Knowing the spirit / Ostad Elahi ; translated and with an introduction by James Winston Morris.

Format:

Book

Author/Creator:

Ilāhī, Nūr ʻAlī, 1895-1974.

Contributor:

Morris, James Winston, 1949-

Standardized Title:

Maʻrifat al-rūḥ. English

Language:

English

Persian

Subjects (All):

Soul--Islam.

Soul.

Physical Description:

viii, 158 pages ; 24 cm

Place of Publication:

Albany : State University of New York Press, [2007]

Summary:

Ostad Elahi's Knowing the Spirit provides a concise and remarkably illuminating philosophic account of our unique place in the universe: of the creative expressions of the divine Spirit throughout nature, and of the process of the soul's deepening perfection through all the challenges and lessons of our existence in this world and beyond. This revealing book draws together in a single vision those symbolic teachings and spiritual insights familiar to many Western readers today through the classical mystical poetry of Rumi, Hafez, and Attar. The historical context and language of this study are marked by the confluence of classical Islamic philosophy and spirituality, including Sufi thought, and their scriptural sources. But Elahi's thought integrates those influences and marks them with the magisterial imprint of his own profound spiritual experience and characteristic simplicity, openness, and directness of expression. This volume offers a singular masterpiece of recent spiritual thought, opening up fundamental human perspectives and possibilities too often clouded by the distractions of current events. The emphatic universality of both the subject and presentation of Knowing the Spirit points the way to unsuspected bridges between different civilizations and religious traditions, indeed to the prospect of an inclusive "science of spirituality" based on the common ground of each person's spiritual life and experience.

Contents:

Table of contents

Preface and acknowledgements

Translator's introduction

Ostad Elahi's life and works

Childhood and youth

Professional life and judicial career

The final period : writing and teaching

Ostad elahi's published works : the place of Knowing the Spirit

Historical contexts : the audience, language and structure of Ma'rifat ar-Rūh

The "three sources" : rational argument, religious tradition, and spiritual experience

Allusion and realization

The basic structure of Knowing the Spirit : the origin and the return

The contemporary significance of Knowing the spirit

The Persian text and translation conventions

Translation of Knowing the Spirit

Original table of contents

Introduction

Establishing the existence of the Divine Artisan

The Spirit

The gathering, reawakening, and returning (of the Spirit) in the realm of return

The purely bodily return

The purely spiritual return

The harmonization of a bodily and spiritual return

The (Spirit's) return by way of the process of perfection

The belief of the proponents of transmigration

Conclusion.

Notes:

Includes bibliographical references (pages 145-148) and index.

Translated from the Persian.

ISBN:

0791468577

9780791468579

0791468585

9780791468586

OCLC:

62615995