The Naming of the “Inward Parts”

In the traditional view of the human being, the person is the “inward parts.” This post concerns the naming of this most familiar but also most elusive something. Elusive, yes, but as a Sufi phrase would have it, “nearer to you than your jugular vein.” Nearer than the jugular vein because we’re not the body—although, to be sure, even at this fairly basic level views diverge even within the confines of traditional thought. In the tradition influenced by Aristotle the soul-body duality is of the essence of the human; in other indeed in most spiritual traditions the body is secondary, a vehicle, in relation to the soul it is as the garment is in relation to the body itself; at death we’re off, like a dirty shirt...

In my own language I always contrast traditional with modern, and by modern I mean materialistic, thus a view that denies any reality to what we might call a “detachable” soul. Yet the inward parts have their own designations even in the modern scheme of things—and, furthermore, not just using single words like ego, self, or personality but more complicated schemes. The Freudian comes to mind: Id, Superego, and Ego. Here the inward parts form a triad, reflecting the primitive child-like id, the sum of social conditionings called the superego (the parent within), and then the ideal Freudian ego which faces reality as it is, refuses to project any of its wishes upon it, and simply calls a spade a spade.

Now the world in which we find ourselves may be a “school” in which we are expected to develop; it may be a state of degradation into which we’ve fallen because of our collective sin (as in “the Fall”); it may also be a realm in which we find ourselves captured, seduced to enter it by rash curiosity; or it may be a temporary but necessary adaptation in response to cosmic events long since forgotten. Human cosmologies have all sorts of explanations, but these have certain elements in common and others that diverge. The divergent elements have to do with responsibility. The responsibility for being here may be ours. Or it may be caused by the failure or the arrangement of higher levels of being; and these may be superior and benevolent or inferior and rebellious. The elements that cosmologies agree on are that we must develop while we’re here, as persons not as collectives; we must develop either to escape this realm at all or, once freed from it by death, to reach the proper place “over there” rather than end up in a place much worse than this one. The development required of us is that of our inward parts. No amount of body-building or acquisition of wealth,  power, or mere knowledge will do us the least bit of good if our inner core, that permanent something, does not undergo a favorable change.

I find it interesting to contemplate the terminology used in different cultures to deal with this situation. In virtually all of them at least two states are recognized. One is the ordinary, unreformed, undeveloped self, the old Adam, the “mortal mind,” the unenlightened self. The other is the product of successful development. In Catholicism, minimally, this is the soul in a state of grace, thus purged of sin even if, before it reaches heaven it must still abide in purgatory for a while to burn away, manner of speaking, residual errors that in a Hindu system of belief would be called remaining karma. In Buddhism there are two states, the basic and as yet unreformed and the enlightened; once illumination has burned away all karma, liberation, and with it certain escape, has been achieved. No intermediate stages and ranks are stipulated, although the bodhisattva, equivalent to a high saint, is a person who, liberated, is still here or has returned to help others achieve escape. In the inner circles of spirituality, a hierarchy of development is always detectable. Thus we find in Catholicism a hierarchy of sinners, the virtuous, and the saints.

I’ve encountered the most extensive system of classification in Sufism. Here we learn of seven levels of developments. These are states of consciousness, or of souls. The word used is nafs, meaning breath or soul. Sufism unfolds a very sophisticated psychology that developed long before our own twentieth century forays into Freudian, Jungian, and other sophisticated psychologies. Seven, of course, is an arbitrary number we frequently encounter in these realms. I read that “seven” simply to mean a gradient from which seven points have been singled out for description. In this scheme we have the following selves or “breaths”:

Commanding
Accusing
Inspired
Serene
Fulfilled
Fulfilling
Purified and complete

Let me give some feel for the first three. The Commanding Self is the unreformed, ordinary self that develops naturally in society. It is what we’d call the ego or the personality, a structure of conditioned or acquired behaviors with only superficial consciousness. The Accusing Self is a soul that has developed enough to have a conscience; it is accusing—but accusing itself for failure and for heedlessness. It is the first level of actual development. All of these levels have their problems. In Catholicism, for instance, where soul-development is job one, this state of the self can sometimes slip into what is called a “scrupulous conscience,” which is a problem at this stage of development. The Inspired Self has developed sufficiently so that it is capable of perceiving the inflow of grace. The Accusing Self, having removed the barriers produced by this dimension sufficiently so that an inflow is possible, grace begins to work on the person and, as it participates in the development of the self, the self then ascends to even higher levels. Humble of necessity, I’ve never looked very far beyond the Accusing Self, but we do encounter instances of the higher levels in the flesh as well as in the lore.

Interesting, really, how systems of naming the inward parts develop—and how extensive the descriptions become when actual development proceeds beyond the first step or two. The absence of such concepts in ordinary discourse testifies to the general absence of interest in soul-development in the current culture. This then brings me to the “inspiration” for this posting. It was a program I heard on NPR’s Science Friday yesterday. There I learned that multi-tasking is not good for people. It causes the brain to focus rapidly on different tasks, and, in making these quick shifts, the brain experiences losses. Thinking of this as I was driving, I had to chuckle. Our culture’s problem is that it can’t even concentrate on one ordinary task at a time, I thought. And Job One, in this dimension, seems to be to concentrate with some real vigor on another world we cannot even see...