نگاهي به نفس و ذهن و نقش آنها در ادراك

A Glance on "Nafs" and "Mind" and Their Roles in Understanding

This article emphasizes on the import of Nafs in understanding. The author believes that despite the fact that Nafs is the noblest element and the essential reality of human being, its status is mostly ignored. It is sometimes equated with heart, intellect, or mind. He claims that Nafs is superior and more general than mind. The author argues that "knowledge" is the presence of the known or objective realities before Nafs. Simultaneously, mind receives reflections from objective realities and by records them in the form of mental existents, which are, in turn, at the presence of Nafs and understood by it. So Nafs has a twofold function: it understands the objective world and the subjective entities by its twofold dominance over the two arenas. The objective entity independently exists, and the subjective entity is its representation. Judgment, as an action of Nafs has its role in affirming objective realities, as well as their subjective reflections.