Quoth the Imam Ghazali:
Glory be to God, whose praise should precede every writing and every
speech! May the blessings of God rest on Mohammed, his Prophet and
his Apostle, on his family and companions, by whose guidance error is
escaped!
You have asked me, O brother in the faith, to expound the aim and
the mysteries of religious sciences, the boundaries and depths
of theological doctrines. You wish to know my experiences while
disentangling truth lost in the medley of sects and divergencies
of thought, and how I have dared to climb from the low levels of
traditional belief to the topmost summit of assurance. You desire to
learn what I have borrowed, first of all from scholastic theology; and
secondly from the method of the Ta'limites, who, in seeking truth, rest
upon the authority of a leader; and why, thirdly, I have been led to
reject philosophic systems; and finally, what I have accepted of the
doctrine of the Sufis, and the sum total of truth which I have gathered
in studying every variety of opinion. You ask me why, after resigning
at Bagdad a teaching post which attracted a number of hearers, I have,
long afterward, accepted a similar one at Nishapur. Convinced as I am
of the sincerity which prompts your inquiries, I proceed to answer
them, invoking the help and protection of God.
Know then, my brothers (may God direct you in the right way), that the
diversity in beliefs and religions, and the variety of doctrines and
sects which divide men, are like a deep ocean strewn with shipwrecks,
from which very few escape safe and sound. Each sect, it is true,
believes itself in possession of the truth and of salvation, "each
party," as the Koran saith, "rejoices in its own creed"; but as the
chief of the apostles, whose word is always truthful, has told us, "My
people will be divided into more than seventy sects, of whom only one
will be saved." This prediction, like all others of the Prophet, must
be fulfilled.
From the period of adolescence, that is to say, previous to reaching
my twentieth year to the present time when I have passed my fiftieth,
I have ventured into this vast ocean; I have fearlessly sounded its
depths, and like a resolute diver, I have penetrated its darkness and
dared its dangers and abysses. I have interrogated the beliefs of
each sect and scrutinized the mysteries of each doctrine, in order
to disentangle truth from error and orthodoxy from heresy. I have
never met one who maintained the hidden meaning of the Koran without
investigating the nature of his belief, nor a partizan of its exterior
sense without inquiring into the results of his doctrine. There is
no philosopher whose system I have not fathomed, nor theologian the
intricacies of whose doctrine I have not followed out.
Sufism has no secrets into which I have not penetrated; the devout
adorer of Deity has revealed to me the aim of his austerities; the
atheist has not been able to conceal from me the real reason of his
unbelief. The thirst for knowledge was innate in me from an early age;
it was like a second nature implanted by God, without any will on my
part. No sooner had I emerged from boyhood than I had already broken
the fetters of tradition and freed myself from hereditary beliefs.
Having noticed how easily the children of Christians become Christians,
and the children of Moslems embrace Islam, and remembering also the
traditional saying ascribed to the Prophet, "Every child has in him
the germ of Islam, then his parents make him Jew, Christian, or
Zoroastrian," I was moved by a keen desire to learn what was this
innate disposition in the child, the nature of the accidental beliefs
imposed on him by the authority of his parents and his masters,
and finally the unreasoned convictions which he derives from their
instructions.
Struck with the contradictions which I encountered in endeavoring to
disentangle the truth and falsehood of these opinions, I was led to
make the following reflection: "The search after truth being the aim
which I propose to myself, I ought in the first place to ascertain
what are the bases of certitude." In the next place I recognized that
certitude is the clear and complete knowledge of things, such knowledge
as leaves no room for doubt nor possibility of error and conjecture, so
that there remains no room in the mind for error to find an entrance.
In such a case it is necessary that the mind, fortified against all
possibility of going astray, should embrace such a strong conviction
that, if, for example, any one possessing the power of changing a stone
into gold, or a stick into a serpent, should seek to shake the bases
of this certitude, it would remain firm and immovable. Suppose, for
instance, a man should come and say to me, who am firmly convinced that
ten is more than three, "No; on the contrary, three is more than ten,
and, to prove it, I change this rod into a serpent," and supposing
that he actually did so, I should remain none the less convinced of
the falsity of his assertion, and although his miracle might arouse my
astonishment, it would not instil any doubt into my belief.
I then understood that all forms of knowledge which do not unite
these conditions (imperviousness to doubt, etc.) do not deserve any
confidence, because they are not beyond the reach of doubt, and what is
not impregnable to doubt can not constitute certitude.
_The Subterfuges of the Sophists_
I then examined what knowledge I possessed, and discovered that in
none of it, with the exception of sense-perceptions and necessary
principles, did I enjoy that degree of certitude which I have just
described. I then sadly reflected as follows: "We can not hope to find
truth except in matters which carry their evidence in themselves—that
is to say, in sense-perceptions and necessary principles; we must
therefore establish these on a firm basis. Is my absolute confidence
in sense-perceptions and on the infallibility of necessary principles
analogous to the confidence which I formerly possessed in matters
believed on the authority of others? Is it only analogous to the
reliance most people place on their organs of vision, or is it
rigorously true without admixture of illusion or doubt?"
