“Freedom from lower qualities is an essential qualification required for spiritual progress.”

Source: The Sayings and Teachings of the Great Mystics of Islam (2004), p. 95

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update Dec. 16, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "Freedom from lower qualities is an essential qualification required for spiritual progress." by Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr?
Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr photo
Abu Sa'id Abu'l-Khayr 11
poet 967–1049

Related quotes

Qutbuddin Bakhtiar Kaki photo

“This is, in fact, the philosophical defence of progressive socialism, that human progress requires that one after another the lower material animal functions shall be reduced to routine, in order that a larger amount of individual effort may be devoted to the exercise of higher functions and the cultivation by strife of higher qualities.”

J.A. Hobson (1858–1940) English economist, social scientist and critic of imperialism

section 11, p. 421
The Evolution of Modern Capitalism: A Study of Machine Production (1906), Ch. XVII Civilisation and Industrial Development

T. E. Lawrence photo

“Merit is no qualification for freedom.”

T. E. Lawrence (1888–1935) British archaeologist, military officer, and diplomat

"Letter to the Editor" The Times (22 July 1920) http://www.telstudies.org/writings/letters/1919-20/200722_the_times.shtml
Context: Whether they are fit for independence or not remains to be tried. Merit is no qualification for freedom. Bulgars, Afghans, and Tahitans have it. Freedom is enjoyed when you are so well armed, or so turbulent, or inhabit a country so thorny that the expense of your neighbour's occupying you is greater than the profit.

Frithjof Schuon photo
Haile Selassie photo

“Knowing that material and spiritual progress are essential to man, we must ceaselessly work for the equal attainment of both.”

Haile Selassie (1892–1975) Emperor of Ethiopia

Interview in The Voice of Ethiopia (5 April 1948).
Context: The progress of science can be said to be harmful to religion only in so far as it is used for evil aims and not because it claims a priority over religion in its revelation to man. It is important that spiritual advancement must keep pace with material advancement. When this comes to be realized man's journey toward higher and more lasting values will show more marked progress while the evil in him recedes into the background. Knowing that material and spiritual progress are essential to man, we must ceaselessly work for the equal attainment of both. Only then shall we be able to acquire that absolute inner calm so necessary to our well-being.
It is only when a people strike an even balance between scientific progress and spiritual and moral advancement that it can be said to possess a wholly perfect and complete personality and not a lopsided one.

Alexander Hamilton photo

“There is yet a further and a weightier reason for the permanency of the Judicial offices, which is deducible from the nature of the qualifications they require.”

No. 78
The Federalist Papers (1787–1788)
Context: There is yet a further and a weightier reason for the permanency of the Judicial offices, which is deducible from the nature of the qualifications they require. It has been frequently remarked, with great propriety, that a voluminous code of laws is one of the inconveniences necessarily connected with the advantages of a free Government. To avoid an arbitrary discretion in the Courts, it is indispensable that they should be bound down by strict rules and precedents, which serve to define and point out their duty in every particular case that comes before them; and it will readily be conceived from the variety of controversies which grow out of the folly and wickedness of mankind, that the records of those precedents must unavoidably swell to a very considerable bulk, and must demand long and laborious study to acquire a competent knowledge of them. Hence it is, that there can be but few men in the society, who will have sufficient skill in the laws to qualify them for the stations of Judges. And making the proper deductions for the ordinary depravity of human nature, the number must be still smaller of those who unite the requisite integrity with the requisite knowledge. These considerations apprize us, that the Government can have no great option between fit characters; and that a temporary duration in office, which would naturally discourage such characters from quitting a lucrative line of practice to accept a seat on the Bench, would have a tendency to throw the administration of justice into hands less able, and less well qualified, to conduct it with utility and dignity.

John F. Kennedy photo
Jules Michelet photo

“France is the daughter of freedom. In human progress, the essential part, the main force, is called man. Man is his own Prometheus.”

Jules Michelet (1798–1874) French historian

[Peface de la Histoire de France, Michelet, Jules, Flammarion, 1893-1894, VIII]
History of France, 1833-1867

Adyashanti photo

“To have enough curiosity to start to question your deepest identity is absolutely vital and essential to spiritual awakening, and to the realization of peace and freedom.”

Adyashanti (1962) Spiritual teacher

The Basic Teachings - Part 1: Principles of the Teaching (2009)

Related topics