Quotes and Short Lessons

Blog Author: B. A. Deen

"A man might spend a lifetime reading spiritual books and studying the writings of the great mystics. He might feel that he had penetrated the secrets of the heavens and the earth, but unless this knowledge was incorporated into his very nature and transformed him, it was sterile. I am beginning to suspect that a simple man praying to God - with little understanding but with a full heart - might be closer to the Truth than the most learned student of the spiritual sciences."

     – Charles Hassan Gai Eaton

 

"Yesterday, I was clever, so I wanted to change the world. Today, I am wise, so I am changing myself"

    - Rumi

"Perhaps at no other time in history have men been so knowing and yet so unaware, so burdened with purposes and so purposeless, so disillusioned and so completely the victims of illusion. This strange contradiction pervades our entire modern culture, our science and our philosophy, our literature and our art."
    - W. M. Urban

When it is said to them:
"Believe as the others have believed:"
They say: "Shall we believe
As the fools believe?"
Nay - of a surety - they are the fools,
If they but knew.'
   -  Quran 2:13

"To be human means to be... suspended between animality and divinity, but modern thought admits only of animality... Traditional wisdom corrects and perfects the image of man by insisting on his divinity, not by making a god of him but rather by taking account of his true nature, which surpasses the terrestrial and without which there would be no reason for his existence."

    - Frithjof Schuon

"Western values remain the standard by which all are judged and most accept to be judged. It is taken for granted that the rest of the world must play by the rules which Western civilisation has laid down, rules which are the product of European history. The European powers are a small minority in the United Nations, but one glance at the Charter of that organisation is enough to show that it contains not one principle derived from any other source, and the same is true of international law as it is at present understood. The key word is ‘civilised’. One may be a Muslim, a Hindu, a Buddhist or an Eskimo shaman; there is just one condition that is obligatory for all – one must conform to ‘civilised’ values on pain of being condemned as ‘backward.’"

    - Charles Hassan Gai Eaton

"The distinction between the male and female is not only biological, nor even psychological or spiritual. It has its roots in the Divine Nature Itself, man reflecting more the Majesty (Jalal) and Absoluteness of Allah and women embody His Beauty (Jamal), Mercy and Infinitude."

    - Seyyed Hossein Nasr