#baqa

Slay the Princess is a truly original narrative game: a loop, a locked-away Princess, inner voices, and a Narrator who feels just a little too suspicious. I already wrote about my gameplay experience in this post —but what struck me most was how open this game is to interpretation. You can read it as pure horror, as a twisted romance, or as a meta-puzzle about fate and free will. Personally, after sitting ten minutes in silence after finishing my run, I found two lenses that spoke to me: mental health (a theme I often explore on this blog) and tassawuf (Sufi mysticism), which I mention less often. This post is meant to be a meta analysis through that lens. For context: tassawuf is an integral part of Islam, focused on mysticism and philosophy.

At the start of the game, you’re thrown into confusion. The Narrator is harsh, authoritarian, almost dictatorial toward your choices. The Princess might appear as the Damsel, or instantly shift into something terrifying like the Nightmare, but sooner or later she reveals her horror. Inevitably, you die, trapped in an endless loop. What allowed me to finally “escape” was realizing the Narrator was the real villain, and choosing to submit to the Princess and accept Fusion with her—giving me access to the Princess of Transformation ending, the only route that actually rolls credits.

From this perspective, the Princess represents all the parts of yourself you reject: depression, anxiety, trauma. She can be terrifying but she’s also vulnerable—trapped, afraid, sometimes lashing out before you’ve even acted. She is transformation, and transformation in life often comes through painful experiences.

The Narrator is the toxic inner critic: that negative voice that hates your vulnerable self and wants it destroyed. He is you—an echo of you—but also something external, a force that created both you and the Princess while demanding stasis and perfection. In tassawuf, there is this idea that Iblis (Satan) doesn’t need to tempt you into grand evils. His greatest trick is simply making you hate yourself.

This is where the game resonated spiritually. The constant loop reminded me of jihad al-nafs. In the West, “jihad” is often misinterpreted as terrorism, but the word literally means “struggle” or “effort.” Nafs is the ego—the selfish, self-centered part of us. The greatest jihad in life is this inner battle with your ego. Slay the Princess captures this so well: the loop doesn’t just feel mechanical, it feels like relapse. Like the inevitability of having to face what you don’t want, again and again. The more you try to resist it, the more it reconfigures itself to block your way. That emotional frustration is the closest I’ve ever felt to the endless battle against the self described in tassawuf.

And then there is destiny. The game gives you choices, but they are always counted, always brought back into the loop. This paradox echoes the Islamic concept of qadar (destiny): the broad strokes of life are set, but your choices and intentions still matter. You are responsible, yet not omnipotent.

Finally, the Fusion ending echoed something I know from both Asian philosophies and tassawuf. In Buddhism and Hinduism, through many reincarnations, the soul eventually dissolves into the Infinite. In Islam, this possibility exists in a single lifetime through mystical experience: fana. Your soul, created by God and part of Him, longs to return. Sins are only a veil that separates you from divine love. In the game, the Narrator’s constant interference keeps you from merging with the Princess.

But fana is not the end in Sufism—it leads to baqa, “remaining in God.” The self dissolves, yes, but what emerges is a new form of being, sustained in divine presence. That duality—healing through union but also annihilation of individuality—is exactly what the Fusion route embodies. You accept your darkness, you stop resisting transformation, but you also vanish as a separate being. The tension between destruction and transcendence is what makes the ending so haunting.

This mattered to me personally—as someone constantly struggling with mental health, trauma, and relapse, but also as someone deeply spiritual. I’ve often found guidance in tassawuf to navigate life, suffering, and fatality. The game hit me harder because it spoke not only to my mental wounds but also to the spiritual language I use to make sense of them.

I know this isn’t the intent of the developers. The game wasn’t designed as a treatise on tassawuf. The developers themselves have never imposed a single symbolic reading of the game, preferring it to be a mirror for whatever the player brings to it. And I’m sure others could find just as many echoes in other religions or philosophies. That’s what makes a game like this so powerful: it’s horror on the surface, but it reflects back whatever truths you bring into it.

Melanjutkan artikel yang berjudul “Apa Itu Pengalaman Spiritual”,[1] tulisan ini hendak menelisik lebih jauh tentang bagaimana manusia mengalami pengalaman spiritual. 

