“Knock and He will open the door. Vanish and He will make shine like a sun. Fall and He will He will raise you to heavens. Become nothing and He will raise you into everything.” — Rumi
AL- Ghazali describes the difficulty to comprehend God, who in His nature cannot be comprehended and of whose absolute essence, it is not possible to give a wholesome explanation. He admitted that God was completely different from human beings and therefore beyond all rational knowledge. Quran tells us, “You have been given very little knowledge.” All our decisions are based on biased perceptions of the past and incomplete view of the future. God sees the past present and future completely as His wisdom is perfect across time and space. When we realize our limited knowledge, we are naturally more inclined to trust God’s perfect vision over our incomplete vision. The Faithful puts his trust in God, ‘God is enough for me.’ Quran says, “There is no God but He, in Him I have put my trust, He is Lord of the mighty throne. (9:129).”
Al-Ghazali suggests- “If humanity was to ever succeed in loving God, first attaining knowledge about Him is indispensable. We ought to know that the love of God will never reign in the heart of a man, until first the knowledge of God reigns there and until the remembrance of God becomes unceasing.” The analogy that he uses follows a clear line of logic. Anything that human beings know more about, they also have a greater level of affection towards it. Moreover, since God is ultimately the most beautiful entity imaginable, love for Him will grow directly proportional to the level of understanding of His being. Such knowledge will necessitate the growth of love and therefore ought to be intentionally pursued. He explained,
“For love is the fruit of knowledge, it is extinguished when knowledge is extinguished; it redoubles when knowledge redoubles; it grows mighty in the strength of knowledge.”Allah is the prime motive of all creation and out of Love for these possibilities of self-expression, He created Transformation world, the ‘stage’ so that He may be known in all these different modalities. Imam Ghazali believed that an ignorant believer is more dangerous than the non-believer. An ignorant sees, who has said this instead of what is being said? “Be an orthodox or believer of any creed or religion, but do not turn into a zealot, a fundamentalist, because he believes, he is better than the rest and and that is enough to veil you from God.”
Creation is, for Ibn-Arabi, no more or less than the rendering visible of the invisible. When Sufis talk about ascertaining knowledge about God, however, their primary focus is not a rational assent, but rather an inward focus. Since they are primarily striving to attain a spiritual reality, reason alone is by its nature limited to grasp its truth. The only faculty within human beings that is designed to attain true spiritual knowledge is therefore the heart. In order to knowmankind needs to turn towards the heart, which is the seat of the spirit, and begin penetrating the deep mysteries of God. Al-Ghazali suggested, “If you then would know God, you must look into your own heart.” He goes on to describe his personal journey of how he attained revelation in the following words:-
“This did not come about by systematic demonstration or marshalled argument, but by a light which God most high cast into my breast. That light is the key to the greater part of knowledge. Whoever thinks that the understanding of things Divine rests upon strict proofs has in his thought narrowed down the wideness of God’s mercy?” In other words, true spiritual insight must go beyond the confines of rationality through an internal journey that takes place within the heart and seeks to discover the knowable elements about God, and the vehicle for reaching that goal is love. As one mystic suggested, “Sufis attempt to soar to the Highest on the wings of love and devotion.”
Imam Ghazali quoting Prophet (PBUH) said, ”The people who will be most severely tortured on the Day of Judgment will be those scholars, who did not benefit from their knowledge,” hence the imperative to pass on their knowledge truthfully to other people. He tells us that way out of suffering is to be nourished spiritually. He himself had left everything to find the true nature of divine reality and to find certitude. He believed this was possible only by removing the obstacles and purging the soul of its base characteristics and vicious morals, so that the heart may achieve freedom from anything that is not God. He advises us to to achieve moral transformation and to live a God conscious life drawing yourself away from fruitless desires. He says, ”If you travel on the spiritual path in God’s consciousness, travelling both inwardly and outwardly trusting only in God, recalling God through invocation and prayers, the constant remembrance of God will purify your soul.” Quran tells us, “It is not the eyes that are blind, but the hearts.” (22:46) —To be continue.
—The writer is author of various books based in Rawalpindi.
(muhammadtahir50@hotmail.com)
