The Septenary Principle in Sufism

Although Hindu, Greek, Taoist, Egyptian and Zoroastrian examples of the septenary constitution were presented in early Theosophical literature, Sufi examples were relatively scarce, even though the Sufi schools are a notable esoteric tradition that make prominent use of the sevenfold structure, as subsequent studies have shown, a pioneering work being Henri Corbin’s The Man of Light in Iranian Sufism (1971).

The table below adapted from a Naqshbandi model (https://sufipathoflove.com/seven-levels-of-being/), with additions from the Kubrawiya school.

1	2	3	4	5	6	7
An-Nafs al-Ammara Inciting to evil self	Nafs al Lawwamah Reproachful self	Nafs al Mulhimah Inspired Self	Nafs al Mutmainnah Tranquil Self	Nafs ar Radiyyah Content Self	Nafs al Mardiyyah Pleasing Self	Nafs al-Kamila The Pure /Perfect Self
Soul: Ruh Madeni Mineral soul	Soul: Ruh Nabati Vegetable soul	Soul: Ruh Haywani Animal soul	Soul: Ruh Nafsani Personal Soul	Soul: Ruh Insani Human Soul	Soul: Ruh Sirr Secret Soul	Soul: Sirr Al Asar- The Secret of Secrets
Light/Colour /Aura : Blue	Light/Colour /Aura : Yellow	Light/Colour /Aura : Red	Light/Colour /Aura : White	Light/Colour /Aura : Green	Light/Colour /Aura : Black	Light/Colour /Aura : Colourless
Located: Human skeletal system. As-sadr –The Breast/Chest	Located: Liver and related to the digestive system. Al- Qalb – The heart	Location: Heart & Circulatory system Ar-Ruh -The Spirit	Location: Brain and nervous system. As-sir The Innermost being	Location: Inner or Spiritual heart. As-sara'ir – The Consciences	Location: Innermost Spiritual Heart. Al-Akhfa –The Hidden	Location: Innermost Spiritual Heart of Hearts Al-Khafa – Secrecy
Mediation- Dhikr to repeat: La-ilaha ill-lil-lah no Gods, but The God.	Mediation- Dhikr to repeat Ya Allah O The God	Mediation- Dhikr to repeat Ya Hu! O He	Mediation- Dhikr to repeat Ya Haqq O Truth	Mediation- Dhikr to repeat: Ya Hayy O Everlasting	Mediation- Dhikr to repeat Ya Qayyum O Eternal	Mediation- Dhikr to repeat: Ya Qahhar O Omnipotent
Quran Ref: Behold! The commanding nafs encourages evil, except when my Lord bestows mercy. (Qur'an 12:53)	Quran Ref: And I swear by the reproachful soul!” (75:1-2)	Quran Ref: And a nafs and Him who gave order to it and inspired it with a sense of what is wrong for it and what is right for it. (Qur'an 91:8)	Quran Ref: O the righteous soul will be said, "O, you nafs in complete peace and satisfaction!" (Qur'an 89:27)	Quran Ref: Return to your Lord, content (Qur'an 89:28)	Quran Ref: for His being pleased with you! (Qur'an 89:28)	Quran Ref: This day have I perfected your religion for you, completed My favor to you, and have chosen for you as your religion Islam. (Qur'an 5:3)
Traits: narcissistic, mechanical, conditioned, non-reflective, impulsive.	Traits: conscience, capacity for self-observation	Traits: generosity, gratitude, modesty, empathy, ardent desire.	Traits: dignity, sincerity, courage, compassion, complete loyalty.	Traits: endurance, resignation, constancy.	Traits: knowledge of Allah, sincerity, unbounded faith and hope in existential communion.	Traits: freedom from duality, acceptance of Allah's will, joy of union, freedom from expectation, contentment.

