Turning Away from Divine Servitude

🟠 Turning Away from Devotion to God
📆 Date: 1403/07/05 – 22 Rabi al-Awwal 1446
📌 Meshkat-e Noor session
📌 Weekly commentary and exegesis session on the Sahifa Sajjadiyya (Supplication 20)
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei
🗒 Some of the topics discussed in the session:
🌼 Imam Sajjad has revealed a profound secret in this passage from the Sahifa Sajjadiyya: How can I take in the entire world’s experience all at once? How can I become a superhuman—or rather, one of God’s most exalted creatures?
How can I see from the first glimmer of my existence to the end of eternity, and taste all love and delight? How can I encompass the experience of the whole universe? What must I do to reach the beginning and the end of devotion to God and travel this path? I must equip myself with righteous guidance.
Once I am fully equipped with it, keep myself on the path of truth, and arm myself with the intention to grow, then I will have become one of God’s exalted creatures.
🌼 How can I attain the most beautiful encounter with God and experience, to the full, the joy of being with Him? It is possible by connecting with this triangle; through that connection, my origin will become my return.
🌼 It means passing beyond all veils and reaching the moment when I am ripe to be gathered, like a fruit. Once I attain this station, I will be sent along another path—a path that is no path at all. I must equip myself with righteous guidance; if I turn it into something else, I will be destroyed.
🌼 God has set one path for us.
🌼 He has shown me His religion and introduced me to the rightful guide. I must hold fast to the Two Weighty Things if I am to arrive. Then I will have been guided by righteous guidance and set out on the path of truth.
🌼 If I abandon this path, countless other paths lie ahead, and I will be lost and unable to find my way. Can anyone move outside God’s religion? They cannot! What could I replace my heart and soul with? Is there any substitute? Religion stands above all these things, and nothing can take its place.
🌼 A human being who errs will never, for all eternity, find the right way to God. The Architect of the universe Himself has opened a path and commanded us to enter it.
🌼 The right way, then, lies only on the Straight Path. Moving among numerous paths and their winding mazes will bring us nothing but deeper misguidance.
🌼 There is no straightness in crookedness.
🌼 How can someone who does not know themselves prescribe a course of action for themselves? They are ignorant of their own nature. Whatever parts and functions of their being they did not know about, they denied, believing them to be superfluous. They disrupt their body’s immune system, and yet the body resists their demands.
🌼 But they do not stop there. They also seek to destroy their greater world, just as they have turned against their lesser world.
🌼 Humanity has become like the Kharijites in its devotion to God. In the end times, opposition to religion and flight from religion are flourishing in full force.
🌼 The so-called religion of humanity is leading into error.
🌼 Humanity has even rebelled against the religion it fashioned for itself.
🌼 Modern humanity is caught among peoples like Thamud and others…
🌼 It is as though today were the Great Gathering itself, and each person had to create a paradise for themselves amid this hell. The believer who stands firm and does not let go will hear God’s words: “كُونِي بَرْدًا وَسَلَامًا”
🌼 Yet each day of our devotion to God must reveal new dimensions of us. We must be renewed, like a fragrant plant that receives a fresh fragrance and beauty each day from God’s religion.
Our sense of nearness to God and our love for Him must deepen and grow stronger.
🌼 The end times are an age for mining the treasures of religion. Whoever flees God’s religion and forges a new one has, it seems, resigned from devotion to God.
🌼 If they can escape God’s domain of sovereignty, let them. If they wish to live on something other than water and bread, let them. But the believer must draw sustenance from all water, bread, and light, and enter the abode of the hereafter.
🌼 The believer is in God’s contest. The gaze of the religious is not a personal one. If we hold fast to God’s religion sincerely, God Himself will be our protector.
🌼 Let us not distract ourselves with the ambiguous aspects of our religion and lead others astray.
🌼 Whoever strives sincerely will reach their goal, like the honeybee that sets out and is inspired by God as to the paths leading to the flowers and how to turn their nectar into honey.
