Oaths: Satan’s Most Effective Weapon

🌼🔆🌼The Devil’s Most Delectable Feast🌼🔆🌼

🌹🔅☘️ بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ ☘️🔅🌹

🔅🌹 “The Delusion of Eternity”  “A Philosophy Grounded in Innate Reason”  “The Honeybee’s Reason: Knowledge” “Commentary on Supplication 20 of al-Ṣaḥīfa al-Sajjādiyya”  “Session 241” and more … Summary with addendum       1403.11.18    Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903)  🌹🔅

🔅🌼O God, let my whole being be spent in Your cause. 🌼🔅

🌸🌹☘️وَ عَمِّرْنِي مَا كَانَ عُمُرِي بِذْلَةً فِي طَاعَتِكَ، فَإِذَا كَانَ عُمُرِي مَرْتَعاً لِلشَّيْطَانِ فَاقْبِضْنِي إِلَيْكَ قَبْلَ أَنْ يَسْبِقَ مَقْتُكَ إِلَيَّ، أَوْ يَسْتَحْكِمَ غَضَبُكَ عَلَي‏ ☘️ 🌹 🌸

🌹O God, make me blind to the Devil’s appetite. Whenever I stir his desire and whet his appetite, take me away from his table, lest I become a boon to the thriving market in sin and disobedience.

🌹O God, forbid the Devil my being, my thoughts and deeds, my wealth and possessions.

🔅🌼The Devil’s Oath of Eternity 🌼🔅

🌹Eternity is a prize no one is willing to relinquish. The Devil’s false promise of eternity is a strategy for leading those who seek it forever astray—to nothingness, futility and ruin.

🌹The Devil fattens and emboldens his devotee so he can exploit him all the more for his vile ends.

🌹When the Devil promises eternity, the disgrace of that promise is set in the record.

🌹Take no counsel or admonition from the cowardly, the greedy, the covetous, the foolish, the liar or the enemy.

🌹One of the Devil’s ways of feeding himself is through false oaths.

🌹When an oath is wielded as a weapon and a deception, there is certainly a greater aim at work—and great ruin and loss lie ahead.

🌹Why did Adam not reflect on why the Devil was so insistent that he eat from the forbidden tree?!

🌹Why did he not ask God Himself, the Truthful One, about the tree?!

🌹Suggestion, provocation, embellishment, incitement, oath-taking, beguiling promises, temptation and repetition are among the Devil’s chief tools for carrying out a great deception.

🔅🌼The Devil’s Sucking Trunks🌼🔅

🌹A mosquito sinks seven needles in at once, each with its own particular function. The Devil has not just one sting, but seven infernal stings; he has thousands of deadly, varied portions, sweet in appearance.

🌹By implanting a false sense of eternity, the Devil tames the human being.

🌻🔆Al-Aʿrāf: 20   فَوَسْوَسَ لَهُمَا الشَّيْطانُ لِيُبْدِيَ لَهُما ما وُورِيَ عَنْهُما مِنْ سَوْآتِهِما وَ قالَ ما نَهاكُما رَبُّكُما عَنْ هذِهِ الشَّجَرَةِ إِلاَّ أَنْ تَكُونا مَلَكَيْنِ أَوْ تَكُونا مِنَ الْخالِدينَ

🔆Then Satan whispered to them, to make manifest to them what was hidden from them of their nakedness. He said, “Your Lord has only forbidden you this tree lest you become angels, or become immortals!”

🌻🔆Ṭā Hā: 120   فَوَسْوَسَ إِلَيْهِ الشَّيْطانُ قالَ يا آدَمُ هَلْ أَدُلُّكَ عَلى‏ شَجَرَةِ الْخُلْدِ وَ مُلْكٍ لا يَبْلى‏

🔆But Satan whispered to him, saying, “O Adam, shall I guide you to the tree of immortality and a kingdom that never decays?”

🌹The race toward the false Tree of Eternity is ever under way among those who seek worldly things; like flies, they all swarm toward forbidden trees, driven by the craving for a counterfeit immortality.

🌹Making this world seem eternal goes hand in hand with making what is low seem lofty—and, at the same time, making what is lofty seem low.

🌹Take care of yourselves. Do not be heedless of the lower self or the Devil; he is a formidable foe—he has laid many an elephant low.

🌹Do not let yourselves become raw materials for the Devil’s industries, mines and food supply.

🔅🌼The Delusion of Eternity 🌼🔅

🌹The stronger, taller and more ornate a person’s buildings become, the more intensely they foster a false sense of immortality.

🌹 Why are some people never satisfied with accumulating wealth?!

🌹Behind Satanic courtesies and gatherings lie great harms.

🌹Behind Satan’s smiles lie bitter, prolonged weeping.

