The Human Being: The Garden of the Heavenly Beings

🌼🔆🌼The Devil’s Taste🌼🔆🌼

🔹 Weekly Sessions on the Commentary and Interpretation of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya (Supplication 20)
📅 Date: 1403/12/02 – 21 Sha‘ban 1446
✨ Session: Meshkat-e Noor
🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei

God’s Vengeful Wrath ⚡️

“Or lest Your wrath against me take hold.” My God, let me never become the devil’s pasture! If I do, God’s مقت will overtake me—that is, His vengeful wrath. When such wrath—that is, God’s مقت—seizes a person, there is no escape from it.

The Intensity of Divine Wrath 🔥

This is a wrath so fierce that it will not relent until it has burned a person to ashes. May no one fall under such divine wrath, for there will be no way to escape it. God’s مقت is His punitive, vengeful wrath, reserved only for those who are His enemies.

Betraying Oneself ⚖️

In other words, enmity emerges from مقت: a wrath visited only upon God’s enemies, from which no one can escape. This human being was once so honoured that the angels were commanded to prostrate before him, while Satan was cast out of God’s presence for refusing to do so. Yet if this human being becomes the devil’s pasture, he becomes the most ignorant traitor to himself. Can such betrayal be justified? Could anyone betray himself so utterly, falling from such a lofty station? Indeed, this is what human beings do: they betray themselves, break their innate nature, and, in doing so, overturn the very constitution of their being.

The Dark Fate of Betraying One’s Innate Nature 🌑

They set the laws of their innate nature ablaze and distort the very structure of their being. Then they become buried beneath layer upon layer of doubt and illusion, captive to the soul’s and Satan’s beguilement. They are seduced by Satan’s adornments, swimming through seas of mirage and drowning in empty desires. Their base minds intoxicate them.

Humanity’s Fall from the Highest Station ⚖️

They become prisoners of their own base minds. A human being who should have become a garden for the angels becomes the devil’s pasture, his grazing ground. The devil grazes there, crawls and swims, breeds and tends to himself. It becomes the devil’s kitchen. Thus, a human being falls from the highest of heights to the lowest of the low. Humanity was meant to nourish the whole celestial realm; the beings of the realm of might were meant to draw sustenance from us. Yet now this very human being has become a delicacy for Satan! So pure a food becomes so vile that it turns into prey for the lowest creature in all existence.

From the Wonder of Creation to Falling into Satan’s Trap 🔥

Human beings have the capacity to nourish all of existence, to become its highest member—or its very soul—and to bring forth wonders beyond measure. Yet now they have become Satan’s food, Satan’s grass! This human being, who should have put the brakes on Satan’s headlong rush, now accelerates him. They should have been a source of pain to Satan, but instead have become his remedy: Satan draws healing from them. This human being, who should have been Satan’s death, now gives life to Satan and breathes life into him. This human being, who should have made Satan weep, has become the cause of his laughter.

This human being has no idea what position they have come to occupy—especially people of the end times, whose lives are marked by such intensity. They are either with reason or with ignorance: either they ascend at the greatest speed, or plunge with astonishing force, sinking past the very depths of the lowest of the low. This human being, who should have made themselves a paradise of God’s good pleasure, has instead become the Hell of their Lord’s wrath. From what rank to what station they have fallen!

Managing Death and Eternal Destiny 🕊

We must manage our death**; not only must we keep Satan hungry so that he takes no provision from us, but **we must become the nourishment of the heavenly beings of the world, fatten them and nurture them. The end of our life, the end of our worldly existence, must be crowned with the highest grade of servitude to God, not that we become losers.

We must admire a death of honour and dignity. Our life must come to its end with honour and nobility. A life that concludes in felicity and a good end, a life that ends in martyrdom and ends in the exalted realms, not that a person turns himself into God’s hell.

The Final Destiny of Man 🌳

One day a person will reap what he has sown. A person is like a growing tree, and at the time of his death, all his fruits will be brought forth. Will the tree of man bear the fruits of Paradise? The fruits of the Garden of Ridwan**? Or will **the wicked tree of man bring forth the fruits of Zaqqum?

