"Haqq means true, real, right, worthy, and appropriate (in modern times, it is used to speak of human “rights”); haqîqa means reality and truth. The Koran uses haqq, the conceptual opposite of bâtil (false, vain, unreal, inappropriate), in a variety of senses, not least as a divine name, “the Real, the True”, and to designate the content of revelation in the Koran and earlier scriptures. Haqîqa is not a Koranic term, but it was used in the Hadith literature and given special attention in philosophy. Tahqîq or “realization” means to speak, affirm, and actualize haqq and haqîqa—truth, reality, rightness, appropriateness. Ibn ‘Arabî finds its role in human becoming encapsulated in the Prophet's saying, “Everything has a haqq, so give to each that has a haqq its haqq”. In other words, everything in the universe, society, and the soul has a rightness and an appropriateness, and the human task vis-à-vis each thing is to act rightly and appropriately; or, everything has rights, and people have the responsibility (that is, the haqq “against them”, ‘alayhim) to observe those rights.
Another hadith explains that the primary haqq, upon which all other haqqs are based, is that “There is no god but God”, which is to say that there is nothing truly real but the Real, there is nothing truly right but the Right. In Islamic theology, understanding this notion is called tawhîd or “the acknowledgement of [divine] unity” and is considered the first of the three principles of faith.
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From earliest times, Muslim philosophers recognized that haqq—truth, reality, rightness—was basic to the quest for wisdom and the happiness of the soul. Already al-Kindî, at the beginning of his most famous work, On First Philosophy, writes that the goal of the philosopher is to reach haqq and to practice haqq. Scholars translate the word here and in similar contexts as “truth”, but doing so suggests that the issue was logical and epistemological, when in fact it was ontological and existential; for the philosophers, the goal of the quest for wisdom was transformation of the soul, and that could not be achieved simply by logic and argumentation. Al-Kindî's statement is in fact an early definition of tahqîq, and the term itself became common in philosophical texts, though it seldom has the same urgency that it has in Ibn ‘Arabî's works. For him it is the guiding principle of all knowledge and activity and the highest goal to which a human soul can aspire.
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Some of the implications of tahqîq can be understood when it is contrasted with its conceptual opposite, taqlîd, which means imitation or following authority. Knowledge can be divided into two sorts, which in Arabic were often called naqlî, transmitted, and ‘aqlî, intellectual; or husûlî, acquired, and hudûrî, presential. Transmitted knowledge is everything that one can learn only by imitating others, like language, culture, scripture, history, law, and science. Intellectual knowledge is what one comes to know by realizing its truth within oneself, like mathematics and metaphysics, even if these are initially learned by imitation. Mullâ Sadrâ calls intellectual knowledge “non-instrumental” (al-ghayr al-âlî), because it accrues to the soul not by the instruments of sense perception, imagination, and rational argumentation, but by the soul's conformity with reason or intelligence (‘aql), which, in its fullest reality, is nothing but the shining light of the Real. In short, Ibn ‘Arabî, like many of the Islamic philosophers, holds that real knowledge cannot come from imitating others, but must be discovered by realization, which is the actualization of the soul's potential."
Imagine the clouds dripping.
Dig a hole in your garden to put them in.
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