Prayer is the most universal spiritual practice. It connects the spirit of human beings to the Divine, thus preventing them from forgetting Him. But it also enables one to revert back to oneself, to one’s true dimension, which is spiritual in nature.

Ostad Elahi practiced prayer in various forms since childhood and referred to the essential conditions of prayer many times in his works. Some of his recommendations regarding prayer can be found in Words of Faith: Prayers of Ostad Elahi, which was published on the occasion of the centennial of his birth.

Ostad Elahi delivered the main thrust of his conception of wisdom in a prayer entitled “The Quintessence of Religions”. Leili Anvar chose this angle to shed some light in a concrete and personal way on some of the subtlest aspects of this thought which, while taking root in the mystical tradition, reverses the prevailing trend by replacing reason at its rightful place in the process of spiritual perfection. The question of evil, the meaning of true ethics and true humanness and the importance of faith are among the themes dealt with in this analysis.

Leili Anvar is Lecturer in Persian Literature at the Institut national des langues et civilisations orientales in Paris and a specialist in mystic poetry. This lecture was given on 10 September 2011 as part of a symposium organised by the Fondation Ostad Elahi around the question “What wisdom for our times?”.

Ostad Elahi was born on September 11, 1895. On the occasion of his 116th birthday, it was only natural to pay him homage by reviewing some of the salient aspects of his life and works. In the preface to his translation of Knowing the Spirit (SUNY, 2006), Prof. James Morris draws from various sources, including autobiographical conversations and remarks by Ostad himself. This lively portrait of an outstanding 20th century spiritual figure manages to uncover the inner connections between the rich and varied experiences of a lifetime and the central notions of a philosophy. The following excerpt is published with the kind authorization of the author and SUNY Press.

Nūr ‘Alī Elāhī—or Ostad Elahi (“Master” Elahi), the honorific by which he is most widely known today—was born on September 11, 1895 in Jeyhunabad, a village in western Iran(1). The outward course of his life, as he described it in autobiographical conversations and remarks during his later years,(2) falls into three distinct periods: his childhood and youth, entirely devoted to traditional forms of ascetic and religious training; his active public career, for almost thirty years, as a prosecutor, magistrate, and high-ranking judge; and the period of his retirement, more openly devoted to spiritual teaching and writing (including the composition of Knowing the Spirit), when he became well known as a religious thinker, philosopher, and theologian, as well as a musician. Ostad Elahi’s own later description of those outward events, summarized in a few of his sayings quoted further on, helps bring out the inner connections between those different periods of his life and the broader lessons he was able to draw from those very different activities and experiences.

This is a short excerpt from the French TV program “Les Chemins de la Foi” (The Routes of Faith) broadcasted on March 27, 2011. The significance of Ostad Elahi and Malek Jân Nemati’s spiritual heritage is discussed during an interview of two specialists of the mystical traditions of Iran: Leili Anvar, Associate Professor of Persian [...]

James Morris, Ph. D., is professor of Theology at Boston College. A specialist of islamic philosophy, he has written authoritative studies on Ibn ’Arabi and Mulla Sadra’s metaphysics. His most recent publications include a translation of Ostad Elahi’s Knowing the Spirit (SUNY, 2006), a book which he also prefaced and annotated. In this video interview, [...]

In this article published in december 1997 in the magazine L’Être et l’esprit, Bahram Elahi presents his conception of “natural spirituality,” reviewing its fundamental principles. “Natural spirituality” is a spirituality adapted to the very nature of man, it involves a daily practice based on what he calls “natural meditation”. “Natural spirituality” is not related to [...]

As both a government-sanctioned public interest foundation and a nongovernmental organization in special consultative status to the United Nations Economic and Social Council, the Ostad Elahi Foundation for Ethics and Human Solidarity (Fondation Ostad Elahi: éthique et solidarité humaine) represents one of the finest and most prolific examples of Ostad Elahi’s thought and philosophy in [...]

If, as normal individuals without extraordinary faculties, we are to carry through to the end the task of self perfection, we should bear in mind that we would not be able to achieve this without drawing sustenance from a transcendent source of energy. By cultivating within oneself a feeling of an omniscient, omnipotent and infinitely [...]

It is a function of true understanding to bring back together the dispersed parts of a whole in a coherent context where they become meaningful. Our earthly life is a case in point. As a brief stage in the course of a long and complex journey, it should be carefully reassessed according to this pattern. [...]

Ostad Elahi’s conception of spirituality demands that great importance be given to reflection and discernment, not of course of the material kind that we apply to ordinary matters of daily life, but a reflection and discernment rooted in spirituality and nourished by authentic ethical and spiritual principles. Spiritual discernment is also to be considered as [...]