The Fall from Servitude

📖 Weekly session on the explanation and interpretation of Sahifa Sajjadiyya (Supplication Twenty)
📅 Date: 1403/09/29 – 17 Jumada al-Thaniyya 1446
✨ Session: Meshkat-e Noor
🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei
Some of the points raised in the session:

🌼 Intimate converse with God
O God, if You do not spend me on Your love, I will be spent on Satan. If You do not make me Your field, I will become Satan’s pasture. Take my hand Yourself, take my heart, take my spirit and my soul Yourself. Tame me and make me Your captive, so that I may not be parted from You for a single moment.

🌼 Endowment for God
O God, my soul and my life are spent for You. I am Your creation; spend me on Yourself.

🌼 The supplication of servanthood
Set me apart for Yourself. Choose me for Your worship and servitude. If it were not so, I would worship myself and I would serve Satan.

🌼 The value of Sahifa Sajjadiyya
O God, do not take Sahifa Sajjadiyya from me. Take my life, but do not take Sahifa Sajjadiyya from me. Do not take this pure wine from me for a single moment. Stir up my thirst for this sacred Sahifa, so that moment by moment I may drain the cups of love. Take me beyond thought and intellect Yourself, so that I may worship You and serve You thoughtfully and wisely.

🌼 Reflection and worship
There is no worship like reflection. I must transform my being into pure worship and servitude of You, so that I do not become the ego of the intellect. How shall I worship You? Not merely rational—I must become the intellect itself, so that I may become purely Your servant.

🌼 Worship through reflection
It is impossible for a person to worship God without deep understanding. Worship is impossible except through deep understanding—understanding of religion, of creation, and of servitude to God. O God, grant me success so that I may reach the station of servanthood. Worship without reflection is worship minus worship. O God, let me not worship myself without realizing it. Were I to seek to worship You in ignorance, by that very ignorance I would have worshipped myself and Satan. O God, make me the bride of this mine of worship. This blessed Sahifa of Yours is the mine of supplication, the mine of the secret of secrets.

🌼 The core of worship
The core of worship is supplication—that is, that I understand and know how to call upon my God with deep understanding. This calling is itself the core of worship and servitude. All deeds and actions exist for reaching this station, where I may praise You with spirit and soul, with all my longing. If I do not reach it, I will perish and be destroyed.

🌼 Perishing in heedlessness
It is impossible for a person to perish through supplication. It was when I failed to call upon God that I became the prey of Iblis. I have become the quarry of my own ego. No bird is hunted except through forgetfulness of God. The remembrance of God leaves the heart, and then it is hunted. Is it possible for someone to remember God and for another to hunt him?

🌼 The value of the blessed Sahifa
This blessed Sahifa, this Sahifa of worship and servitude, is the ways of love and the paths of love toward God. Each of its passages is a vast highway toward the love of God, toward the secrets of God, the unseen of God, and the wonders and treasures of God.

🌼 The Sahifa, a ship of love
Each of its supplications is a ship that takes us aboard and draws us up to the realm of dominion. It is our ship for journeying through the realms of malakut and jabarut, our ship for journeying through the realm of lahut. This is God’s pure wine, which we can sip at every moment.

🌼 The most excellent worship
If we seek the best worship, the mine and the great station of worship is this very Sahifa Sajjadiyya. His Holiness says: the most excellent worship of my community after the recitation of the Quran is supplication. Do we know of anything more beautiful than a Sahifa of supplication?

🌼 The role of the lover in the Sahifa
Sahifa Sajjadiyya is the best stage for playing the role of the lover. How can I play the role of the Imam in the Sahifa and supplicate and praise like him? If I cannot, I have lost.

🌼 Taking on the character of the divine attributes
Let us take on the character of God’s attributes; we must take on the character of God’s attributes. This means we must be like the friends of God. God’s character is like God’s names. If I do not reach that lofty station, it means I have not walked the path of servitude to God. Through Sahifa Sajjadiyya I must experience the spirit of worship and servitude.
In truth, the great workings of God’s worship set a person in motion and re-create human nature. By God, if I enter this ocean of Sahifa Sajjadiyya with reflection and swim in it, if I dive in this sea like a fish, I will experience the true life of servitude to God and grasp the loving atmosphere of God.
In Sahifa Sajjadiyya, each supplication is joined to the next.

