World of Philosophy

Author(s): Christopher Key Chapple, Intaj Malek, Dilip Charan, Sunanda Shastri, Prashant Dave
Publisher: Shanti Prakashan

Page 453

Reality as we mentioned earlier. Sufis are human beings and the object of human being is to acquisition of knowledge about Reality. The knowledge of the soul and the things of the world is an essential step to acquire divine knowledge. How this knowledge can be obtained? There are some proce. dures for attaining knowledge, such as, common sense, tradition, revelation, observation, logical reasoning, contemplation etc. They also believe, human being possess two elements, material and immaterial. The material element of human being is related to his body and the immaterial element is basically associated with his soul. Generally a question can be emerged, we is able to know? Body is material in nature not possessing any ability to know, the multiplicity of the bodies is due to the multiplicity of the material forms but does not indicate the multiplicity of the soul. Body is a composi tion of various parts and elements hence its nature is compound. Dissolution and decay is a property of compound object and not the simple element. Soul is simple and fully devoid from any part and conscious. Therefore, soul is only remains and he is able to know the things. Soul is immediately selfconscious, he is self conscious through itself and its essence is quite indepen. dent of any physical accompaniment. Sufis also graded soul primarily into two kinds, i.e. Animal soul (nafs) and the rational soul (Ruh). The nafs is associated with the material life and carnal desires of human being where as the Ruh is potentially Divine intelligence and related to inner aspect of human being. The rational soul in its essence is potentially divine and good as well as pure and therefore it always motivated to kill the carnal soul. One of the important mottos of the Sufis as we mentioned before is "muta qabla antamuta" i.e. die before you die. 16 Sufis are like the mujahids, they engaged in the constant struggles against their evil soul. In their eyes, there are two types of struggles in Islam, i.e. aljihadal akbar (greatest warfare/struggle) and al-jihad al- asghar (the lowest warfare). Those who slain for the sake of religion is called al-jihad al-asghar and those who always engaged in the inner struggle against of his evil soul is called al-jihad-al akbar. This means a Sufi gain power to control over his nafs and able to regulate it. This helps to establish link between the divinity and psycho-cosmic dimension of human being, through it an man can aware concerning the cosmic dimension of his being-ness in a qualitative and symbolic sense but not in a quantitative sense. These correspondences restructure his nafs and elevate it to the Ruh. In this process a finite soul becomes unite with its origin. In the Quranic aspect human being possesses three types of soul, like al -nafs al- ammara (evil soul), al- nafs -al lawwamma (soul in the state of purity), al-nafs- almutmainna (satisfied soul) (Quran). Sufis believe the pure and satisfied soul is the illuminated soul and only the illuminated soul has the right to cure the soul of others. Any one who demands to have this right is an ignorant. The men who have achieved illumination possess certain metaphysical powers that are capable to emancipate other soul. Moreover, such a man does not live in a compartmentalized existence; rather, his thoughts and actions are
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