Are the heart, soul and nafs the same entity?

Answer

There is the physical heart and the spiritual heart. Nafs most certainly is a distinct creation in us. It is neither the spiritual qalb nor the rooh. Whether the qalb and rooh are one and the same thing, only Allah knows. The Auliya who have attained very lofty stages of ma'rifat understand these issues better, but they too are unable to express it in human language to give us a 100% absolute understanding. The Qur'aan explicitly states that we have been given only a little knowledge of the rooh.