Wajd
The soul's rapture: the ecstasy that comes over one in dhikr or sama', unsought and unprogrammed.
Wajd comes from wajada, to find: wajd is what ‘finds’ the soul, invades it, and makes it lose its ordinary measure. The Sufi tradition applies it to the state that comes over one in invocation or spiritual audition (sama’): a trembling, a transport, sometimes a cry. Al-Qushayri ranks it among the delicate chapters of his Risala, for the state can be feigned, and the masters’ convention is that it does not occur to be seen.
The vocabulary articulates a fine nuance: wajd is the momentary seizure; wujud (from the same verb) is that state become lasting; and tawajud is its affected pursuit, held by the masters to be an imposture of the soul. Rapture is not manufactured.
The experience is therefore neither a goal nor a proof: it can come over one in a dhikr session without being expected, and the guides teach to receive it without clinging to it. The work of the path lies elsewhere: in discreet regularity, not in the seizing state. See hal, the category it belongs to.