Bismillaahir-Rahmaanir-Rahiim In the name of Allah The Merciful, The Compassionate
Al-Ghazali The Alchemist of Happiness
From my early youth since before I was twenty
until the present time when I'm over fifty,
I have recklessly launch out into the midst of ocean depths.
I have ever briefly embarks on the open sea.
Throwing aside all craven caution,
I've poked into every dark recess.
I have made an assault on every problem.
I have plunged into every abyss.
I have scrutinized every creed of every sect.
I have tried to laid bare the innermost doctrine of every community.
All of this have I done that I might distinguished between true and false.
Between sound tradition and heretical innovation.
We come into this world and we leave it,
that much is certain, I think.
It's this road we're travellin' on that we need to figure out.
But then knowledge is like the horizon,
it recedes as we approach it,
so there is always the need to know more.
From Malibu to Mecca and now Mashad
I've been seeking my answers from philosophy and religion
and turn to the teachings of Islam.
It may not seem an obvious choice.
Especially if you buy into that "Clash of Civilizations" scenario.
But then with so much happening in the world today,
things that I've taken for granted are being called into question.
How can I get to the bottom of it?
Years before, I'd come across the writings of a man who'd lived nearly a thousand years ago
but whose teachings, resonated within me.
He exerted a tremendous influence on thinkers in the East and the West,
Muslim and Non-Muslim alike.
His life was devoted to probing the mysteries of existence
and by overcoming his own philosophical doubts
and achieving spiritual illumination,
he became a model for seekers of the truth everywhere.
His name was Al-Ghazali.
And that's why I've embarked on this journey,
to find out more about his life
and his quest for Ultimate Reality.
Al-Ghazali is generally regarded as one of the five or six most influential thinkers in
the history of humanity.
And his greatness reaches posterity.
And probably the main reason why he's so subsequently revered
is that he shows that at the living heart of every belief
and every practice of Islam
there is a spiritual purpose and a process of repentance and upliftment and transformation.
That's why he's called 'Proof of Islam', no one else quite has that title.
It is here in Tus, Khurasan, in north-eastern Iran, that the journey begins.
This is where Ghazali was born in 1058
and would eventually return to spend the last years of his life.
It seems strange that for so great a man his final resting place should be shrouded in mystery.
Everyone used to think that this was Ghazali's tomb and..
This mausoleum, they used to call it the prison of Harun, but why is this here?
Yes. This is just a memorials, stone for Ghazali's tomb.
For a long time we have no evidence of where is Ghazali's buried really.
A lot of people from everywhere
particularly from Pakistan and Central Asia come here and pilgrim this stone as a
Ghazali's stone, but it's not really.
There is another tomb that archeologists suppose Ghazali should be buried there
and this is over the great wall of Tus, at a distant.
- If you like we can have a look for it... - Can we? - Yes
So this is where they think that Ghazali was buried?
Yes, some evidences showed that Ghazali had been buried here.
So Ghazali was born here and then he
eventually came back
but it's, it seems like a complete
desolute place...
Why would he want to come back to somewhere like this?
Tus was a great and huge center for Islamic culture.
A lot of scholars born here in Tus
including Ghazali and...
In Ghazali's day, superficially, the Islamic world was
the greatest civilization that ever been.
The biggest, the most prosperous, the most intellectually, and arhitecturally productive.
As a civilization, everything seems to be flourishing.
And perhaps the most productive soil in the central Islamic lands, at the time,
was Khurasan, which approximately means the core of what we nowadays refer to as Central Asia.
There were great cities there, great colleges,
great disputations between theologians
also major center for the study of Islamic law.
This is where many of the early principles of Sufism
were systematized
and to turn it into a method which allowed Muslims to return,
as much as they could,
to the original spirituality at the core of the faith.
So in all of those areas,
Khurasan really is a heartland of Islamic intellectuality and
the vibrancy of Muslim life in the period.
So the Mongols laid waste to the great cities of Khurasan.
Erasing nearly every trace of its centers of knowledge and culture.
Perhaps it's foolish looking for signs of Ghazali in the dust anyway.
It was in writings like "The Revival of Religious Sciences" and "The Alchemy of Happiness"
that he indicated the inner meanings of the Islamic rites
and the methods that lead to his realization.
But that spiritual alchemy
like the alchemy that transmutes base metals into gold
is not so easily discovered.
Where did it all begin for him...?
[Ahmad al-Ghazali, a renown Sufi figure, Ghazali's younger brother]
As it is my self-proclaimed deign to be a seeker of truth
I need firstly to discovered the foundation of certainty itself.
Human nature and its base condition is one of emptyness
and ignorance of the unseen world of God.
Human beings attain its knowledge through organs of perception.
In fact each of the senses is given to us
that we may understand the world of created things.
The first thing created in us
is the sense of touch.
Touch allows us to perceive heat and cold,
wet and dry,
smooth and rough.