William Q Judge - Talk on Karma

1891 was a watershed year for Judge with his writing on Karma and Reincarnation. A half a dozen articles appeared, including lecture transcripts. The passages below are from a nice, basic presentation on reincarnation which shows off Judge's skills as a public speaker and his pioneering efforts in promoting reincarnation in Christianity. His ideas that everyone is seeking happiness and we are all connected are themes that have become quite important today with the Dalai Lama, which shows that his message remains relevant today.
All men and women, I take it, are in the pursuit of happiness. If they do not find happiness here they seek it after death. They think that if they are not happy now they may be happy when they shall have died; and so, I suppose, the poor people who live in your East End -- which is a blot on your civilization, brought about by the wrong philosophy which those living in the other end believe and practice -- they, I suppose, in the degradation in which they are compelled to exist, are also in the pursuit of happiness. They cannot get it now in London, but they expect it sometime; and the other circles of your society, those who are not condemned by nature or by God to have been born in the East End without their consent, even they are full of disappointment, unable to secure the ends they have in view, compelled to work hard for the living which they cannot secure -- they also are in the pursuit of happiness. Is it not so? And is it not also so that in both places the individuals of each class demand justice? And "Karma," about which I am to speak, is justice and nothing else.

Now the doctrine of Karma which we talk about means that as this being passes from life to life, he is under the government of law, and not of injustice. Is the world governed by law, or is it governed by favor? The religious systems of the day in the West show that their teachers believe the Universe to be governed by favor, by prayer, by partiality, by the absence of law. The theologians say, "If the Lord made law, he can also refuse to obey the law"; but the Theosophist says, "If the Lord made law to govern the Universe, he must obey the law." And the great law governing man in his progress through life, in all the relations of life and of the Universe, is Justice, and that law of justice says that as you sow, so shall you reap, and that was enunciated by Jesus of Nazareth, just as all the teachers before him and since have enunciated it in all places and times. Now if that law enunciated by Jesus is true, that as you sow, so shall you reap, and as ye judge so shall ye be judged, where is the justice of having a human being born in degradation without his consent, unless you adopt our doctrines of Reincarnation and Karma? Karma means Justice, compensation for every act good or bad which you do in your life. Seventy years is not enough time in this life to reap by experience and to receive justice for all your deeds. Do you know that although this saying of Jesus is believed, "As you sow, so shall you reap," yet hundreds of men now live sixty or seventy years of wicked life and do not get apparently what they have sown? When will they get it, if there is no justice? Similarly, you see good men living sixty and seventy years of life; where do they get what they have sown? You may say, some of you, one reaps up in Heaven and the other in Hell; but if you say that, at the same time there is another doctrine which you admit, that the wicked man merely by believing at the last moment may reap yet his just reward. For what? For being wicked all his life, and at the end simply saying, "I believe in something that is not justice"?

If there is justice in the Universe it must govern us always, and we believe in Reincarnation, that you and I have been here before, that I have been here before and will be here again, and so have you. If this be true, and I think it is, and also the other principle of justice, the principle of perfect compensation and balance in nature, then the whole Universe is vindicated; but if you look at it in any other way, God becomes unjust -- and no one believes that he is so. The Universe becomes something governed by caprice, for do not the theologians and the churches, all churches in this country and in every other country which are dogmatic, say that you can alter the course of nature by prayer, that when the mother prays for the child who is on a journey, that child is saved from a horrible wreck, while forty other children are killed because their mothers did not pray? Is that justice? No. Justice means that for every act you perform, every thought you think, every thing you do, you will receive an exact equivalent some time; and seventy years of life, as I told you, is not long enough. It is not long enough to reap by experience, to account for the savages being savages, to account for your poor people being poor and degraded. Nothing will account for these things but our doctrines of Karma and Reincarnation -- that these people have come over from other lives where they did those acts which condemn them now to suffer the compensation.

The Christian must believe in this, because St. Matthew says, "For every act, word and thought, you must give account." Giving account does not mean saying, "I did it," and then getting no reward and no compensation. It means to give account, to render and give up, to receive the fine or the punishment. In St. John's Revelation it also says, "I saw the Book of Life Open, and men were judged for their acts"; so that in the Christian Bible, we find that this doctrine of Karma -- that perfect justice must rule, that you must receive the compensation for every act and thought -- was taught, and this compensation can only be accomplished by Reincarnation.
That is what the law of Karma means. Karma means action, the result of action, the cause and the effect. Human beings are always setting in motion causes, and those causes must reap effects, must bring about effects here or hereafter, and hereafter does not mean in a mythical place which no man can find, but here on this earth. You must come again and again to reap the results of your acts, good or bad, to progress from life to life on this earth, to continue civilization higher and higher, so that at last those pinnacles may be reached to which the earlier speakers referred. Then the whole world will admit that it is one family going on to perfection, not that other parts in it are in the favor of some Almighty presence, which, by reason of their supplication, gives them benefits which it will not give to anyone else just as worthy.
The Theosophist says that justice rules the world, and justice is the English equivalent of the word Karma, or of the old, most ancient doctrine that man is ruled by law and must give account, must suffer or enjoy in various, several lives on earth, for every act, word and deed which he may have performed.
Talk on Karma [Given to the general public during the First Annual European Convention of the T.S., on July 10, 1891; Theosophical Sitftings, Vol. IV., pp. 24-26.]