I then set myself earnestly to examine the notions we derive from the
evidence of the senses and from sight in order to see if they could be
called in question. The result of a careful examination was that my
confidence in them was shaken. Our sight, for instance, perhaps the
best practised of all our senses, observes a shadow, and finding it
apparently stationary pronounces it devoid of movement. Observation
and experience, however, show subsequently that a shadow moves not
suddenly, it is true, but gradually and imperceptibly, so that it is
never really motionless.
Again, the eye sees a star and believes it as large as a piece of gold,
but mathematical calculations prove, on the contrary, that it is larger
than the earth. These notions, and all others which the senses declare
true, are subsequently contradicted and convicted of falsity in an
irrefragable manner by the verdict of reason.
Then I reflected in myself: "Since I can not trust to the evidence
of my senses, I must rely only on intellectual notions based on
fundamental principles, such as the following axioms: 'Ten is more
than three. Affirmation and negation can not coexist together. A thing
can not both be created and also existent from eternity, living and
annihilated simultaneously, at once necessary and impossible.'" To this
the notions I derived from my senses made the following objections:
"Who can guarantee you that you can trust to the evidence of reason
more than to that of the senses? You believed in our testimony till it
was contradicted by the verdict of reason, otherwise you would have
continued to believe it to this day. Well, perhaps, there is above
reason another judge who, if he appeared, would convict reason of
falsehood, just as reason has confuted us. And if such a third arbiter
is not yet apparent, it does not follow that he does not exist."
To this argument I remained some time without reply; a reflection drawn
from the phenomena of sleep deepened my doubt. "Do you not see," I
reflected, "that while asleep you assume your dreams to be indisputably
real? Once awake, you recognize them for what they are—baseless
chimeras. Who can assure you, then, of the reliability of notions
which, when awake, you derive from the senses and from reason? In
relation to your present state they may be real; but it is possible
also that you may enter upon another state of being which will bear the
same relation to your present state as this does to your condition when
asleep. In that new sphere you will recognize that the conclusions of
reason are only chimeras."
This possible condition is, perhaps, that which the Sufis call
"ecstasy" (_hal_), that is to say, according to them, a state in which,
absorbed in themselves and in the suspension of sense-perceptions, they
have visions beyond the reach of intellect. Perhaps also Death is that
state, according to that saying of the prince of prophets: "Men are
asleep; when they die, they wake." Our present life in relation to the
future is perhaps only a dream, and man, once dead, will see things in
direct opposition to those now before his eyes; he will then understand
that word of the Koran, "To-day we have removed the veil from thine
eyes and thy sight is keen."
Such thoughts as these threatened to shake my reason, and I sought to
find an escape from them. But how? In order to disentangle the knot
of this difficulty, a proof was necessary. Now a proof must be based
on primary assumptions, and it was precisely these of which I was in
doubt. This unhappy state lasted about two months, during which I
was, not, it is true, explicitly or by profession, but morally and
essentially, a thorough-going skeptic.
God at last deigned to heal me of this mental malady; my mind recovered
sanity and equilibrium, the primary assumptions of reason recovered
with me all their stringency and force. I owed my deliverance, not
to a concatenation of proofs and arguments, but to the light which
God caused to penetrate into my heart—the light which illuminates the
threshold of all knowledge. To suppose that certitude can be only based
upon formal arguments is to limit the boundless mercy of God. Some one
asked the Prophet the explanation of this passage in the Divine Book:
"God opens to Islam the heart of him whom he chooses to direct." "That
is spoken," replied the Prophet, "of the light which God sheds in the
heart." "And how can man recognize that light?" he was asked. "By his
detachment from this world of illusion and by a secret drawing toward
the eternal world," the Prophet replied.
On another occasion he said: "God has created his creatures in
darkness, and then has shed upon them his light." It is by the help
of this light that the search for truth must be carried on. As by
his mercy this light descends from time to time among men, we must
ceaselessly be on the watch for it. This is also corroborated by
another saying of the Apostle: "God sends upon you, at certain times,
breathings of his grace; be prepared for them."
My object in this account is to make others understand with what
earnestness we should search for truth, since it leads to results we
never dreamed of. Primary assumptions have not got to be sought for,
since they are always present to our minds; if we engage in such a
search, we only find them persistently elude our grasp. But those who
push their investigation beyond ordinary limits are safe from the
suspicion of negligence in pursuing what is within their reach.
_The Different Kinds of Seekers after Truth_
When God in the abundance of his mercy had healed me of this malady, I
ascertained that those who are engaged in the search for truth may be
divided into three groups.