But by using touch alone,
we are unable to perceive colors and sounds.
As far as touches concern,
these have no reality.
[Ahmad al-Ghazali], [Abu Hamid al-Ghazali]
Next,
comes the sense of sight.
Sight allows us to perceive colors and shapes.
Sight is a most far reaching of all senses.
[Al-Ghazali reciting Al-Baqarah to his father] Bismillaahir-Rahmaanir-Rahiim
Alif Laam Miim
[Dhaalikal-kitabullaah...] Then comes hearing
[rayba fiihii hudal-lil-muttaqiin...] which allows us to hear sounds of various kinds.
And taste,
[al-ladhiina...] and so on,
[yu'minuuna bil-ghaibi...] until the senses are all present,
wa yuqiimuunas-salaat, wa mimma razaqnaahum yunfiquun
When we are about 7 years old,
a part of discernment is created in us.
This new step in our development
permit us to understand more than just the world of the senses.
At this point,
we progress to a further state.
Reason is created in us.
We grasp abstract things that are necessary,
possible or impossible.
And this is a perception beyond the reach of the earlier stages.
Beyond reason there lies yet another stage
where a different eye is opened,
and we behold the unseen world.
What is to be in the future
and other things that lie
beyond the reach of reason.
How are you Dervish?
Better than you it seems.
It's nearly time... I need a favor.
You know very well I will do everything I can.
Take my sons with you.
They are growing boys.
I will take them for as long as I can.
Let the student be certain
that even more he's owed to the teacher
than to the father.
For a teacher is the one who brings him to eternal life
while the father
is a cause only of his temporal life.
The idea that the father
of meaning which is the teacher
is more important
than one's actual biological father.
It is an old theme,
and Plato has Socrates telling us this in "The Republic."
What Imam Al-Ghazali is
pointing out here is
the idea of "divine ad infinitum."
The idea of
what ultimately comes
at to not what is perishing
and what goes on forever.
And so this is the idea of learning
those things that one needs
for this infinite journey.
Because what the father gives you
he gives you life
for this worldly journey.
But he does not give you
the means to get through the world.
Al-Hamdulillaahir-Rabbil-'aalamiin
Ar-Rahmaanir-Rahiim
Maaliki yaumid-diin
Iyya-Ka na'budu wa iyya-Ka nasta'iin
May he rest in peace.
O light of my eyes,
before dying your father entrusted you to me to show you the path of knowledge.
This is the place for the dead.
We have to go where life is.
Where life is.
We are enjoined to seek knowledge from the cradle to the grave.
And reflecting upon death certainly helps to focus our thoughts
on where we're ultimately heading.
But with the distractions of the world pulling us in so many directions.
It's easy enough to loose sight of what we should be preparing for.
What kind of obstacles that Ghazali encountered
on his way to spiritual awakening?
Bismillaahir-Rahmaanir-Rahiim
Innaa anzalnaahu fii lailatil-qadr
Wa maa adraaka maa lailatul-qadr
Although our Sufi guardian did his best to honor our father's request
to care for my brother and myself.
He was unable to do so for long.
[Why are you so late? This is no time to come to school.]
Soon therefore
[Since you are so late, you must sit here and learn this chapter by heart]
we became students
at the madrasa.
What are you laughing about?
No laughing is allowed here.
Salaamun hiya hattaa-
[matla'il-fajr] He and his younger brother Ahmad
were left by their father at the care
of a friend of his before his death, who was himself
a "Faqir", a Sufi.
What it was about is that in his early years
he was very much devoted to formal studies.
The younger brother was always interested in Sufism.
And there was an aspect of bookishness about, you might say, in his early years
which also of course made him a very great scholar later on.
[You can go now children,] We had become students
[you must learn everything] for the sake of something else
[I've taught you by tomorrow] other than God.
A'uudhu billaahi minash-shaitaanir-rajiim
But he was unwilling that it should be for the sake of anything
but himself.
We know that he was a prodigy.
All the evidence indicates that he memorized standard texts in very early age
and exhausted the intellectual opportunities of his own town
in his early teens, and had to head-off to the neighboring provincial capital of Nishapur
where he sat at the feet of
Al-Juwaini
who was
in the eyes of many, the leading jurist and also theologian of the day.
From an early age I constantly thirstied after a grasp of things
as they really are.
To me this was something instincly.
A part of my God-given nature.
A matter of temperance.
And not of my choice so contriving.
He's a voracious reader.
He is somebody who wants to understand everything.
He has an insatiable appetite for knowledge.
He actually says about
"Kalaam", which is theology.
He says that I did not write anything
concerning theology
until I had memorized
12.000 pages
of the great theologians of Islam.
Hello, my dear Ahmad.
Hello Muhammad.
He really is taking in this knowledge
with a worldview, with a cosmology
based obviously on Islamic concept of "Tauhiid"
or the ultimate unity of God and how that unity is manifest through diversity
in the world.