🌻🔆الشعراء : 128   أَ تَبْنُونَ بِكُلِّ ريعٍ آيَةً تَعْبَثُونَ

🔆Do you build, out of vanity, a monument on every high place?

🌻🔆الشعراء : 129   وَ تَتَّخِذُونَ مَصانِعَ لَعَلَّكُمْ تَخْلُدُونَ

🔆And build palaces (and beautiful, sturdy fortresses), hoping to live forever in this world?

🌹The contest grows harder still: a race after the mirage of false immortality.

🔅🌼Satan’s Most Delicious Food🌼🔅

🌹The richest morsel, the most delicious meal, the strongest vitamin, the most invigorating food of Satan is associating partners with God.

🔅🌼Whoever seeks a substitute for God will abide forever in the Fire🌼🔅

🌹Seeking a substitute in matters of divine oneness leads to eternal abiding in Hell and deprives one of the forgiveness of the Most Merciful of the merciful.

🌹Do not set limits on God. Do not confine Him within any boundary—temporal, spatial, existential, essential, nominal, attributive, or one of greatness—or even within a boundary beyond all these.

🌻🔆 إِنَّ رَبِّي لَطِيفُ اللَّطَافَةِ  لَا يُوصَفُ بِاللُّطْفِ عَظِيمُ‏ الْعَظَمَةِ لَا يُوصَفُ بِالْعِظَمِ كَبِيرُ الْكِبْرِيَاءِ لَا يُوصَفُ بِالْكِبَرِ جَلِيلُ الْجَلَالَةِ لَا يُوصَفُ بِالغِلَظ[1]

🔆Indeed, my Lord is subtle in His subtlety, yet cannot be described as subtle; He is great in His greatness, yet cannot be described as great; He is mighty in His majesty, yet cannot be described as mighty; He is exalted in His glory, yet cannot be described as imposing.

🌹It is He who has made subtlety subtle, greatness great, the mighty mighty, and glory glorious. Surely, God transcends His acts and His will.

🌹We should not take existence to be the boundary of what comes first and last; what lies before existence and what comes after it are hidden from us.

🌹Indeed, if there is no existence before existence, then what is there? The answer is that “whatness” belongs entirely to the realm of existence—so what is this that has no “whatness”? And what lies beyond what comes after?…

🌹Existence exists within the realm of existence.

🔅🌼Will is will by virtue of His will beyond will🌼🔅

🌹Existence exists by virtue of His existence beyond existence.

🌹Just as time was not created within time, nor place within place, existence did not come to exist within existence.

🔅🌼The intellect is the honeybee of knowledge🌼🔅

🌹Philosophy founded on anything other than the innate intellect leads to associating partners with God—the most delicious Satanic fare, indeed a Satanic nuclear bomb.

🌹By “intellect” I mean the innate intellect, not just any kind of reason. Even pure love is among its offspring; it bears seventy-five noble qualities of virtuous character.

🌹The honey of knowledge can be gathered only from the hive of knowledge by the honeybee of knowledge. The intellect is that honeybee: a fly cannot make the honey of knowledge from the nectar of knowledge; it contaminates and corrupts it, producing injustice and darkness from knowledge.

🌹To express the point with an even fuller analogy: “The intellect is the queen of the hive of knowledge, and the noble qualities of character are its honeybees.”

🔅🌼Philosophy founded on the innate intellect🌼🔅

🌹If we understand philosophy as the love of wisdom, a rational, demonstrative method and a means of formulating universal principles and grappling with the mysteries of existence, it can be endorsed only when founded on the innate intellect—not on just any faculty of understanding.

🌹A philosophy not grounded in innate reason will produce nothing but intellectual rubbish.

🌹Only a philosophy grounded in innate reason can yield light, illumination and knowledge; a philosophy grounded in non-innate perception will yield darkness, gloom and ignorance.

🔅🌼 Equip yourselves with all the virtues 🌼🔅

🌹How does a cockroach take pleasure in its own love? The answer is that it has fallen to the lowest of the low, and its appetite, desire and affection have fallen accordingly. Its thoughts and actions, and its pleasure and beauty, are likewise base.

🌹Satan grows fat on the food of vices and dies of hunger and thirst when faced with virtues.

🌹Equip yourself with every moral virtue. Possessing only some of them may perhaps do more harm, for it can be deceptive and become a veil concealing one’s vices.

🌹The geography of ethics is vast. We must not reduce it to one or a few qualities and then use those as the measure of people’s worth.

🌹In His mercy, the Almighty Lord laid out the path of innate reason alone to make the journey of servitude easier, so that we would not be left hesitating over our choices or making errors of discernment. Whoever is equipped with innate reason will possess every moral virtue.

