Al-Ghazali

What is the Absolute? Does God exist?

A living God who creates by will and is the only true light

A personal GodStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali defends, as an Ash'ari theologian, a single God who is living, knowing, powerful and endowed with will, who creates the world from nothing and sustains it at every instant. In The Just Mean in Belief he argues that the world had a beginning and that whatever begins needs someone to bring it into existence; in The Incoherence of the Philosophers he rejects Avicenna's God, from whom the world emanates by necessity, because that God is denied free will and knowledge of particulars. His mystical work does not depersonalise this God but intensifies Him: in The Niche of Lights he holds that the only true light is God and that all other lights are borrowed, and his commentary on the ninety-nine names makes each divine attribute a model the believer can imitate within human measure.

Who am I? Is there a true self?

The true self is the heart, a mirror created to know God

A created, immortal soulStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali opens The Alchemy of Happiness with knowledge of the self, because knowledge of the self is the key to knowledge of God. What man truly is is not the body, which is his mount and his tool, but the heart (qalb): a subtle, spiritual reality of a divine order, able to know God and destined to survive death. The book on the marvels of the heart, in the Revival, describes it as a mirror that is clouded by sins and passions and polished by discipline and remembrance of God, until it reflects the realities of the unseen world. The passional self (nafs), with its appetites, is not the absolute enemy but the animal the heart must govern. The soul is created, not eternal; but its destiny is immortal.

Why do we suffer?

A heart sick with the world is veiled from God

Separation from GodStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali devotes an entire quarter of the Revival, that of the «vices leading to perdition», to the diseases of the heart: gluttony, lust, anger, envy, love of money and fame, pride, ostentation. They all share one root, love of the world, which clouds the mirror of the heart and veils it from God; that distance is the true misery, here and in the next life. He lived it himself: in Deliverance from Error he tells how, in 1095, God locked his tongue until he could no longer teach, and the physicians said the illness lay in the heart and their art had no remedy for it. Outward afflictions, by contrast, are trials to be borne with patience and gratitude, and they can bring one closer to God.

What happens after death?

Death is the passage to meeting the King, and the body will be raised

Eternal life and resurrectionStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali closes the Revival with an entire book on the remembrance of death and what comes after: the agony, the grave, the resurrection, the judgement, the balance, the bridge, paradise and the fire, and also the vision of God, which is the supreme bliss. The Precious Pearl follows the same itinerary with abundant traditions. Against the philosophers, who admitted only the immortality of the soul, he holds in The Incoherence that denying the resurrection of bodies is unbelief, for nothing prevents God from giving the soul back a body. Remembering death every day is not morbid: it detaches from the world and prepares the encounter. According to his brother Ahmad's account, he died in Tus at dawn, after asking for his shroud and declaring himself ready to enter into the presence of the King.

How is liberation or salvation attained?

Knowing is not enough: the heart must be purified and the path tasted

Through disciplined practiceStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali came to the Sufi way after exhausting theology, philosophy and the teaching of the Ismailis, and what he discovered was that salvation is not reached by reading. In Deliverance from Error he puts it in an image: what a difference there is between knowing the definition of health and satiety and being healthy and sated. The Sufis, he writes, were men of lived states, not of words. That is why the Revival is a programme of practice: acts of worship performed with inner attention, discipline of the soul (riyada), struggle against vices, acquisition of virtues and constant remembrance of God. In the Letter to a Disciple he insists that knowledge without deeds is madness. The goal is knowledge of God, but the path is purification.

Is a teacher necessary?

The disciple needs a master to train him, but not an infallible imam

IndispensableStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali distinguishes two questions. On the spiritual path the master is indispensable: in the Letter to a Disciple and in the Revival's book on the discipline of the soul he explains that whoever seeks God needs a shaykh to train him, to uproot his bad traits of character and replace them with good ones, as the farmer pulls up weeds; the disciple must entrust himself to him as the sick man to the physician. But in matters of religious truth he rejects the authority the Ismailis claimed for their hidden, infallible imam: in Deliverance from Error and in his refutations he holds that the only infallible teacher is the Prophet, and that his teaching is already in the Qur'an and the sunna, within reach of reason and of the scholars.

