EVLF - "Ghazali"

ABU AL-GAZALI 

1) EMOTION ("romantic") 

2) WILL ("nobleman") 

3) LOGIC ("skeptic") 

4) PHYSICS ("slacker") 

Ghazali was the greatest mystical theologian and philosopher of the Islamic world. He had a great influence on the development of Arab-Muslim culture. According to Islamic tradition, every 500 years a renewer of faith should appear, and many Muslims saw Ghazali as such a renewer. One of his biographers wrote: "If there could be a prophet after Muhammad, it would surely be Ghazali. 

Judging by contemporary sources, Ghazali's life was not particularly eventful: an Iranian writing in Arabic, he studied in Nishapur and Baghdad and taught law. When Ghazali immersed himself in philosophy, the study of this science, caused in his soul the deepest crisis, however, typical for this psychotype. According to one biographer, Ghazali, studying philosophy, came to the conclusion "about the fundamental incompatibility of faith as an irrational concept and philosophy as a product of rationalistic constructions, which caused him a deep psychological crisis (1095). The latter, having given up the post of mudaris (professor), led a life of a wandering dervish for 11 years, and then a hermit". 

What seemed to be the reason for the esteemed professor to go into seclusion: was it because the irrationality of faith contradicted the rationality of philosophy? Surprisingly enough, it was. Moreover, almost every "gazali" experiences precisely this kind of mental crisis; it is inherent in his or her psycho-type. Let's remember what contradiction a person within himself feels most acutely: the contradiction between the First and the Third Functions. In "Gasali", therefore, the First Emotion and the Third Logic, i.e. mysticism and reason, are in conflict, and the victory of the stronger mystical, irrational beginning over common sense in this case is inevitably predetermined, which was clearly shown in the example of the life of Gazali, who left professors to become a hermit. 

Not only life, but all of Ghazali's philosophy fits more than comfortably into his order of functions. Ghazali's anthropology is as follows: the structure of man coincides with the structure of the universe (microcosm coincides with macrocosm). The universe consists of three layers or levels. The lower level is the "world of the manifest and tangible", i.e. the material, physical layer of being (4th Physics). Higher is the "world of the spiritual", where by "spiritual" is to be understood a certain volume of knowledge, intellect, will, spirit (3rd Logic and 2nd Will). Finally, above all is the "world of the supersensible and hidden", which is inaccessible to man's ordinary perception, and, being a divine world, it is cognizable only through mystical illumination (1st Emotion). That is, the picture of the internal structure of man and the cosmos turns out to be drawn by Ghazali in his own image: 1st Emotion, 2nd Will, 3rd Logic, 4th Physics. 

As a philosopher, Ghazali became famous as the author of the Self-Refutation of Philosophers, which gave rise to skepticism in its Arabic-language version. When Western philosophers became acquainted with Ghazali's work, they found his arguments almost exhaustive and gave the Self-Refutation of Philosophers their highest marks: Munch called Ghazali the first skeptic of the Middle Ages, Renan claimed that after Ghazali "Hume had nothing more to say. And need I remind you that such active, consistent skepticism is the clearest hallmark of the 3rd Logic? 

Judging by his persistence in confessing skepticism, Ghazali's ulcer in the 3rd Logic was very deep. This means that his 1st Emotion must have been particularly redundant and powerful. And indeed, Ghazali's mental religious experiences reached such a degree that he almost bodily began to feel the core of his ecstasies. He, speaking of his mystical experience, reported: "It is so peculiar, as if in reality you feel some object. No, it is not for nothing that Ghazali is credited with the "emotionalization" of Islam, previously quite moderate in this respect. Before Ghazali, many had neglected prayers and rituals; he increased the number of prayers and demanded strict observance of rituals because they were instruments of ecstasy, of heart-mystical comprehension of the Godhead. 