🌹Moral standing must be assessed across the whole field of ethics: let us list the moral qualities and determine an overall ethical average. To disregard particular moral qualities is sheer immorality.

🌹Some people excel in only a few moral qualities.

🌹A believer may be weak in just one moral quality; but Satan magnifies and multiplies that weakness, while concealing the qualities in which the believer excels, so that they go unseen and the believer is viewed with disdain.

🌹An unbeliever may excel in just one moral quality, but Satan highlights, amplifies and publicizes it, making that person beloved.

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

🔅🌼 A student’s perspective on the discussion, “Satan’s Most Delicious Food” 🌼🔅

🌻🔆Oaths: Satan’s Effective Weapon🔆🌻

🌼🔆🌼Satan’s Most Delicious Food🌼🔆🌼

🔹Weekly sessions on the commentary and interpretation of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya (Supplication 20)

📅 Date: 1403/11/18 – 7 Sha‘ban 1446

✨ Session: Meshkat-e Noor

🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei

🎥 Watch the full lecture at the link below:

📝 Some of the topics covered in the session:

### 🕯 Prayer and supplication to God

My God, grant me a life that I may spend all of it in obedience to You. If I turn away from Your obedience, O God, take my soul. O God, I cannot bear Your anger and wrath. O God, may my life add to the beauty of this creation, not to its fire. Be my helper; be my protector. O God, close every path of Satan and the self to me. Blind, deafen and silence the self and Satan toward me, so they cannot see me or hear me, or speak to me or summon me. Make me so steadfast on the road of Your oneness that I hear no call but Yours, perceive no one but You, know none but You, and hasten nowhere but toward You.

### 👹 Satan and his temptations

Indeed, Satan milks people in many different ways, drawing on the harvest of their lives. He fattens up the sinner himself, wanting people to grow fat through sin. At times, he milks them dry to extract the greatest possible benefit, turning them toward idolatry and disbelief, and even against the very person for whose sake he was cast out from God’s presence—so that he can prove his oath.

### 🐍 Satan and his tools of deception

We must be on our guard: Satan has many proboscises. A mosquito does not have seven proboscises, but seventy—or even more. When it bites, it inserts seven needles into the skin, each with its own purpose. Some of these needles act as levers. Others widen a path through the human skin. Another works like a sensor, locating a blood-rich vein. Yet another injects a substance to numb the area, while a different needle sucks the blood. When Satan attacks a person, he drives all his needles into that person’s very being. Each has its own purpose: they drain away faith and religion, leaving the person hollowed out, bereft of truth. Let us beware of Satan and his needles. Let us be alert to every one of his deceptions. One of them is swearing a false oath.

### ⚔️ Satan and the Weapon of Deception

When Satan wants to undermine a believer’s steadfastness, he reaches for this weapon. With an oath, he enchants and subdues a person, then leads them into trouble. One of his oaths promises a person eternal life. He plants the idea of immortality in their mind—so earnestly, and with such solemn oaths, that they accept his words and suggestions blindly and bring about their own ruin. Yes, Satan fattens up his followers, encourages and emboldens them, and makes them utterly brazen in committing sin.

### ⚖️ Satan and His Many-Coloured Weapons

Let us beware of Satan and his many-coloured weapons, all of them aimed at subduing human hearts. One of these effective weapons is his oath. When an oath is sworn, a person should be wary. Whenever we hear someone swear an oath, we should be on our guard: a great deception lies behind it. Behind that oath, behind its sacred appearance, lies immense harm. Behind it is some grand purpose that the one swearing it hopes to achieve. If the person swearing the oath is a liar, the person who believes them must be very foolish indeed. A foolish person accepts the word of a liar. In his great deception, Satan swears that a person will live forever.

### 🍏 Satan’s Temptation in the Story of Adam and Eve

Satan tempted Adam and Eve so that their covering would be stripped away and what had been concealed would be exposed. “Your Lord forbade you this tree only lest you become angels or live forever.” Satan tempts them, claiming that God forbade the tree because He did not want Adam and Eve to become angels, or to live eternally in Paradise. Did Adam not reflect? Did he not reason that there was none more compassionate or caring than God?

### 🤔 Adam and Eve’s Inattention

Did Adam and Eve not consider whether God wished them harm? Why did they not reflect? Why did they let their guard down? Surely, they were heedless. Was Satan God’s spokesman, that Adam and Eve went astray? Did Adam not wonder why that being, Iblis, was so insistent that he and Eve approach the tree? Did he not consider what the oath-taker stood to gain? Did Adam and Eve not believe in their truthful Lord? Why did they not heed His prohibition?

