soul, spirit, psyche, mind, human being, person, individual, self, being, essence, nature, the same, the very same, the very, the selfsame, the identical itself, oneself, himself.
Lit. "breath"; personality/ego clusters which control people and keep them from seeing Truth until the nafs is purified, refined, and transcended.
Literally "breathe"; personality/ego clusters which control people and keep them from seeing Truth.
Used in the Qur'an more than 300 times, where its primary meaning is the human self or person. In post-Qur'anic religious literature it came to mean the human ‘soul' or ‘spirit' in a metaphysical sense also used as a synonym of rooh . “nafees” means precious, priceless, valuable.
This word contains all the things that come from your self --your perception, your hearing, your feeling, the voices in your mind, and the desires of your heart that say this and that or ask why or what. The
Self, soul, mind, human being. The nafs includes man's innate nature, his genetic predisposition, and his conditioned behavior. Its manifestation may be base and animalistic, or spiritually elevated, according to the state of its purity. From the verbs nafusa, to be precious, valuable; naffasa, to comfort, relieve; and tanaffasa, to breathe, pause for a rest.
It has many meanings, including intellect, Personality, or Self, which may be termed as mind, or psyche. Quran uses this word for a specific thing called Human Personality, which in religious parlance is referred to as the soul.
1. The soul or person 2. (and more commonly in this website) the lower self – the ego.
Nafs is an Arabic word meaning self. In Sufi teachings, it means more of false ego. When Sufis talk about opposing Nafs, they mean Nafs Ammara that is explained later.
