Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III: “….here and now, in this world, we have a soul….”

“Whatever may or may not be the soul’s future, there is one impregnable central fact in existence: that here and now, in this world, we have a soul which has a life of its own in its appreciation of truth, beauty, harmony and good against evil.

Anwari, Nizami, Mawlana Rumi, Saadi, Qa‘ani and a host of others – names that will be well known to Oriental scholars, but which will perhaps convey little to the general public here – each in his own way gave a message to mankind. But the fundamental point of each message if carefully studied is that man’s greatest of all treasures, the greatest of all his possessions, was the inherent, ineffaceable, everlasting nobility of his own soul. In it there was for ever a spark of true divinity which could conquer all the antagonistic and debasing elements in nature. And let me once more stress that this faith in the soul of man expressed in a great variety of ways – in prose and verse, in art and architecture – was not simply a religious or mystic faith but an all-embracing and immediate contact with a fact which, in every human being, is the central fact of existence.”
Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III
Extracts from Inaugural Lecture Before the Iran Society
November 9, 1936 London, United Kingdom
Speech at The Institute of Ismaili Studies

“It is said that we live, move, and have our being in God. We find this concept expressed often in the Koran, not in those words of course, but just as beautifully and more tersely. But when we realize the meaning of this saying, we are already preparing ourselves for the gift of the power of direct experience. Roumi and Hafiz, the greatest Persian poets, have told us, each in his different  way, that some men are born with such natural spiritual capacities and possibilities of development, that they have direct experience of that great love, that all-embracing, all-consumming love, which direct contact with reality gives to the human soul….

But as the joys of human love surpass all that riches and power may bring a man, so does that greater spiritual love and enlightenment, the fruit of that sublime experience of the direct vision of reality which is God’s gift and grace, surpass all that the finest, truest human love can offer. For that gift we must ever pray.”
Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III
Extracts from “The Islamic Concept and My Role as Imam,” The Memoirs of Aga Khan, Cassell and Company Ltd, London, 1954

“Life is a great and noble calling, not a mean and grovelling thing to be shuffled through as best we can but a lofty and exalted destiny.”
Sir Sultan Mahomed Shah Aga Khan III
The Memoirs of Aga Khan, Cassell and Company Ltd, London, 1954

Compiled by Nimira Dewji