Through the Gates of Gold - Ch.5, pt. 2a The Secret of Strength

The first half of this chapter uses the images of death and the battlefield, the second part uses the images of nature and gardening. The chapter begins with an interesting reflection on the exoteric nature of religion, with its tendency towards rigid dogmatism. With the simple experience of living with in a different religious tradition, one can relativize this narrow outlook and appreciate the esoteric perspective better:

Religion holds a man back from the path, prevents his stepping forward, for various very plain reasons. First, it makes the vital mistake of distinguishing between good and evil. Nature knows no such distinction; and the moral and social laws set us by our religions are as temporary, as much a thing of our own special mode and form of existence, as are the moral and social laws of the ants or the bees. We pass out of that state in which these things appear to be final, and we forget them forever.

This is easily shown, because a man of broad habits of thought and of intelligence must modify his code of life when he dwells among another people. These people among whom he is an alien have their own deep-rooted religions and hereditary convictions, against which he cannot offend. Unless his is an abjectly narrow and unthinking mind, he sees that their form of law and order is as good as his own. What then can he do but reconcile his conduct gradually to their rules? And then if he dwells among them many years the sharp edge of difference is worn away, and he forgets at last where their faith ends and his commences. Yet is it for his own people to say he has done wrong, if he has injured no man and remained just?

As in many wisdom traditions, observation of the dying process has great philosophical value:

When a man's soul passes away from its brief dwelling-place, thoughts of law and order do not accompany it. If it is strong, it is the ecstasy of true being and real life which it becomes possessed of, as all know who have watched by the dying. If the soul is weak, it faints and fades away, overcome by the first flush of the new life.

Why? Because he is no longer held back and made to quiver by hesitation. In the strange moment of death he has had release given him; and with a sudden passion of delight he recognizes that it is release. Had he been sure of this before, he would have been a great sage, a man to rule the world, for he would have had the power to rule himself and his own body. That release from the chains of ordinary life can be obtained as easily during life as by death.

The experience of being on a battlefield, opens some interesting reflections of the nature of suffering and empathy; by focusing on everyone’s suffering, one’s own suffering loses its importance:

It only needs a sufficiently profound conviction to enable the man to look on his body with the same emotions as he would look on the body of another man, or on the bodies of a thousand men. In contemplating a battlefield it is impossible to realize the agony of every sufferer; why, then, realize your own pain more keenly than another's? Mass the whole together, and look at it all from a wider standpoint than that of the individual life. That you actually feel your own physical wound is a weakness of your limitation. The man who is developed psychically feels the wound of another as keenly as his own, and does not feel his own at all if he is strong enough to will it so.

Next is a reflection on the stark reality of the instinctive nature of the struggle for existence – we are born alone, we die alone, and we have to fight our own battles. And like a breath of fresh air, a new possibility is proposed – instead of struggling and resisting the forces of life, why not join in with nature and work along with her; and this goes hand in hand with the idea that it is better to  conquer yourself than a thousand men in battle.

The great life of the world rushes by, and we are in danger each instant that it will overwhelm us or even utterly destroy us. There is no defence to be offered to it; no opposition army can be set up, because in this life every man fights his own battle against every other man, and no two can be united under the same banner. There is only one way of escape from this terrible danger which we battle against every hour. Turn round, and instead of standing against the forces, join them; become one with Nature, and go easily upon her path. Do not resist or resent the circumstances of life any more than the plants resent the rain and the wind. Then suddenly, to your own amazement, you find you have time and strength to spare, to use in the great battle which it is inevitable every man must fight, — that in himself, that which leads to his own conquest.