He talks about
desiring
to get to the root
of problems.
So
he had literally mastered,
memorized, interiorized,
and then began to teach
these things at a very early age.
About the lesson on Assad Khurasani, there were some questions...
[Everyone is interested to know your opinion]
The change of tradition all authority and inherited belief
[Yes, we should discuss this in great detail]
cease to hold me.
[You, what's your opinion?]
For I could see that Christian children always grew up to be Christians.
Jewish children to be Jews.
And Muslim children, to be Muslims.
I also heard the saying related from the Prophet
"Every child is born with a sound nature
it is only his parent who make of him a Jew,
a Christian,
or a Zoroastrian."
Ghazali had observed that for certain external factors
shaped the different forms that revelation and religious experience could take.
At the heart of all of these, is the Divine Existence.
And it is in man's nature
to seek this Reality.
Ghazali speaks about
sound nature that
he referring to the hadith of the Prophet.
You know this word "fitra."
Can you explain to me what that mean?
What that actually means?
"Fitra"
means actually "the nature."
But as it is the
primordial nature of man in the "fitra."
Man as was created by God.
And if you ask what this consist in.
One can say the love of God and worship of God.
Man is created for that.
And the highest worship or the highest form of worship is knowledge of God.
And if serving God
for human kind means knowing God,
then it refers to implicate other than
God has given man
so that he can know Him.
This knowledge naturally
is the
identification of the Known and the knower.
One can put it like that man is made for this in an eon.
And that is why I say is primordial nature.
By nature man is a worshipper
just as created by God.
There is an inherent nature of God,
that God has given human beings.
And that nature has been imprinted
in us.
And one of those things about this nature, I think
Imam Al-Ghazali's life is a reflection of that,
is that
there is a knowing
pain
in the soul.
And it does not go away.
And one the tragic aspect of human existence
is that, when we removed God
from our search which, and
whatever we called God
if the Buddhist talk about Ultimate Reality
Ultimate Concern
this is still
coming approximating on understanding of God.
God is Ultimate Concern.
If we remove Ultimate Concern
from our lives
we have to find substitutes.
This is human nature.
We will find substitutes to fill that hollow space within man
because man is essentially a hollow being.
So how can we reconcile faith with reason?
It's become a luxury to practice religion unquestioningly in the modern world.
On the one hand there is cynicism and no absolutes.
On the other hand rages mistaken for revelation.
And religion in its various persuasions
hijacked by radical ideologist.
Allowing atrocities to be committed in its name.
Why is it?
How is it that religion meant to be a means to salvation
has become so unappealing?
How has the profane become so seductive?
So that we no longer are aware of the unseen
or able to accept that there may be a higher purpose to life?
This is a tragic condition.
The ancients
even in their pursuit of the mundane
always knew that tradition
and the pursuit of the sacred
will always so much more important.
In his search for knowledge
Ghazali traveled to study under the leading theologians of the day.
But some of his most important lessons
came from quite unexpected sources.
Nobody move!
Well, well, what have we here?
Nothing of importance.
Let me see what it is.
It is nothing.
Please give them back to me, they're of no value to you.
These things are without value you say?
They contain everything I learned from my journey to Gurgan.
Everything I learned from my teachers for the last two years.
They are everything I know.
So all I have to do is take them from you to strip you of your knowledge.
In my heart
I knew he had a point.
I decided, he had been sent by God to teach me.
Having experience a run in with a band of cockroach robbers.
I resolve to God myself
and the knowledge I have gained
against any future encounters.
I spend three years committing all the notes I had accumulated to memory
whilst continuing with my studies under the guidance of the learned and venerable
Imam Al-Haramain Al-Juwaini.
The world has always been fraud with dangers.
And as Ghazali said,
"You only really possessed what you can't loose on a shipwreck."
So do we spend our entire lives watching from the shore?
Or despite the dangers venture out,
in search of a deeper knowledge.
One that isn't to be found
in books alone.
Imam Al-Ghazali recognized that there were basically four
types of knowledge.
The first type of knowledge were sensory knowledges.
Knowledge of the sensory that we
we had this ability to perceive whether it was hot or cold.
We could look and see that it was day as opposed to night time.
But he examined this and recognized that it wasn't true.
That a feverish man
would think it was hot when in fact it was cold.
We can't deny
the knowledge of the senses.
But he recognized that the knowledge was not infallible.
The knowledge was something that we could deluded
into thinking in fact something when it was not.
Sight
is our most powerful sense.
But when we look at the sundial our sight tells us that the shadow on it
is standing still.
There seems to be no movement.
But if we returned to the shadow an hour later,
then our own eyes will tell us that the shadow has moved.
Not by fits and starts
but gradually and steadily.
By infinitely small distances.
Never pausing or resting.
The second type of knowledge is he identified as rational knowledge.
