 At the heart of Suhrawardi’s epistemological concerns lie two important components of his ishraqi philosophy of lights: the concepts of ‘self-awareness’ (shu‘ur bi-l-dhat) and ‘knowledge by presence’ (‘ilm huduri) (PI, §§114–7). What is at stake is the nature of the acquisition of knowledge and its ontological underpinning. He begins by exploring and questioning some of the issues raised by the hypothetical thought experiment of the ‘flying’ or ‘suspended’ person found in Avicenna’s Discussions and his Notes on Aristotle’s De anima, and his treatments of the soul in the Cure and Salvation. In Intimations, for instance, he criticizes and then rejects Avicenna’s Peripatetic ‘representational’ epistemology that conceives acquisition of knowledge by means of a ‘representation’ or a ‘form’ of what is known in the knower (Kaukua 2015, 106–17). He rejects it as a proof for the existence of the immaterial soul, claiming that the relation enjoyed by the (material) body/(immaterial) soul is a “more intimate relationship of ‘presence’ (hudur)”, since ‘presence’ now connects (immaterial) intellection and internal (material/brain) senses activities. This experiential evidence would serve as proof for the existence of the soul