Ethics Without Religion, Goodness Without a Soul

🌼🔆🌼What Is the Human Being?🌼🔆🌼

🌹🔅☘️ بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ ☘️🔅🌹

🔅🌹 “The Truth of Fitrah”   “The Truth of Ethics”   “Further Reflections on the Religion of Humanity” “Commentary on Supplication 20 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya”   “Session 229” and more … Summary and further reflections        1403.07.19    Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903)  🌹🔅

🔅🌼 An Overview and Map of the Discussion: “Ethics without Religion, Goodness without a Soul”🌼🔅

🔹

📅 Date: 1403/07/19 – 6 Rabi al-Thani 1446

✨ Session: Meshkat-e Noor

📖 Weekly commentary and interpretation of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya (Supplication 20)

🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei

📝 Some points raised in the session:

🌸 If God has blessed us with righteous guidance, it means He has brought our hearts together.

🌿 To receive the full benefit of righteous guidance is to hasten the advent and to benefit fully from the Imam of our Time—that is, to behold the beauty of God’s Proof, the Greatest Remnant of God.

🌼 O God, I ask You to turn my heart toward acceptance of the truth, so that I may kiss the choice You have made and accept Your definition of the way and its destination. This supplication is the same as “اللهم عرفنی نفسک، عرفنی رسولک، عرفنی حجتک”.

🌸 I want to traverse every boundary of servitude to God and, all at once, be immersed in God’s light, immersed in God’s sun.

🍂 May I become a ray of the Sun, the Proof, and God; may I become a speck of dust upon that very righteous guidance, through the path of truth and the intention to grow, so that separation may be impossible for all eternity. May I be joined to the blessed tree like a leaf, growing and flourishing with it, never stopping for a moment. May I give expression to the ardour and rapture of love for God.

🌿 Righteous guidance is the sublime vision of God’s religion and God’s law.

🌾 Any personal interpretation of God’s religion amounts to creating a sect in opposition to it, whether it is expressed in words or otherwise. The jurist relies on clear, decisive principles and interprets ambiguous passages in their light, forbidding himself every kind of personal interpretation.

🍁 Every personal interpretation gives rise to sects. A jurist of reason and fitrah is a jurist who strives in every arena along God’s path.

🌸 A religious jurist is someone who keeps their fitrah alive, for fitrah is the final arbiter. One must seek sincerely, take one’s own self to task, and silence its promptings in order to hear the message of one’s fitrah.

🍃 Anyone actively engaged in religious matters must continually journey through fitrah. Such a person has undoubtedly come to know the true religion. They will not err in recognising the religion and the Messenger of God, and will receive God’s message from within themselves.

🌸 Our fitrah is the clear, resonant voice of God’s word.

🍃 Whoever tries to interpret their religion according to their own thinking will produce as many religions as there are human beings. But God’s friend, through righteous guidance, the true path, and sincere intention, has set only one way before us, so that we will not go astray in choosing our path.

🌷 Whoever has accepted God’s religion, Islam, must have done so after careful inquiry—and that inquiry, too, must be sincere and grounded in fitrah—before claiming to be a true adherent of God’s religion.

🌼 Whoever seeks the truth, the Almighty will lead to it. How does the honeybee recognise flowers? Did it study at a university to distinguish poisonous flowers from non-poisonous ones? Where did it learn the characteristics of every single flower? These are inspirations and divine revelations that God has placed within the honeybee.

🍂 God does not leave His servant alone in the realm of servitude; He shows them the flowers. The address and identifying mark of God’s Proof are within us. If we are like the honeybee of wilayah, we will find the Imam of our Time.

🌿 God’s Proof cares for us. If he cannot see us, he cannot be at ease. Could he bear to be separated from his Shi‘a?

🌻 Let us be like the honeybee of wilayah, so that we do not fall prey to the substitution of one religion for another.

🍁 A person consumed by desire will make laws within this very sphere—laws that draw humanity down toward the animals.

🌸 A human being is truly human only when governed by the laws of humanity, and only the Creator of humanity has the power to determine those laws.

🌾 How can people make laws for themselves when they do not know themselves? Who has ever offered a comprehensive definition of the human being?

🌷 What does it mean to be human? How are we to know ourselves? The definitions people give are no broader than their own minds. How can someone who is still striving to know themselves make laws for themselves?

🌿 The highest definition people offer is that a human being is a rational animal. But what animal do we know that does not speak? There is not a particle that does not glorify God. All fundamental particles—even electrons, which are themselves composed of fundamental particles—speak and call upon God. If, in defining the human being, I reduce humanity to the level of an animal, then I have understood neither the human being nor speech. What is speech?

