General Description: In al-Ghazzali's view, everything begins by knowing who you are. He says that you should know that you are born with an outer form and an inner essence and it is that inner essence or the spiritual heart that you have to come to know in order to know who you are.

"This is book XXI of part three of the Alchemy of happiness entitled The Destroyers"--P. 4 of cover.

In this work, here presented in a complete English edition for the first time, the problem of knowing God is confronted in an original and stimulating way. Taking up the Prophet's teaching that 'Ninety-nine Beautiful Names' are truly predicated of God, Ghazali explores the meaning and resonance of each of these divine names, and reveals the functions they perform both in the cosmos and in the soul of the spiritual adept. Although some of the book is rigorously analytical, the author never fails to attract the reader with his profound mystical and ethical insights, which, conveyed in his sincere and straightforward idiom, have made of this book one of the perennial classics of Muslim thought, popular among Muslims to this day. This volume won a British Book Design and Production Award in 1993.

Al-Ghazali was one of the great Muslim theologians. In this book the author provides a translation of some of his works, including his spiritual autobiography. Al-Ghazali's description of his own emergence from scepticism anticipates the philosophical method of systematic doubt employed by Descartes. Another work translated here sets out Al-Ghazali's ideal of how a religious person should order his life from hour to hour and day to day.