The mathematical knowledge.
And so.
What he did was he began to examined
all of his rational knowledge and he realized
and this is, questioning a priori assumption which is very interesting, it is very modern.
What he realized was
is that, just as he had discovered
that the sensoria were not
invaluable sources of knowledge,
that the intellect could also be in a deluded state,
that we could actually think something to be true,
and have reason to doubt
but in fact, it wasn't.
And he felt very comfortable with mathematics,
which is interesting, because the modern world--
one of the few areas--where the modern world feels comfortable is mathematics.
So he felt comfortable with mathematics, because he said,
"Whether we're awake or asleep,
2+2 will always equal 4."
What do you say this is?
It's a stick. You can all see it's a stick.
And now I will turn it into a snake, a big dangerous snake.
If anybody has the slightest doubt, I will hold their breath in their chests.
Do you understand?
Now, pay close attention.
Certain knowledge must be infallible.
[I close it, I close it, I close your mouth, I close your bite]
This infallibility of a proposition,
means that no attempt to demonstrate its falsity
can create doubts or denial.
Now, if someone asserts
that 3 is more than 10,
and that to prove it he can turn stones into gold,
or a stick into a snake,
should I believe it?
So Master, what is this?
It is evident, it's a stick.
Stick!
Like you, he thinks it's a stick.
Now we will have to see what happens...
Well... now we see what happens.
Do you see now what happened?
A snake!
What if he actually changes the stick into a snake,
in front of my very own eyes?
And now... what is it?
No doubts about what I know are raised in me because of this.
It's a good trick. However, it is not a snake.
So it's not a snake.
The only thing I'm left wondering
is how he managed to change a stick into a snake?
What are you staring at? Go about your business.
In our dreams we are certain
that what we see is real.
Yet when we awake
we know that what we took to be an unquestionable fact
was in fact, illusion.
So what proof can theology or philosophy give us,
to guarantee that our senses aren't also deceiving us?
Despite all the knowledge I had acquired,
I still couldn't resolve this simple and fundamental problem.
A battle was raging between my heart and my head.
And I eventually became physically ill.
It was a bewildering time.
The sickness lasted nearly two months.
During which time I was--
practically speaking--a skeptic.
Though not in principle
or in out with expression.
Ghazali did not
begin by forcing doubt upon himself.
As he began to question himself.
Now what certitude do I have about this?
about this, about this matter, about this religious right,
about this moral judgement.
And he
didn't on purpose, stripped himself of all certitude
in order to get a complete doubt and then see what happens.
It wasn't like that.
It was that doubt have been coming to his mind,
he began then to question the surest certitudes.
He do that he had,
to undo himself. He had to reconstitute his being.
He had to undergo spiritual transformation.
What would I do?
And he had to change his life, his way of thinking.
He was willing to sacrifice everything for the sake of certitude.
At length, God healed me.
I found myself restored to health and bouts.
Once more I was able to accept
the necessary truths of the intellect
as I regained confidence in their certain, and reliable character.
This did not come about by systematic demonstration or ordered argument.
But by a light that God Most-High casts into my breast.
That light is the key to the greater part of knowledge.
Ghazali was able and willing to give something up
in order to receive illumination.
Ordinary soul that received illumination...
You have to, you receive illumination
only if you are opened your heart to God, which means dying to yourself
and dying to the world about you. And that's what Ghazali did.
It was only through divine grace that Ghazali overcame his bout of skepticism.
And we too must be open to the possibility, of receiving a light of guidance.
But with such darkness and confusion confronting us today,
is it any wonder that it can be hard to see a way forward?
Was the situation any different in Ghazali's lifetime?
At the time of Imam Al-Ghazali,
authority was being questioned.
Who has ultimate authority?
The religious people did not recognized
the secular authority.
And these religous fanatics began to kill
those who they deemed as obstacles in their path
to achieving some type of religious sovereignty.
Get him...
Beat him...
He is a non-believer...
Don't let him get away.
We have to show him a lesson.
We have to show everyone a lesson!
In his time confusion was reigning.
Confusion was
was everywhere.
And I think most of us would
agree in the modern world, that we are living in a very confusing times, difficult times.
A times that everything is being questioned.
And nobody really can see
a clear light.
And I think that he was in these times.
And that's why he's so extraordinary.
Political situation in Ghazali's time
was in many ways fragile.
Certainly very complicated.
There was a caliph in Baghdad.
He was a titular ruler of the Sunni Islamic world.
Real political power is in the hands of
the Seljuks,
viziers,
of whom Nizam al-Mulk was probably
the best known example.
And it felled to the Seljuk to try and figure out
what sort of Islam the state should be patronizing.
Those who hear someone say, "There is no god but God and Jesus is His prophet"...
and still consider him a non-believer because he is a Christian, are ignorant.
The danger lies with those who lack knowledge.
