The truth is that in our religious thought, self-cognition has been recognized as the spirit of all knowledge and learning the most profitable of all kinds of knowledge.
Imam ‘Ali (PBUH), the truthful successor of the holy prophet of Islam in this regard said: “Knowledge of the self is the most beneficial of all knowledge.” Viewing self-cognition as the objective and apogee of knowledge, he also says: “The highest degree of knowledge is that man would know his own self.”
Elsewhere the truthful successor of the holy prophet says: “Whosoever has attained self-cognition has achieved greater victory.”
All these emphases point to the significance and necessity of self-cognition in the discipline of Islamic anthropology.
So, if there is someone who does not know himself and claims to have knowledge of God, then according to Imam Ali, there is room for distrust and amazement.
It is only through self-cognition that man is able to understand the purpose of creation, know his place in this system, and realize that the aim of imparting to us all these graces and endowments is something else, superior to and higher than what is visible.
This world is a stage of action and its aim is a higher and more sublime sphere of existence. This lower and animal existence is not an end in itself.
It is through this approach that Imam Khomeini, may his soul be sanctified, gives preference to reforming the self over reforming others and reckons the interior as more important than the exterior.
In this perspective, the essence is the interior and not the external conditions. If man be free from all external entanglements but has a feeling of inner bondage, he is then not truly free. If man possesses the whole world but internally feels indigence, he is still destitute.
Basically, everything originates internally. So, while quoting a hadith which expresses, “The freeman is free in all circumstances,” the Imam says:
Let it be known to you that contentment comes from the heart and the absence of neediness is a spiritual state, unrelated to external matters that lie outside the human self. I have myself seen certain persons among rich and wealthy classes who say things which no honorable poor man would say.
It is from this aspect that Imam Khomeini describes it as follows: “Thus the combat with the self of the self… implies overpowering one’s own powers and faculties, and placing them under God’s command, and purging the domain of our body of satanic elements and their forces.”
Combat with the self, in the Imam’s code of ethics has such an esteemed position that he commences his book, Sharh-e Chehel Hadith [Exposition of Forty Hadiths] with it and the first hadith he expounds is this very hadith of ‘combat with the self’, considering it loftier than attaining martyrdom in the way of God:
“Thus, the combat with the selfof the self is the combat with the selfof greater importance. This combat with the selfis superior to being killed in the way of God…
Thus, Imam Khomeini while expounding it (combat with the self) does not speak about suppression of instincts.
It is true that in combat with the self we always aim for victory and that we earnestly aspire to crush our opponent. But we do not all the times yearn for the elimination of the adversary.
Rather, it is likely that his existence could be useful to us! We only see to it that we are not overcome by the adversary in this arena, not that we annihilate the enemy, i.e. our self.
So, the Imam adopts the term, ‘triumph’ and in no way talks about self-denial. Instead, he emphasizes that “the combat with the self of the self which is the combat with the self of greater importance implies overpowering one’s own powers and faculties, and placing them under God’s command.”