Animal Soul and Spiritual Soul

 Contributed by

S L Peeran

Ancient uncouthness

 

Our ancient barbaric lore of million years

Continues to work in our subconscious.

Where millennium years of cultural breeding

Fails, it erupts within with all its force.

 

The ineptitudes, the inborn waywardness

Uncivilized mind, the illegitimacy

Of living, the have not deprived feeling

Breaks the barriers of refinement.

 

The sexual urges grips the mind,

Pleasures offered by the taste buds,

The numbness, high feelings of intoxicants,

Breaks the sobriety of civilized ways.

Green snake within, burning passions, greed

Hatred, stroke the fire within for violence. 

                                       S L Peeran

Imam Al Ghazali says on this topic in his monumental work, “The Alchemy of Happiness” as follows: The effect of death on the composite nature of man is as follows: Man has two souls, an animal soul and a spiritual soul, the latter of which is of angelic nature. The seat of the animal soul is the heart, from which this soul issues like a subtle vapor and pervades all the members of the body, giving the power of sight to the eye, the power of hearing to the ear and to every member, the faculty of performing its own appropriate functions. It may be compared to a lamp carried about within a cottage, the light of which falls upon the walls wherever it goes. The heart is the wick of this lamp and when the supply of oil is cut off for any reason, the lamp dies. Such is the death of the animal soul. With the spiritual or human soul, the case is different. It is indivisible and by it, man knows God. It is so to speak, the rider of the animal soul and when that perishes, it still remains, but is like a horseman who has been dismounted or like a hunter who has lost his weapons. That steed and those weapons were granted to the human soul, so that by means of them, it might pursue and capture the phoenix of the love and knowledge of God. If it has affected that capture, it is not a grief, but rather a relief to be able to lay those weapons aside and to dismount from that weary steed. Therefore, the Prophet said, “Death is a welcome gift from God to the believer.” But alas, for that soul which loses its steed and hunting weapons before it has captured the prize, its misery and regret will be undescribable.

 

[The author is an editor of ‘Sufi World’. He can be contacted at slpeeran@gmail.com. www.slpeeran.com Please visit http://www.internationalsuficentre.org]