They believe that even sound arguments written by philosophers...
just because they are written by philosophers, should be absolutely refused.
No matter from where or from whom they hear these arguments...
because they have no light of true knowledge, reject them.
Their narrow-mindedness and lack of knowledge gives them the right to refuse all arguments.
Those who do not accept the Prophet are non-believers.
He is right.
Those who do not accept the rulings of the Prophet are non-believers.
If this is why you consider him a non-believer...
then not accepting the things he said that are right, is wrong and unjust.
You think that your knowledge is so great that it permits you to contradict all religious scholars?
Ghazali repeatedly makes the point that one of the main veils
that keeps people from seeing God is religious fanaticism.
He said it doesn't matter too much which school of Islamic law you follow.
There are different theological positions that is
valid to adopt.
Try and be orthodox.
In fact it's necessary to be orthodox,
but whatever you do, don't turn it into some kind of zealot.
So that religion just becomes a way of feeling that you are better than everybody else.
And thereby veils you from God.
Come on...let's go.
An ignorant Muslim is more dangerous than a non-believer.
Only the ignorant accept what is right by who has said it, rather than what has been said.
Many have seen Nizam al-Mulk as a kind of Macchiavelian figure.
Patronizing certain forms of religion that he saw as being politically expedient.
Certainly his politician's eye seems to have spotted in Ghazali,
an individual whose program could bring stability and unity to
what was at the time a very fractured
Islamic social and intellectual reality.
I was invited to present myself to the vizier, Nizam al-Mulk.
The powerful chief minister of the Seljuk sultan, Malik Shah.
There I joined his retinue of legal experts and theologians.
[Umar Khayyam]
[Talking to Umar Khayyam] Your poem was exquisite and beautiful.
Abu Hamid Muhammad, young scholar, welcome.
Nizam al-Mulk recognizes in him
the man who has the power
in a sense, not only to give legitimacy
to the Islamic tradition as a cohesive tradition
that is universal
and not as a sectarianism
that will splinter into many, many different groups.
He gives the basis
for accepting state authority.
Not as some kind of a
use of a religion as an opia
but as a recognition that this is in the overriding benefit
of the citizens themselves, that anarcy is
is a wretched way
to live.
I had heard much about your righteousness, knowledge and philosophy...
and I did not fully believe it...
until I saw it with my own eyes...
and heard your strong and well-argued debate...
and then I became assured.
Abu Hamid Muhammad, I admire your open-mindedness...
your ability in delivering speeches, and strong reasoning.
I am honored, Sir.
I would like your knowledge to be shared by a much wider audience.
This is most gracious of you.
I have been thinking about it, and today I am convinced...
to appoint you as Head of Theology at the Nizamiyya College in Baghdad.
So that you may teach students and those thirsty for knowledge, conscious reflection, and the lesson of unity.
Your Honour, I am overwhelmed and I hope not to dissappoint you.
I have great faith in your abilities.
I thank you Sir. Thank you.
Theology was the "rock 'n' roll" of the age
and Ghazali was a superstar.
Attracting hundreds of students who flocked to hear him expound on theology and jurisprudence.
He himself said that a man who's been pursued by a ferocious lion
doesn't mind whether it's a stranger or famous individual who saves him.
So why do people seek knowledge from celebrities?
And what happens when the celebrity starts to believe his own publicity?
There is a lot of evidences to suggest that
Ghazali's extraordinarily stellar performances in universities of his day
went, somewhat to his head.
That he was preaching from the pulpits of the most distinguished,
venerated mosques in Islamic world,
with all of the great texts
of Hellenic and Islamic civilization at his finger tips.
Producing books that already
amongst the intelligentsia best sellers
and clearly changing the trajectory of Islamic thought.
With hundreds and hundreds of the best students anywhere in Islamic world
travelling thousands of miles to sit at his feet.
I take refuge in God from the accursed satan.
In the name of God, The Merciful, The Compassionate.
Peace and blessings upon our Lord and Prophet,
Seal of the Prophets and Lord of the Messengers, Muhammad...
All the things which I knew with the teachings of God
could now be revealed in true form to the students
hungry for guidances.
Take leave from the prison of the mischief-makers, take leave come snow or come rain.
Take leave of your flocks. Take leave brothers, we will all come back again.
He was in effect accusing
the established leadership of Islamic world of the day
of a kind of false consciousness.
Upholding in his marvelous, very well-founded public debates
in front of the sultan or
whether it be thundering from the pulpits
or in retreats
of a kind of hypocrisy
that they were not practicing what they preached.
Thirsts, for all of the intellectual brilliances,
the heart were, as he says, dark and ruinous.
And he saw that as being a fundamental challenge in the threat to the integrity of Islam.
He saw this having dangerous political consequences.
He saw it as having consequences for the credibility of
mainstream orthodox Islam
as opposed to esoteric or sectarian alternatives.
And he also saw him himself
because he was pointing the finger first and foremost at himself.