Man’s Life: A Source of Survival or Destruction ⚡️

Man, beware lest you become the saliva of Satan! Lest you become the water of Satanic life! The more wicked a person is, the more he becomes a source of life and vitality for Satan. Perhaps if man did not exist, Satan’s life would come to an end. It is man who revives his enemy**, who **gives him artificial respiration, who injects his own blood into the soul of Iblis so that he may endure and multiply the sins of this world and its impurities.

Racing Ahead in the Field of Sin ⚖️

Man, how strange is his place in the strange field of wickedness! In this age of the end times**, this human being *has raced so far ahead in evils that he has put the people of ‘Ad, Thamud and Lot to shame. A combination of all of them, and more besides! In the field of sin against God, he runs with haste*, in the *marketplace of sin he competes*, he outpaces his rivals! If **his sin decreases, he feels defeated and bankrupt! Woe to this man! To his abject state!

This human being who should have opened the gates of eternity and felicity**, who should have *managed his life and death*, who should have **inscribed for himself the most beautiful death! If one does not have the most beautiful death, he has lost his life entirely!

Awaiting the Best of Deaths 🕊

What a beautiful prayer!
O Lord! Make death the best of absent ones for me, the one I long for!
O Lord! Let death be such that I feel its sweetness, that is, the delicious taste of meeting God, so that I await it at every moment!

The Taste of Eternity in the Death of the Believer 🌿

O death, where are you?
O death, where are you, that I may taste you?
For the taste of eternity flows from the heart of you!
Yes! For the believers, death has the taste and flavour of eternity!

O Lord! Make the grave the best of dwellings, the one You populate!
O Lord! Be Yourself the architect of my grave, Yourself make my grave flourish!
Who am I to attend to the building of my grave?
It is You, O Lord! The best of builders of the grave, who transforms it into Your Ridwan!

A Death That Is the Best of Absent Ones 🌟

O Lord! After death, make the grave better for me than both of them!
O Lord! A death that is the best of absent ones, the very one we long for!
And a grave that is the best of dwellings, the very one we populate!

O Lord! Reform me before death takes hold of me!
And O Lord! At the time of death, shower Your mercy upon me!
And forgive me, after my death, after my passing!

Death Is Pure Good ✨

Indeed, death is pure good**—among the *most beautiful and blessed creations of God. God created death and life, and everything He created, He created well. Whatever God created, He made beautiful. Death, too, is one of God’s finest creations*—indeed, **it is pure good. It is blessed for the believer and better even for the unbeliever.

Death or Life? Imam al-Baqir’s (AS) Answer 📖

Imam al-Baqir (AS) was asked: Is death better, or life? What do you say about the unbeliever? Is death better for him, or life?
The Imam replied: Death is better both for the believer and for the unbeliever. He then explained why:

For God says:
“Whatever is with God is better for those who do good.”
And He also says:
“Let not the unbelievers think that the respite We grant them is good for them. No—it is not so! Rather, We grant them respite so that they may increase in sin. This is a form of punishment and retribution—a punishment in the form of life—and for them there will be a humiliating torment.”

Indeed, death is better for the believer**, because it is the *gateway to felicity and to meeting God. And it is better for the unbeliever as well*, because it *prevents his sins from increasing*; for **the longer he lives, the greater his misery and torment will become.

How beautiful, then, is the prayer that a person ask God to take his soul when he has become captive to and pasture for Satan, when he has fallen prey to his own lower self!

A Swift Death Is Better Than a Life of Misery ⚖️

The words of our master, Amir al-Mu’minin (AS):
“A swift death is better than a life accompanied by misery and wretchedness.”

If death suddenly overtakes a person**, then this *death is better than a life spent in misery and sin. No life is worse or uglier than the life of an envious person*; for **envy is a sign of a satanic life.

Envy is the food that delights Satan’s palate**—a food **exceedingly delicious to Iblis!