🌸 They say that a human being is a tool-making animal, or that humanity is simply one kind of being among others: a chemical solution, a physical mechanism, a sort of robot, or an upright animal. They do not know what a human being is, yet they write laws for humanity.

🍃 Did God not say that He created the human being in “the best of forms”? Only the One who created me in the most perfect order can make laws for me. Why do I not know myself? There is one reason: I have forgotten my God. Knowledge and understanding flowed into me from my God; but when I turned my back on Him and forgot Him, I too fell silent.

🌷 Do not be like those who forgot God, so He caused them to forget themselves.

🌿 This forgetfulness has silenced the human being.

🍂 A person’s worth and value lie in what they consider good. The highest vibration they can imagine is the vibration of pleasure; they do not realise that this vibration must ultimately reach stillness. It must rise so high that desire lies beneath its feet. Sensual pleasure is the lowest kind of pleasure, a trial example meant to lead me toward a higher horizon of pleasure. How? Whoever raises their vibration raises their pleasure as well. They reach a point where vibration ceases and they attain “trans-vibration.” Is that the same as “trans-pleasure”?

🌾 Every movement has an end toward which it strives. Weak movement must reach trans-acceleration and overtake time. Then it attains trans-pleasure and sees everything below it.

🍁 Whoever sees the human being as an animal is an animal themselves. With such a way of thinking, they cannot offer a higher definition of humanity; their definitions will remain confined to this same sphere.

🌸 We must look at ourselves in the mirror of our innate nature. Then we will see that we are not a tiny speck; within us lies the greater universe. I must look at myself in the mirror of wilāya, the true “revealer of innate nature.” The Imam says: You are greater than the greater universe; your pain, too, comes from within yourself, yet you do not see. You are that manifest Book through whose letters the inward, the hidden and the secret are made plain.

🍃 God, the Exalted, casts every reality from the screen of this human being into the world. Now, if I abandon righteous guidance and fashion a religion for myself, where will I end up?

🌿 Whoever turns away from reason turns toward ignorance. Whoever flees the forces of reason becomes a companion to the forces of ignorance. The longer their tail grows, the darker, more ignorant and more vile they become. Let us beware of inventing a religion for ourselves. In doing so, we would imprison the greater universe within our animal nature.

🌻 If there is no religion called “humanity,” does that mean the good deeds of such a person are rejected? No—but they are lifeless. They display a shadow of goodness, but have no spirit, and will fade away. By contrast, someone who does good through religious faith—because God has commanded it, and to win the love of the Eternal Beloved—makes every good deed a world unto itself, alive with spirit. The good deeds of someone without faith, however, end with their death. They have set a limit to their goodness, and when that limit is reached, the goodness too disappears. It is like a picture of a flower beside a real flower: it can never equal the flower itself.

🍂 In today’s world, could the shared bond among people not be their humanity? If we take that common bond away from them, are we not drawing them to the brink of animality?

🌷 Let us suppose that someone without religious belief observes every ethical principle. The question is: Is belief in an omnipotent God the final word of humanity, or its first? The first thing a person should attend to is finding the Creator. If someone fails to get this first step right, how can they hope to get the steps that follow right? Surely, if this person investigates God’s religion, they will embrace it.

🌸 Why does this ethical person not accept God as God? Is that not itself unethical?

🌻 People ask, “Isn’t ethics enough?” Is the terrain of ethics made up of just one or two elements, that we should merely observe those and remain unaware of its vast expanse?

🍁 A person without religion accepts only this world, even though a human life extends across the whole of existence—and beyond it.

🌿 Whoever invents a religion for themselves sees it end with their death. They are like someone who tends a garden but never tastes its fruit, who plants a flower but never enjoys its nectar: with their death, everything comes to an end. Yet this world is a path that leads to a destination.

🍃 Ethics is not the destination; it is a means of reaching the highest destination. Who determines the principles and rules of a religion of humanity? How would such a religion be devised? Would all people agree on it? What would become of those who rejected it? Would they be forced to submit to the majority’s verdict? That is precisely what we see happening now.

🌼 Someone who lives ethically without religion cannot expect anything from the Creator, because they do not acknowledge Him. From whom would this person seek a reward? How can someone who denies Paradise expect to dwell there? They will burn with regret: they performed all those deeds, yet refused to acknowledge the One who rewards them.