And of course his great crisis is precisely about.
His suspicion that he is not practicing what he preaches.
We are living in a time like his time.
When religion had become stale.
Religion had become didactic.
Religion had become a dry practice
of argumentation
dialectic debate among students.
Imam Al-Ghazali, I think, of all of his achievements
and we can see this in his own autobiography
one of the things that he really set out to do was,
"End argumentation for argumentation's sake."
I was distressed by what was going on in the capital of the empire.
I decided to speak out.
And I condemn the hypocrisy of those surrounding the caliph.
I was critical of Islam's religous and political leaders.
I was determined to unveil the truth in its entirety.
He really recognized the spiritual pathology
of the desire of the ego and the self
to overcome one's opponent.
And he wanted to get back to something much deeper
which is not that, "I am entrenched in my personal
opinion, agenda, political position
and I have no recognition of my opponent."
But to recognize that my oppenent and myself
must, together, be in search of the truth.
And if the two of us are in search of the truth,
we can speak.
But if we, are in search, of self-aggrandizement,
if we are in search of some, ego-stimulating experience
of overpowering my debater
then we come to nothing.
And because he was, a man that could win any debate,
he knew how important it was
that the ego could not be the object.
That the ego must be set aside
in order for that debate to come to some kind of fruition.
Stay here...
Master!
I have come a long way.
I have nothing to my name.
Please give me something.
What have I here to give you?
[The "Hashshashiin" (assassin) sect, lead by Hasan-e Sabbah who refused to recognized the 'Abbasids caliphate in Baghdad]
Kill one man, and you may well terrorize ten thousand.
But is this what we were created for?
While it's unclear who's actually behind the assasination of Ghazali's patron, Nizam al-Mulk,
it may have prompted him to begin reevaluating the life he was leading in Baghdad.
Muhammad, children, where are you?
Ghazali had a brother
Ahmad al-Ghazali
who went on to become
a major poet and Sufi figure in Persian literature.
The relationship between the two men must've been a complex one.
It seems to have been very affectionate.
But it almost certain that Ahmad al-Ghazali
more interested in ecstatic experiences
pouring forth his great torrents of rather baroque Persian poetry about
the love of God,
was probably a little bit skeptical about the
philosophical and theological activities of his brother.
I am sorry to bother you at this hour.
There is something I wanted to speak to you about in private, not in front of the family.
Has anything happened?
There is a lot of talk in town, and at the university, about you.
How can I stand to see my brother looking so pale and troubled.
Just looking at your eyes I can see how deeply worried you are.
I think what was happening to Imam Al-Ghazali really is
he wanted to be real.
And I think he recognize how false he was.
The fact that in the West we call
personality, personality which is from the Roman word "persona"
which means "mask."
He's already in awareness that the personality is, somehow, were hiding behind something.
And I think what happened was he became aware of his personality.
He became aware of this mask, this exterior
that he was presenting to the world
that which was "the wonder boy", "the genius",
"the brilliance dialectician."
And
he's realizing that
this can't be me.
Because he's realizing how horrible that person is.
Despite my success,
my wealth, and my status,
my doubts returned.
Not in what I believed,
but in the way I was living my life.
Surrounded by great material wealth.
It may well be that
the sanctity and
spirituality and the
effusive quality
of Ahmad al-Ghazali's Islam
was a kind of counterpoint to the former
book-based, systematic theology that Al-Ghazali was experiencing and dishing out at the mosques.
It may well be that eventually it was Ahmad's example
somebody who would crack the problems of the meaning of life
through the love of God and experience
rather than through logic chopping
was the final straw that broke the camel's back and precipitated the crisis.
You lent them a hand when they were reluctant...
and you yourself have been kept behind, whilst they have gone ahead.
You have taken the role of guide, yet you yoursefl will not be guided.
You preach, but you do not listen.
Oh Whetstone, how long will you sharpen iron, but will not let yourself be sharpened?
But will not let yourself be sharpened?
He came to realization
that all of these intellectual knowledge was in fact
a very, very well camouflaged ignorance.
And
because he was ignorant of the most important thing,
which was himself.
For six months I was constantly tossed
between my worldly desires and my longing for eternal life.
In the end, the matter stopped being one of choice
and became one of compulsion.
And this is where the crisis begins
and he says
that one day he would put a step forward
and the next day back.
And he said, "I have to give up all these stuff
I have to find out, I have to set out on this path."
And he's feeling
the time, he's feeling this clock.
This clock ticking.
He's realizing, "I've limited time here."
Most of us don't like to think about that.
The fact that we have no guarantees about tomorrow.
He is really at that point where, he realizes,
"I'm mortal, I'm going to die."
"Have I prepare for this journey?"
And this is the only real crisis
that has any meaning for a human being.
So he had, the truly, existential crisis
of the human condition, which is all mortality.
