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