Nafs and Rūḥ

Sufi writing about the self is not vague about which self it means. Nafs is the lower soul: appetite, self-regard, the part that resists. Rūḥ is the spirit. Suhrawardī states the division in one sentence:

“The source of the blameable qualities in man is nafs: the source of the laudable qualities is ruh (the soul).”

— Awārif al-Maʿārif, Chapter VII

But they are not two rival principles. He is careful to make the nafs derivative: “Nafs is the result of ruh; ruh, of order.” The lower soul is not a second power set against God's; it is a downstream effect.

What the nafs actually does

Suhrawardī's description is of something active and strategic rather than merely weak:

“In the beginning, when nafs is yet firm in the dwelling of nature, it ever wisheth to draw to its own low dwelling the ruh (soul) and the heart from the lofty region; and ever giveth to itself in their sight the splendour of a new decoration. As a broker, shaitan adorneth the worthless majesty of nafs.”

— Awārif al-Maʿārif, Chapter VII

The image is of a salesman. The nafs does not overpower the heart; it presents itself attractively, repeatedly, with fresh decoration each time.

The greater war

The most frequently cited authority on the subject is a saying al-Hujwīrī reports in his chapter on doctrines:

“And he also said: ‘We have returned from the lesser war (al-jihád al-aṣghar) to the greater war (al-jihád al-akbar).’ On being asked, ‘What is the greater war?’ he replied…”

— Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV

In the same passage the Prophet's definition of the fighter is given as “he who struggles with all his might against himself (jáhada nafsahu) for God's sake.” This is the root of the whole ascetic vocabulary: self-mortification (mujáhadat) is warfare, and the enemy is internal.

Why self-knowledge comes first

Al-Ghazali opens The Alchemy of Happiness with the knowledge of self rather than the knowledge of God, and the ordering is deliberate — self-knowledge is the road to the other. Suhrawardī states the same dependence directly: “the maʿrifat of God is dependent upon and bound up with the maʿrifat of the nafs.” (Chapter VI; see ʿilm and maʿrifat.)

This is why the nafs is not a topic within Sufi practice but the field of it. Nothing else can be worked on directly.

The nafs as a source of false states

The lower soul also counterfeits. Junayd's warning about the permanence of spiritual states — “their permanence is merely a suggestion of the lower soul (nafs)” — is an accusation of forgery: the nafs supplies the comfortable impression that a passing gift has become a settled possession. (Kashf al-Maḥjūb, Chapter XIV; see ḥāl and maqām.)

Suhrawardī applies the same suspicion to contraction and expansion: kabz is “the revelation of the qualities of nafs,” and bast is “the up-lifting of the veil of nafs from before the heart.” What the seeker experiences as mood is being read as information about where the nafs currently stands. (Chapter VIII)