Pada titik tertentu, seseorang bisa saja seseorang mengalami pengalaman spiritual dalam bentuk pengalaman “kesatuan segalanya”. Hal itu terjadi ketika seseorang menemukan inti kesatuan batin segala hal meskipun secara lahiriah tetap tampak ada perbedaan identitas khas masing-masing individu. Pada tingkat yang lebih lanjut, subjek dan objek sudah tidak ada. Semuanya menyatu begitu saja.

Ada juga jenis lain pengalaman spiritual yang bisa bersifat dualistik dan juga bisa pula bersifat monistik. Pengalaman spiritual dualistik berbentuk penyatuan antara subjek dan objek tetapi tidak benar-benar menyatu karena masih jelas mana subjek dan mana objek. Jadi, subjek adalah satu hal, objek adalah satu hal pula, dan pengalaman penyatuan spiritual itu adalah satu hal yang lain. Biasanya, pengalaman spiritual dualistik banyak dipahami pada agama-agama yang konsep Tuhan di dalamnya adalah bersifat terpisah dari makhluk. Karena itu, tidak mungkin terjadi penyatuan.

Pengalaman spiritual monistik sangat berbeda dengan yang dualistik. Pada pengalaman ini, semuanya larut hingga yang ada hanya satu, bukan dua. Pada saat itu, tidak ada lagi perbedaan konseptual antara satu dengan yang lain. Yang ada hanyalah kesadaran itu sendiri, tetapi tidak dihantui oleh kategori-kategori, konsep-konsep, nama-nama, klasifikasi-klasifikasi, dan sebagainya.

Pada pengalaman spiritual dualistik, yang terjadi adalah hilangnya keterpisahan antara manusia dengan Tuhan, namun itu lebih merupakan “persekutuan” daripada penyatuan karena tidak ada penyatuan ontologis, hanya keselarasan. Pada tahap itu, manusia menjadi “seperti Tuhan”, yaitu hilangnya “diri” hamba, tetapi bukan berarti menjadi entitas yang berbeda karena tetap manusia tetap manusia. Salah satu perumpamaan yang bisa menggambarkan adalah masuknya setetes air tawar ke dalam samudera sehingga yang ada hanyalah rasa dan warna samudera. Saat itu, manusia fana dan yang baqa hanya Allah SWT. Ada juga pengalaman spiritual yang bersifat negatif, yaitu pengalaman yang tak terkatakan dan tak terlukiskan. Kesemua pembahasan sebelumnya tentang kategori pengalaman spiritual lebih merupakan perlukisan tentang pengalaman itu. pengalaman spiritual yang bersifat negatif enggan menggambarkan pengalamannya karena memang tidak tergambarkan. Menurut pengalaman ini, apapun yang dikatakan tentang pengalaman spiritual itu, maka pastilah bukan itu. Kalaupun dicoba gambarkan, maka bisa dengan cara negatif, yaitu menyebutkan yang bukan itu.[]

Iqbal had a very well-defined critique of Sufism that he developed quite early on in his book Asrār-i khudī. Influenced by Nietzsche and by German Orientalism, Iqbal thought that "Platonic" Sufism was too focused on the annihilation of the self, and, by extension, in political quietism, and that this was a factor in the supposed decay of Indo-Muslim culture. In opposition to annihilation (fanā), Iqbal developed his signature idea of khudī (self-fullness). But khudī itself is a concept that owes as much to Sufism as it does to Nietzschean thought; it can be understood in terms of the Sufi idea of baqā or subsistence, which (and Iqbal must have known this!) was by no means new in Sufism. Fanā and baqā, selflessness and self-fullness, have long been tied together by Sufis. We can see this in Rumi's verse, which Iqbal knew well:

jahd kun dar bī-khudī khud rā bi-yāb zūd-tar w'Allāhu a'lam bi's-sawāb

Struggle in selflessness, and find your Self with greater speed. And God knows best what is right.”

Nigeria, ennesima strage di Boko Haram: si temono duemila morti

Enorme è lo shock per ciò che sta accadendo in Francia, ma non bisogna dimenticare che il terrorismo di matrice islamica sta colpendo anche altri Paesi. La Nigeria per esempio, che ieri, giovedì 8 gennaio, è stata funestata dall’ennesima strage, la strage più sanguinosa fino ad ora, perpetrata diaBoko Haram (“l’educazione occidentale è peccato”).

Il gruppo terroristico, dallo scorso fine…