He was the most celebrated scholar of his age — professor at the greatest university in the Islamic world, advisor to sultans, author of books that shaped Islamic thought for centuries. Then, at the height of his success, he had a breakdown. Or was it a breakthrough?
"I examined my motive in my work of teaching," Abu Hamid al-Ghazali wrote, "and realized that it was not sincere. I was seeking fame and position, not God. My knowledge was vast, but my soul was empty."
"I looked at all I had learned,
And I saw that it was words about words,
Arguments about arguments,
Knowledge that puffed up but did not transform.
A man can know everything about honey
Without ever tasting its sweetness."
For months, Ghazali could not speak. He tried to lecture and no words came. The doctors could find nothing wrong with his body. He understood: it was his soul that was sick. The cure required abandoning everything he had achieved.
He resigned his position, gave away his wealth, and became a wandering Sufi. For eleven years he practiced what he had only studied. He discovered that the scholars had been right about doctrine but wrong about method. "Knowledge alone is not enough," he wrote. "You must practice until knowledge becomes state, until state becomes station, until station becomes being."
"The mystics possess states, not words.
What they know cannot be learned or taught.
It can only be experienced.
The difference between knowing the definition of health
And being healthy,
Between knowing the definition of drunkenness
And being drunk.
All my learning was definitions.
Now I seek the reality."
When Ghazali returned to teaching, he was transformed. His great work, "The Revival of the Religious Sciences," wove together law, theology, ethics, and mysticism into a single path. He showed that Sufism was not a deviation from Islam but its heart.
"Those who think mysticism contradicts religion understand neither," he wrote. "The law is the body, theology is the mind, Sufism is the soul. A body without a soul is a corpse. A soul without a body is a ghost. Only together are they a living human being."
Teaching 40
Knowledge without practice is words about words. You can know everything about honey without tasting its sweetness. At some point, learning must become being. The breakdown that strips away false success may be the breakthrough that leads to the real.