Ḥāl
Definition
Hal — literally 'state' — refers to a transient condition of the heart produced by spiritual experience: joy, grief, contraction, expansion, longing, awe, or love. In the context of sama', the hal is what good spiritual listening is supposed to produce in the prepared heart — a genuine inner movement toward Allah that is neither manufactured nor suppressed. Al-Ghazali argues that the spiritual path involves the cultivation and management of these hal-states: welcoming the genuine ones, not performing the absent ones, and exercising the wisdom to know which states are signs of genuine spiritual progress and which are signs of spiritual confusion or ego-driven performance.
As understood in the classical tradition of Imam al-Ghazali and the scholars of his school.
Appears in
1 book in the library
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