The Tyrannical Nafs
An interview with Sheikh Ragip
Part 2
WIE:
There is a famous passage in the Koran where, upon returning from battle, Muhammad says to his followers, “Now we leave the lesser holy war for the greater holy war—the war against the nafs.” In light of what you’ve been saying about not struggling against the ego, what do you think about the Prophet’s widely quoted metaphor of spiritual combat?
Ragip:
I think it was a perfect teaching for the time. But you have to understand the context. The Muslims had just come back from fighting the Meccans who had more money, more cavalry, better equipment, better armor, and better weapons. But by means of faith, effort, and God’s grace, they won. So they’re coming back exhausted but feeling, “Wow, we did it! We’re great warriors, look at what we did! We beat the crap out of them! All those Meccan nonbelievers, we kicked their butts!” And it was at that point that Muhammad said, “Now we’re going to the greater war!” He was addressing that little piece of pride.
I think the problem is what we tend to do when we hear “holy war”—it’s too easy for it to become black and white. In a war, you know who your allies are and you know who your enemies are. But the spiritual path is much more subtle. The nafs never says to you, “I am your enemy. I’m going to mislead you from your spiritual path. I want you to meditate a little less. I want you to do your work a little less. I want to nail you!” It doesn’t do that. It says something like, “You’ve been traveling, so why don’t you take it easy. Don’t exhaust yourself; get a little more sleep. It’s good for your health. I’m your friend. I have your best interests at heart.” So this business is complicated
I also think it’s unfortunate that often we call it the “inner holy war” because war sounds very violent. I think it’s far more sophisticated to say it’s really an inner training—the way you train a beautiful, intelligent dog or horse or, in a way, a child. I think transformation through love is far more sane and sensible.
WIE:
In Sufism, the relationship with the sheikh, or teacher, has always been considered to be essential in helping the dervish to go beyond the ego. There’s a quote from Rumi that states, “Whoever travels without a guide needs two hundred years for a two-day journey.” How does the relationship with the sheikh help the dervish in leaving the ego behind?
Ragip:
One metaphor I’ve found very useful comes from a German psychologist who’s also a Sufi. She said, “You can see yourself clearly enough to make trivial changes in yourself, just like if you have a cut, you can bandage yourself. But fundamental change you can’t do for yourself because you’re too close to it. You can’t see the structure. You can’t see the forest for the trees.” She said, “While you can put a Band-Aid on your own cut, you can’t take out your own appendix.” And that kind of operation is equivalent to what the sheikh can help you with, which is fundamental change. Many things you can do for yourself, but there are certain levels of depth you just can’t reach by yourself. You can’t do it.
WIE:
A growing number of spiritual practitioners in the West today are of the opinion that it’s not necessary to have a spiritual teacher or guide. Fueled by the antiauthority teachings of Andrew Harvey and a number of others, more and more people are now attempting to guide themselves beyond ego, often selecting from various traditions the practices and ideas they feel will most benefit them in their quest. In Essential Sufism you write, “The ego is afraid of losing control, and even more afraid of dissolving, and comes up with reason after reason for refusing to let go. . . .” Do you think that, in general, this impulse to walk the spiritual path solo, without a teacher, is possibly just another manifestation of the ego’s unrelenting agenda to stay in control of our life?
Ragip:
Yes. I think that’s one way of putting it. But there’s a paradox. My teachers rarely told me what to do. At one level, I had to do the work myself. I had to do my own prayers. My beloved friend Haridas Baba many years ago said, “I can cook for you, but I can’t eat for you.” So the teacher can put a banquet out that you will then do the work with. Can you do that with the banquet that’s available in all the wonderful paperbacks at $9.95 and $15.95? Well, some people would say yes. My own experience is that I have been so inspired by my teachers. I don’t think I would have had the patience to stay with this path if it wasn’t for the love, the acceptance, and the example of my teachers. I’m not sure I would have had the courage to see myself honestly and clearly if it wasn’t for the sense that they saw me clearly and still loved me and accepted me.
But I think, even more fundamentally, I see the teacher as a powerful role model, an example to show that transformation is possible. How do you know it’s possible? There’s somebody there whose personality has been transformed, whose vessel has been permeated by light and love. And I also think there are more esoteric aspects. I think certain practices frankly don’t have any power unless you’ve been given them by a teacher. They won’t work. So I think this business about being your own teacher ignores the importance of transmission, of lineage, of initiation. The spiritual path is not merely logical or mechanical. It’s not psychological or spiritual bodybuilding. It’s something much more subtle. I think there’s an energetic connection with the teacher. We talk in Sufism about the rabita al kalb, the connection of the heart.
