The Unity of Love: Martyrdom and Attaining the Meeting with God

🔘 The Second of Muharram
📆 Date: 1403/04/18 – 2 Muharram 1445
📌 Meshkat-e Noor session
👤 Lecture by Master Ali Saei

🗒 Some points raised during the session:
📌 Please note that the hadith cited in this text are paraphrased. For the complete hadith, please refer to the lecture.
🌼 Peace be upon the sovereign of love, the ruler of martyrdom, the adornment of the heavens and the earth, the adornment of the martyrs and of martyrdom: both the Master of Martyrs and the adornment of the martyrs and martyrdom.
🌼 His name is the adornment of all things; he is the very source of every beauty.
🌼 Why does the name Husayn make a person fall in love with martyrdom and yearn for it? What beauty has Husayn bestowed on martyrdom? He has given martyrdom new life.
🌼 Husayn showed that martyrdom is a path of growth. He showed that martyrdom is itself a means: though it is also a destination, it is the means of all means on the journey toward the Lote Tree of the Utmost Boundary.
🌼 The call, “Is there anyone to help me?”, rings out from the Imam’s lips at every moment. The field of love lies open, calling all the worlds to pass through its gate.
🌼 From martyr to martyr, from God to God: انا لله و انا الیه راجعون
🌼 Husayn has made martyrdom itself a martyr; he has opened a new road in the field of servitude to God.
🌼 Truly, Husayn has left martyrdom in awe of him. Martyrdom was enamoured of Husayn and takes pride in him.
🌼 God, who is Himself the Witness and all-encompassing, seeks martyrdom; the martyr yearns for the all-encompassing Witness and attains the meeting with God.
🌼 To fly toward the meeting with God and reach His embrace: from the martyr who is from God to God, the Witness.
🌼 The martyr is himself a sign, a sublime manifestation of God.
🌼 To seek martyrdom is to wish, through one’s martyrdom, to become His Name—to become, all at once, the Name of God. The Name of God is living and has no bounds or limits. The martyr, who is the Name of God, is alive and ever in motion; it is by this very Name that we must call upon Him.
🌼 Among the marvels of the martyr are the martyr’s uniqueness and the uniqueness of love. Love is one because it comes solely from the Beloved. Whoever receives that love in their heart becomes a lover. (The lover is like a lamp; its light is that love which has reached it from the Beloved.) To become a lamp is to become a lover.
🌼 No one shares in the love of God. This love is not mutual; it has only one direction. All love comes from the Beloved. The lover is nothing other than the Beloved’s own love.
🌼 Husayn is the command centre of love.
🌼 Have we reached the vision of love, or have we grasped only its shadow?
🌼 Love is God’s pure will.
🌼 Love is one of the flavours of divine knowledge.
🌼 Knowledge is more delectable than love.
🌼 Serenity is higher than pleasure; pleasure fades before serenity. Freedom from every bond (every attachment to other than God) is higher still. Entrusting all things to God goes beyond freedom—handing back to Him everything He has given.
🌼 There is something beyond love, too. Love is a means; beyond love is the Beloved Himself. Love is a tool, a rung on the ladder that leads to what lies beyond it.
🌼 The love of God burns away every tale of love. Let us discover the sources of the love of God.
🌼 If, through Husayn, I attain the meeting with God, then I have truly understood Husayn.
🌼 Visiting Husayn must lead to the visitation of God. Karbala is the appointed meeting place with God; Husayn is the way to God.
🌼 Fortunate is the one whose feelings and state of mind do not depend on other people’s opinions. In the oneness of God, I am captive to no one.
🌼 The sinner is his own lowest self.
🌼 (Hadith) It is not the case that we can save someone from the Fire of Hell. There is no kinship between God and anyone; no one will have an excuse. No one draws near to God except through obedience to Him. (That is, anyone who has refused to obey God but hopes for our intercession is only deceiving themselves.) Whoever among you obeys us will benefit from our guardianship; whoever among you disobeys God will gain no benefit from our guardianship. Then he repeated twice: “Woe to you—do not deceive yourselves.”
🌼 A name should lead us to the one it names. Husayn is truly the sacred name of the martyr, and it must lead us to the meeting with God.