by nagasiva (haramullah yronwode)

What is a nafs? What should be done with it — exorcism, circumcision, reform, or suicide? In 2003, a Pagan writer steeped in occult philosophy and Islamic studies posed these questions to a community of practitioners, producing an unusual document: a rigorous, cross-traditional examination of the Sufi concept of the lower self, drawing on Reynold Nicholson's scholarship on Islamic mysticism, Titus Burckhardt's Sufi doctrine, Gurdjieff's teachings on the multiplicity of "I," and the four gradations of nafs described in the Quran. The argument — sustained across six hundred lines of careful analysis — is that the nafs is not a "false self" to be destroyed but a behavioural repertoire to be refined: heart-rust to be polished away, not a limb to be amputated.

Posted to alt.pagan.magick, alt.religion.islam, alt.islam.sufism, and alt.sufi in September 2003, this essay represents a rare moment in Usenet's history: a practitioner of Chaos and Pagan magic turning a serious scholarly lens on an Islamic mystical concept, using it to interrogate the fashionable idea of "crucifying the false self." The result is neither dismissal nor easy synthesis but a careful, sometimes humorous, always learned inquiry into one of the deepest questions in comparative mysticism.

I'm hearing nafs is bad motivation and suggestions that we separate it out as a separate "self" and crucify it. The God is One, they say (Not Two, Not Three) but the self is supposedly two (or five, or sixteen).

I'm not so sure. If you told me that NAFS were like hair being cut off, then I'd at least understand, but when egos start being discussed, can we presume that they are separate from souls, for example? or that an ego is something that a soul "has"? It's worth examining.

For example: if the soul is a temporary phenomenon caused by the function of the body (subjectivity and the beauty of sensate experience) and the ego a fabricated puppet of the mind used for communication and identification (popping like a bubble at physical and social death), what does a "false self" matter, or the conditions of any of them at all matter? Could focussing on shells lead to the abandonment of attention to the roots?

Huge motivational differences will be determined primarily by metaphysical certitudes and knowledge. What we think we are made of, and how we figure our overall actions will be met by cosmic authorities, play a key part in our reaction to the way terms are used.

The Fall Guy

Scapegoats are easily fabricated, imaginary or with real target victims as stand-ins for apparent evils. Making a "bad self" out of one's consciousness and then somehow torturing, killing, or otherwise assaulting or threatening it doesn't sound like the exact first course of action I can imagine the One whom I know as the Most Compassionate would suggest. This is surely some specialist's art or science for those with a predilection for wrestling or martial arts.

Instructors like Khidr and Nasrudin would seem to predispose to admitting of at least a personal self, capable of being educated, remembering truth, and conceivably loyal, but they can often be described as instructing metaphorically. The implication of:

Bedar, the Watchman, caught the Mulla prying open a window of his own bedroom from the outside, in the depths of night.

"What are you doing, Nasrudin? Locked out?"

"Hush! They say I walk in my sleep. I am trying to surprise myself and find out."*

might be of a united mind which could become bifurcated. It admits of the capacity to work against oneself — in many cases ridiculous and futile, as in dreams, or perhaps merely in extraordinary states of mind compromising one's knowledge and sincerity (as in matters of trance and mystical ascension, zikr, etc.).

Where it includes accurate self-perception would seem to be the issue of contention, and when the request or requirement for dropping a mask becomes circumcision, I say it has gone too far — it becomes violence.

The False Self?

Granted that a Sufi trajectory were appropriate, coming to awareness of what was and was not "false" as regards self would be the next task at hand: discerning if it would be wise to have a NAFS-ectomy or whether it might somehow be reformed or retrained because our education or nature somehow included something needing revision.

How our nature could be so I leave you to explain, as my understanding is that by nature we are perfect and pure, only sullied by antagonistic forces in a world of confusion and challenge (most of us). Granting that Allah somehow made an imperfect Creation, then I'd look for where imperfection arose (sin?).

Conditioning and the corruption of the Whisperer are probably sufficient to explain what could be called the "disease" of hypertrophied ego. Yet if a toe were inflamed we would not cut it off to heal it, or with other actual appendages. The last resort would be a crucifixion, unless the thing being cut off isn't real in the first place (mask), or it is so far distant from our pain centers that we can't tell (like hair or fingernails). If it's just a bundle of learned behaviours, perhaps it isn't that much to cast off.

It is customary to blame such things as falseness on cosmic evils, such as Mara or Shaitan, but responsible mysticism usually locates the problem in human discernment or perceptual condition (roughly: lack of spiritual adeptship — innocence; or myopia — ignorance) for which it serves all to provide a possible remedy.

The Nafs — Really to Be Mortified?

