Seyyed Hossein Nasr Quotes

Spiritual Work is not easy. It means the willingness to surrender feelings that seem, while we're in them, like our defense against a greater pain. It means that we surrender to God our perceptions of all things.

One of the most extraordinary things about being a spiritual teacher is the rare privilege of being able to look deeply into the very souls of many human beings at the same time.

Discipline, it has been suggested, is the means of human spiritual evolution. What provides the motive, the energy for discipline? This force I believe to be love. I define love thus: The will to extend one's self for the purpose of nurturing one's own or another's spiritual growth.

In fact, the machine doesn't have the consciousness we have, the free will that we have, and to surrender one's free will, not in every matter but in spiritual matters, to a spiritual teacher is in a sense a lower level of surrendering one's will to God.

Maybe, just maybe, I would like to become a real spiritual teacher, a working lama!

Surrender means accepting this moment, this body, and this life with open arms. Surrender involves getting out of your own way and living in accord with a higher will, expressed as the wisdom of the heart. Far more than passive acceptance, surrender uses every challenge as a means of spiritual growth and expanded awareness.

One could say that everybody in this world has a spiritual teacher. For most people, their losses and disasters represent the teacher; their suffering is the teacher.

One may have many teachers, but only one guru, who remains as one's guru even in many different lives, until the disciple reaches the final goal of emancipation in God. You must remember this, once that relationship is formed.

The easiest and shortest way to God-realization is through the contact of a Sadguru, which means keeping the company or sahavas of such a Master, obeying him and serving him. This remedy is like a special express train which carries you straight to your destination.

When a man gets up so high (spiritual mountaintop) that he cannot reach down and save poor sinners, there is something wrong.

The whole purpose of spiritual direction is to penetrate beneath the surface of a man's life, to get behind the façade of conventional gestures and attitudes which he presents to the world, and to bring out his inner spiritual freedom, his inmost truth, which is what we call the likeness of Christ in his soul.

I would have no desire other than to accomplish thy will. Teach me to pray; pray thyself in me.

Yes, fasting is not merely a commandment from God but a godly gift, a grace and a blessing. God the creator of our body and soul knows of our need to fast for its benefit for our spiritual life, development and our eternity. He granted us the knowledge and manner of fasting. As a kind Father and a wise Teacher, He has recommended fasting for us.

Surrendering means non-desiring.

I believe the choice to become a mother is the choice to become one of the greatest spiritual teachers there is.

To the ego mind, surrender means giving up. To the spiritual mind, surrender means giving in and receiving.

When it comes to spiritual teachers, there are those safe, gentle, consoling, soothing, caring; and there are the outlaws, the living terrors, the Rude Boys and Nasty Girls of God realization, the men and women who are in your face, disturbing you terrifying you, until you radically awaken to who and what you really are.

We should reflect on the idea that since the beginning of time sentient beings have been mentally unstable because they have been slaves of delusion, they lack the eye of wisdom to see the path leading to nirvana and enlightenment, and they lack the necessary guidance of a spiritual teacher. Moment by moment they are indulging in negative actions, which will eventually bring about their downfall.

The Bible applied to the heart by the Holy Ghost is the chief means by which men are built up and established in the faith, after their conversion. It is able to cleanse them, to sanctify them, to instruct them in righteousness, and to furnish them thoroughly for all good works.

The Truth must be told at all costs, no matter how unpopular it may be. The authentic spiritual leader, having freed himself of his own false need to be popular, tells the Truth whether it falls on fertile or stony ground. Such a teacher is the salt of the earth, though few know it. If you think the world is delirious as is, you would find it intolerable without his healing influence.

A friend of mine urged me to see my pain as an opportunity. And since the same psychic that contacted Dion Fortune had told me that I was a "teacher" - she didn't mean at Columbia, she meant in the spiritual sense - I decided my affliction was the universe telling me that it was time to stop writing fiction and become the spiritual guru I was clearly meant to be.

Lord, for the erring thoughtNot into evil wrought:Lord, for the wicked willBetrayed and baffled still:For the heart from itself kept,Our thanksgiving accept.

Sanctification means being made one with Jesus so that the disposition that ruled Him will rule us. It will cost everything that is not of God in us.

Without an unreserved surrender to His grace, complete mastery over thoughts is impossible.

Brokenness is God’s requirement for maximum usefulness.