Cyclical history, gnosis, and memory: a study in the role and significance of Mystical Poetry as a medium of Popular Culture for Persian Sufism

The ‘automatic’ sense in immediately identifying and relating to what is ‘right,’ ‘just,’ ‘true,’ or ‘real’ is just an example of how cunningly our inner-selves know ‘who we are,’ ‘what we are,’ ‘where we come from’ and ‘where we are going.’ Just as quickly as this ‘hyper’ sense identifies with the good, not a moment is wasted in informing us of the ‘wrong,’ the ‘bad,’ the ‘lie,’ or the ‘evil.’ This has prompted humankind to ask the question ‘What is in us that knows? How does it know? Most importantly, where does this knowledge come from?’ In one simple answer, this knowledge is within; it is our ‘real self’ that knows because we were meant to know. In mystical or esoteric language, it does not get any more confusing than this, and paradoxically, no simpler. Answers to life’s riddles and much more have been laid to claim by gnostic persons or groups for centuries on end. Their admission to this spiritual wealth is the result of a spiritual alchemy that transforms the common man of flesh to the ‘Man of Light,’ to adapt Henry Corbin’s title.1 In Iranian gnoseology, this theme is profoundly important and prevalent among its religious heritage, especially within Sufism. Sufism, which is, among other inheritors of ‘gnosis,’ a contemporary face of today’s spirituality, finds an ongoing relevance in the heart of the second millennium through not only the great lyrical poets of Persia but also through its obvious links with the various spiritual or gnostic contents or themes as manifested in popular film

A Sequential Meta-Transfer (SMT) Learning to Combat Complexities of Physics-Informed Neural Networks: Application to Composites Autoclave Processing

Physics-Informed Neural Networks (PINNs) have gained popularity in solving nonlinear partial differential equations (PDEs) via integrating physical laws into the training of neural networks, making them superior in many scientific and engineering applications. However, conventional PINNs still fall short in accurately approximating the solution of complex systems with strong nonlinearity, especially in long temporal domains. Besides, since PINNs are designed to approximate a specific realization of a given PDE system, they lack the necessary generalizability to efficiently adapt to new system configurations. This entails computationally expensive re-training from scratch for any new change in the system. To address these shortfalls, in this work a novel sequential meta-transfer (SMT) learning framework is proposed, offering a unified solution for both fast training and efficient adaptation of PINNs in highly nonlinear systems with long temporal domains. Specifically, the framework decomposes PDE's time domain into smaller time segments to create "easier" PDE problems for PINNs training. Then for each time interval, a meta-learner is assigned and trained to achieve an optimal initial state for rapid adaptation to a range of related tasks. Transfer learning principles are then leveraged across time intervals to further reduce the computational cost.Through a composites autoclave processing case study, it is shown that SMT is clearly able to enhance the adaptability of PINNs while significantly reducing computational cost, by a factor of 100

An inquiry into the nature of the female mystic and the divine feminine in Sufi experience

This article is an inquiry into the nature of the female mystic and the divine feminine in Sufi experience. It considers this experience in the general sense with regard to the Sufi tradition, but in its analysis, the article primarily draws on examples from the classical period of Sufi history. Based on an analysis of the thought of key Sufi figures from that period, the assertion is made that the ground of the sacred is female and, as such, the basis of mystical experience is feminine

Female Mystics and the Divine Feminine in the Global Sufi Experience

This book is a reprint of the Special Issue Female Mystics and the Divine Feminine in the Global Sufi Experience that was published in Religions)

Reflections on an academic pursuit of religion

The study of religion is a contested field of investigation that has for the past two decades challenged my thinking on the subject. 'An unofficial philosopher of religion who received his academic training from a 'historian' sums up my story as an accidental scholar of religion. On the whole, I see my work as a series of successive leaps, unbound by any one particular project. As a mid-career academic, I am in the process of yet another leap, as it were. The one thing that anchors what I do is the simultaneous historical and philosophical pursuit of what religion is

Classic Sufism and Gnosis

The term "gnosis" in classic Sufism has a range of meanings that need to beconsidered in its varieties of expression as found in the literature and language of theSufis in that period. The gauge for this chapter is the identification of a series of termsthat correspond with "gnosis," but which are not singularly sufficient definitions. These are tadjalli (theophany), dhawq (taste), and ma'rifa (intuitive knowledge). Gnoseology is here used to convey a general approach to the theory of metaphysicalknowledge among well-known mystics of Islam, and will be explored accordingly. As such, this chapter provides an outline of the development of the categories ofknowledge among Sufis of the classic period. Earlier Sufis were not inept or deficientin their "gnoseology"; rather, despite the paucity of information on early figures, what can be gleaned from the later biographical tradition is at the very least enough to suggest that these early Sufis had a profound interaction with their religion (AliHujwuri [flor. 1030], Kashf al-Mahjoub IX-XII). The activity of Sufi gnoseology is an early occurrence, and continues to be developed in greater detail by Sufis exposedto Hellenic thought. This later period (for which there is an abundance of material sources) offers relevant exegeses on theosophy, emanationist ontology, and complex metaphysics in the writings of mystics based on Avicennian principles, some of whom categorize a reformulation of familiar terms – tadjalli, dhawq, and ma’rifa – in their theory of knowledge