasp of what Islam was about. Apparently not! Corbin's translations here open up whole new vistas on Sufism and Islam (at least for the ignorant, such as myself). To hear the same tired stories and dogma about Islam and Mohammed repeated so often and then to come across a work such as this is quite an experience.

First of all: one star off for Corbin's impenetrable introduction. Although in some ways it helps to set the stage, I find it hard to believe that anyone but Corbin and perhaps a few experts in this field could really follow what he is talking about. Perhaps the translator is at fault here, but I doubt it - since the (double!) translations of the original texts themselves tend to be crystal clear and very enjoyable to read. Corbin's lengthy introduction (nearly half the book), however, is so weighty and confusing that it nearly deterred me from reading the texts that follow - which would have been a big mistake.

The texts are highly varied (in length and quality - curiously, the more recent authors, mostly late 1800's, become in my opinion far less interesting and more dogmatic, or so it seems) but all point to what Corbin calls the 'Imaginal Realm', which is a bit difficult to describe, but is generally explained as halfway between pure ideas and material reality; that is, a world of mental images, spaces, objects, and so on. To someone (such as myself) very interested for a long time in dreams, lucid dreaming, astral projection, etc., the correspondences are very intriguing. As another reviewer pointed out, there is a similarity here to the shamanic descriptions of traveling to 'higher worlds' and for me many of the first-person accounts of travel to the Imaginal Realm were very reminiscent of lucid dreaming experiences. The later texts to focus more on how this Realm explains how a 'bodily' Resurrection can take place, a tortured argument I found not only unconvincing (and boring), but rather dogmatic.

Overall however this is an eye-opening book that will introduce you to a beautiful and fascinating side of Islam most people never seem to come across (and which, unfortunately, seems greatly in decline today). Intriguing! Very highly recommended, especially, to dreamers who want to see an ancient religious take on the dream world.