The Nafs And The Mind
The human being has 4 enemies, according to the Islamic tradition: your
‘nafs’ (lower self), your desires (hawa), shaytan (satan), and the ‘dunya’
(this temporary material world). In this article, I’m going to define the ‘nafs’
as it has traditionally been defined, in the Quran and Sunnah. Then I’m going
to share with you how this relates to your mind and emotions. Then, I’ll give
you some techniques you can use to literally ‘master’ your nafs, or at the very
least, prove to you that you can.
Much has been written about the nafs by Muslim scholars throughout the ages,
and much has been discovered more recently in Western psychology, and by
leaders of the ‘human potential’ movement. This series of articles intends to
bridge that gap, and set you up with a new understanding that will literally
empower you to ‘master your nafs’. Indeed, it’s no coincidence that the Arabic
term for ‘psychology’ is ‘ilm an-Nafs’ – knowledge of the ‘self’.
The first thing to clarify is that there are several definitions that can be
given to the nafs, and the several ways in which the term is used throughout
the Quran and in Islamic literature.
1. The Nafs as the ‘Lower Self’
Start by thinking of the human being as having a ‘heart’ – a
psycho-spiritual heart – the essence of what makes us human. According to the
Islamic tradition, this ‘Qalb’ or ‘heart’ contains 2 parts of us. The ‘nafs’ –
the lower self and the ‘ruh’ – the higher self. There is a precedent in the
Islamic tradition to avoid over-questioning what the ‘ruh’ is, because by
essence its true nature cannot be understood by the human mind. It suffices to
say that it makes up the best part of us.
For those of you into psychology, this definition of the nafs is comparable
to Freud’s understanding of the id (lower self, nafs), super-ego
(higher-self, ruh), and ego (self – the balance between the two). However, what
Freud writes about the id and super ego does not necessarily equate to what the
Quran and Sunnah teach about the nafs and ruh. (The Islamic understanding of
the ‘ruh’ in particular is very different to Freud’s theories about the
super-ego)
2. The Nafs as the ‘Level’ of your soul.
Throughout the Quran, references are made to the nafs and from these
scholars have deduced that there are 7 distinct ‘levels’ of the nafs. The first
and lowest is “nafs al-ammarah” the inciting soul which is completely
unconscious and unaware and so inclines towards evil. The highest is “nafs
al-kamila”, the perfect soul, believed by some to be a station attained only by
the Prophets.
The 2 definitions above will give you much more clarity when you read
Islamic writings on the soul, where the term nafs is either being used to
describe the ‘lower self’ or the current ‘level’ of your soul.
With these definitions in mind, I would like to let you in on a theory that
allows us all to understand the connection between our mind, thoughts, emotions
and soul, in accordance with the Quran and Sunnah.
3. A Psychological Definition Of The Nafs.
My contention is that the ‘nafs’ is a word used to describe our thinking
mind. This includes every thought you have or are having right now of the past
and the future, and the emotional patterns triggered by your thoughts. If you
want to master your ‘nafs’, the most effective way to do this (as is done
automatically by all the pious people who have mastered their nafs) is to let
go of your thoughts. If this makes absolutely no sense to you right now and
you’re thinking…
“But aren’t thoughts… good?!
Aren’t we meant to think?
Isn’t it ‘I think,
therefore I am’?”
…then hang in there, because you’re about to have a spiritual insight that,
insha’Allah, will bring you much closer to Allah (swt), improve the power of
your Salah, and put a smile on your face for the rest of the day by allowing you
to master your nafs, right now.
The reason your mind, (or your nafs) has a strong reaction to this
understanding is that your whole sense of your “self” is based around your
thinking mind. You think you are your thoughts. You are not. You are much more
than your thoughts. You are the consciousness, the space, within which the
thoughts exist.
Often your thoughts rush through your mind so thick and fast that you can go
for an entire day without ever having peace of mind – a peace which can only
come by quieting your thoughts. And sometimes, perhaps during Salah, or
the few moments after a Salah, you will have been in a state where there was
silence, not just around you, but inside you. Silence inside your mind. You
were free from thought. Free from your nafs.
When your thoughts are completely quiet, you are fully conscious. When a
thought enters your mind, just notice that the thought entered. Observe the
thought. By doing this, you do not identify with it. You realize that you are
the consciousness that observes the thought, not the thought itself.
Play this game as you read this article. And rest assured that once you
‘get’ the point of this article, you can be in a state of ‘no-mind’, or
‘no-thought’, if only for a few seconds to start with. Then, you can move on to
the following articles and train your mind (your nafs) so that you control
them, rather than allowing them to control you.
First you must simply notice your thoughts, and realize that you are not
your thoughts. The moment a thought comes up, observe it, and you are outside
of it. You realize that you are more than it.
Mind And Emotions
It’s well established in different areas of psychology that your mind and
your emotions are linked. In cognitive behavioural therapy (CBT), the aim is to realize which thoughts came up when you felt a negative emotion, then write out
the distortions in that ‘automatic’ thought, and think about the situation in a
different, more realistic way. This frees you from the negative emotion, and
allows you to improve your well-being.
