Stations of the Nafs

The Sufi doctrine of the stations of the nafs, the soul, a graduated scheme of spiritual development moving from the base commanding self toward the soul at peace, gathered here on its vice pole and distinct from the more general Islamic vice-and-virtue scheme gathered under this type's own Islamic Vices heading, which lists individual named traits rather than stages of a single graduated scheme. Al-nafs al-ammara bi'l-su, the soul that commands to evil, is named in the Quran, surah Yusuf, in Joseph's own words, that the self commands to evil except where his Lord shows mercy, and classical exegesis reads it as the lowest of the scheme's named stations, the starting point a soul must move beyond.