Four Qualities of Accompanying the Ahl al-Bayt (AS) 🏆

How beautiful are the words of Sayyid al-Shuhada (AS)!
At the outset, he points to four important qualities that believers acquire by accompanying the Ahl al-Bayt (AS):

Whoever accompanies us will never be without four qualities:

1. Firm, well-grounded and steadfast signs that cannot be defeated.
2. Just judgment (whoever stands with us will become a just judge).
3. A beneficial brotherhood that, like honey and sweet syrup, brings benefit to others—not only to one’s own brother, but to the entire universe.
4. Keeping the company of scholars and learned people.

Then he said:
“Death is better than mounting dishonour, and dishonour is better than entering the Fire! By God, both disgrace and the Fire are far from us!”

Sayyid al-Shuhada’s (AS) Lesson on Honourable Death 🕊

The lesson that Sayyid al-Shuhada (AS) teaches us is this:
We must escape disgrace**, we must **be delivered from the Fire!
Death is better than disgrace, and disgrace is better than entering the Fire!

Let us never be deprived of an honourable death!
Let us treasure sacred death!
Let us come to know death with honour!

It is Husayn (AS) who elevates death through honour.
It is Husayn (AS) who ennobled death.

Imam Husayn (AS) gave death a special worth and value.
In Husayn’s presence, death boasts and takes pride in itself!

Indeed, where death becomes more alive than life, what a beautiful death it is!

The message of the Master of Martyrs (AS) is this:
“Death is better for you than a life of humiliation and disgrace!”

The worth of life in the service of God 🍯

A person must be a source of sweetness, a beehive of honey; otherwise, death is better for them than life.
For anyone who has neither generosity nor modesty, death is better than life.
For one who is of no use and brings no benefit to others, death is better than life.

For the shameless, life is a cause of ruin and destruction!
For the shameless, life brings downfall and ever-greater torment.
Death is better than falling away from servitude to God!
When a person is falling, death would be a great gain for them!

The measure of a person’s life ⏳

The end of the year is the time to take stock, and how beautifully this hadith fits the occasion:
“Whoever finds two days of their life equal has been cheated.”
“Whoever’s today is worse than yesterday is accursed!”
“And whoever sees no growth or progress in themselves, but keeps declining, is a loser; they have lost out in their service to God!”
For such a person, death is better than life!

Life: a capital investment in eternity—or in torment? ⚖️

Whoever’s life brings them loss day after day is both cheated and accursed!
If this capital, meant to secure eternity, turns instead into an investment in torment and ruin, it is a loss.

But blessed, continually gaining, immersed in profit, and envied (though not by believers, but by the envious!) is the one whose today is better than yesterday!

A life of service to God, or a fall into satanic ways? 🏆

Blessed and envied is the person whose life, sweet as honey, is devoted to serving God!
Their life will be blessed, dignified and honorable!

But if this God-given life is put in the service of Satan and the ego, it becomes a total loss!
A person’s life should become a beehive of service to God, sweetening the hearts of all creation and delighting every soul!

But if it turns into Satan’s foul hive, it becomes a source of pain and torment in this world!
In that case, Satan himself would have reason to reproach them!

Satan was commanded to prostrate, but disobeyed and was cast out!
Yet now this person has turned themselves into Satan’s foul hive!
What a complete reversal of direction they have set out on!

They should have soared from their finest form and reached its highest heights!
But now they have fallen to the lowest of the low!

From Satan’s pasture, they become Satan’s crossroads, Satan’s city, Satan’s likeness!
From Satan’s path to satanic strategy; from a satanic birthplace to a satanic nursery; from Satan’s kitchen to Satan’s latrine!
They have become Satan’s sewer!

Let a human being not become Satan’s backbone! 🔥

With every passing moment, they make Satan stronger, add to the world’s burden of sin, and become a source of suffering and torment in this world!
They become a paradise for devils!

This person, who should have been Satan’s hell, has now become his strength and muscle!
They should have broken Satan’s back; instead, they have become his backbone!