Altaf Ali > Altaf Ali's Quotes

“Shiism is already and of itself the spiritual way, the ṭarīqah —that is to say, initiation.”
― Henry Corbin, History Of Islamic Philosophy

“Through his devotion to the holy Imāms, the Shiite is predisposed to receive this initiation from them, and such initiation provides him with a direct and personal link with the spiritual world in its 'vertical dimension' without his having to enter formally into an organized ṭarīqah, as is the case in Sunnism.”
― Henry Corbin, History Of Islamic Philosophy

“Tradition is not only a protective, conservative principle; it is, primarily, the principle of growth and regeneration… Tradition is the constant abiding of the Spirit and not only the memory of words.”
― Kallistos Ware, The Orthodox Church: An Introduction to Eastern Christianity

“One can no more prevent the mind from returning to an idea than the sea from returning to a shore. In the case of the sailor, this is called the tide; in the case of the guilty, it is called remorse. God upheaves the soul as well as the ocean.”
― Victor Hugo, Les Misérables

“Faith, Ibn Qays, stands on four pillars: forbearance, conviction, justice, and struggle against evil.”
― al-Qadi al-Qudai, A Treasury of Virtues: Sayings, Sermons, and Teachings of Ali, with the One Hundred Proverbs, attributed to al-Jahiz

“The only way there is to know God is through what he calls the `proof of existence' (al-burhan al-wujadt), which is a direct act of intuition and which does not admit any separation between the knower and the known.”
― Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

“sense-perception is not only the `weakest' form of perception but also corresponds to the lowest level of existence.”
― Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

“When we complete the state of animal [soul] in a gradual manner, we receive the lights of the intellect and the powers of the rational soul capable of perceiving universals and disembodied intellective [forms].”
― Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

“Those who dared criticize Serra and his Franciscans for their treatment of the Native Americans risked being crushed by the power of the Roman Catholic Church, with its power of excommunication, or being literally torn to pieces by the Inquisition, which could conduct an investigation using horrendous means of torture against anyone who dared challenge the church or its hierarchy.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions

“Many Spanish Moors and Jews who had established an intellectual culture superior to the rest of Europe during the Dark Ages were, under royal decree, either forced to renounce their religion or were compelled to flee. What remained in Spain was a population seething with intolerance toward any remnant of their former rulers. To guarantee a complete elimination of the Muslim and Jewish culture, the monarchs also ordered the destruction of all Moorish and Jewish libraries, considered Europe’s most advanced in science and literature.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions

“Even the many deaths of Indian children did not faze Serra’s dark joy. In a report dated July 24, 1775, to Friar Francisco Pangua, his Franciscan superior at the Colegio de San Fernando in Mexico City, Serra wrote: In the midst of all our little troubles, the spiritual side of the missions is developing most happily. In [Mission] San Antonio21 there are simultaneously two harvests, at one time, one for wheat, and of a plague among the children, who are dying.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions

“7.27 ʿAlī said: By God, a group of people will enter the Garden of Eden first on the day of resurrection. These people did not pray or fast more than others, nor perform the hajj or ʿumrah pilgrimage to Mecca more often than others. The honor is due to the worth of their minds.”
― al-Qadi al-Qudai, A Treasury of Virtues: Sayings, Sermons, and Teachings of Ali, with the One Hundred Proverbs, attributed to al-Jahiz

“Women are never whipped in public, but in an enclosed and somewhat distant place that their cries may not excite a too lively compassion, which might cause the men to revolt. —Captain Jean-François Lapérouse, describing in 1826 the procedure for whipping Indian mission women.”
― Elias Castillo, A Cross of Thorns: The Enslavement of California’s Indians by the Spanish Missions

“It is therefore clear that the five perceptions (i.e., the five senses) just like the other kinds of perceptual powers manifest the Divine Identity, which is the First Beloved and the Perfect Goal of man. Asf r, I, 1, p. 118”
― Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

“The Just Therapy Team’s discussions involved an outline of how othered marginalized groups desired a genuine alternative therapeutic dialogue. Marginalized groups (e.g., women, people of color, persons living in poverty, and persons struggling with mental health issues, disabilities) no longer wanted to be dictated to or told who they actually were as persons, as defined by the dominant class of Western psychological thinking (T. K. Tamasese and C. Waldegrave, personal communication, 1991, 1996, 2004, 2008).”
― Stephen Madigan, Narrative Therapy

“Furthermore, Sadra considers knowledge essential for performing religious duties as well as for attaining virtues. This is an important step toward assigning an ethico-spiritual function to knowledge whereby intellective knowledge becomes a further step toward spiritual realization. For instance, Sadra says that `obedience to God is not complete without knowledge and knowledge is not attained except through the intellect.'S' Obviously, this is a familiar theme in Islamic history, and one can cite numerous examples of it. Socrates, for instance, is reported to have said that `all virtues come into being only through knowledge (ma `rifah).'S1 The proposition is true also when reversed: knowledge leads to virtue insofar as virtues are seen as having a cognitive value.”
― Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

“There are four degrees of perfection [in knowing things]: the first is the refinement of one's outward state (al-zahir) by following Divine orders and Prophetic law. The second is the refinement of one's inward state (al-batin) and cleaning the heart from dark and despicable habits and behavior.73 The third is the illumination [of the soul] by the forms of knowledge and favorable qualities. The fourth is the [spiritual] extinction (fana') of the soul from itself and fixing its gaze (al-nazar) upon contemplating the First Lord and His Magnificence.”
― Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