John Ralston Saul The Fight for Freedom of Expression Around the World: A Personal Account

John Ralston Saul delivered his lecture The Fight for Freedom of Expression Around the World: A Personal Account
On October 18, world-renowned author John Ralston Saul delivered the inaugural lecture of the Warren Allmand Lecture Series. The Series, co-sponsored by the Thomas More Institute, and supported by the McGill Institute for the Study of Canada and the Institute of the Study of International Development, is intended to honour the legacy of the late Warren Allmand, former MP, Cabinet Minister, and tireless proponent for the advancement of human rights. Allmand was also a proud McGill alumnus, graduating in 1957 with a Bachelor of Civil Law degree.
John Ralston Saul, CC OOnt (born June 19, 1947) is a Canadian writer, political philosopher, and public intellectual. Saul is most widely known for his writings on the nature of individualism, citizenship and the public good; the failures of manager-led societies;[1] the confusion between leadership and managerialism; military strategy, in particular irregular warfare; the role of freedom of speech and culture; and critiques of the modern economic situation. He is a champion of freedom of expression and was the International President of PEN International, an association of writers. Saul is the co-founder and co-chair of the Institute for Canadian Citizenship, a national charity promoting the inclusion of new citizens. Saul was international president of PEN International from 2009-2015.
Links:
https://www.pen-international.org/
http://warrenallmandlectures.ca/en/lecture/
Lecture Topic:
Recent debates about free speech have become increasingly confused. How can one defend the right to freedom of expression in the face of hate speech and an increasingly skewed division between fact and opinion? For John Ralston Saul, it has always been clear in the world of writing that freedom of expression involves two fundamentals: a belief in unrestricted expression, coupled with a commitment to not encouraging hatred between people. This means that those who claim the right to freedom of expression in order to encourage racism or hatred simply have no understanding of the history of freedom of expression. And they neglect what has caused so many public voices, over the last few hundred years, to die in its defense.
Rough transcript of lecture:
It is through language that we express the state as best we can.  People being hung are being hung by me, not the state. If I’m not willing to do it individually, then I should be against in general.
Freedom of expression is central to everything we do. Non democratic states hate it; corporations have difficulty because it is the opposite of advertising; people in politics are uncomfortable with it,  they will say‘’the press is very mean to me’’, but in politics, you have to have thick skin. In conversations with heads of state, you need thick skin.  Anyone, anywhere with power makes them very nervous. Often they could not figure out how to deal with writers, they couldn’t figure out how to buy us.
Il existe une confusion, la liberté d’expression est mal comprise – on pense que la liberté d’expression justifie la haine, la violence, tandis que la gauche croit que c’est un outil pour ceux qui ont le privilège. 
Le mouvement technologique a commencé avec un romanticisme, ce n’est plus le cas. L’internet est moins une voix de l’expression libre qu’outil pour voler l’information libre des citoyens ou une plateform pour des politiques extrêmes. On répond souvent, ‘’donc vous avez des choses à cacher?’’. Moi je réponds, ‘’oui j’ai beaucoup de choses à cacher’’. Ma discussion privé, vous n’avez pas le droit de le savoir avant que je le présente en public.
Je suis allés à des réunions avec des diplomates, qui pour dire certaines choses, devaient sortir de la salle de réunion, car on m’informe qu’ il y a avait 4-5 micros dans la pièce.  Un ambassadeur d’Ankara a mis son téléphone dans une en valise et l’a placé en dehors de la salle de réunion car  le téléphone, ouvert ou fermé, est un micro accessible. Un millier d’écrivains sont emprisonés outués chaque année.  Combien de présidents de banques sont tués? Il ya une paresse des canadiens de prendre la liberté d’expression, de parler en public. Galsworthy, à son époque, voyait déjà les problèmes politiques pour la liberté d’expression.
Unhampered freedom of expression and unlimited freedom implies voluntary restraint, and implies the need to check mendacious and deliberate falsehoods, which means a refusal to use language that encourages hatred. There is no hate literature, this is hate propaganda.  
Quelques piliers de la charte :
1-      déclaration des droits linguistiques pour protéger les langues en danger
2-      déclaration des droits et devoirs sur le web
3-      droit des femmes
4-      la traduction en tant qu’élément de liberté d’expression