It seems that particular ascetic Sufis are prone to regard the NAFS as indeed worthy of mortification, particularly describing it as alike to a possessing or energetic spirit. For some the entire self is what distinguishes a faqir from a Sufi (the Sufi being absent a self at all). For my part I adore the tales of wily NAFS. Nicholson relates:

The Sufi teachers gradually built up a system of asceticism and moral culture which is founded on the fact that there is in man an element of evil — the lower or appetitive soul. This evil self, the seat of passion and lust, is called nafs; it may be considered broadly equivalent to "the flesh," and with its allies, the world and the devil, it constitutes the great obstacle to the attainment of union with God.

"Cutting off the NAFS" therefore may constitute the removal of something pagans and those interested in the experiences of lust and sex and reproduction and all the wondrous pleasures of the Goddess might find objectionable, or limiting. The identity of the sought-for "God" thereafter serves as motivating parameter (those in search of union with Allah are after the crucifixion of "the flesh," by these measures).

Nicholson describes the appearance of the nafs in vision:

Mohammad ibn 'Ulyan, an eminent Sufi, relates that one day something like a young fox came forth from his throat, and God caused him to know that it was his nafs. He trod on it, but it grew bigger at every kick that he gave it. He said: "Other things are destroyed by pain and blows: why dost thou increase?" "Because I was created perverted," it replied; "what is pain to other things is pleasure to me, and their pleasure is my pain."

The nafs of Hallaj was seen running behind him in the shape of a dog; and other cases are recorded in which it appeared as a snake or a mouse.

Mortification of the nafs is the chief work of devotion, and leads, directly or indirectly, to the contemplative life. All the Sheykhs are agreed that no disciple who neglects this duty will ever learn the rudiments of Sufism. The principle of the mortification is that the nafs should be weaned from those things to which it is accustomed, that it should be encouraged to resist its passions, that its pride should be broken, and that it should be brought through suffering and tribulation to recognise the vileness of its original nature and the impurity of its actions.

Self-mortification, as advanced Sufis understand it, is a moral transmutation of the inner man. When they say, Die before ye die, they do not mean to assert that the lower self can and should be destroyed, but that it can and should be purged of its attributes — which are wholly evil. These attributes — ignorance, pride, envy, uncharitableness, etc. — are extinguished, and replaced by the opposite qualities, when the will is surrendered to God and when the mind is concentrated on Him. Therefore, "dying to self" is really "living in God."

In general, Nicholson is in agreement in recommending against those who speak of "destruction of the NAFS." Purgation or refinement through discipline, yes, but in terms of destruction, the NAFS isn't a good target.

The Gradations of Nafs in the Quran

So if the "lower self" isn't supposed to be destroyed, what is this "false self" that is the target of this crucifixion, anyway? It's worth noting that the term NAFS is far more complex than its usual translation as "the bad part of the self." The Quran and Islamic scholars have given it four distinct gradations:

an-nafs (the soul, the psyche, the subtle reality of an individual, the "I") — as opposed to the spirit (ruh) or to the intellect (aql) — the nafs appears in a negative aspect, because it is made up of the sum of individual or egocentric tendencies. But a distinction is made between:

1. an-nafs al-haywaniyah: the animal soul, the soul as passively obedient to natural impulses.
2. an-nafs al-ammarah: "the soul which commands" — the passionate, egoistic soul.
3. an-nafs al-lawwamah: "the soul which blames" — the soul aware of its own imperfections.
4. an-nafs al-mutmainnah: "the soul at peace" — the soul reintegrated in the Spirit and at rest in certainty.

The last three of these expressions are from the Quran. Beyond these: an-Nafs al-kulliyah — the Universal Soul, which includes all individual souls. This corresponds to the Guarded Tablet and is the complement of the Spirit (ar-Ruh) or First Intellect (al-Aql al-awwal), analogous to the Psyche of Plotinus.

The tendency for the term "NAFS" to be translated simply as "soul" ought to give the hedonist or the eclectic spiritual faqir pause. Why ought the SOUL be mortified or harmed in any way?

The Sufi Path — Integration, Not Mortification

When Sufi sources indicate that the method is not so much the destruction of the radical opposition but point instead to an integrative process, I sit up and take notice. Burckhardt writes on the essential Unity (al-Ahadiyah):

The Essential Unity, in which all diversity is "drowned" or "extinguished," is in no wise contradicted by the metaphysical idea of the indefinite number of levels or degrees of existence. On the contrary, these two truths are intimately connected one with the other... This enables us to understand that the Sufi doctrine of Unity (which is strictly analogous, despite the difference in terminology, to the Hindu Advaitic doctrine of "Non-Duality"), has no connection with a philosophical "monism"... Their opinion is the more astounding since the doctrinal method of these masters consists in bringing out the extreme ontological contrasts and envisaging the essential Unity not by rational reduction but by an intuitive integration of paradox.

