‘I have now entered a life that knows no death and my existence is
eternal.
‘Then the Divine Voice told me that the creatures wanted to see me. I
replied, “I want to see none besidesYou, but if it beYour will that the world
should see me, I submit toYour command. I pray to be endowed withYour
Unity-consciousness (
wahada-niyat
) so that the creatures seeing me should
rivet their attention on Your creation and onYou, and so that I should not
come between You and Your creation.” The Creator fulfilled my wish and
since then in that state creation appears before me.
‘Then I took a step out of the threshold of the Lord but staggered and fell
down. And I heard the Divine Voice say, ‘Bring back Our beloved friend to
Us, because he cannot live without Us, nor move one step forward without
Us.”’
10
And this is Al Ghazali’s account of how having despaired of ever finding
God through regular studies and having fallen prey to some undiagnosable
sickness, he ultimately surrendered to God in the way the Sufis do:
‘Thereupon, perceiving my impotence and having altogether lost my power
of choice, I sought refuge with God Most High as one who is driven to Him,
because he is without further resources of his own. He answered me, He
who “answers him who is driven (to Him by affliction) when he calls upon
Him” (27:63). He made it easy for my heart to turn away from position and
wealth, from children and friends.’
11
Al Ghazali describes his spiritual voyage
as the mystical journey of the Sufis, and identifies his experience as akin to
that of the Sufis.
10
Fariduddin Attar, Tadhkirat ul-Auliya, Lahore, 1961, pp.75-76
11
Watt,W.M., op. cit., pp. 60-61
