Knowing the Spirit

Ostad Elahi

feb 2012 · State University of New York Press

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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.

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Ostad Elahi (1895–1974) was born in Iran and was equally renowned as a master musician, distinguished jurist, and a remarkable philosopher and spiritual teacher. James Winston Morris is Professor in the Department of Theology at Boston College. He is the author and editor of many books, including The Master and the Disciple: An Early Islamic Spiritual Dialogue; Orientations: Islamic Thought in a World Civilisation and The Reflective Heart: Discovering Spiritual Intelligence in Ibn >Arabi's Meccan Illuminations.