Ghazali is an ascetic, but his asceticism, as is usually the case with the 4th Physic, is not aggressive at all. The philosopher is simply indifferent to the material layer of existence, he is not annoyed by excess in this sphere, nor is he pleased by belt-tightening. Ghazali writes: "...you must not think that hatred of the world is an end in itself... renunciation of this world has the purpose of desiring neither its existence nor nonexistence. This is the pinnacle of perfection... 

Perfection with respect to possessions is that money, possessions, and water are equal for you. The abundance of water near you, when you stand, for example, on the shore of the sea, does not harm you, nor does its limitation to the necessary measure harm you. 

We see familiar features of "ghazals" in the characters and behavior of people who have nothing to do with philosophy. Moreover, like any holder of the 1st Emotion, "ghazali" is more inclined to artistic activity than to philosophizing. The genus "ghazali" is the genus of artists, poets, musicians, etc. The poet Alexander Blok can be considered a vivid representative of the "Ghazali" engaged in the artistic sphere, and the history of his life is the most convenient example to show those specific features of this psychotype, which have escaped the eyes of Ghazali biographers. 

But before examining Blok's life from the perspective we know, I will cite one statement by the poet that perfectly formulates the conflict between the 1st Emotion and the 3rd Logic that is familiar to us, typical of "ghazals. Arguing once with Gorky, who was respectful of the manifestations of a strong intellect, Blok hotly exclaimed: "If only we could stop thinking altogether, if only for ten years. Put out that deceptive, swampy light (mind - A.A.) that draws us deeper and deeper into the night of the world and listen to the world's harmony with our hearts. How glad Ghazali would be, if he had heard in his grave this phrase of the Russian poet, so succinctly and expressively formulated his cherished dream. 

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However, from recognizable traits, let us move, using the example of Blok's life, to the yet unknown features of the "Gazali" character, taking him in a purely mundane aspect of everyday life. A remarkable, though not very pleasant feature of this psycho-type is that he is an involuntary, slang termed "dynamist", i.e. a person who provokes sexual excitement, but does not experience anything of the kind himself. In the case of "ghazali" it should be emphasized that he is an involuntary dynamist, because neither the 4th Physics, nor the 3rd Logic, nor the 2nd Will can participate in conscious sexual provocation. 

The light breath of the 2nd Will, its simplicity, accessibility, and natural nobility entices and seduces others in the "ghazals. The refined, refined beauty that usually accompanies the 4th Physique also leaves few people indifferent. However, the decisive role of an involuntary exciter in "ghazali" is played by an excess of the 1st Emotion, which nature itself is supposed (as already mentioned) to be an extremely effective erotic starter. The trouble for anyone who falls in love with "ghazals" is just what attracted him: emotional overreaches of this type do not at all testify to excessive sexuality, and the 4th Estate has not only exquisite beauty, but also a weakened libido, which puts sex on the last place in the hierarchy of values of this type. A typical phrase for a "gazali" sexual relationship is: "I don't understand why this is necessary at all. 

The history of the relationship between Alexander Blok and women is a good illustration of the thesis about the involuntary dynamism of "ghazals. The first and main victim of the delusion about the erotic abilities of Blok was his wife - Lyubov Mendeleeva. When she was still a bride, she wrote to Blok: "You imagined all sorts of good things about me and behind this fantastic fiction, which lived only in your imagination, you and me, a living person with a living soul, and did not notice, overlooked. However, seductive selfindulgence prevailed in Lyubov Dmitrievna over female intuition, and they were married. Immediately after the wedding Blok went abroad, leaving his young wife, presumably, in extreme perplexity. At first, his wife still managed to arouse something resembling a display of sensuality in Blok, but, in her own words, soon "that little bit stopped, too. From that moment on, she, again in her own words, became not a wife, not a widow, not a bride, and remained in this strange state until the death of the poet. Other women were no luckier with Blok than his wife. There was even a legend in St. Petersburg that two of the best local minxes made attempts to seduce the poet, and each time the result was disappointing for them: after chatting with the lady all night on various philosophical and literary themes, he got up from the sofa and with the words "Madam, morning! The cabbie is waiting!" he saw the temptress off. 