Which in general leaves no room for crucifixions or mortification to extinction or excisement. The NAFS therefore is more a behavioural repertoire or coping mechanism than a "self" in any sense, false or real. Confusing one's coping mechanism with oneself, perhaps the NAFS is more like what Sheikh Maulana describes as "heart-rust" — an accretion of worldliness occluding the purity of the heart, something from which one would benefit in its removal.

The Sufi tradition uses the simile of the butterfly and the chrysalis: the developing human must be helped (and must help herself) out of her cultural cocoon. The process entails transformation or metamorphosis, and after the shedding of the cocoon the emergent butterfly is akin to the fully developed human, capable of "flying." The chrysalis is sometimes analogous to the School, and Sufis continually warn of the false or "reconstructed" chrysalis — false systems or outmoded schools. To the Sufi, one of the saddest sights of all is the caterpillar who does not know how to spin her own cocoon.

A butterfly does not look like a caterpillar, yet it is, in some sense, the inevitable eventual form that it must take.

The Observer — Gurdjieff and the Multiplicity of I

Speeth, drawing on Gurdjieff and de Ropp, describes the Path as including a dispensing with all previous "I"s — a sequential multiplicity:

What, then, is the beginning? It is simple. Accept the truth about the third state — accept multiplicity. There is, in fact, no I. There is a multitude. He who knows this ceases even to think of himself as I. He speaks of "it" or "this." Meanwhile he observes how different "I"s come and go — actors in his personal theater. Something new develops in him. One who observes. In one part of his being, this man is becoming objective toward himself. In one part of his being, he has ceased to lie. Insofar as he has ceased to lie, he is becoming liberated. The Observer combines objectivity with discrimination. The Observer knows who is who in the jungle. The Observer is the forerunner of the Master.

Speeth and company treat what is left behind as an emotional repertoire also, which must be inhibited — possibly comparable to how any animal is retrained or reconditioned toward different standards or principles. As such, what is left behind isn't really about "self" so much as what is mistaken for self.

Inasmuch as humans are docile, receptive animals, we can be programmed to different behavioural repertoires, positively or negatively reinforced. Becoming convinced of the Truth may prepare us for something confining that aspires to what is "good."

But beware! If there is a Neoplatonist bug in the works, concealing itself as the "dispensable Animal-Soul" when, in the Real, everything proceeds from the Creation, the Manifest, after Allah's beautiful and substantial generation, emanating outward to more ephemeral levels, like ghosts, gods, and spirits, in a fabulous presentation and gift — then we would be foolish to begin lopping off whole segments of what is called "soul," especially when its significance might be central to our function.

Peace be with you.

Footnotes

1. The Exploits of the Incomparable Nasrudin, by Idries Shah, Dutton, 1972; p. 87.
2. Surah 6:45; The Meaning of the Holy Quran, transl. Abdullah Yusef Ali, Amana Corp., 1991.
3. Ibid., Surah 6:54.
4. Reynold A. Nicholson, The Mystics of Islam, Arkana Books, 1989; pp. 39.
5. Ibid., pp. 39–40.
6. Stuart Litvak, Seeking Wisdom: The Sufi Path, Weiser, 1984; pp. 72.
7. Leonard Lewin, ed. Diffusion of Sufi Ideas in the West, Boulder, Co.: Keysign Press, 1972, pp. 9–12.
8. An Introduction to Sufi Doctrine, Titus Burckhardt, transl. Matheson, Sh. Muhammad Ashref, 1997; pp. 160–1.
9. Ibid., p. 25–6.
10. Virtues of Zikr, by Shaikul Hadith Maulana Muhammad Zakariyya Kandhalvi, Sh. Muhammad Ashref, 1358 Hijrah, p. 75.
11. The Gurdjieff Work, by Kathleen Riordan Speeth, And/Or Press, 1976; p. 75.

Colophon

Written by nagasiva yronwode (posting as "haramullah") and originally posted to alt.pagan.magick, alt.magick.tyagi, alt.religion.islam, alt.islam.sufism, alt.sufi, and talk.religion.misc in September 2003. Message-ID: <[email protected]>. Copyright 2003 nagasiva yronwode; quoted material copyright the individual authors.

A practitioner of Chaos and Pagan magic turns a serious scholarly lens on the Islamic/Sufi concept of the nafs — the lower self or animal soul. Drawing on Nicholson, Burckhardt, Litvak, Gurdjieff (via Speeth), and the Quran itself, the essay argues that the nafs is a behavioural repertoire to be refined, not a "false self" to be amputated. One of the few sustained cross-traditional engagements between Neopaganism and Islamic mysticism in the Usenet archive.

Preserved from the Usenet archive for the Good Work Library by the New Tianmu Anglican Church, 2026.

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