R.J.: So when was your first contact with religion, I mean before you went to the United States?
S.H.N.: During my childhood, as I said, I used to be taken to pilgrimage sites and to holy places, often with your grandmother. Our father would not come, and I was mostly with the women of the family. The women would also take me as a child to Muharram processions. Moreover, there was a little mosque behind our house when I lived in the area of Shahabad, and I used to visit it often.
R.J.: Did these events affect you?
S.H.N.: Very much so. I felt myself very deeply Muslim from the beginning without any kind of fanaticism. There is a fact that I will mention to you; it is a very personal point but, nevertheless, I shall mention it to you. Through all the cultural and intellectual ups and downs I have experienced in my life, I have always loved God. The first memory I have of my childhood is of loving God, and that has lasted until now. This relation has never ceased, and I never went through a period of religious doubt as have so many people, including the great St. Augustine.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr with Ramin Jahanbegloo, In Search of the Sacred: A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on His life and Thought, p. 12
Here's another section I've culled out of the wonderful In Search of the Sacred, the book of interviews with Seyyed Nasr. As I've often opined to my students, I can't imagine ever saying anything intelligent in an interview let alone have something profound enough to say to warrant a three-hundred page book. My equivalent would be: In Search of the Farcical: A Conversation with Gary Scudder on His Life and Thought (published as part of the Postcard Series). Nasr tells us, "The first memory I have of my childhood is of loving God, and that has lasted until now." We often hear of folks who have come to an understanding of the divine, either, like most relationships I suppose, either gradually or as love at first sight. It's rare, at least it seems to be in today's world, and especially in the secular west, to hear of someone who knew an unquestioning, unfailing love of God from the very beginning. It seems to be that we are introduced to religion, essentially socialized to it, but God is, of course, a different concept. I've talked before about the fact that I've never had that intense perception of a God, but rather a quiet sense of the interconnectness of things; I think that's true now, and I suspect it was also true when I was "officially" an atheist, I just didn't have the intellectual tools, or maybe just the maturity and focus, to understand what I was sensing. There have been times when I felt that more intensely than others, especially on a rocky outcropping along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia and then much later in an all but deserted little cathedral in Vienna, but then it would fade. I don't know if one can will those intense feelings to return. Maybe some people are truly just constructed differently, right from birth, and that allows them to feel the sense of God, long before they are socialized to love or hate religion? From my readings of Nasr, and our brief Skype session with him, I'm certain that he would be horrified by the thought that someone would identify him a person who, like the prophets, was wired to see and feel what others can not see and feel.
S.H.N.: During my childhood, as I said, I used to be taken to pilgrimage sites and to holy places, often with your grandmother. Our father would not come, and I was mostly with the women of the family. The women would also take me as a child to Muharram processions. Moreover, there was a little mosque behind our house when I lived in the area of Shahabad, and I used to visit it often.
R.J.: Did these events affect you?
S.H.N.: Very much so. I felt myself very deeply Muslim from the beginning without any kind of fanaticism. There is a fact that I will mention to you; it is a very personal point but, nevertheless, I shall mention it to you. Through all the cultural and intellectual ups and downs I have experienced in my life, I have always loved God. The first memory I have of my childhood is of loving God, and that has lasted until now. This relation has never ceased, and I never went through a period of religious doubt as have so many people, including the great St. Augustine.
Seyyed Hossein Nasr with Ramin Jahanbegloo, In Search of the Sacred: A Conversation with Seyyed Hossein Nasr on His life and Thought, p. 12
Here's another section I've culled out of the wonderful In Search of the Sacred, the book of interviews with Seyyed Nasr. As I've often opined to my students, I can't imagine ever saying anything intelligent in an interview let alone have something profound enough to say to warrant a three-hundred page book. My equivalent would be: In Search of the Farcical: A Conversation with Gary Scudder on His Life and Thought (published as part of the Postcard Series). Nasr tells us, "The first memory I have of my childhood is of loving God, and that has lasted until now." We often hear of folks who have come to an understanding of the divine, either, like most relationships I suppose, either gradually or as love at first sight. It's rare, at least it seems to be in today's world, and especially in the secular west, to hear of someone who knew an unquestioning, unfailing love of God from the very beginning. It seems to be that we are introduced to religion, essentially socialized to it, but God is, of course, a different concept. I've talked before about the fact that I've never had that intense perception of a God, but rather a quiet sense of the interconnectness of things; I think that's true now, and I suspect it was also true when I was "officially" an atheist, I just didn't have the intellectual tools, or maybe just the maturity and focus, to understand what I was sensing. There have been times when I felt that more intensely than others, especially on a rocky outcropping along the Appalachian Trail in Virginia and then much later in an all but deserted little cathedral in Vienna, but then it would fade. I don't know if one can will those intense feelings to return. Maybe some people are truly just constructed differently, right from birth, and that allows them to feel the sense of God, long before they are socialized to love or hate religion? From my readings of Nasr, and our brief Skype session with him, I'm certain that he would be horrified by the thought that someone would identify him a person who, like the prophets, was wired to see and feel what others can not see and feel.
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