Page:A Moslem seeker after God - showing Islam at its best in the life and teaching of al-Ghazali, mystic and theologian of the eleventh century (IA moslemseekeraft00zwem).pdf/203



by raw theologians, are yet by no means without significance. For consider: The condition of which I speak resembles that of a person who loves any other object, such as wealth, honour, or pleas ure. We see such persons so carried away with their love, and others with their anger, that they do not hear one who speaks to them, nor see those passing before their eyes. Nay, so absorbed are they in their passion that they do not perceive their absorption; you necessarily; Jurn it away from that which is the object of it/

Elsewhere Al-Ghazali says: " The commence ment of this life is the going to God; then follows the finding Him, when the absorption takes place. This at first is momentary, as the lightning swiftly glancing upon the eye, but afterwards, confirmed by use, it introduces the soul into a higher world, where, the most pure essential essence meeting it, fills the soul with the images of the spiritual world, while the majesty of Deity discovers itself. "\

The evident sincerity and the moral earnestness of Al-Ghazali shown in his works and in the ex tracts which we have quoted, surely explains in a large degree why his influence has been so deep and permanent, far greater than that of the merely in tellectual philosophers, such as Averroes. While he discouraged scholastic philosophy, he encour aged moral philosophy. The reader will remember how he carried a book of ethics with him on his journeys. After his death several famous ethical