A Common Mis-Take

A few days ago I was visited by two delightful and profound women, one Muslim, the other Hindu, both of whose lives revolve around the quest for being true to their spiritual evolution. In the course of our intimate and heartfelt conversation, the Muslim friend expressed the need for continuing to conquer and overcome her ego. The twists and turns of her life had already demanded so much of her in sublimating her personal desires for the sake of a greater good, that it surprised me slightly that she, of all humble people, could still be yearning for that. It was of course a mark of her sincere humility and taqwa, of realizing that no matter how much one might think one knows or has mastered, what one doesn’t know is yet greater and that the ego is pernicious. The control she was referring to was, of course, over the negative aspects of the self, the parts that interfere with trusting in Allah, that fill one with fear, grief and anxiety – in short, the untethered ego-self (nafs) that makes you feel separate, alone, forgotten and forgetful.

Over the years I’ve found there’s a lot of confusion about this very idea of controlling the ego, particularly among aspirants on the Sufi path.  There is a notion among the sincere adherents or zealously inclined that the goal should be to extinguish the ego-self, to ‘kill’ it and stamp out its traces. Sufi poetry abounds in references to the extinction of the experiencing self, to 'fana''. The very concept of ‘fana’ implies death, after all. The groundwork for enabling such an experience is understood to be constancy in the full practice of Islamic rites of worship and, in addition to that, meditative reflection, invocation of litanies and Divine Names, serving brethren on the path and humanity, and acting against the ego-self. Fana' is rarely a once in a lifetime experience, though it could be. More often it is a state visited and revisited until daily consciousness is shifted from seeing everything in separation to witnessing with the eye of unity.

As a highly idealistic young woman, I found it relatively easy (or so it seemed to me at the time) to exert the influence of mind over matter, of going against my ego-self. The adolescent, black-white idealism suffusing my psyche could just cut through any fuzzy emotionality. If X was of the ‘nafs’ and ‘Y’ wasn’t, I’d do ‘Y’ – simple. I saw the logic of the exercise and I practiced it with alacrity.  I kept hearing in talks about the importance of going against the nafs, the ego-self, in order to become a better Muslim, a more attuned Sufi. The lower nafs was the enemy, a satanically inspired saboteur whose grip could be loosened by dosing it with negation. Without sublimating the nafs, awakening to higher consciousness was impossible. I also saw fellow wayfarers on the path struggle with the challenges they faced, but I never seemed to feel it in the same way (my own challenges came later in life, however!).  I remember one day longing for my father to come in and order me to give away my gold bangles (I was wearing about six 24carat ones from the Arabian Gulf). He never did, though I felt quite ready to give them away. Gradually I came to learn that as far as possessions went, it wasn’t so much the object itself, but the attachment to it that formed a barrier to freedom. Imam Ali had once defined zuhd, asceticism, thus: 'Zuhd is not that you should not own anything, but that nothing should own you.'

Possession of, or attachment to, objects or people or reputation isn’t the only way the nafs exerts its influence over us. The ego-self has its weaknesses and strengths. Without it we cannot exist. Without it we would not survive. But without the light of higher consciousness we would not thrive. There are mineral, vegetative and bestial elements to the ego-self – linking us all in common patterns of humanity. All these aspects need their sustenance if balance is to be kept.

In his talks, my father and spiritual master, Shaykh Fadhlalla Haeri, has often referred to the inner 'zoo': we each possess a gallery of inner animals, i.e. tendencies characterized by different beasts, maybe one more dominant than others. Learning to recognize them is the key to releasing ourselves from their sway. The superb allegorical tale known as the Conference of the Birds by the twelfth century poet Fariduddin Attar uses the templates of different birds to represent different flavours of the ego-self and how they can hinder or propel one along in the journey to the courtyard of the Divine. 

Like many Sufi masters before him, Shaykh Fadhlalla has also spent a lot of time decoding for his listeners and readers the seven-fold model of the self that devolves from the Qur’an al-Karim, from the basest nafs al-ammarah, the commanding self, to the nafs al-mardiyyah, the self that is pleased and contented (see his book ‘Journey of the Self’ for a complete exposé of ‘Sufi psychology’, or even better, perhaps, study the first module of the Academy of Self Knowledge, for it gives you a fulsome mapping of the human being from its basest metal to its higher consciousness).

I once asked Shaykh Ikram Hussein Rizvi Seekari Chishti how to kill the self. He was a hakim and Sufi master of the Chistiyyah silsilah, based in Hyderabad, Sindh. We often met him when he would visit Karachi where he had a sizable following.  Looking at me with his ethereal and watery eyes, he lifted up a long boney finger and wagged it, tutting, ‘Don’t say that, for the point is not to kill the self,’ and then felt silent, his gaze penetrating me. At the time I was taken aback, given that aspiration to fana’  is a sine qua non goal of our spiritual practice. And from his otherworldly demeanour and isharah, I somehow understood that ‘killing’ the self was not the goal per se, but that the goal was transcending the self. 

So how to do that without aggressively squashing the self, and somehow denying an unalterable and fundamental part of our beingness? I have found the greatest clarity about this from the way Shaykh Fadhlalla has elucidated the relationship of the self to the soul, for though by its nature the self could be an obstacle, it need not be a barrier, if it could but dissolve into soul consciousness. Keep moving towards the light of the soul, away from the turbidities of the self, and somehow the self will align itself to the soul.

Glossary:
Taqwa: Cautious awareness, god-consciousness, a protective fear of disturbing one's connectedness to Divine will.

Fana’: Annihilation or extinction of the self in Allah. An essential phase in awakening to full presence of the Divine in Sufi cosmology. Bestowed ultimately by the grace of Allah, but also striven for by regular invocation, meditative practice and persistent mindfulness of attachments.

Nafs: Self, ego-self; also individual spirit or soul (as used in the Qur’an). related to the root meaning 'to breathe'.

Zuhd: asceticism, abstemiousness or doing without.

Al-karim: noble

Nafs al-ammarah: the commanding self - stubborn, wilful.

Nafs al-Mardiyyah: the self that is pleased or contentedly submitted to Allah - gracious, at peace.

Silsilah: chain of transmission of a particular Sufi tradition.

Isharah: indication; subtle teaching, usually wordless.