“the most general condition for guilt-free massacre is the denial of humanity to the victim. You call the victims names like gooks, dinks, niggers, pinkos, and jags. The more you can get high officials in government to use these names and others like yellow dwarfs with daggers and rotten apples, the more your success.... If contact is allowed, or it cannot be prevented, you indicate the contact is not between equals; you talk about the disadvantaged, the deprived. Troy Duster, "Conditions for Guilt-Free Massacre" (1971)”
― Brendan C. Lindsay, Murder State: California's Native American Genocide, 1846-1873

“All existence from its highest to the lowest and from its lowest to the highest is [united] in a single relationship by which some parts of it are related to some others. Everything is united in spite of their external diversity.”
― Ibrahim Kalin, Knowledge in Later Islamic Philosophy: Mulla Sadra on Existence, Intellect, and Intuition

“Corbin is making the case for the indissoluble link between philosophy and spirituality. He writes, “henceforth we must cease to separate the history of philosophy from the history of spirituality. Philosophy itself is only a partial symptom of the secret that transcends all rational statement and that tends to express itself in what we may comprehensively term a spirituality.”6 If philosophical reflection does not reach a state of spiritual consciousness, then “philosophical discussions have scarcely more significance than an administrative conversation. This is why the history of philosophy should never be treated apart from the history of spirituality, and indeed of daily devotional experiences.”7”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“The symbol is not an artificially constructed sign: it flowers in the soul spontaneously to announce something that cannot be expressed otherwise. It is the unique expression of the thing symbolized as of a reality that thus becomes transparent to the soul, but which itself transcends all expression.”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“Many people, especially non-Muslims, who read the Qur’an for the first time, are struck by what appears as a kind of incoherence from the human point of view. It is neither like a highly mystical text nor a manual of Aristotelian logic, though it contains both mysticism and logic. It is not just poetry, though it contains the most powerful poetry. The text of the Qur’an reveals human language crushed by the power of the Divine Word. It is as if human language were scattered into a thousand fragments like a wave scattered into drops against the rocks at sea. One feels through the shattering effect left upon the language of the Qur’an, the power of the Divine whence it originated. The Qur’an displays human language with all the weakness inherent in it becoming suddenly the recipient of the Divine Word and displaying its frailty before a power which is infinitely greater than man can imagine.5”
― Tom Cheetham, All the World an Icon: Henry Corbin and the Angelic Function of Beings

“How should the first two chapters of the book of Genesis be understood in their internal, that is, spiritual, sense? It must be done by applying what the Christian world has so utterly forgotten: that everything in the Word, to the smallest detail, envelops and signifies spiritual and celestial things.”
― Henry Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam

“A desire to investigate the mysteries of faith by means of the things of sense and of scientifics, was not only the cause of the fall of the posterity of the Antiquissima Ecclesia, as treated of in the second chapter of Genesis, but it is also the cause of the fall of every church; for hence come not only falsities, but also evils of life.”94”
― Henry Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam

“Finally, the Qur’ān (4:157) is resolutely “docetist”: Christ did not die on the cross; God raised him up unto Himself, for men did not have the power to kill the Word of God (Kalām Allāh), the Spirit of God (Rū Allāh). But men had the illusion that they killed him, and in doing so they obtained what they wanted: doubt, perplexity, misleading (all that we call “agnosticism”); the”
― Henry Corbin, Swedenborg and Esoteric Islam

“Therefore the tongue of mutual understanding is different indeed: to be one in heart is better than to be one in tongue. Without speech and without sign or scroll, hundreds of thousands of interpreters arise from the heart. The birds, all and each, their secrets of skill and knowledge and practice”
― Jalâl ud Dîn Rûmî, Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi

“A life of faith without love is like sunlight without warmth—the type of light that occurs in winter, when nothing grows and everything droops and dies. Faith rising out of love, on the contrary, is like light from the sun in spring, when everything grows and flourishes. Warmth from the sun is the fertile agent. The same is true in spiritual and heavenly affairs, which are typically represented in the Word by objects found in nature and human culture.”
― Emanuel Swedenborg, Secrets of Heaven 1: Portable

“Philosophy should come to know the dimensions, qualities and quantities of the earth, the depths of the sea, the capacity of fire and the effects and nature of all these things in order to admire, revere and praise the divine artistry and intelligence.”
― Asclepius, Asclepius: The Perfect Discourse of Hermes Trismegistus

“Without delay, from the middle of his (closed) fist every pebble began to pronounce the (Moslem's) profession of faith. Each said, “There is no god” and (each) said, “except Allah”; (each) threaded the pearl of “Ahmad is the Messenger of Allah.”
― Jalâl ud Dîn Rûmî, Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi

“The married pair must match one another: look at a pair of shoes or boots. 2310. If one of the shoes is too tight for the foot, the pair of them is of no use to thee. Hast thou ever seen one leaf of a (folding) door small and the other large, or a wolf mated with the lion of the jungle? A pair of sacks on a camel do not balance properly when one is small and the other of full size.”
― Jalâl ud Dîn Rûmî, Mathnawi of Jalalu'ddin Rumi