Al-Madnun Bihi 'Ala Ghairi Ahlihi — That Which Is Entrusted to None but Its Proper People — is among the most philosophically ambitious and esoterically guarded of al-Ghazali's works. Its title announces its character: this is a text that does not open itself to all readers equally. Al-Ghazali states plainly at its outset that the mysteries of the human soul are not to be disclosed to the uninitiated, that such disclosure could become a calamity for those whose minds are not yet prepared to receive it. This is not obscurantism; it is epistemological precision applied to the most volatile of subjects. The English translation by Abdul Qayyum "Shafaq" Hazarvi — published by Qadeem Press as The Mysteries of the Human Soul — makes this treatise available for the first time in English, allowing non-Arabic-speaking scholars and serious readers of Islamic thought to access a work that has long circulated within the Arabic manuscript tradition.
The treatise is structured as a sustained philosophical dialogue. A group of sincere inquirers pose questions to al-Ghazali, and he responds — sometimes with direct answers, more often with analogies, distinctions, and counter-questions that redirect the reader's gaze toward deeper conceptual territory. The opening inquiry concerns taswiyah: the preparation of matter — first dust, then sperm — to receive the soul breathed into it by God. Al-Ghazali's analysis of this Qur'anic concept leads immediately to the question of nafkh, the act of divine breathing, which he interprets not as a literal exhalation from God but as the causal mechanism by which the light of the soul is kindled in matter made ready to receive it, analogous to the lighting of oil in a lamp.
From this foundation, the text moves into some of the most technically demanding philosophy produced in the classical Islamic period. Al-Ghazali argues for the absolute indivisibility of the human soul through a series of logical demonstrations: if the soul were divisible, the cognitions of two individuals would be identical, which is plainly false; if it occupied space, it would be divisible, which contradicts its nature as a non-material substance. The soul therefore occupies no space, is limited by no direction, and is neither attached to nor detached from the body — it governs the body from a plane of existence that does not admit of spatial categories.
Chapter II addresses the question of how souls, being non-material and indivisible before the existence of bodies, come to be individual and distinct after embodiment. Al-Ghazali's answer hinges on the body as the source of individuation: the soul acquires its particular proclivity from its commerce with a specific body. After the death of that body, the soul retains the marks of that commerce — its virtues, its vices, its degree of spiritual development — and it is on this basis that souls differ from one another in the afterlife. The chapter also engages the famous hadith positing that God created souls two thousand years before bodies, which al-Ghazali interprets not as a literal statement about human souls but as a reference to the souls of angels and the great celestial bodies.
Chapters III through V constitute the eschatological heart of the treatise. Al-Ghazali treats the Preserved Tablet (Lawh al-Mahfuz) and the Pen not as simple cosmological curiosities but as realities whose formless nature resists any naive literalism. He argues similarly for belief in the resurrection of bodies, the Balance of the Day of Judgment, the intercession of the Prophet, the Sirat — the Bridge stretched over Hell, which he interprets as the moral mean between extremes — and the punishments of the grave. These are not treated as allegorical conveniences but as genuine metaphysical realities to be affirmed within the framework of rational necessity and scriptural authority. Where philosophers such as Avicenna have cast doubt, al-Ghazali acknowledges the debate but insists that the philosophical tradition itself does not preclude belief in bodily resurrection, citing Avicenna's own qualified acknowledgment of the possibility.
The final chapters address the vision of God and the Prophet in dream-states, and the distinction between mithal (example) and shabah (resemblance). Here, al-Ghazali's Sufi formation is most fully on display. The vision of God in a dream does not mean that one has seen the divine essence — God has no form, and form cannot be predicated of Him without qualification. What is seen is an example, a form through which the divine reality communicates itself to human consciousness in a manner proportioned to human receptivity. The soul, when sufficiently purified through worship and the annihilation (fana') of self, is capable of receiving such communications. The traditions of the Prophet are marshaled in support, including the saying attributed to him: "I have seen God in the most beautiful form."
The work closes with a reaffirmation of the central Ghazalian synthesis: that the knowledge of God passes through self-knowledge, that the universe is the mirror of God and the human heart the mirror of the universe, and that the soul — the masterpiece of creation — bears within it the image (surat) of the divine attributes in derived and subordinate form. To know one's own soul is therefore not merely an exercise in philosophical self-understanding; it is the beginning of the path to the knowledge of God. In this sense, al-Madnun Bihi remains what it was when first composed: a text entrusted to those capable of receiving it, and a challenge to every reader to ask whether they are ready.