We support targeted writers who feel alone, we give them a sense of being listened to. In Moscow, there are posters of the best Russian writers with the blurb ‘’enemies of the state’’. In Central Asia, we visited a writer in prison. After the visit, prison official dressed in a soviet-style uniform invited us to lunch at an Argentinean steak house. Now dressed in a dapper suit, he told how he loved literature and so we managed to get the prisoner’s sentence cut in half. It is hard getting people out of prison. There was a case were a Muslim student downloaded a religious tract with some dubious elements in it and was sentenced to death, we managed to get him quietly taken out of the country. One meeting in Central Asia, the representative loudly shouted at me for most of the meeting. You weren’t there – neither were you.
One writer had his house surrounded by soldiers with machine guns. We had a contact alert the press and when the news quickly got out, there was a public outcry, and this dispersed the gunmen.
In Mexico, with murder of a number of journalists, we met with Mexican Senate to change a law from provincial to federal in order to better protect them.
A writer in Turkey was tortured and horribly beaten to near death. He is still alive and had to flee to England for 10 years after which he went back to Turkey. Three quarters  of the world is unlike Canada, they do not have that degree of freedom of expression. In Istanbul, there are 10 000 people in prison, of which 135 are writers. We visited them in two school buses.  It was very disorganized and we ended up being allowed to drive up too close to the prison and officials started screaming with guards waiving machine guns at us.
There was a writer in Myanmar in prison who refused medication, saying let me out or I die, he was released. With the Rohinga crisis, you have an extreme right wing generals alliance with an unbalanced Buddhist monk who used Facebook to orchestrate the oppression.  43 000 people have died as a result of this. At a meeting with in Honduras with the minister of justice, we became aware that they were behind the violence we were concerned about and at a press conference, there was an attempt to kidnap one of our delegates.
Perdre sa langue, c’est perdre sa liberté d’expression. Il faut faire un effort, les langues autochtones sont en danger. La grande réussite du français au Québec peut aider pour écrire un document de protection de langues autochtones. Les Acadiens ont fait un retour en force, mais les choses sont difficiles au Manitoba et en Ontario. Il y a de vrai luttes au Canada avec 70 langues autochtones en danger; il ya des abus éthique déplorables. C’est notre décision consciente; si on détruit la langue, on détruit la culture.  Il y a 15 ans, il n’a avait aucun désir dans le gouvernement de faire quelque chosel il y a trois ans, ont a annoncé de l’argent réel, mais c’est très tard. On a besoin d’un rôle des citoyens de soutenir ces langues.
We need to support indigenous languages. I can see newspapers such as the Toronto Sun and the Journal de Montréal write that it is a waste of tax payers money. We have experience with the laws on French immersion. My grandson can now take a course on Ojibway. There is a potential mass liquidation of languages going on.
In Newfoundland, there is a classic violation of freedom of expression with the Muskrat Falls Hydro project. A Journalist Justin was given a criminal charge in a dictatorial manner, with the aim of bankrupting him through heavy court costs. It is the biggest freedom of expression problem in a long time. It reminds me of Joseph Hom when corrupt judges attempted to try to bankrupt him. The Halifax trial lasted four hours where he gave a memorable testimony stating that ‘’When I sit down in solitude, the only questions I ask are, what is right, what is just, and what is good for the people’’.
40 % of writers are in prison because of their use of the internet.  In Ethiopia, where the population of 85 million are very poor, the government has one of the world’s most sophisticated internet security systems.
 As a citizen and internet user, you have to begin every day testing yourself to what extent you believe in freedom of expression.
Utilitarianism arguments are prevalent now. The dependence on management is rising, but we are not doing any better. There is a return of monopolies, we need to break up the monopolies. The problem of authoritarianism is linked to the western concept of the nation state which can’t deal with complexity.  As a democracy we should be able to deal with multiple interests. We need to  stop shutting down minority language schools. This is not because of technology, it is because of government decisions.  
Universities need to encourage debate among students. Universities should create places of debates, not racism and hatred. To say that internet sites are not publishers is a lie. We need define hate, we need to do this every day and speak out. At a European diplomatic dinner with my wire, we would hear anti-semitic comments, so we decided to take them to task for this