Mourning: The Banner of Divine Victory

🌼🔆🌼Mourning: The Struggle of the Advent🌼🔆🌼
🔹The Seventh Night of Muharram
📅 Date: 1404/04/12 – 7 Muharram 1447
✨ Gathering: Meshkat-e Noor
🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei
📝 Some points raised at the gathering:

🎖 Mourning means aiding God; answering Karbala’s call

السّلام علیک یا أبا عبدالله،
و علی الأرواحِ الّتی حلّت بِفنائک…

Imam Husayn (peace be upon him) and mourning for him:
What is its wisdom?
What are we seeking to affirm?

Mourning for Imam Husayn (peace be upon him) means “awakening”;
it means “a movement of devotion to God.”

We mourn for the Master of Martyrs,
which means we seek to affirm that we are followers of Husayn.

And a follower of Husayn is one of Imam Husayn’s disciples—
one who aids God’s religion.

One who mourns has raised the banner of aiding God.
They have become a standard-bearer for Imam Husayn (peace be upon him).
They have answered the call, “Is there anyone to help me?”
They have said, “We are here.”

Where?
In the realm of ذر, in the realm of loins.

Husayn’s commemorations
are a pledge to Imam Husayn to aid God’s religion.

Why?
Because Imam Husayn (peace be upon him) himself embodied the truth of aiding God
throughout all existence, in every dimension of it.

Without that aid,
the very foundations of devotion to God would have collapsed.

Those who mourn for the Master of Martyrs
are Imam Husayn’s disciples,
just as the disciples of Jesus (peace be upon him) were.

🕊 We are God’s helpers, not merely mourners

“یا أیها الذین آمنوا کُونوا أنصار الله…”
This is God’s command to all believers.

We who mourn for the Master of Martyrs
answer Husayn’s call at every moment.

Yet…
of all those who answer,
only a small number
remain true to their covenant, pledge and pact.

The disciples said:
“We are God’s helpers.”

But among the Children of Israel,
one group believed,
while another disbelieved.

That is:
whoever remained faithful to their covenant,
God Himself was with them,
affirmed them and strengthened them.

Just as the Master of Martyrs,
that herald of God,
would cry out:
“هل من ذابٍ یذبّ عن حُرم الله؟”

He was calling all humanity to aid God’s religion.

“The sanctuary of the Messenger of God” means the foundations of God’s religion.
All of God’s religion was gathered within that sanctuary.

The Master of Martyrs
had brought the whole religion together in one place.

Why did Zaynab al-Kubra (peace be upon her) leave no one outside the sanctuary?
Because the whole “sanctuary” was Karbala.
Karbala is the sanctuary.

Imam Husayn had gathered all the good and righteous in one place.
Beyond the bounds of Karbala, there was no sanctuary.

On the eighth of Dhu al-Hijjah,
when Imam Husayn set out from the pilgrimage for Karbala,
he took the Hajj with him to Karbala.

He took the sanctuary with him to Karbala.
He did not make for Arafat;
rather, he brought Arafat to Karbala.

Muzdalifah, Mina, the Kaaba, the Sacred House of God,
the Quran, the Prophet’s family—all of reality…

📣 “Is there anyone to help?” is the cry of the whole religion

This cry,
is the very cry that declares:
all truth,
all religion,
is gathered here.

⚔️ لبیک یا حسین: the beginning of existence’s most serious test

Whoever failed to answer,
that means… was an idolater.

I believe this:
every particle in the entire universe
heard the call of His Eminence سیدالشهدا
and answered, saying لبیک.

Those same souls who, in the primordial realm,
were in their fathers’ loins and their mothers’ wombs.

They were infants at the breast;
they knew neither the earth
nor time nor place…

yet they answered لبیک.

Where were we?
We were in the primordial realm.

We had answered the summons of God’s Proof then.
And now we are part of a movement
to fulfill that same covenant,
with his noble descendant, His Eminence Mahdi علیه‌السلام.

And this covenant will be fulfilled.

🏴 Mourning means standing ready for the ظهور

The sanctuary means the Prophet’s family.
The sanctuary means holiness.
The sanctuary means the sacred symbols of faith.

Whoever said “لبیک” made it there.

We who mourn are on alert.
Ready for battle, ready for jihad,
ready for martyrdom, ready to lay down our lives for God’s religion.

Ready to defend the sanctuary of the Messenger of God,
ready to defend the Two Weighty Things.

Mourning is no mere claim;
it is proof.
It is a commitment.
It is a noble covenant.

It is the battle for the ظهور.
It is standing ready for the ظهور.

It is going out to welcome God’s Proof.

By God…
when that moment comes,
it will not be delayed by even an instant.

The ظهور will come suddenly.

And then
some will be lost in the sweet sleep of heedlessness,
or writhing in the graveyard of their own sins,
still wallowing there.

And His Eminence…
will receive permission to appear.
And it will all be over.

