Table of Contents

Preface and Acknowledgments Translator's Introduction I. 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 II. Historical Contexts: The Audience, Language, and Structure of Ma'rifat ar-Ruh 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 III. The Contemporary Significance of Knowing the Spirit The Persian Text and Translation Conventions KNOWING THE SPIRIT Original Table of Contents Introduction 1. Establishing the Existence of the Divine Artisan 2. The Spirit 3. The Gathering, Reawakening, and Returning (of the Spirit) in the Realm of Return 4. The Purely Bodily Return 5. The Purely Spiritual Return 6. The Harmonization of a Bodily and Spiritual Return 7. The (Spirit's) Return by Way of the Process of Perfection 8. The Belief of the Proponents of Transmigration Conclusion Notes Notes to the Translator's Introduction Notes to the Translation Bibliography References Originally Cited by Ostad Elahi Works Cited in the Translator's Introduction and Notes Index

About the Author

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.