Supplement to the discussion of the soul that incites to evil, the soul that reproaches, and the soul at peace

and fear in their natures of what may attach to their essence from the blights that befall and the infirmities that come upon them — as a spur to their souls to guard their bodies, to watch over their frames and to protect their structures from the blights that befall them; for bodies have in themselves no awareness and no power to draw a benefit or to ward off a harm. Were pain and fear not in their souls, the souls would make light of the bodies and of their service and would deliver them up to destruction before their lifetimes were spent and their terms run out, and they would be destroyed in the swiftest span, before the attainment of a perfecting, interworld genesis and the building up of the inward — and that runs counter to the divine benefit and to the universal wisdom in bringing them into being. The pains and aches deposited in the animals are not, as a party of the metempsychosists (al-tanāsukhiyyah) supposed, of the order of punishments for them; rather they are for what we have mentioned. End.

Supplement, on the discussion of the soul that incites (al-nafs al-ammārah) and the soul that reproaches « and the soul at peace »

The soul (nafs) is the vaporous substance that bears the power of life, of sensation and of voluntary motion; the philosopher called it the animal spirit (rūḥ). It is the intermediary between the heart, which is the rational soul, and the body; and it is that which is indicated in the Qurʼān by the olive tree described as being blessed, neither of the east nor of the west — because man's rank is raised and his composition effected by it, and because it is neither of the east of the world of immaterial spirits nor of the west of the world of dense bodies. The soul that incites, then, is the one that inclines toward bodily nature, commands the sensory pleasures and appetites, and draws the heart toward the lower side; it is the lodging of evil and the wellspring of blameworthy traits and evil acts. He said, exalted be He: ( indeed the soul incites to evil ).

The soul that reproaches (al-lawwāmah) is the one that has been illumined to the measure in which it has been roused from the slumber of heedlessness; it has awakened and begun to set its state right, wavering between the two sides, the Lordly and the creaturely. Whenever an evil issues from it by the rule of its original dark constitution, the divine rousing light overtakes it, and it falls to reproaching itself and to repenting, asking forgiveness and returning to the door of the Forgiving, the Merciful. For this reason God gave it prominence by mentioning it with an oath, in His words: ( No! I swear by the soul that reproaches ).

The soul at peace (al-muṭmaʼinnah) is the one whose illumination by the light of the heart is complete, so that it has stripped off its blameworthy attributes and taken on the praiseworthy traits, and has turned wholly toward the side of the heart, racing in its ascent toward the side of the world of holiness, holding itself clear of the side of defilement, persevering in the acts of obedience, at rest in the presence of Him who is exalted in ranks. It is the one indicated in His words: ( O soul at peace, return to your Lord, well pleased and well pleasing; and enter among My servants and enter My garden ).