🍂 They reject the artist but accept the art. I want to reach the artist. These ethics and acts of goodness are paths that lead me to the Unknown at the heart of existence, the One beyond all beauty, from whom beauty comes. So His approval is essential; I long for His smile.

🍃 People say we should practise ethics for its own sake alone. But does ethics have no source, no one to whom it belongs? I show love for the sake of my beloved, to draw closer to them, so that my beloved will be pleased with me.

🌿 Therefore, whoever turns their back on God’s religion is unjust. Justice means placing everything where it belongs.

🌷 Humanity needs God’s knowledge. People ask, “Are all good principles and rules, taken together, worthless?” Is not the first principle to find the light? If the way is not clear, how can anyone travel it? Can anyone find the way without God’s religion?

🌻 Someone who can no longer distinguish sweet from bitter when they catch a cold—what becomes of them if their faculty of understanding changes? Turning away from our innate nature changes that faculty.

🍁 Philosophical thought, if it passes through the realm of our innate nature, will take on a divine hue—provided, of course, that the religion is the original, uncorrupted one.

🌿 First, we must distinguish “reflection” from “disguise.” Reflection has its source in reason; disguise arises from the self and human mischief. Disguise resembles reflection and ensnares a person. If reflection is pursued rightly, it will lead to God’s religion.

🎥 Watch the full talk at the link below:

🔗 Jame Jan website

🌍 jamejan.com

🟠 Jame Jan Eitaa channel

🔗 https://eitaa.com/jamejan

🔅🌼 Inhuman definitions of the human being🌼🔅

🌹How can human beings, who do not know themselves and have failed to offer a complete and accurate account of themselves, presume to make laws for themselves in such ignorance?

🌹When human beings turn away from their truth and innate nature, they become ignorant of themselves. To be ignorant of oneself is to be ignorant of one’s own soul; the lamp of one’s being goes out. When the soul is extinguished, nothing remains but darkness.

🌹If there is no quality beyond animality, the human being becomes a “rational animal.”

🌹A robotic view of the human being reduces us to something lower even than inanimate matter. Some people imagine themselves to be nothing more than a chemical solution and a physical machine.

🌹Other definitions of the human being include “an animal that makes tools,” “a stationary creature standing on two legs,” and “a walking being.”

🌹The human being is God’s servant, endowed with all the faculties found in other creatures, as well as a distinctive intellect and heart. Human beings are those before whom the angels prostrated, and God’s specially appointed servants in the realm of devotion. They are beings who seek perfection and the field in which the greater world is cultivated.

🔅🌼The human being is God’s most excellent system🌼🔅

🌻🔆At-Tin: 4   لَقَدْ خَلَقْنَا الْإِنْسانَ في‏ أَحْسَنِ تَقْويمٍ

🔆Indeed, We created the human being in the best of forms,

🌻🔆At-Tin: 5   ثُمَّ رَدَدْناهُ أَسْفَلَ سافِلينَ

🔆then We reduced him to the lowest of the low,

🔅🌼The human being is a magnificent manifestation of God🌼🔅

🌷🔆دَوَاؤُکَ فِیکَ وَ مَا تَشْعُرُ

وَ دَاؤُکَ مِنْکَ وَ مَا تَنْظُرُ

And you think you are a small body.

وَ فِیکَ انْطَوَی الْعَالَمُ الْاَکْبَرُ

وَ اَنْتَ الْکِتَابُ الْمُبِینُ الَّذِی

بِاَحْرُفِهِ یَظْهَرُ الْمُضْمَر[1]

‌🔆O human being, your remedy lies within you, though you do not know it; your pain, too, comes from within yourself, yet you do not see it.

Do you think you are a small being, when an immense world lies hidden within you?

O human being, you are a lucid book whose letters reveal every hidden thing.

🔅🌼The reason people do not know themselves is that they forget God🌼🔅

🌻🔆Al-Hashr: 19   وَ لا تَكُونُوا كَالَّذينَ نَسُوا اللَّهَ فَأَنْساهُمْ أَنْفُسَهُمْ أُولئِكَ هُمُ الْفاسِقُونَ

🔆Do not be like those who forgot God, so He caused them to forget themselves. They are the rebellious.

🌹It is far more astonishing to forget God than to forget oneself; if a person forgets themselves, that is hardly cause for extraordinary wonder.