In Neuro-Linguistic Programming (NLP), a central tennet is that you control
your mind, therefore your emotions and your results. NLP teaches you to direct
your focus or ‘internal representations’ (ie. the pictures and words that make
up your thoughts) and to direct the way you use your physical body in order to
get into any emotional state you want. This is very cool, and very powerful,
and I’ll show you how in a future article, insha’Allah.
Both these methods are good for helping you direct your mind and control
your emotions. In other words, they help you master your nafs. However, the
deeper spiritual state I want you to enter is to be completely free from your
thought-emotion reactional patterns. You can do this instantly, by simply
noticing your thoughts as they enter, and noticing the feelings inside your
body when they come up.
Some great questions to ask yourself consistently to help you enter this
state are:
“What’s happening in my body right now?”
“Is my body at ease right now?”
“Am I at ease right now?”
…and notice what is happening inside your body. By asking yourself these
questions, you will interrupt the thought/emotion pattern and for a moment you
become present and fully conscious (free from your nafsy-thoughts).
Here’s another great question I want you to ask yourself right now. Ask
yourself…
“I wonder what my next thought will be…”
Read that question again, close your eyes and pause before continuing.
What happened? Did you have millions of thoughts rushing through your mind
right away, or did you experience a few moments where no thoughts came up? Most
people, myself included experience the latter.
Now that you’ve experienced the state of no-mind for a few moments, commit
yourself to doing it for a few seconds before the ‘Allahu Akbar’ at the start
of every Salah you pray today.
Sh Hamza Yusuf wrote a popular book, translating and explaining a classical
Islamic spiritual text, called ‘Purification Of The Heart’. It’s an excellent
book and there are very few like it available in English. It breaks down each
of the psycho-spiritual diseases of the human heart and then goes into
practical cures for each of them. The diseases range from anger, envy, and fantasizing to procrastination and heedlessness.
Naturally when I first looked at the book in an Islamic bookshop somewhere,
I skipped straight to the “juicy bits” – the overall root diseases of the
heart, and their cures. Do you want to know what the cure is for pretty much
all of the dis-eases of the human heart, from an Islamic spiritual
perspective…?
Dhikr.
Dhikr is often translated as ‘rememberance of Allah’. And herein lies the
problem. How can you ‘remember’ Allah,
when Allah is incomparable? It is impossible,
isn’t it? To remember is to bring something to mind, but whatever you bring to
mind when you ‘think of Allah’ is not Allah, so you are not remembering Allah.
Unless…
You first accept this reality: freeing your mind from thought, (which I also
refer to as the ‘thinking-mind’, ‘nafs-thoughts’, ‘the ego’, or ‘the nafs’) is
the closest you will ever be to Allah. If you want to ‘remember Allah’, and be
in a state of true, deep dhikr, you must clear your mind of all thought. When
your mind is free from thought, you will notice you are closer to Allah than
you’ve ever been before. You are now in a state conducive to real ‘dhikr’. In
fact, you are in a state of ‘ihsan’ and dhikr is what your body & tongue do
when you are in this state. If you’re a Muslim you’ve almost certainly been in
this state before, probably during some form of worship – you just didn’t
realise how you did it.
In future posts, I will break down all the different ways you can get into
this state of ‘spiritual presence’, which in Quranic terminology is called
‘ihsan’ and is an internal requisite if you want to benefit from your ‘dhikr’
and worship. I’ll also show you which everyday activities automatically put you
in this state – such activities are considered by many to be ‘excellent’ things
to do. However, for now, it is important that you recognize that to be in a
state of true dhikr is to free your mind from all thoughts. That will bring you
closer to Allah than anything else you can do. In this state of no-mind, you
have pure awareness of Allah, and when you choose to say ‘SubhanAllah’ in this
state, it will be about 1 billion times more powerful. Don’t take my word for
it – try it for yourself.
The Quran – The Greatest Form Of Dhikr
Of course we know that the Quran is the highest form of dhikr. However, only
when your mind is quiet do you open up the space inside yourself for the Quran
to be absorbed. If your mind is thinking millions of irrelevant thoughts as you
are reading the Quran, you will miss the point of what you’re reading (that’s
if you understand the Quran in the first place). If you are reading the Quran
without understanding it, because you haven’t yet
invested a few hours into
learning basic Arabic, then the only way you can really benefit from such
reading is by being intensely present whilst reciting the words.
Let all your acts of worship enhance your awareness of the present moment.
Why? Because when you are fully aware of the present moment, your nafs-thoughts
disintegrate – at least in that moment you are the master of your nafs; you are
in a state of ‘ihsan’ (spiritual presence).
You do not need to be a scholar or a saint to do real, pure dhikr. It is
your birthright, and you can do it right now, as you sit in your chair, reading
this article. When you get into this state of being free from thoughts of the
future and the past, you will automatically be fully aware of the present
moment. You’ll be fully in tune with ‘Reality’ (al-Haqq). In other words,
you’ll be aware of Allah (SWT).
Of course, your nafs will do everything it can to stop you from becoming
aware of its never ending stream of thoughts, that you identify with. But your
nafs can’t do much, once you become aware of the fact that ‘dhikr’ is worship,
and being in a state of dhikr is tantamount to being ‘present’ – free from
thought.