God caused my tongue to dry up
so that I was incapable of lecturing.
Each day I try hard to teach, so as to please my students.
But my tongue wouldn't utter a single word.
Nor could I accomplish, anything at all.
For a man who has reason to prominence because of his tongue,
to have his tongue taken away from him means
that his prominence's taken away from him.
He has lost everything
in his inability to speak.
If it was possible to be without You
The whole world would turn inside-out
Oh Friend...
The Garden of Eden would dry out, the Garden of Eden would dry out
It is not possible without You...
The crisis did not start with a physical as at less which should bring depression, you might say, in modern terminology.
It began
with a mental, intellectual crisis
and gradually seeped into a psychological
psychosomatic reality to soul and body, you might say.
And it went from up down,
and gradually began to affect his habit of eating, his appetite, his sleep
and he fell seriously ill.
I think it is his heart.
In my opinion, it is a problem of the brain.
No, it lies in his blood circulation.
I can't do anything.
Nor can I.
Me neither, there isn't much I can do.
Then we are agreed.
There is nothing wrong with his body...
the illness lies in his soul.
I examined my motives
and realized that my work was not driven by a pure desire for the things of God.
Instead,
I was motivated by the desire for an influential position
and public acclaim.
I saw for certain that I was on the brink of a crumbling bank of sand.
And an imminent danger of hell fire, unless I undertook to change my way of life.
I knew that the Sufi way combines intellectual belief and practical action.
The action takes the form of purging the obstacles in the soul
and of stripping away its base characteristics and vicious morals.
So that the heart may achieve freedom from everything
that is not God.
Intellectual belief was easier.
But it became clear to me
that what is most distinctive in Sufism
cannot be grasped by study alone.
But only by immediate experience
by ecstacy
and by a moral transformation.
The Sufis were people not of words
but of experience.
I had no hope of the next world
unless I could live a God-conscious life
and withdraw myself from fruitless desires.
Great religious figures transform society
as much by who they are
as by what they say.
And it would be ideal to tribute Ghazali's influence
simply to the brilliance and clarity of
the books that he left behind him.
He was revered as very clear
as somebody who lived the reality of Islam
and of Sufism,
Islamic spirituality.
As somebody who was well on his way to being a saint.
I have been able to do what my doctors couldn't do.
Cure myself.
And yet the cure is absolute.
[Ghazali's daughter, Nisaa' al-Ghazali]
I have to give everything up.
My position.
My reputation.
My home.
And my family.
He perform the act
which make the Ghazali of Ghazali
as for we are speaking about him now, 900 years later.
That is he left
his position
his wealth
his family
the world, and disappeared.
He
fled from the whole
condition of life which had been so successful
in close with the caliph, at the capital of Islam,
well-off,
very famous,
he left everything.
in order to rediscover certitude.
In order to be honest with himself.
And understanding
the nature of the Divine Reality.
You understand, I have to go.
I gave to the poor what wealth I have
keeping only as much as what suffice myself
and provide sustenance for my family.
And I expected never to return
to Baghdad.
When you begin the inner journey
within your soul.
It's very good to also begin an outer journey
at the world out there.
It's not at all like modern tourism
in which you travel under service of your soul
not more worry of going to comeback to the same and perfect person of
after having spent ten thousand dollars and ruin the climate
and their environment.
It is not like that at all.
But when one travels with consciousness
one realizes that one's home
is not a particular street
one's place is not in particular place,
it's in God.
A real travelling, spiritually means that.
And so travelling outwardly is considered
to be a very good support with the travelling inwardly.
What is it about that road to Damascus and sainthood?
Come on, get in.
After his crisis, Ghazali needed to become a stranger
to the circles of princes and scholars where he'd made his name.
I speak a little Farsi. Do you know any English?
Dissolving his ties and placing himself in the crucible of ascetism
he began living as an anonymous wayfarer
trusting only in God.
Publicly, I announced that I had resolved to set out on a pilgrimage to Mecca
but privately I made arrangements to journey to Syria.
I took this precaution out of fear that the caliph and my colleagues
would oppose my position.
Al-Ghazali spends the best part of ten years
incognito.
We don't quite know what his itinerary might've been.
He probably perform the hajj pilgrimage to Mecca
a year after disappearing from Baghdad.
We know that he spent some time in Jerusalem.
And indeed, wrote one of his key, theological treatises in Jerusalem.
We know also that he spent quite a bit of time in retreat, in a cell, in Damascus
whose location is still known and pointed out and indeed visited to this day.
But it's very likely that he was following in the footsteps of many of the earlier Sufi saints of Islam
who had decided simply to sever
temporarily
their worldly attachments.
And to find God in the wilderness.
Travelling through deserts and forests and mountainous regions.
Trusting in God to provide for them.
And constantly trying to bare Him in mind.
Contemplating the beauties of God's creation.