Literary scholars have tried to explain the irregularity of Blok's behavior by the brokenness of Russian sexual ideology of the beginning of the century: with its preaching of ascesis in the world, "white marriage," "pageboys" who replaced "knights" in the performance of lowly marital duties, and similar nonsense, really popular then among the morally, mentally and physically corrupt Russian intelligentsia. In the case of Blok, however, this was not the case. Nature is always stronger than ideology, and only their coincidence can create an illusion of ideological dependence, but only an illusion, no more. Nature, the very "gazalievsky" order of functions of Blok implied a great fantasy, intricacy, rigidity and callousness in love relationships. And the fact that he calmly looked at his wife, who was squirming nearby, serenely looked at his former lover standing under the windows of the St. Petersburg winter night, says not about some ideological dependence, but that his main love functions - Emotion and Physics - were effective, i.e. existed only for themselves and no empathy on these layers could be expected from him. 

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Another typical character trait of the "ghazals" is the light sadness that accompanies him from his youth to the grave, apocalyptic expectations, the feeling of the end, the exhaustion of life. It has already been said before that the 4th Physicist in general has a weakened vitality, hence the chronic sadness. But, pay attention, in "ghazals" this sadness is light and makes it light with a strong light spirit of the 2nd Will, charged with a calm, good-natured perception of the world. However, even the 2nd Will of the "Gasali" is not able to cancel the secret thirst for catastrophe inherent in the 4th Physique, and Blok himself confessed in a letter to Andrei Bely "I Love Perdition". 

This phrase explains a great deal. Blok, in his own words, "a joyless and dark monk," certainly could not help but welcome everything that made the world around him akin to his inner tragic world, everything that led to the end of this "underdog" (as Blok called life). Therefore, the mystery of Blok's personality, the mystery of his shocking manifestations of joy at the sight of national disasters, catastrophes, wars and revolutions, rather than in some bouts of meanness in the poet's exemplary decency, is in the 4th Physique. 

At the same time, not every "gazali" is so frank with himself and those around him in his greedy anticipation of catastrophes (personal, social, cosmic). This type's love of death is directly proportional to the real wellbeing of his life. Blok has an unsuccessful drama "Song of Destiny," in which the hero makes a characteristically Buddhist confession: "Lord. I can not go on. I feel too good in my quiet white house. Give me strength to say goodbye to it and see life in the world... Is it possible for a living man to live peacefully now, Elena? A living man is broken by everything: he looks around him - only human tears... he looks into the distance - and he is drawn to this distance... 

Don't need hearth and silence- 

I want a world with a singing wind!" 

The calmer and more nourishing the life of a "gazelle," the stronger the craving for collapse, doom, and apocalypse. And vice versa. The worse life is, the more he presses the natural and never fully overcome tragic spirit within him. 

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Gazali feels best in the religious sphere, especially in the early stages of the organizational formation of religion, while church discipline has not yet had time to expel the free and freedom-loving spirit dear to this psycho-type. The emotionalism of the ghazals, their sincere indifference to the demands of the flesh, their enduring sadness and apocalyptic expectations fit perfectly into the procrustean bed of the most rigid religious doctrines for others. It is not surprising, therefore, that a significant and most sympathetic part of the various pantheons is made up of "ghazal" saints. Suffice it to recall the Indian Krishnamurti or the Iranian Luqman, about whom in his hagiography it is very expressively said: "He begged Allah to deprive him of his reason, so that he might indulge in the adoration of God without hindrance. However, if we want to imagine the scale on which the religious activity of the "ghazals" can reach, it is best to turn to the figure of the most remarkable representative of this human species, Prince Gautama Shakyamuni, the founder of Buddhism and the first of the Buddhas. 