That severed vein
will sever the thread of separation.

Everyone who was ready
will make it there.

🌍 Mourning: the blood of awakening in the veins of existence

No community
can precede its appointed time,
nor be delayed beyond it.

But the community of “عَجَل,”
the community of “هَجَل,” will come.

We mourn His Eminence سیدالشهدا.

True mourning
has spirit; it has life.
It transforms the universe.

True mourning
breathes into the universe
the spirit of love.

The more widespread the mourning,
the greater the love mothers have for their children.

This mourning holds mysteries…
It transforms the world.

Good, spiritually grounded, pure and fruitful mourning
is mourning joined with understanding.

If understanding is separated from mourning,
then that mourning is truly a “calamity,”
not “mourning.”

Mourning soothes calamity.
Then it makes that calamity fruitful.
It brings its fruits to ripeness.

But without understanding…
calamity becomes an even greater calamity.
Wound is piled upon wound.

Everything in the universe is accompanied by knowledge.
The mourning born of love, too, is accompanied by knowledge.

Without knowledge,
there can be no love.

🧠 Love without knowledge is nothing but noise.

Love is accompanied by knowledge.
Knowledge is accompanied by following.

Without following,
love is counterfeit;
it has no spirit or life.

It is knowledge that sets mourning in motion,
gives it momentum and lets it flow.

Understanding is the prelude to movement;
and movement dwells within understanding,
imbued with meaning.

Without understanding, nothing
has any meaning.

What is the difference between melody and noise?
Melody is accompanied by learning and knowledge.
Noise is devoid of knowledge.

Knowledge stirs the heart and sets it in motion.
It is the secret of arrival.

A special, mysterious bond exists between the knower and the known.
A bond woven together,
like the bond between our limbs and our soul.

If the Shia are leaves on the tree of God’s Proof,
then they are connected to one another;
they are one.

When someone feels pleasure,
every part of them is
affected by it.

When someone drinks pure wine,
every particle of their being is intoxicated.

When someone is a Shia of Husayn,
Husayn’s joys and sorrows
transform and turn them inside out.

How could we be “the earth of that heaven”
and not be affected by it?

🌌 We are the earth beneath the heaven of the unseen realm, whether we wish it or not.

“أَوَ لَمْ یَرَ الَّذِینَ کَفَرُوا أَنَّ السَّمَاوَاتِ وَالْأَرْضَ كَانَتَا رَتْقًا فَفَتَقْنَاهُمَا…”

The address of Allah, Possessor of Majesty and Honour,
is directed to the disbelievers.

The disbelievers should have seen…
the heavens—
not just the one above their heads,
but all seven heavens.

And the earth: its past,
its present, and its future.

I am not concerned with what the believers should have seen…

They should have witnessed the highest unseen realm.

But the disbelievers?
They do not see.

And I, who claim to believe, do not see either!

So…
Which branch of faith am I connected to, then?!

“وَالسَّمَاءَ بَنَیْنَاهَا بِأَیْدٍ وَإِنَّا لَمُوسِعُونَ…”

We built the heaven with power,
with our hands,
and We are continually expanding it.

This is the outward heaven.

But how does the inward heaven expand?
I have no idea…

We are the earth beneath that heaven of the unseen realm,
whether we wish it or not.
The warp and weft of our being are bound up with it.

We, too, should have been expanding.

The love and compassion of Husayn
make the world fruitful.
They enlarge it.

With God’s Proof,
the world is, at every moment, undergoing a transcendent experience—
an expansion, an opening out.

Knowledge is only one path to it.

At every moment,
this world of existence
is a classroom.

The passage of time means knowledge in motion.

The eye of knowledge flows through the garden of being.

Now…
Where are the blossoms of our being?

The tree of our being
is forever immersed in this “water of life.”

We are continually connected
to the water of life that is Hussein.

What comes of it?

Where does one who is immersed in the water of life of Hussein
arrive?

Love accompanies knowledge.
And affection is more virtuous than love.

⚖️ Am I truthful in claiming to be Hussein’s follower?

I want to find out:
Am I sincere in being “Hussein’s follower,”
or am I a liar?

What is the sign?
This is a very dangerous thing to say…
I am afraid…
It makes me tremble.

But it is the truth, and it must be said.

Imam al-Sadiq, the truthful one from the family of Muhammad,
swears by God—
by Allah:

Whoever loves this world,
we do not love them.

I do not love anyone who is infatuated with this world.

How can God’s Proof not love us,
while we are in love with him?

And how could he
choose anyone other than us for his allegiance?

In this passage, Imam al-Sadiq, peace be upon him, does not say:
“I do not love him”;
rather, he speaks from a higher station:

Whoever knows our rightful claim and loves us
loves God, the Blessed and Exalted.

📚 Knowledge without following is illusion, not faith

How do we attain that station?
The station of love—the station of following?

How can we safeguard our knowledge?

Without knowledge,
following is impossible.

One whom we do not obey
is not truly known.

