In the first chapter of the Sawanih , Ahmad Ghazzali says that when ishq came into being she inhabited the Spirit ( like a pearl in the shell). Up until last year I thought that ishq here meant love and I interpreted her relation to the Spirit as a kind of unification of love and our soul. But I have discovered that ishq here means something different. It means the Divine Self that is created by the Creator at the dawn of creation, according to the Bundahishn, and She inhabits the Vohumanah and becomes one with him. That is precisely why the self is always accompanied by consciousness. So by Ruh Ahmad G means the Nous in Neoplatonism or the holy Spirit in Christianity.
I have written a rather long essay in Persian explaining this discovery. The reason A.G. uses the Word ishq for the Self is that the word nafs in Sufism have taken the meaning of the lower self only while the Divine Self have been identified with Allah. In Christianity the Divine Self has been identified with Christ. Recently some scholars have discovered the idea of the Self in Plotinus, an idea that had been recognized by Iranian sages long before Plotinus.