Is the world real?

A world created anew at every instant, and none better is possible

A good and real creationStated explicitly

For al-Ghazali the world is real and good, but it does not sustain itself. In The Incoherence of the Philosophers he denies any necessary connection between what we call cause and effect: cotton does not burn because fire touches it, but because God creates the burning when the contact occurs, according to a custom (ada) He can suspend. The world is thus a continuous work of the divine will. In the Revival's book on divine unity and trust in God he states that there is nothing in the realm of possibility more wonderful than what exists: the present order is the best that could have been. And in The Niche of Lights he adds that the existence of creatures is borrowed, as the moon's light comes from the sun.

What is love?

Only God truly deserves love: love crowns the path

Longing and unionStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali devotes one of the final books of the Revival to love, longing, intimacy and contentment, and presents it as the goal of all the preceding stations: repentance, patience or trust are preparations for loving. He analyses the causes for which one loves — love of one's own existence, of the benefactor, of beauty, of affinity — and shows that all of them, carried to their end, find a full object only in God, the origin of being, of every good and of all beauty. From love springs the longing to see Him and intimacy with Him. To illustrate pure love he quotes the verses of the two loves attributed to Rabia, thereby making them the canonical example of the tradition.

Are we free, or is everything determined?

There is no agent but God: the pen does not write by itself

There is no doerStated explicitly

In the Revival's book on divine unity and trust in God, al-Ghazali describes the highest degree of faith in unity: to see that there is no agent but God. He illustrates it with a parable: a traveller sees a blackened sheet and questions the ink, which refers him to the pen, which refers him to the hand, which refers him to will, knowledge and power, until all acknowledge that they obey another. Secondary causes are intermediaries; the only actor is God, who also creates human acts. Nevertheless, as an Ash'ari theologian he holds that man acquires (kasb) his acts and answers for them before the law and at the judgement. Trust in God does not abolish effort: the one who trusts goes on working.

Why meditate or pray?

The rites of the law, lived with presence of heart, transform the believer

Ritual and self-cultivationStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali's great contribution was to give the rites back their soul. The first quarter of the Revival goes through purification, prayer, almsgiving, fasting, pilgrimage, recitation of the Qur'an and remembrance of God, and for each act sets out its outward rules and its inner secrets. Ritual prayer is fully valid only when accompanied by presence of heart, understanding of what is said, reverence, awe, hope and shame. The Beginning of Guidance orders the believer's day from waking to sleep. Beyond the rites lie constant remembrance (dhikr) and retreat (khalwa), which he himself practised for years; but he never set them against the law: Sufi practice flourishes within it.

Can reason know the ultimate?

Reason has a limit; beyond it, a light that God casts

The ultimate lies beyond the mindStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali was a master of logic, who wrote two manuals to teach it and defended its use in law and theology; in The Incoherence of the Philosophers he fought Avicenna with his own weapons. But Deliverance from Error tells how a crisis of doubt made him distrust both the senses and the first principles of reason, and how he came out of it not through a chain of proofs but through a light God cast into his breast, the key to most knowledge. The ultimate is not demonstrated: it is tasted (dhawq). Above reason lies the degree of prophecy, of which the Sufis attain a sample. Reason is an indispensable instrument, but it is not the supreme judge.

Withdraw from the world or transform it?

He left his Baghdad chair to withdraw, and returned to teach years later

Withdraw in order to findStated explicitly

Al-Ghazali's most famous decision was a withdrawal. In 1095, at the peak of his career as professor at the Nizamiyya of Baghdad, he realised he was teaching out of ambition and not for God, lost his speech and left the city. For some eleven years he lived in Damascus, Jerusalem, Hebron and Mecca, given to retreat, asceticism and the remembrance of God. In the Revival he devotes a book to weighing the advantages of seclusion and of life in company, and concludes that it depends on each person and each moment. But in 1106 he agreed to teach again in Nishapur, convinced that the corruption of his age demanded speaking out; he also wrote counsel for sultans. Retreat was for him a necessary purification, not a definitive flight.