and the movement of a human being—indeed, of any body—can only occur in a direction and toward a direction. Motion necessarily entails direction, and to posit something moving without a direction is like positing motion without anything that moves. This is undisputed among rational people.

However, extreme philosophers may claim that the heart and spirit are not bodies, being neither inside the body nor outside it, neither within the world nor outside it. The falsity of this is known through sensory perception, reason, and revelation, as we have explained elsewhere. Extreme speculative theologians claim that the spirit is merely an accident of the body, not something that separates from the body and subsists independently. This too is false according to revelation and reason, as we have explained elsewhere.

Once the falsity of both views is recognized, it becomes clear that the spirit within us is a body that moves. Furthermore, we say that a person can feel within himself the heart—that lump of flesh—rising and moving upward when he is in desperate need of Allah Most High.

The twenty-first point

He says in his Nihāyah: “Pointing upward is caused by familiarity and habit, and by people’s customary practice.” He has mentioned the basis of this habit—a basis that is unsound.