Haqiqa
The inner truth: the fruit of the path, the direct knowledge of God to which the journey leads.
Haqiqa comes from haqq, the true, the real: it is truth, the ultimate reality of things. In the classical triad shari’a, tariqa, haqiqa, the word denotes the third storey: no longer ordered conduct nor the road travelled, but truth itself tasted in the heart.
Al-Jurjani, in the Book of Definitions, states the reciprocal equation: one is the husk, the other the kernel; the fruit needs the husk to ripen, and the husk has meaning only through the fruit. Haqiqa therefore never abolishes the Law: it penetrates it. Whoever claims the kernel while throwing away the husk has found nothing.
The term neighbours ma’rifa, knowledge: haqiqa is the object, the divine reality itself; ma’rifa is man’s access to it through the heart.