Now I think there have been cases where that connection was established without a living teacher. I think St. Francis did that through Jesus. But that’s rare. How many of us are St. Francis? Very few of us. And also, my teachers have said, semihumorously, that it’s much better to have a dead teacher than a live teacher because they don’t give you much trouble. They don’t speak up. They don’t get critical. All they do is say, “Love, be happy, don’t worry,” because what else are they going to tell you in their writing? They can’t say, “Now, you know what you’re doing when you’re doing your practice. Why don’t you try not to do that anymore?” in a gentle or not-so-gentle way. When it comes to dealing with the subtle tricks of the nafs, it’s very useful to have a teacher because some people start to go into the woods and don’t know it. You really need someone to say, “Wake up, boy! You just took a ninety-degree turn and you don’t know it.”
WIE:
Earlier you mentioned that the ego can appear to get stronger in response to our spiritual efforts. In Heart, Self and Soul, you also describe how your first conscious experience of the tyrannical nafs, or negative ego, in yourself came immediately upon your decision to formally ask to become a dervish [Sufi initiate]. Why is it that when one deepens one’s commitment to the spiritual quest, the ego seems to become more visible?
Ragip:
Well, I think most people, especially before they take up the spiritual quest, are absolutely under the domination of the tyrannical nafs. But if we use the metaphor of the phar aoh, the inner tyrant, who’s the best ruler? It’s not the ruler who has to call the troops out to keep order. It’s the ruler who gives commands and everybody says, “We must obey.” It’s the ruler whose authority isn’t questioned. And so it seems to me that until one gets onto the spiritual path, the ruler has it easy, because there’s no opposition. There’s no rebellion. But when we start on the spiritual path, there is a rebellion and then what happens is that, in a way, the forces of the tyrannical nafs that have been underground, that have been hiding, suddenly become revealed. That revealing is actually a weakening of their power because they’re no longer unconscious. But what happens is that, paradoxically, very often when you start on the spiritual path, you suddenly see the power of the nafs, and you think, “Oh, my God! I’m in much worse shape than I thought I was.” The problem is, you just didn’t know what bad shape you were in before. You were run by this thing. You weren’t fighting it. So when you first see it, there’s a shock.
For us, one of the greatest blessings is to fast during the month of Ramadan from dawn to dusk. One reason is that it’s an incredible mirror for the nafs. We get short-tempered. We say, “I don’t want to fast. I want to sleep.” Or, “I have to drive today. Maybe I shouldn’t fast.” We begin to hear the voice of the nafs. And one of the great blessings of fasting or doing any ascetic practice is to begin to hear the voice that’s opposing, that’s saying, “Don’t do this. I don’t like this.” It’s a bit like TheWizard of Oz. There’s this big powerful voice and you think, “Well, obviously we have to follow that.” But meanwhile there’s somebody saying, “It’s really just the little man behind the curtain.” Because the more clearly you see it, the more you really see it is like a trickster, and the less power it has. But you have to see it.
You see, the danger is that ascetic practices don’t always do that. Purohit Swami, who is one of the great Indian teachers of this century, has a brilliant translation of Patanjali’s Yoga Sutras, in which he says, “I have met many practitioners of hatha yoga, all of whom had strong wills and had developed great capacities and great power—and very powerful egos in the process.” So if you just do ascetic practices without the context that this is a practice of looking at yourself, the danger is, of course, you’re going to feed the ego—“I fasted for a month!” It’s interesting that in Islam you can’t fast for more than a month, and this came about partly to address this problem of self-inflation: “Well, you only fasted for twenty-nine days, I fasted for thirty-five!” So asceticism gives an incredible potential for ego inflation; but on the other hand, if we use it with this context of, “Watch what’s going on, watch the process,” then it really can reduce the ego tremendously.
WIE:
In researching this issue, we learned that Orthodox Christian ascetics are often encouraged to soften their discipline when they have guests, so that they can’t show off their feats of austerity to others.
Ragip:
There is a tradition in Sufism that has a very powerful focus on reducing the ego in this way. It’s called the Malami tradition or “the path of blame.” What the Malamis will do, knowing that the ego wants to be known and thought well of, is they will either be invisible or deliberately soften their practice in front of other people, so that other people think they don’t have much of a practice. The Malamis, for example, almost never wear special clothing. They don’t even have a special meeting place. They avoid all the trappings, because they know that the ego loves trappings. I have one very dear friend who is a highly respected teacher in this tradition. And I have seen him walk into our mosque in Istanbul and look like somebody who just walked in from the street, not like a visiting teacher. And he’s a wonderful, brilliant teacher. Many of the Sufis have this quality—as opposed to showing your practice to other people, almost deliberately showing that you don’t have one and then running to do your prayers where they can’t see you. So in that sense it is like war. It’s almost like a war against the ego. It’s very sophisticated. It’s like, “Whatever you want, I’m going to go do the opposite. You want to look good? We’re going to look bad. You want to be seen? We’re going to be invisible. And any time we’re gonna be visible, I’m going to make sure we don’t look the way you want us to.” It’s an incredible discipline.
Interviews by Craig Hamilton
Source www.enlightennext.org
