 Save 10% with my code Bobby10 on raw, organic, grass-fed and grass-finished, freeze-dried organ meats from grassland nutrition. Link in the description box. All right, guys. Welcome back to the channel. If you're new, my name is Bobby. Guys, today we're going to react to Imam Al-Ghazali, advice on knowing yourself. Hashtag spiritual psychologist. I heard many times about Al-Ghazali, but I can't tell you what position he had within Islam, what his role was within the history of Islam. I already wanted to learn much about him and about Ibn Taymiyyah. But that being said, why I chose this video is because it speaks about knowing yourself and I truly believe in the value of knowing yourself. First, you have to know yourself and then you can understand everything else in life. Even now, when people tell me why don't you revert to Islam, I tell them all the time. It is because I know myself. Because I know myself, I have to understand many, many particular facets of Islam before I would be able to accept it. I know people will say this is shaitan making you procrastinate. But guys, as I said already, I know myself, I know what goes into my psychology. I understand myself and I understand how I perceive the world. I am a person that needs to ask those questions before he can commit. But once I commit, I'm in it for good. All right, that being said, with no further ado, let's have a look. The alchemy of happiness is a guide to transform the essence of man from his baseness to the purity of the angelic state. This reminds me of Gnostic Christians. If you look into alchemy, the claim was that everything ultimately in this universe can be transmuted and therefore any precious metal could be transmuted into gold. They thought that by transmuting the materials, they can essentially create gold. And moreover, the Gnostics believed that they can transmute their fallen nature, so to speak, into something God-like, something that will be worthy as a vessel for God consciousness, so to speak. Transformation is through increasing knowledge of God. Okay. However, before you can begin to know God, first you must know yourself. Absolutely true. Knowing yourself starts with an understanding of the human being's two distinct components, the body and the heart, or more specifically, the spiritual heart. There are five steps to understand the heart. First, you must recognize its existence. Next, know that the heart works to seek happiness through knowledge of God. It acquires this knowledge through knowledge of God's creation. This is very, very deep because it implies that true happiness within our hearts can only be found through the knowledge of God, only be found through God. If you look into this day and age, through Hollywood, etc., people are told that they can experience love within their hearts by promiscuous dating, by having multiple sexual partners and not getting married, not having children, rather, by six cats and 17 dogs. Then you will be very, very happy. The emotional love is being sold to you. The true love, which is the yearning for God, is of course suppressed within this day and age. Next, know that the body is a kingdom and within it, the limbs and organs are its workers. Appetite is the tax collector. Anger is the policeman. Intellect is the chief minister. And the heart is king. Fair. The body is in a constant spiritual struggle between being held captive by anger and appetite and using them as a mount and weapon to attain spiritual fulfillment. If the heart acts at the advice of the intellect and keeps anger and appetite under control, the path to happiness will be made accessible. Absolutely beautiful. Essentially a balancing through intellect and heart. A balancing of your intuition, the heart and the intellect, your intelligence. Absolutely on point here, controlling the appetite and the anger, aka your desires. Ultimately, if you look at us, this why atheists say that we are animals, we do have a biological body, this undeniable. And if you just look at our body in a vacuum, you could say, yes, this is a mammal. This is a ape, a great ape. But there is, of course, a partial truth to this. It is an animalistic body in a way. We have teeth. We have hair. We go to the toilet. We have to pee. We have to poop. This is very animalistic. We have just like animals. We give birth just like animals. So that means we do have a animalistic body that doesn't make us animals. Of course, we have a soul. We have a consciousness which is far, far superior to any other creature around here. But that being said, our animal body will resist our intellect, will resist our heart with its appetite, with its anger, with its monkey urges, if you will. Yet again, do not understand me wrong here. I'm not saying we are monkeys. I do not believe in evolution one bit. But this is what the atheist really talks about. He talks about the animalistic body, which we truly possess in that sense. And we will have to learn to steer it through creation, to not be slaves to our own urges all the time. Now I'm hungry. Now I'm sad. Now I'm tired. It doesn't matter what you are. Only if we master our biology, we can be free. But if the intellect becomes the prisoner of anger and appetite, the kingdom will become desolate. The heart will be destroyed. Exactly. This is why I said before as well. I cannot stand emotional men. Being emotional is the opposite of what it means to be a man. Know that appetite and anger were created to nourish and protect the body and our its servants. The body was built to bear the senses and it is their servant. The senses were created for intelligence gathering and serve the intellect. The intellect was created as the lamp of the heart. Through its light, the heart may see the divine presence. Thus, the intellect is the servant of the heart. The heart was created to witness this. This is what I see with many intellectuals nowadays. Jordan Peterson would be the prime example of this. Intellectualizing it until he collapses and starts crying again in an interview. Just rationalizing over and over again what God is. What do you mean? There are two components to the equation here. You can rationally, intellectually try to understand God. But of course there is the heart aspect, the