Mushahada (Sufism)

At the beginning of the real journey to God there is contemplation or vision of God in a state of mystical ecstasy, when the Sufi becomes perfect for absolute unification with God. The God-given desire to behold his essence enables knowledge to become vision, vision to become revelation and revelation becomes contemplation as God reveals divinity in the heart of the seeker. This last becomes existence with and in God.

This is one of the most important states of consciousness in Sufism. There is vision of unveiled, divine beauty in which the beholder and the beheld are not two, but one.

The experience of this vision depends on the devotee's love and faith in God and illumination of the heart by the grace of God. In contemplation of God everything else is obliterated.

The seventh psychic state listed by A Reza Aresteh as progress on the inner self through divine attraction, kedesh-jazba, the outer self already having been purified through conscious effort, kushesh. The tenth stage in a systematic account of various stations of the Sufi spiritual path.