🌼 The Fall of the Human Being and the Consequences of Sin
The God-fearing see; the people of Paradise see the Fire. They experience the torment of the Fire in this very world, though it is made cool and safe for them, and they still grasp its intensity. Those who commit sins are in a state of falling. They sin, and they fall.
By God, the mouse that feeds on filth is the consequence of a fall. It was a pure creature, but became tainted by sin and was brought so low, so vile. It has been falling for seventy thousand years to reach this state. It does not know it, but it has surely fallen. The cockroach, too, has surely been falling for several thousand years.
Why have creatures that feed on filth become this way? They have reached the Tree of Zaqqum. Anyone who takes pleasure in sin is lower than these low and vile creatures.

🌼 Time and Beyond Time in the Fall
The human being is within the realm beyond time, and falls. By God, on the Night of the Ascension, when the Messenger of God visited Paradise and Hell, he had passed beyond time. He saw our present state there, in that timeless realm.
A blow is struck, and its consequences take seventy thousand years to unfold. Our Lord does not wait; whether it is seventy thousand years or more makes no difference to our Lord. A person falls for seventy thousand years until reaching the Tree of Zaqqum—the tree that grows in the depths of Hell, whose blossoms are like the heads of devils.
It has seventy thousand branches of fire, and each branch bears seventy thousand fruits. A person comes to rest between two rocks, whose distance apart is seventy thousand years. What is the secret of these seventy thousand years? I do not know. They eat from it—they must eat. After eating, they must gulp down boiling water, ḥamīm.
They shift and slip between the two rocks, and this alone takes seventy thousand years. What mystery is this? O God, how did the human being come to such a pass?

🌼 The Need for Self-Examination
We must review our principles and their practical implications. At every moment we need to revisit and examine ourselves. We must put ourselves on trial, reprimand ourselves, and take account of ourselves. We must shout at ourselves, call ourselves to account, seize ourselves by the collar, tear open our own garments, and rip apart the collar of the lower self.

🌼 Satan’s Cropland
Satan may well be sowing in the soil of our being, growing the fruits of baseness, vileness, impurity, and filth.

🌼 God’s Warning about Satan’s Deeds
O you who believe, without a doubt, wine, idols, and divining arrows are impure and are among the works of Satan. They are the filth of Satan’s work, so keep away from them, that you may prosper.

🌼 Taking Satan as a Partner
O human being, do not make Satan a shareholder in yourself, granting him a share within your being. Woe to those who make Satan a shareholder in their very being. Woe to those who make Satan a partner in their food and sustenance and, God forbid, even in their own seed.

🌼 Satan’s Permission to Intervene
Let us not allow our hearts to be sealed, with God then turning away from us, for in that case Satan is given leave to intervene. He incites people with his voice, drives them on with his cavalry and infantry, and shares in their wealth and children. Yet Satan’s promises are nothing but delusion and lies.
If a person does not keep watch over himself, he becomes not only Satan’s pasture but also makes Satan a partner in his wealth, his honour, and his life. God forbid—do we not see it? We must beware of this traitor to honour and dignity. The shameless are those who make Satan a partner in their honour and invite him to themselves.

🌼 Seeking Refuge in Satan
It is not merely that they become this way: they fly towards Satan, the devils, and the jinn, seeking their help and refuge and making them their stronghold. Their fruits become the Tree of Zaqqum.

🌼 A Change of State and Sustenance
When a person changes his state of mind and spirit, his sustenance changes too. He flees from all that is pure, and impurity and filth become his food. He eats from the Tree of Zaqqum.

🌼 The Food of the People of Hell
The Tree of Zaqqum grows in the depths of Hell, and its blossoms are like the heads of devils. Those who commit sins eat from it and fill their bellies. After eating, they must gulp down a mixture of scalding, boiling water. Then, after this initial hospitality, they fall into the depths of Hell.
Those who are satanic in character have satanic food. Those who take pleasure in sin will one day taste that pleasure as it truly is. The initial pleasure was only a false covering that enticed them to consume sin; but one day the effects of that sin will emerge from their bodies.

