Heart In Sufism

[Emerenciana Mcgreal]

Thereare three central ideas in Sufi Islamic psychology, which are the Nafs (self, ego or psyche), the Qalb (heart) and the Ruh (spirit). The origin and basis of these terms is Qur'anic and they have been expounded upon by centuries of Sufic commentaries.

Nafs is considered to be the lowest principle of man. Higher than the nafs are the Qalb (heart), and the Ruh (spirit). This tripartition forms the foundation of later, more complicated systems; it is found as early as the Koranic commentary by Ja'far al-Sadiq. He holds that the nafs is peculiar to the zalim (tyrant), the qalb to the muqtasid (moderate), and the rūh to the sābiq (preeminent one, winner); the zālim loves God for his own sake, the muqtasid loves Him for Himself, and the sābiq annihilates his own will in God's will. Bayezid Bistami, Hakīm at-Tirmidhī, and Junayd have followed this tripartition. Kharrāz, however, inserts between nafs and qalb the element tab', "nature," the natural functions of man. The spiritual body (soul) was created in adult form of the living body.

"Nafs" (self or ego) is the aspect of the psyche that can be viewed along a continuum, and has the potential of functioning from the grossest to the highest level. The self at its lowest level refers to our negative traits and tendencies, controlled by emotions, desires and its gratification. Sufic psychology identifies seven levels of the nafs, which have been identified in the Quran.[2] The process of growth depends on working through these levels. These are: tyrannical self, regretful/self-accusing self, inspired self, serene self, pleased self, pleasing self and the pure self.[3][4]

In Sufi psychology the heart refers to the spiritual heart or qalb, not the physical organ. It is this spiritual heart that contains the deeper intelligence and wisdom. It holds the Divine spark or spirit and is the place of gnosis and deep spiritual knowledge. In Sufism, the goal is to develop a heart that is sincere, loving and compassionate, and to develop the heart's intelligence, which is deeper, and more grounded than the rational, abstract intelligence of the mind. Just as the physical heart supplies blood to the body, the spiritual heart nourishes the soul with wisdom and spiritual light, and it also purifies the gross personality traits. According to Sufic psychology emotions are from the self or nafs, not from the heart.The qalb mediates between the Nafs and spirit. Its task is to control the nafs and direct the man toward the spirit.

The spirit ruh is in direct connection with the Divine, even if one is unconscious of that connection. The spirit has seven levels or facets of the complete spirit. These levels are: mineral, vegetable, animal, personal, human, secret and secret of secret souls. Each level represents the stages of evolution, and the process that it goes through in its growth. The spirit is holistic, and extends to all aspects of the person, i.e. the body, the mind and the soul. Each level of the spirit has valuable gifts and strengths, as well as weaknesses. The goal is to develop the strengths and to achieve a balance between these levels, not forgoing the lower ones to focus only on the higher ones. In traditional psychology, ego psychology deals with the animal soul, behavioral psychology focuses on the conditioned functioning of the vegetable and animal soul, cognitive psychology deals with the mental functions of the personal soul, humanistic psychology deals with the activities of the human soul and transpersonal psychology deals with ego-transcending consciousness of the secret soul and the secret of secret souls.

Spirit is beyond the realm of creation. It is directly connected with Alam e Lahoot (Unity of attributes and names) which is from Amr Allah (Command of Allah), Therefore, Spirit already knows everything including its own source.

Lataif are special organs of perception in Sufi spiritual psychology, subtle human capacities for experience and action. Depending on context, the lataif are also understood to be the corresponding qualities of that experience or action.[6]

Realizing (or activating or awakening or "illuminating") the experience of the individual lataif (and thereby the Jism Latif as a whole) is considered by some Sufi orders to be a central part of the comprehensive spiritual development that produces the Sufi ideal of a Complete Man (Al-Insān al-Kāmil).

Sufism is a path of love. The Sufi is a traveler on the path of love, a wayfarer journeying back to God through the mysteries of the heart. For the Sufi the relationship to God is that of lover and Beloved, and Sufis are also known as lovers of God. The journey to God takes place within the heart, and for centuries Sufis have been traveling deep within themselves, into the secret chamber of the heart where lover and Beloved share the ecstasy of union.

