I am a Doctor of Science presently holding a position as an assistant professor in computer science at the University of Science and Technology in Lille, where I teach a course on data bases, programming and Web technologies. I also have a passion for music; I play the cello and I sing works from the classic repertory—baroque to contemporary–in several vocal ensembles.

I have long been interested in questions dealing with ethics and spirituality and it is probably for reasons which I assumed were ethical that I got involved in a leftist organization when I was young. With the friends I had then, we undertook activities that were meant to express our rebellion against an unfair society. But this rebellion was actually a form of antisocial vandalism that had more to do with the desire to settle personal problems than with the altruistic will to improve the human condition.

Realizing that my motivations were not as clear as I thought led me to a form of “spiritual assessment” that enabled me to shed new light on my existence. One day, I met up with a former activist friend again, someone who had, like me, taken part in the events of May 1968, but whose behavior had radically changed. He was so radiantly righteous, sincere and respectful of others that I could not but ask him why he had changed so much. He answered that his ethical line of conduct was grounded in a form of transcendence as defined by a certain Ostad Elahi. That is how I first became attracted to Ostad Elahi, his philosophy and his life.

From then on, I have followed an intellectual and ethical path that has led me to realize that religion, or rather spirituality, could be approached from a rational point of view, laying emphasis on the practice of ethics, on tolerance and the respect of others. Faith is usually expressed by adhering to a dogma and respecting a ritual, but what I discovered then was the necessity to concentrate on the task of transforming one’s inner self by resorting to one’s sense of reason and one’s critical mind. It was an approach that I found perfectly adapted to my way of thinking, which is why I have enthusiastically followed it.