Music and Ecstasy in Sufism | Al-Ghazali on the Hidden Fire of the Heart

<p><iframe allowfullscreen="allowfullscreen" width="640" height="390" src="https://www.inoreader.com/yt-embed/?v=Vefhrxb2_fQ" referrerpolicy="strict-origin-when-cross-origin" style="width:100%;aspect-ratio:16/9;height:auto;display:block;border:0;" frameborder="0"></iframe></p><p>Nine hundred years ago al-Ghazali said the heart is a flint: it holds a hidden fire that music strikes, and the ecstasy you feel is the soul recognizing an echo of the world it came from. He also knew the same fire could overwhelm the one who held it. One Sufi ran through a field until his feet bled. Another heard a single verse and fell down dead.<br> <br> This is a transmission of his chapter on music and dancing from The Alchemy of Happiness: why a melody you were not even listening to can undo you, why the fire it raises is already in you before the song begins, how the Sufis told real ecstasy from its performance, and the quiet etiquette they built so that no one carried away by it would ever stand alone.<br> <br> Sourced directly from al-Ghazali, The Alchemy of Happiness (Kimiya-yi Sa'adat), Chapter V, in the Claud Field translation of 1909, public domain and quoted throughout. The fuller Arabic treatment is in the Ihya, Book 18, on the conduct of listening and ecstasy.<br> <br> Stay for the moment near the end, where a man is carried so far out of himself by a verse that onlookers call it the descent of God into a human being, and al-Ghazali corrects them with the image his whole book is built on: the ecstatic has not become God, he has become a clean mirror, and to mistake the reflected light for his own is the error of a man seeing himself in a mirror for the first time.<br> <br> Read along in the full Field translation, freely available, so you can check every line against the source.<br> <br> Subscribe for more readings from the rare end of the Sufi tradition. <br> <br> Written essays and full sources on the Substack below.<br> <br> MORE FROM SPIRITUALRELIEF<br> Music <a href="https://www.youtube.com/@UCBo3tQklTFD_10GtJx8mAmA">https://www.youtube.com/@UCBo3tQklTFD_10GtJx8mAmA</a> <br> Express Your Support Through A YouTube channel membership:<br> <a href="https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb2GDYQwKx6lYfvJCZCHx0w/join">https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCb2GDYQwKx6lYfvJCZCHx0w/join</a><br> Essays and translations <a href="https://spiritualrelief.substack.com">https://spiritualrelief.substack.com</a><br> <br> #sufism #sufi #islamicmysticism #spiritualrelief #alghazali #rumi #alchemy</p> <p><a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Vefhrxb2_fQ" target="_blank">- Enlace a artículo -</a></p> <p>Más info en https://ift.tt/OIxV5q0 / Tfno. & WA 607725547 Centro MENADEL (Frasco Martín) Psicología Clínica y Tradicional en Mijas. #Menadel #Psicología #Clínica #Tradicional #MijasPueblo</p> <p>*No suscribimos necesariamente las opiniones o artículos aquí compartidos. No todo es lo que parece.</p>