ISF Publishing

There is no word in English which can be used as a true equivalent of the technical term ‘subtlety’. The original word is latifa (plural lataif). It has been rendered ‘purity spot’, ‘place of illumination’, ‘centre of reality’. In order to activate this element it is assigned a theoretical physical situation in the body — generally considered to be the centre where its force or baraka is most strongly evidenced. The latifa is theoretically considered to be ‘an incipient organ of spiritual perception’.

The five centres are named Heart, Spirit, Secret, Mysterious and Deeply Hidden. Another one, strictly speaking not a latifa at all, is Self, composed of a complex of ‘selves’. This is the totality of what the ordinary (raw) man or woman considers his personality. It is characterised by a shifting series of moods and personalities whose rapidity of movement gives the individual the impression that his consciousness is constant or a unity. It is not in fact so.

The illumination or activation of one or more of the centres may take place partially or accidentally. When this happens, the individual may gain for a time a deepening in intuitive knowledge corresponding with the latifa involved. But if this is not a part of comprehensive development, the mind will try, vainly, to equilibrate itself around this hypertrophy, an impossible task. The consequences can be very dangerous, and include, like all one-sided mental phenomena, exaggerated ideas of self-importance, the surfacing of undesirable qualities, or a deterioration of consciousness following an access of ability.