🌼 Satanic Pleasures
Satanic pleasures are those made alluring through deception—making what is ugly seem beautiful. For sinners, sin is made alluring: its outward guise draws them in. But when the abscess of satanic pleasure bursts, they will understand the immense calamity that has befallen them.

🌼 Deception and Empty Hopes
For those who turn away after having been guided, Satan makes their deeds seem fair and lures them on with empty hopes. The sinner is falling—a fall that lasts not for a moment, but for eternity. One moment of sin, if its true nature were revealed, would bring thousands of years of torment.

🌼 The Taking of Sinners’ Souls
When God wills to take the soul of an unbeliever, He addresses the Angel of Death: “O Angel of Death, go forth, you and your companions, against My enemy.” The Angel of Death strikes God’s enemy such a blow to the head that his descent begins. This fall lasts seventy thousand years and ends at the Tree of Zaqqūm.

🌼 The Fall of Sinners
Every sinner, at every moment of sin, undergoes such a fall—a fall lasting seventy thousand years. Hell encompasses the unbelievers. They are surrounded by Hell, yet cannot see it in this world; time keeps them from understanding. But the God-fearing do see: they see the fire awaiting the people of Hell.

🌼 The Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya as a Unified Whole
The Imam spoke with such delicacy and precision, stitching the Ṣaḥīfa together like a master tailor, that no finer garment could be made for worship and servitude to God. Each prayer in the Ṣaḥīfa is like one of the human body’s limbs, joined to the others. The entire Ṣaḥīfa is a single body, its prayers like limbs and organs connected according to a precise order and design.

🌼 Nourishment for Love and Devotion
If we recite the whole Ṣaḥīfa again and again, it is as though we have experienced complete servitude to God. The Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya is a complete feast of love, the nourishment of rapture and devotion to God. Truly, it is Zayn al-ʿĀbidīn’s Jawshan Kabīr.

🌼 God’s Field and the Slaughterhouse of Devils
The Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya is God’s vast field, the garden and rose garden of His saints, the paradise of the great prophets, and the slaughterhouse of devils. If we wish to struggle against the devils, expose them and leave them despairing, we must enter the heart of the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya. This book is the hell of Iblīs and a sanctuary for worship and devotion to God.

🌼 A Place to Fall in Love
The Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya is a place to fall in love—a place where one worships God with love. We must worship God with our whole being, sincerely, giving Him all our love without reserve. God knows how to cherish His servants. We need only turn to Him sincerely to learn the way of loving devotion.

🌼 Love of Worship
The Messenger, the Chosen One, said: The most virtuous people are those who love worship. They embrace worship and draw close to it, so that their very being is inseparable from the act of worship. One must become so steeped in worship that one is not merely a servant, but servitude itself.

🌼 Cherishing Worship
Worship must become the beloved of the heart. Our relationship with the One we worship must go beyond love. Worship must be felt through the body: molecule by molecule, atom by atom, particle by particle, every part of our being must touch and engage in worship, until we can say, “I have become God’s servant.”

🌼 Making Time for Worship
One must set oneself free for worship and detach from everything else. Only through complete solitude and letting go of all that is other than God can one attain the station of servitude. We must free ourselves from bondage to everything but God, so that we may become bound to Allah.

🌼 Worship in Hardship and Ease
When this happens, and one sets oneself apart for worship, hardship and ease in life no longer make any difference. Both become means of serving God. Whether life passes in hardship or ease, both come from God and must be accepted.

🌼 The Fifteenth Supplication of the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya
The fifteenth supplication of the Ṣaḥīfa Sajjādiyya is like a cup of pure wine. O God, all praise is Yours. I praise You for granting me the blessing of a healthy body, and I praise You again for making me ill. Whatever comes to me from You is good for me, whether health or illness.
O God, I do not know in which state I should give You greater thanks: in health, when You let me enjoy the wholesome things You provide, or in illness, when You delivered me from darkness. You called to me, and I did not answer. You brought me to my senses, so that I might know You are the most merciful of the merciful.

🌼 God’s Field or Satan’s?
We must become God’s field, or our lives will be wasted. A person who is not God’s field becomes Satan’s pasture. We must take care not to become Satan’s kitchen, beauty salon, or clinic. The human being is God’s field, and if worthy, becomes the tablet on which God brings His artistry to completion.