Whoever seeks within God’s religion will be helped by God Himself, who will show them the way.
🌼 The so-called religion of humanity is inhuman. Why? How can human beings, with their knowledge, find the way to the highest destination? When people let their desires set the measure of their laws, whenever desire prevails, their understanding declines. Their intelligence sinks to the level of the dull and foolish. Modern people, in their foolishness, write laws for themselves; more wretched still is the person who makes themselves subject to the religion of fools.
But when desire is governed by reason, it not only ceases to hinder growth, it becomes a wing for flight.
🌼 The believer uses the pleasures of this world as steps toward the source of all pleasure and beauty.

🌼 A person must be careful not to be buried in the earth.
🌼 The human path went astray from the moment he considered himself the owner of his own free will. A person is not the owner of his free will; he can choose, but when he forgets that its true owner is God, he falls into error.
But he uses it ignorantly: he commits suicide and kills others.
🌼 At the very first letter of the alphabet of free will, the human being has lost himself.
🌼 It reaches the point where, because he sees himself as the owner of free will, he claims divinity—whether deliberately or ignorantly.
In the soul of every human being there is a percentage of Pharaoh-ness; it is the human being, unjust and ignorant, who utters “Verily your Lord is the Most High.” Whoever says “I, I” means that a percentage of Pharaoh-ness exists within him.
🌼 The race of “I am your Lord, the Most High” is underway among human beings; Saqifa is one example of it. Before it there were pseudo-Saqifas, and after this there will be more. Throughout history, Saqifas have been erected in various ways: they do not accept God’s choice and want to choose for themselves. Now, if we give an example in the domain of science, the matter is entirely clear: they have not accepted God’s choice and fashion a religion for themselves; then they also erase God from their minds and deny His role.
🌼 They search for how creation began and construct various theories, and they reach no conclusion. Ultimately they arrive at the conclusion that everything began from a quantum—nothing. In all of this they try to deny God’s existence.
But no matter how hard they try, they lose themselves; there is no scientific proof for polytheism.
🌼 By the tongue of their own nature they confess that this world must have come into being all at once; they do not say it is nothing. But they say it derives a share from something.
🌼 The beginning of a thing was not with a thing; they themselves know that time was not created within time, and they themselves confess that place was not created within place.
They themselves confess that existence was not brought into being within existence, and ultimately they confess that it must have happened all at once.
🌼 So the correct path is the very one the Merciful God has shown us; we must enter through that same route and reach the meeting with the Beloved. We must not be deceived by ornate words.
🌼 Humankind strives to free itself from the bond of servitude to God, but they do not know that separation from the will of the Truth is not possible. Even if they act boldly, this too is God’s will, so that this test may reach its end in this manner.
🌼 In the arena of competition, complaint is out of place; if the terms of the contest were changed, nothing of the contest would remain.
🌼 A test has meaning only when a person avoids what is attractive and enters the very pit of what is difficult for him, so as to prove that he is God’s servant.
🌼 One must not flee from hardships that appear difficult.
🌼 The champion of servitude to God will be distinguished in this very arena.
🌼 Imam Husayn says:
O followers of the family of Abu Sufyan—and this address is to all the people of the world—if you have no religion and do not fear the Resurrection, then at least be free.
Does this mean that a person can continue his life even without religion?
The Imam’s words contain particular allusions.
When he calls to freedom, he calls you to return to your own nature and to discover the package of your own nature. Imam Husayn (peace be upon him) wished to expose the disbelievers and polytheists: whoever becomes free, this freedom of his will guide him toward the truth. Freedom is a road to the truth; had they listened to the Imam’s words with true freeness, they would have found the truth.
🌼 The Imam continues: at least return to your own parties—that is, remain loyal to the laws of your own tribes. In reality, the Imam was trying to expose them, to state that you are not even loyal to these laws.
🌼 Those who flee from God’s religion in a sense rise up against God to reject Him from His own sovereignty. This is manifest error; we must continually cling to God Himself, so that He does not leave us to ourselves for even a moment.