🔅🌼Lack of understanding leads people to degradation🌼🔅

🌻🔆Al-A‘raf: 179   وَ لَقَدْ ذَرَأْنا لِجَهَنَّمَ كَثيراً مِنَ الْجِنِّ وَ الْإِنْسِ لَهُمْ قُلُوبٌ لا يَفْقَهُونَ بِها وَ لَهُمْ أَعْيُنٌ لا يُبْصِرُونَ بِها وَ لَهُمْ آذانٌ لا يَسْمَعُونَ بِها أُولئِكَ كَالْأَنْعامِ بَلْ هُمْ أَضَلُّ أُولئِكَ هُمُ الْغافِلُونَ

🔆Indeed, We have created many jinn and human beings for Hell. They have hearts with which they do not understand, eyes with which they do not see, and ears with which they do not hear. They are like cattle—indeed, even more astray. They are the heedless ones.

🌹It is not hard to picture a human being who has fallen into a pit lower than animality. A base person sees everything in animal terms, and has a sense of himself and a way of seeing the world lower than the animal. His pleasures, too, are base, animal pleasures.

🌹Human beings behold their own faces in the mirror of their understanding and define themselves accordingly.

🌷🔆And Imam Ali, peace be upon him, said: قِيمَةُ كُلِّ امْرِئٍ مَا يُحْسِنُه‏[2]

🔆A person’s worth is measured by what they consider good.

🌹A desire-centred view of the human being cannot offer a definition that transcends mere humanity.

🔅🌼Innate insight is the path of the true religion🌼🔅

🌹The fulfillment of this prayer, «وَ مَتِّعْنِي بِهُدًى صَالِحٍ لَا أَسْتَبْدِلُ بِهِ، وَ طَرِيقَةِ حَقٍّ لَا أَزِيغُ عَنْهَا، وَ نِيَّةِ رُشْدٍ لَا أَشُكُّ فِيهَا», means “hearts united, the advent hastened, and the vision of the Beauty of the Real.”

🌹Accepting God’s choice and understanding how God defines religion is true, everlasting felicity. This is the very essence of the prayer «اللهم عرفنی نفسک … »

🌹A personal interpretation of religion breeds sectarianism within God’s religion. Ambiguous religious passages must be resolved in light of the clear ones; otherwise, relying on ambiguous texts, subjective notions, personal and emotional interpretations of religion—and sometimes self-serving ones—will give rise to doubts and the emergence of different sects.

🌹Religious understanding must be pursued through sound, rational, innate and diligent reflection and inference. The religious jurist works within the bounds of knowledge, reason and innate disposition.

🌹Innate disposition is a trustworthy witness; its testimony is decisive, and comes to light through sincere seeking.

🌹Journeying by the light of innate disposition is essential to attaining truth and discerning the true religion, Messenger and guardian.

🌹Anyone who seeks to impose a personal outlook on religion will produce as many versions of religion as there are such ideas—and these will differ from the true religion.

🌹God’s religion is the divine constitution for guidance and felicity.

🔅🌼Those who lack reason are unaware of their own ignorance.🌼🔅

🌹If the forces of reason are not firmly established in a person’s heart, that person will be drawn toward their opposite pole: ignorance. Without doubt, whoever flees the light will be caught in darkness; worse still, the ignorant will imagine themselves wise.

🌹Those who have no reason will flee from reason itself.

🔅🌼A flower’s shadow is not a flower.🌼🔅

🌹Question: If there is no such thing as a human-made religion, does that mean every good deed outside the sphere of religion is rejected?

🌹The difference between a good deed grounded in faith and one done without faith or religious belief is like the difference between something lifeless and something living. A flower, with all its “purity, delicacy, beauty, fragrance and feeling,” is not the same as a picture of that flower. The picture may be beautiful, but it can never take the place of the flower. A human being is not the same as a statue of that person.

🔅🌼What human beings have in common🌼🔅

🌹Question: Isn’t morality enough? Why do we need religion?

🌹Is the domain of morality confined to one or a few simple choices?

🌹If one of our limbs were perfect, would we have no need of the others?

🌹Why does this moral person refuse to acknowledge God as God?

🌹The most immoral and inhumane act is to forget God and His religion.

🌹Morality is not the destination; it is a means of reaching it.

🔅🌼Isn’t our shared humanity what all people have in common?🌼🔅

🌹Question: In today’s world, could our shared humanity not be what people have in common? If we take this away from people, would we not be pushing them toward animality?

🌹Even if we make the impossible assumption that someone without religious belief observes all moral and humanitarian principles, a question remains: Is belief in an all-powerful, exalted God outside the universally accepted principles of humanity? Is acknowledging and accepting the truth not one of those principles? If we hold fast to the law of our humanity, we will embrace God’s religion. Those who speak of humanity yet flee from God’s religion are, in reality, fleeing from the very principles of humanity they profess!

