Signs from Allah: History, Science and Faith in Islam 201. Khudi of Allama Iqbal - 6
By Professor Nazeer Ahmed
Concord, CA

 

The Kashaf (Veil) of the Body and the Mind

There is a divine light in every man, woman and child. It is bestowed upon a human at birth. However, it remains hidden by the curtains that man himself erects. Some sages say there are seven layers of curtains between the spirit and the Self, some say there are seventy thousand layers of curtains. The struggle of man is to remove these curtains so that the pristine essence of man gazes in its fullness at the spirit and partakes of the beauty and the majesty of Divine presence. That is the essence of knowledge.

The curtains that man erects between himself and the Divine light are called kashaf. The body, mind and the outer heart each erect curtains or veils between the light that comes from the ruh and its perception by the Self.

 

The Kashaf (Veil) of the Body

The kashaf of the body is its deception. The materialist worldview confuses reality with the images gathered by the senses. It is like confusing the image in a mirror with the object. We will offer examples to illustrate this observation. Consider the song of a bird. A physical description of a bird singing at dawn on a beautiful morning would go something like this: P-waves generated by the bird travel through the air. They are picked up by the ear drum which generates impulses for the audio nerves and is then heard. Where in this description of P-waves, transmission through the air, eardrums and audio nerves is the sound? Nowhere. The act of hearing is neither in the P-waves nor in the ear drum. It is somewhere else. It is in the Self (the soul), which remains hidden but acts as the seat of cognition and knowledge.

 

The Kashaf (Curtain/Veil) of the Mind

The kashaf of the mind lies in its limitations. Noble as it is, the mind is dependent on logic, structure and reason. It is the king of ilm ul hujjah (the science of argumentation and disputation). But it cannot explain that which is beyond reason. What is the reason to love? Or, for that matter, what is the reason to hate? What is the reason to climb a mountain or to conquer space? Why does a man sacrifice himself for a cause like a moth striking a lamp and burning itself up in the process? Love, honor and sacrifice are attributes of the heart. They are not accessible to the mind. The rationalist who assumes that reason is the limit of man’s knowledge erects a curtain between himself and reality and cannot comprehend the mysteries that transcend rational thought.

 

What is the Nafs

The Nafs is a composite term which includes the body, the mind and the heart. Like the heart, it is a collection of attributes and is not to be confused with a specific part of the body. Depending on the context it is translated as “person”, “soul”, or the Self. It is the “I” that remains hidden and yet makes itself felt through the body, the mind and the heart. In the English language it is sometimes incorrectly translated as “the Ego”. The Ego is only one aspect of the Nafs; it does not capture the full, comprehensive meaning of the Nafs.

The secular perspective denies the existence of the Nafs. In its materialist outlook, it confines itself to the concrete and the rational. “What is material is real and what is real is material” is its perspective. Consequently, secular man cannot come to terms with the emotions and the passions that govern the world of man.  In the secular perspective there is no color, only wavelengths. There is no joy and no sorrow only chemical changes in the body. The secular world is cold, rational, devoid of the higher impulses that make us human.

 

Attributes of the Nafs

The Nafs is distinguished by its attributes, just as are its individual elements, the heart, the mind and the body. Some of the most important attributes of the Nafs are:

• The Nafs is the seat of cognition and knowledge. The sounds that we hear are “heard” not by the ear but by the Nafs. The sights that we see are “seen” not by the eye but by the Nafs. The “heat” and “cold” that we experience are not experienced by the skin but by the Nafs. The Nafs (soul or the Self) is the cognitive element in a human being.
• The Nafs is the fountain of speech. The faculty of “bayan” as it is called in Arabic, is not merely the ability to speak a particular language such as English, Urdu or Zulu, but it is that human ability to transform sounds and signs into ideas, to dissect, combine and integrate them and build the tree of knowledge that distinguishes the world of man from the world of the beast. Speech is not in the tongue; it is in the Nafs or the soul.

God, Most Gracious,

Taught the Qur’an,

Created the human,

Taught him speech.” (The Qur’an 55:1-4)

• The Nafs is the owner of free will.

Humankind is distinguished by its free will. “I will, therefore I am”, is the succinct way to state this. Man has the free will to choose and realize his existential potential.  It is this same free will that makes a man climb a mountain, conquer the oceans, ride the waves, and send a rocket to the moon.

• The Nafs is the knower of beauty, of order and proportion.

 

And the Nafs

And the sense of order and proportion bestowed upon it. (The Qur’an 91:7)

The Nafs has a sense of order, proportion and beauty. Every human, man, woman and child is endowed with these attributes. That is how even the most unlettered person can relate to the enchanting beauty of the rainbow or the serene majesty of a mountain.  The Nafs recognizes beauty, order and proportion in the external world and relates to it because the external is a reflection of what is already in the Nafs.   It is like looking in the mirror; the beauty of the image is a reflection of the beauty of that which causes the image.

• The Nafs is the seat of the Ego.

The Nafs is sometimes mistranslated into English as the Ego. In Arabic, the corresponding term for the Ego would be “Anaya”.  The term “Ego” is a Freudian term used in Western psychology and has its own specific connotations. The Nafs is a broader term than the Ego inasmuch as it includes the hidden attributes of the body, the mind and the heart, and hence connotes the total human being, or simply, the Person.

It is the Ego that incites the human to self-aggrandizement, rebel against the commandments of God and set himself up as an open adversary to Divine Will and in the process lays the groundwork for his self-destruction:

Nay! But humankind does rebel

In that it considers itself autonomous (self-sufficient);

We will drag him by his forelock,

A lying, sinful forelock! (96: 6-7)

• The Nafs has a conscience and is the differentiator of good and evil.

Perhaps the most important characteristic of the Nafs is its ability to know right from wrong, good from evil (…And its guidance as to what is wrong and what is right… Qur’an 91:8). The propensity towards evil and its ability to say “no” to that tendency is a uniquely human ability. Humankind is born with “deen ul fitra”, in the natural state with closeness to Divine presence, but through its own actions gets away from the Divine presence and has to be reminded again and again to return to the Divine fold.

(The author is Director, World Organization for Resource Development and Education, Washington, DC; Director, American Institute of Islamic History and Culture, CA; Member, State Knowledge Commission, Bangalore; and Chairman, Delixus Group)