The Heart (al-qalb) and Spiritual Cognition

Muhammad Zainiy Uthman

ABSTRACT

This article examines the nature of the heart (qalb) as the spiritual organ for cognition. The relation between spiritual experiences and intellectual cognition is delineated in the soul’s quest for and at attaining to certainty, wisdom, illuminative knowledge, and guidance.  The apex of knowledge is the event of the prophetic reception of Revelation as it is shown as the highest level of apprehension of the highest degree of knowledge which occurs to the heart of the best of God’s sentient being. The intellectual tradition in Islam views the soul as having four modes:  these are the nafs, rūḥ, ‘aql and qalb, while the degrees of knowledge which arrives at the soul and which the soul arrives at are four; these are revelation (waḥy), wisdom (ḥikmah), intuition (ilhām), and knowledge (‘ilm). This article analyses the primacy of the qalb as the spiritual organ of cognition and elaborates its ontological reality with a brief exposition of the stations and states of soul. The central position and function of the qalb is supported by verses from the Qur’ān and the writings of earlier Muslim scholars such as al-Junayd, al-Jāmī, al-Qasṭallānī, al-Rānīrī as well as Shāh Walī Allāh. Syed Muhammad Naquib al-Attas continues this tradition to bring to the fore the recognition of the qalb in his writings on the human soul. This study also sheds light on the activity of the qalb in understanding the meanings derived from the knowledge that has been gifted to it, such as in the revelatory experience of the Prophet and trans-empirical experiences by others. The qalb, unlike the intellect, does not act on meanings logically or by way of ratiocination; it leaves the content as it is and unimpaired by the receiver’s act by the subjective imagination of the intellect. The article ends with outlining the stations and states of the heart and ways to achieve them from the tradition of the Sufis.