Anyone who has ever been in love has had that experience when thinking about the person they love: the sensation of the presence of the beloved can fill up your mental space to such an extent that it will accompany you at every moment and in every situation. When you are in love, this presence settles within you automatically and effortlessly. It can even be reflected around you in the smallest events. If you are not in love, you can still stir up a similar experience by directing your thought toward someone and attempt to develop positive feelings toward them and thereby experience the “presence” of this person. Such experiences are internal and multiform, and can be more or less intense depending in particular on how much attention we pay to them.

Pascal was right: proofs of the existence of God are of no avail when it comes to giving faith to the faithless. To realize that a divine scheme is at work in the universe requires more than rational arguments. What, then, is needed? In Knowing the Spirit (p. 45), Ostad Elahi provides the reader with a clue. He speaks of the voice of conscience as an inner device capable of attesting to the existence of God. Now, what does voice of conscience mean? Where does it come from and how exactly can it lead us to acknowledge the existence of God?

In order to gauge the ethical quality of our conduct, there are many factors to be considered, such as the motivation and intention behind a certain course of action. But how does our intention matter, if in most cases we are not even sure what it is? In what sense can intention affect our spiritual growth? These are delicate issues. Here are some reflections from one of our readers that we found worth sharing.

In elaborating proofs for God’s existence, oriental and occidental philosophers alike did not necessarily intend to instil faith in those who were lacking it. When he wrote chapter 1 of Knowing the Spirit, which deals exclusively with this very question, Ostad Elahi was well aware that none of the arguments he presented could actually prove [...]

Generosity, for one who is so inclined by nature or by habit, is relatively undemanding, for it does not require any costly sacrifice. It is quite another matter when ethical concern requires us to renounce a pleasure or craving, or when it runs up against a selfish nature. To overcome such resistance, willpower alone does not always suffice. When self-denial costs us something, we require the aid of a particular type of energy, one that is also known as “grace”.

In attempting to reconcile faith and reason, philosophers have produced what is traditionally called “proofs of the existence of God”. These proofs usually present themselves as sophisticated arguments. As such, they are open to disputation and, one must admit, hardly convincing. It is by reference to them that Pascal wrote: “The metaphysical proofs of God are so remote from the reasoning of men, and so complicated, that they make little impression; and if they should be of service to some, it would be only during the moment that they see such demonstration; but an hour afterwards they fear they have been mistaken.” (Pensées, 543)