~Henry Corbin
We find a testimony of this sense of the voyage in the vast work of a seventeenth-century Persian platonist, Mullah Sadra Shirazi. One of the greatest names in Iranian philosophy, he has remained the guiding thinker in Iranian spiritualiry for generation after generation. Since the idea of a fourfold voyage is a tradition among Islamic mystics, Mullah Sadra takes it as the pattern upon which he structures his great summary of theosophical philosophg entitled 'High Wisdom Concerning the Four Spiritual Voyages'.
The first voyage is from the world of creatures towards Divine Being. In this, the philosopher grapples with general problems of physics, matter and form, and of substance and accident. At its culmination, the philosopher-pilgrim experiences fulfillment at the supersensible level of divine realities.
The second voyage moves from God, towards God, by means of God: one travels with God and in God. Here, the pilgrim never leaves the metaphysical plane; he is initiated into the ilahiyat, or divine sciences (the divinalia), and into the questions of the Divine Essence and the divine names and attributes.
The third voyage begins from God to a re-entry into the creaturely world, but by means of God and in God. In effect, this is an intellectual reversal of the first voyage, involving an initiation into the Hierarchy of Intelligences and the supersensible universes (the malakut and the jabarut).