Sufism is the ancient wisdom of the heart. It is not limited by time or place or form. It always was and it always will be. There have always been lovers of God, long before they were known as Sufis. There is a story about a group of mystics, a band of lovers of God, who were called the Kamal Posh. Kamal Posh means blanket wearers, for their only possession was a blanket which they wore as a covering during the day and used as a blanket at night. As the story goes they traveled throughout the ancient world from prophet to prophet but no one could satisfy them. Every prophet told them to do this or to do that, and this did not satisfy them. Then one day, at the time of Muhammad, the Prophet was seated together with his companions when he said that in a certain number of days the men of the Kamal Posh would be coming. So it happened that in that number of days this group of Kamal Posh came to the prophet Muhammad. And when they were with him, he said nothing, but the Kamal Posh were completely satisfied. Why were they satisfied? Because he created love in their hearts, and when love is created, what dissatisfaction can there be?

The Kamal Posh recognized that Muhammad knew the mysteries of the heart. They stayed with the Prophet and were assimilated into Islam. According to this story the Kamal Posh became the mystical element of Islam. And later these wayfarers became known as Sufis, perhaps in reference to the white woolen blanket, sf, which they wore, or as an indication of their purity of heart, saf, for they were also known as the pure of heart. Over the centuries Sufism spread throughout the Islamic world and beyond, with most Sufis being strict followers of Islam, though some were persecuted by the Islamic orthodoxy.

In the early days of Sufism very little was written down; there were just luminaries, saints, friends of God, wali, who lived their own spiritual passion, their deepest devotion. One such saint was Rbi'a, a woman who was born in the eighth century into slavery, but whose owner was so impressed by the intensity of her devotion that he gave her her freedom. She became known for stressing the love that exists between the mystic and God. Always looking towards God, she cared for nothing that might distract from or interfere with this relationship. She was once asked, "Do you love God?" "Yes," she replied. "Do you hate the devil?" "No, my love of God gives me no time to hate the devil."

Like many early Sufis, Rbi'a practiced severe renunciation and austerities. The great ninth-century saint Byezd Bistm also practiced severe mortification, but he stressed that the real renunciation was of the lower self:

Through the subjugation of the lower self, or ego, the lover realizes his essential unity with the Beloved. Byezd expressed his experience of unity with intoxicated utterances that could be considered heretical:

Al-Hallj's seemingly blasphemous statements, including the famous "an'l-Haqq" (I am the AbsoluteTruth), cost him his life on the gallows of Baghdad. But through his death he became immortalized as the prince of lovers, as the one who was prepared to pay the ultimate price for love, his own blood. In contrast to these intoxicated Sufis, al-Junayd of Baghdad advocated the state of sobriety. Junayd stressed the state of fan, the annihilation of the ego, and unlike al-Hallj, whom he supposedly rejected from his circle as a madman, Junayd felt that it was dangerous to speak openly of mystical experiences.

The early Sufi mystics lived their mystical passion. Their teaching was their life and although their sayings were collected by their followers there was no mystical doctrine. But by the twelfth century Sufi teachings began to be organized into a mystical system. In 1165 one the greatest exponents of metaphysical doctrine, Ibn 'Arab, was born in Spain.

The core of Ibn 'Arab's mystical teaching is expressed by the term wahdat al-wujd, unity of being. Ibn 'Arab replaced the idea of a personal God with a philosophical concept of Oneness. Only God exists. He is the One underlying the many and is also the many. He is the cause of everything, the essence of everything, and the substance of everything:

He is now as He was. He is the One without oneness and the Single without singleness.... He is the very existence of the First and the very existence of the Last, and the very existence of the Outward and the very existence of the Inward. So there is no first nor last, nor outward nor inward, except Him, without these becoming Him or His becoming them.... By Himself He sees Himself, and by Himself He knows Himself. None sees Him other than He, and none perceives Him other than He. His veil, that is phenomenal existence, is a part of His oneness.... There is no other and there is no existence other than He.(4)

The greatness of Ibn 'Arab is not in the originality of his ideas. The theory of wahdat al-wujd, unity of being, was already part of Sufi metaphysics. But Ibn 'Arab formally organized ideas that until then had only been expressed orally. Later Sufis valued the work of "the greatest sheikh" for systematizing what they regarded as the real essence of Sufism.

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