The beginning of the Buddha's life was, by ordinary standards, enviable; he belonged to a rich and glorious family, married early and happily, and experienced the joy of fatherhood, but the convulsions of the outside world broke into the greenhouse life of the prince and ruined it. The sight of a sick old man, a corpse, and a wandering monk so astonished Gautama that he abandoned everything: the kingdom, his wife, and his son, and retired to a hermitage. The tempestuous ascetic practices of his new companions, at first enthusiastically embraced by the prince, soon disappointed him. Gautama left the ascetic community and on the way to Benares, a revelation came upon him and he became a Buddha (lit. "enlightened"). From that moment on, the Buddha devoted himself entirely to the preaching of his teachings, new to India, and, having achieved a remarkable success in this field, he died in Pawa, having been poisoned by stale pork meat. This is the outward background of the story of the Buddha's life. But there was also an inner, hidden side of his personality that actually determined the Buddha's fate - his belonging to the genus "ghazali" - the psychological dependence on a certain order of functions. 

First, the well-being of life for the "ghazals," as already mentioned, is not a reflection, but a provocateur that only makes us feel the tragedy of existence more acutely. In the soul of greenhouse tsarevitch "ghazals" (Blok was sometimes called "tsarevitch") the phrase "I love doom!" sounds louder than in any other soul. This is why Buddha's leap from the ultimate well-being of life to extreme disadvantage is a normal reaction for a "ghazali. At the same time, the atrocity over the physical layer of life, something that was already cheap in Buddha's eyes (4th Physics), could not help but seem to Buddha a shallow aspect of spiritual life, and he left the ascetic community to proclaim the main goal of life - deathnirvana, liberation from life-suffering, "undotykoma. And already by these capital positions one can easily guess the "ghazali" in Buddha. We need only go through his entire order of functions to be convinced of this definitively. 

Judging from the Dhammapada, the oldest and the only monument of Buddhist literature attributed directly to the Buddha, the presence of the 1st Emotion in the founder of Buddhism can be considered quite obvious: the Dhammapada is so poetic, so full of imagery, the proportion of high metaphor in it is so significant that it leaves no doubt on this point. 

The signs of the 2nd Will of the Buddha also lie on the surface. First of all, it is indicated by the Enlightened One's spontaneous democratism. The Buddha was perhaps the first Indian reformer to invade the holy of holies of the local way of life - casteism - and began to indiscriminately admit into his community all who wished to do so, regardless of caste. 

The first two functions of Buddha coincided exactly with the first two functions of the other founder of the world religion, Christ. And this circumstance allowed specialists not without success to draw parallels between Buddhism and Christianity, between the biographies of Christ and Buddha, especially since striking coincidences between them lay literally on the surface. However, there were also fundamental differences due to the different positions of the two lower functions. 

The problem of the role of rationality in human life was of so little concern to Christ that he simply dropped the word "intellect" from his vocabulary. Buddha approached this question differently, and although no traces of a special criticism of the intellect by the Enlightened One have been found, historians of Buddhism have noted his initial orientation "against abstract-dogmatic quests", i.e. skepticism conditioned by the 3rd Logic. 

The difference between Christianity and Buddhism is particularly noticeable when it comes to the attitude to the physical layer of life and its worldview derivatives. Christ, with his 3rd Physics, was an ascetic ideologically and consistently ("the flesh uses not a little"); Buddha, on the contrary, considered ascetic self-torture a delusion, although he did not welcome promiscuity. This attitude to the flesh and its pleasures suggests that Buddhism should be gentler to man, more optimistic, brighter than Christianity. But how disappointed a person is when he compares the two religions and discovers that, contrary to logic, Buddhism is much sadder and more hopeless than Christianity. The solution to this supposed contradiction is in the 4th Physics of the Enlightened One. To it goes back the main thesis of Buddhism - "life is suffering" and individual apocalypse as a way of solving the problem, i.e. deliverance from suffering is possible only through nirvana, absolute personal non-existence. 

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Trying to draw an average black-and-white portrait of a "ghazali," one cannot help imagining a thin, distracted and sad looking, carelessly dressed, with a disheveled head, without makeup, with iconic features, excited, beautiful, sweet, open, honest, worldly helpless man, sadly whispering: "I love doom..."