A life-long pursuit of the spirit
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Hameed Ali , whose pen name is A. H. Almaas, was born in Kuwait in 1944. At the age of 18, he moved to the United States to study at the University of California in Berkeley. He was working on his Ph.D. in physics when he reached a turning point in his life that led him into inquiring into the psychological and spiritual aspects of human nature, in search of the truth of the human soul. Dominican Fr. Albert Nolan, see the podcast Caught between chaos and promise, cites Ali as an influence on his work.
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Episode 1: The five layers of the spirit (26 min.)
Ali tells Tom Fox that as a young man he turned to science to find truth. “I became aware that the truth I was looking for wasn’t really there [in the sciences]. I wasn’t really looking for the truth of the physical world. I was looking for the truth of the human soul, human consciousness, human experience.” His search turned inward and had to confront one question: “What is the spirit?” he asked. “When we talk about spiritual nature or spiritual life, what is the spirit? That was for me a discovery that continues now more than three decades.”
Episode 2: Getting back to the roots (24 min.)
In our secular society, Ali tells Tom Fox, there is a spiritual hunger that is intensifying. People want to return to their spiritual roots. “I see that there are two directions that people are taking. One direction is the fundamentalist direction. This is in all religions. People want to go back to their roots and they do this by going back to the forms of their roots. Their books or their history. Then there are people who want to go back to their roots more experientially. These are the people who turn to more spiritual, mystical orientation.”
To learn more
Read more about A.H. Almaas and his books at www.ahalmaas.com. For more information on the Ridhwan school visit www.ridhwan.org