intuition. And I would say just like the video claims here, these trumps intellect any given day. Duty of the divine presence and is its servant. The heart has a number of qualities which can be grouped into four types, predatory attributes that find happiness in rage, destruction and killing, bestial attributes. These seek happiness in eating, sleeping and copulating, demonic attributes. These thrive on evil, treachery and deceit and angelic attributes which seek happiness in the contemplation of the divine presence. To attain spiritual happiness, the angelic quality of intellect must master the predatory, bestial and demonic qualities. Exactly correct. Now it's a spiritual battle between good and evil being fought within our bodies. It is absolutely correct. Yet again, you are overcoming the animal body on a daily basis. It is not very rewarding at first if you think about spiritual practices such as fasting. Fasting goes against the human body. It goes against the biology because your human body just wants to eat. If you look at any animal in nature they wouldn't fast. Why would they? As long as they're getting food, they will eat. And it's the same with a human being. We tend to overeat quite often in this modern day and age. You see, obesity is rampant. So your body consistently tries to pull you back into animal mode, into beast mode so to speak. As I said, it is not very rewarding to sit still, to pray too fast at first because it goes against the body. But once you realize that you're feeding your soul, your perspective will shift very, very fast. But you know the qualities of the heart. Know that the heart's nobility is what elevates humans above the rank of beasts. How do I say it? Nobility from knowledge has two degrees. One is gathered by the heart through a door that opens toward the five external senses such as learning the arts and sciences. The other is acquired directly by the heart through a door that opens to the heavens and divine inspiration. Right on. Know that the heart is like a well and knowledge is like water. The five senses are streams that fill the well. At the base of the well is dirt. Beneath the well is a pure spring. This dirt is like a veil that blocks the heart from accessing divine inspiration. That's a great example, man. To fill your heart with the pure water that lay beneath it, you must block the streams and empty the water. Absolutely correct, man. And this is why I always say that if you look at the great masters, at the prophets, they all went in some sort of sensory deprivation. They all entered into it, be it Jesus, 40 days of fasting into the desert or even if you look at Muhammad when he goes into the cave into darkness. When you shut off your outer senses, this is when you can access divine inspiration and remove the dirt at the base of the well, which is achieved by the struggle of disciplining the soul. Only then will the fountain of never-ending knowledge burst through and fill your heart. Beautiful. In truth, people in this world are deficient and weak. The heart is constantly struggling to subjugate the body's base qualities to the intellect. This is done through the knowledge of God and its key, the knowledge of oneself, the heart, and its nobility. That elevates man from the rank of beasts to that of angels. That is the start of the alchemy of happiness. I mean, all right, that's it for today's video. Absolutely beautifully done. I hope that those were quotes of Al-Ghazali. I'm not sure here. I just reacted to this video as I said, but I have to pre-assume that this is his work. I didn't even know that he was such a spiritually inclined man. As I said, I didn't know much about him, but through this video, I got to see this site. This absolutely correlates to my own spiritual experiences. Yet again, guys, I'm not here to promote anything quite the opposite. I would always say, stay away from all kinds of substances, stay away from all kinds of psychotropic plans and whatnot. I'm simply here to warn about it and to share my own experience. There's nothing that anybody should ever emulate. However, yet again within my own spiritual experiences, this is exactly what I witnessed. I realized for myself that as long as I'm staying within my five senses, I can never truly understand what God wants from me. To truly understand that, I will have to go within and therefore sensory deprivation by fasting, sitting in darkness and whatnot is the way to shut off those senses. Nowadays, you even have sensory deprivation tanks. This is a tank filled with salt water in absolute pitch black darkness. And if you lay there for long enough, you start to go within. You start to lose your outer senses and you go and connect, so to speak, to the sixth sense. You connect to your true heart. Like that, you create this gateway for divine inspiration, if you will. And this is what the true mystics have seen for thousands and thousands of years. I know nowadays mysticism is kind of tainted through the New Age perspective and of course many so-called heretics and whatnot. But ultimately, this is the only path to truly extract information that is not from this world. Because if you keep your five sense intact, you only receive information from this world. To receive outer, worldly unseen information, so to speak, you have to shut those senses down. There is no other way. But what I really loved about this video is the balance approach. Because yes, it's true, you have many mystics that went the ascetic path and they totally forgot about themselves, about their families, they starved themselves, they went crazy ultimately, because they only focused on spiritual epiphanies. But intellect is important as well. I believe that Islam offers both. It appeals to reason, to intellect, to intelligence and as well to the heart. It is a balanced symbiotic approach. Very, very powerful. Alright guys, but this is it for today's video. If you liked it, leave the thumbs up. If you haven't subscribed already, guys, please do so. And if you want to further support this channel, all the links are in the description box below. Thank you so much for your ongoing support, guys. I truly appreciate it. Alright, this is it. As always, may God bless you all. Much love and peace.