🔅🌼A person without religion is defined by what they lack.🌼🔅

🌹A person without religion settles for the short span of earthly life, though their life extends as far as the universe—and beyond it, into eternity. The irreligious person, and even the “self-religious” person, regards this world as the beginning and end of existence.

🌹If we disregard the Real, one undeniable truth remains: all a person’s goodness ends with their death. They are like someone who tends a garden, only for it to vanish once it has reached its full bloom. Yet all morality and religious rulings are means to a higher end: they are for arriving, not for stopping along the way.

🔅🌼Consensus in the religion of humanity is impossible🌼🔅

🌹Who formulates the principles and rules of the religion of humanity, and how will it ever reach the consensus of all human beings?

 If a segment of human society does not accept it, what then?

 Will the religion of humanity be put to a vote, and will majority vote be the criterion of its acceptability?

 Will the majority always produce righteous thought?

🔅🌼The irreligious human being is wretched🌼🔅

🌹A person with non-religious ethics can have no expectation whatsoever from their Creator; they cannot even chart a future for themselves, for Paradise is the reward of those who believe in the divinity of God. One who does not accept the Creator of Paradise will have no share in it, even if they are the most ethical and virtuous of people.

🔅🌼Ethics is the road to the All-Knowing Creator🌼🔅

🌹For someone to say that they act ethically purely for the sake of ethics itself, and not out of obedience to the command and ordinance of the Master—such ill-conduct is plain to see! It is like one who accepts the fruit of a tree without the tree itself; yet the parable of ethics is weightier still.

Is not love for the sake of the beloved? Love is the means of reaching the beloved; it is the path and the signpost toward the beloved.

🌹One who says, “I act ethically purely for the sake of ethics itself and accept no satisfaction or command,” does he not know that creation (khalq) and character (khuluq) are His creation? Is ethics not the art of the All-Knowing Creator? How can one accept the art without the Artist? Does the Creator’s satisfaction diminish ethics? By no certainty—it makes them more vivid and more soulful. For ethics is ethics through Him, and the One who awakens the moral sense is God Himself. Performing deeds for His satisfaction is that very sweet smile directed at the Lawgiver of ethics, which lends grace and sweetness to the worth of the ethical act—not that it strips away its purity.

🔅🌼Whoever turns their back on God’s religion is an oppressor🌼🔅

🌹Justice is precisely placing each thing in its proper position, and no one but God knows how to determine the positions of ethics and human rulings.

🌹Human beings are unaware even of their own bodies, let alone of their higher dimensions; humans must sit in their proper place.

🔅🌼Humanity stands in need of God’s knowledge🌼🔅

🌹Question: Are good rules and principles entirely outside the sphere of validity?

🌹Often a person errs in distinguishing good from bad, taking good for bad and bad for good. In truth, if a human being could formulate good rules and principles, they would fall within the sphere of divine religion, not outside it. Is it possible that a human being should recognize the good and legislate it, while its Creator has forgotten it?

🌹The first human principle and rule is to find the path and the light, which is what is called religion.

🔅🌼If philosophy submits to innate nature, it is pure intellect🌼🔅

🌹Question: Has everyone who has moved within the sphere of philosophical thought been entirely deprived of the light of Muhammad and the family of Muhammad?

🌹If philosophical thoughts do not deviate from the sphere of innate nature, they will take on a divine colour and fragrance. Innate philosophical thoughts will undoubtedly lead to wholehearted acceptance of divine religion—though what is meant by religion is the essence of religion, free of distortion.

🔅🌼Denial is not thought🌼🔅

🌹Question: Has everyone who has been engaged in thinking always sought to fabricate substitutes? Then why all this invitation to thought on the part of religion?

🌹Rational thinking always has its path toward light and illumination; the foundation of religion rests on rational thought. What must be fled is pseudo-thought masquerading as thought, which in reality, instead of thinking, engages in denial. Denial is precisely the dark, satanic intelligence system.

🌼Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903)🌼

[1] *The Dīwān of the Commander of the Faithful* (peace be upon him), p. 175 Miʿbadi, Ḥusayn ibn Muʿīn al-Dīn / Zamānī, Dār Nidāʾ al-Islām Publishing, Qom, first edition, 1411 AH.

[2] *Nahj al-Balāghah* (Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ edition), p. 482 Sharīf al-Raḍī, Hijrat, Qom, first edition, 1414 AH.