Attempting to recall God through the recitation of the Quran,
through the canonical prayers,
throught a lot of fasting,
through meeting remarkable men,
sages and saints who often lived for a while in the wilderness
and accepted disciples.
I devoted my self to purifying my soul.
Improving my character,
and cleansing my heart
in the constant remembrance of God.
Putting into practice
what I had learned from my study of mysticism.
The fact that he started upon the spiritual life
means that he was initiated.
And that what is his spiritual practices were without doubt
the evocation of various names of God.
Standard practice of Sufism.
Purification of the heart, of the soul
meditation.
The Sufi path
consist of
certain practices,
ways of thinking,
ways of acting,
and above all, ways of being.
Sufi path,
the journey,
the human state,
to divine proximate.
I stayed in Damascus for two years
doing nothing except cultivating of security and solitude.
Together with religious and ecstatic exercises.
I would go into retreat in the Umayyad mosque.
Going up the minaret of the mosque for the whole day.
And shutting myself in, so as to be alone.
One of the thing about the mystic path
or about this direct experience
of Reality
is that for Imam Al-Ghazali, it is science.
Because at the root of science,
and this is well known in the Muslim world during his lifetime,
which came much later from the Muslims to the West
at the root of science
is the ability to replicate the experiment.
If the experiment can be replicated,
then we can get scientific results.
He wanted to find out
does this indeed
these experiences that others have claimed
if I set out on this path
and he was an experimental scientist
if I set out on this path
can I replicate that journey?
And he did it.
And that's how he came to a certainty of it.
We don't know whether it was his intention at the outset to return to civilization.
He probably didn't know.
All he knew when he left Baghdad was that
his spiritual circuits had fused.
He had to get out.
He had to try and find an answer to his crisis in his heart
in the recollection of God.
During this time of solitude
there were revealed to me things innumerable
and unfathomable.
This much I shall say
so that others may behold.
I learned with certainty
that it is above all the Sufis
who walk on the road of God.
Their life
is the best life.
Their method
the soundest method.
Their character
the purest character.
It is in the practice of "dhikr",
or "remembrance"
that God is said to be mysteriously present in His name.
And by this constant recollection we are able to draw nearer to the Divine.
This is the philosopher's stone
with which Ghazali sought to purify his heart
and transform himself.
And it is this that I need to know more about.
I'm doing
research on Ghazali.
And I know that he spent years wandering.
Yes.
And presumably he was engaged in various spiritual practices.
Could you tell us something about these?
And what the nature of them is?
In Sufism, much emphasis is laid on
the invocation of God.
Not only in Sufism,
in the Holy Quran there are many
many verses
in the Quran, about remembering God.
Religion itself
is based on the remembrance of God.
The more one mentions God in close guard
the more the name becomes actualized in him.
The very religous rites of practices
are based on divine invocation.
One can say that the gist
the foundation
of all religious practices
and the surest way
and the nearest shortcut
that shortcut to God
nearest shortcut to God is invocation.
[Sufi "dhikr" congregation ["samaa'"] or "whirling dervishes"]
Al-Ghazali, eventually, does go back
to the great metropolitan cities of Islam.
But the whole point of this story
for Muslims, is precisely that
he returns to orthodoxy.
But with a new vision.
His vision is that the crux of Islam
is an experience.
What he calls "dhawq",
"tasting" the realities
that lie behind the veils
of physical existence.
That's the real argument for religion.
And that doesn't come about through the systematic discussion of metaphysics.
It comes about through remembering God,
purifying the intention,
purifying the heart,
and trying to open oneself up to an effusion
from above.
"The afterlife approaches
and this world passes by.
The journey is long but the provisions are scant,
and the danger's great."
Having set out on this journey
to discover more about Ghazali
and to dispel some of my own doubts.
I've come to realize
that the certainty of knowledge lies in the "tasting".
And while not achieving Ghazali's certainty,
at least I'm beginning to understand
what I need for this path.
As time passed,
various matters together with the entreaties of my family
drew me back to my homeland.
And so I returned to it again
though at one time
nothing could seem less likely.
Theologians,
philosophers, and students of religion
continue to beat a path to my door.
I did not know what I still have to offer.
But I tried to do what I could.
On Monday the 18th of December 1111
my brother Abu Hamid Muhammad awoke.
As dawn he performed his prayer, and prepared himself for his death.
He asked me to bring his burial shroud, and I did.
Say to my friends when they look on me dead,
weeping for me and mourning me in sorrow,
"Do not believe that this corpse you see is myself,
in the name of God, I tell you it is not I.
I am a spirit
and this is nothing but flesh.
It was my abode and my garment for a time
but I am now
even so shall you be
for I know that you are even as I am
the souls of all humankind comeforth from God.
The bodies of all are compounded alike
good and evil
alike, it was us.
I give you a message of good cheer,
'May God's peace and joy forever more, be yours'."
THANKS TO JagatNaruto (This is not official subtitle)