ABSTRACT
For apart from being a jurist and political activist Ayatollah Khomeini was deeply attached to the Islamic mystical tradition, more commonly known as Sufism. Apart from doing the traditional curriculum, which revolved around jurisprudence and its principles, Khomeini showed a strong interest in Ethics, Philosophy, and Irfan. The year 1928, with the arrival in Qum of Ayatollah Mohammad Ali Shahabadi, who became his most important teacher in Irfan, began a seven-year period in which Khomeini embarked on an intense cultivation of both the theoretical and practical aspects of the discipline. The important point Khomeini makes in his Lantern of Guidance is that the welaya, which according to him means closeness and proximity to God and which is achieved through mystical wayfaring, forms the esoteric content of khilafah which denotes deputyship and vicegerency. Among gnoseologists, Khomeini included, there is general agreement that the fourth travel, which denotes social responsibility congruent with spiritual proximity to God, is the preserve of prophet Muhammad.
