 Direct intuition (dhawq) or mystical contemplation plays a predominant role, even for prophets. Prophetic knowledge relies on the functions of the faculty of imagination, i.e., its mimetic function and its role in the particularization of universal truths. Prophecy becomes the ‘direct’ experience of the world of lights. Suhrawardi also introduces an independent ‘world of images’ to account for the ability of prophets and other gifted individuals to access divine metaphysical realms where imaginable forms already exist. Such individuals are either commissioned or uncommissioned to receive and transmit God’s message, the prophets being those who are among the privileged commissioned. Direct intuition lies at the heart of Suhrawardi’s prophetology, inasmuch as only the most perfect sage (hakim) with intuitive philosophy (muta’allih) who witnesses those truths, whether he be a prophet or not, deserves God’s viceregency (khilafa), by being either a living proof or in occultation. Individuals who have access to those metaphysical lights can be invested with this viceregency, depending on the degree of their receptivity and the purity of their hearts (PI, §5). 