When the Quran is not followed,
its greatness does not become manifest.

I claim to recite the Quran…
But if I hold the Quran in my arms
and do not obey it,
I have done wrong—

wrong to the Quran and the Prophet’s family.

I have made my own being
a prison for the Quran and the Prophet’s family;
I have become a veil over them.

I do not let them be known,
because I do not obey them.

And how can someone be known if they are not obeyed?

Obedience accompanies knowledge,
and knowledge accompanies obedience.

The two strengthen one another.

Obedience is the very essence of knowledge,
and knowledge the very essence of obedience.

Their breathing in and out
gives life to servitude to God.

🌞 Taking stock of faith: measuring obedience to God’s appointed guide

Imam Hussein, peace be upon him,
explained what it means to know God.

To know God means to know the Imam of one’s time—
that is, for each person to know the Imam
whom they are obliged to obey.

So let us take stock:
How much do we follow?

That is how much we truly know.

To the extent that we know,
we must follow God’s Proof.

If we do not,
we are false and deceitful.

Our Master says:

“لا رأیَ لِمن لا یُطاع”
One who is not obeyed
has no say, no vision.

The knowledge of the beginning and the end
is gathered in the soul of our Master, Amir al-Mu’minin Ali, peace be upon him.
He is the sun of knowledge.

When he is not obeyed,
all are blind.

When he is obeyed,
the eye of their souls is illumined.

We have stood in the way of our Master’s insight.
Had his judgment been allowed to prevail,
what wonders he would have wrought in the world of existence.

Knowledge dies;
knowledge departs.

Our Master says:

“سلونی قبل أن تفقدونی”

Let us measure ourselves against the Qur’an and the Ahl al-Bayt.

🌱 Love for Husayn is the beginning of servitude, not its end

We are members of one body.
We are not separate from the Qur’an.
We are within its heart.

We are within the sun.
We dwell in the soul of the Ahl al-Bayt.

We must draw life from the breath of the Ahl al-Bayt.
If we do not,
we are but a dead speck in the soul of the Ahl al-Bayt.

If we follow God’s Proof,
if we love Imam Husayn,
then… where is our servitude?

Why has our service to God stagnated?
Why does the tree of our being bear no fruit?
Why is our flower without fragrance?

Why do we not rise in servitude?
Why do we lack the vitality of worship?

Why…
do we not yearn for the night prayer?
Do we not yearn for martyrdom?

Why does sin not trouble us?

We must
draw a fresh breath,
cast off the dust,
expel the toxins,

and replace them with the oxygen of divine mercy.
Like our Master Husayn,
we must breathe.

If we do not,
we will suffer cardiac arrest.
Or perhaps we already have, without knowing it.

Perhaps I, a mourner,
wound Husayn’s soul
and do not know it.

Shimr is gone,
but I, who claim devotion, am still here.

I must bring myself back to life:
in knowledge and in heart,
reviving the wisdom of my Husayni heart.

The heartbeat of love for Husayn is not the end;
it is the beginning.

That beat marks the start of a revolution,
the beginning of transformation.

📖 Reading the Ahl al-Bayt: a conscious adoption

We must be reciters of the Qur’an,
reciters of the Ahl al-Bayt,

reciters of the Qur’an’s truth
and the truth of the Ahl al-Bayt.

We must read the Ahl al-Bayt
as we read our own children.

We look at our children,
and love for them wells up from our souls;
we are ready to give our lives for them.

We understand every feeling they have.

But the Ahl al-Bayt
cannot be compared with any member of the body,
or with any beloved
in this world.

More a father than a father,
more a mother than a mother,
dearer than anyone we love.

Closer than any part of ourselves.

We…
have not yet trained our eyes as we should
to see the Prophet’s Household.

We have understood no part of our own bodies
as we understand the Prophet’s Household.

And because we have not felt this,
we have not sought them out.
And because we have not sought them out,
we have not become one with them.

🕋 When will I become a pilgrim to God’s Kaaba?

Where does our difficulty lie?
Isn’t the Kaaba a means of drawing near to God?

So…
when will I become a “pilgrim” to this Kaaba of God?

🔠 When will I arrange the letters of love in the right order?

When will I arrange the letters of divine love
properly, one after another?

We must come to know
God’s Kaaba and the gateways to God.

We must make the pilgrimage to every Kaaba of God
for our Hajj to reach its fullness.

Each of God’s Kaabas
is a school,
a training ground,
a place where we are equipped for servitude.

We must pass through
all these lessons well.

Whether we wish it
or not,
we will come to meet God.

But…
what matters is the “quality” of that meeting.

God’s proofs
are His adornments for the encounter—
a meeting in perfect beauty
with the Beloved, the First and the Last.

The Kaabas of love and devotion
are the agents of God’s love.

Those who have experienced true love,
or something beyond love,
have made it their own…

And what of us?
Without pain or effort,
we seek to benefit from their experience.