### 💀 Satanic Sorcery and Its Deceptions

When suggestion, provocation and temptation are stirred together with the salt of desire, Satan’s mighty sorcery reveals itself. It casts a person into heedlessness, just as it did Adam. Adam was not meant to listen to Satan’s words and be tempted. Why had he not shut his ears to Satan? Why had he not kept God’s words alive in his heart? Why did Adam take the road to immortality from Satan? Did he attain immortality? Yes, he did—but an immortality of disgrace! This stain of shame is recorded on Adam and Eve’s foreheads for all eternity. Were we not meant to seek advice from cowards, the greedy, the grasping, liars and enemies? Why did we listen to him? Why do we lend him our ears and the full attention of our hearts, give him our very lives and everything we have—and accept what he says, even though we know it is a lie?

### 🌿 Satan’s Temptation and the Tree of Immortality

Satan whispered to Adam, saying, “Shall I guide you to the tree of immortality and a kingdom that will never fade?” Shall I lead you to the tree of eternal life and an imperishable dominion? Do these temptations not still reach our ears? We, too, are seized by the longing for immortality. It is as though a person can attain eternal life by turning to sin. The greedy reach for forbidden trees and embrace them, hoping to live forever; but in the end they are disgraced, and that shame remains on their foreheads for all eternity.

### 🔥 Satan’s Deception and False Generosity

Indeed, Satan knows how to tempt people, fatten them up, bring them into his service and increase his capital. He is not content with a small investment; he wants to expand it. That is why he fattens people with his temptations. Let us beware of being taken in by Satan’s seeming generosity. When Satan offers someone sweets, they should be afraid. When he holds out a cup of poison, they should flee. They should be wary when Satan smiles at them, opens wide the cup of his attentions and spreads his sweets upon the table. They should beware of the deliciousness of Satan’s fare; they should fear it and flee. Behind Satan’s smiles lie eternal tears, which reveal themselves in time.

### 🏰 Deceived by the Illusion of Immortality

Satan deceives people so thoroughly that, deep down, they imagine that climbing a few steps means they are moving towards immortality. They are so deluded that when they raise a tower, they think they have built it themselves. They imagine they are moving towards immortality, when in truth they are caught in a trap.

### 🏛 Satan’s Deceptions in Building Palaces

The noble Prophet Hud said to the people of ‘Ad: “Do you set up a marker of vanity and caprice on every high place? Do you erect lofty monuments and occupy yourselves with empty pursuits? Do you build palaces, imagining that you will live in them forever?” Let us take care of ourselves and be mindful of our own state. What great deceptions Satan has laid in wait for people! Until just a few days ago, everyone would have sworn by him; now he has turned away from religion and found the promise of immortality in this very world. They seek immortality amid the glitter of this perishable abode.

### 🌍 Humanity’s heedlessness and the deception of the fleeting world

Why does humanity not awaken from this heedless slumber? The more firmly people build, the higher they build, and the more they embellish their structures, the stronger their sense of immortality grows. This is why those deceived by wealth can never have enough: they imagine that amassing riches is a path to their own immortality. They do not realise that they are only adding to their burden, bending their backs towards the dust and becoming ever more sullied. Making this world appear eternal and making lowliness seem lofty are among Satan’s most effective ways of overcoming people. Satan makes what is low appear high, and what is truly lofty appear low. He presents the Hereafter to people’s eyes as a mirage, while turning the mirage of this world into the water of life—and humanity, forever thirsty, loses itself within that very mirage.

### 🍂 Satan’s food industry and deceptive pleasures

Let us beware of becoming part of Satan’s food industry or his defence industry. Let us not compete in this false byway to immortality. 

### 🍽 Satan’s Most Delicious Fare

Let us beware of turning ourselves into Satan’s most delicious fare. Who is the most nourishing person for Satan? Who is his greatest and most versatile meal? The fattest morsel for Iblis, his most delicious fare, his strongest vitamin and most invigorating medicine—is there anything more savoury or pleasurable to Satan? That is associating partners with God. Nothing is more delicious to Satan than shirk. 

### ⚖️ God’s bounds and the path of philosophies contrary to human nature

Whoever takes the path of shirk gives Satan hope that he will fulfil his oath. We must set no bounds for God: no bounds on His existence, His essence, His name or His attributes. We must know God in His Oneness and Uniqueness, and worship God through God Himself, not through anything other than God. If we seek rational proofs, if we seek philosophy, let us seek the truth within philosophy. Philosophy, that apparently rational path, is a tool for formulating universal principles and solving the riddles of existence. But only a philosophy grounded in innate reason is worthy of approval. A philosophy grounded in non-innate awareness brings ruin upon the human being.

### 💡 Crises of reason and innate philosophy

The standard for unity amid intellectual crises is the crises of innate human nature. If people proceed on that basis, they will discover a common language. But if each follows their own understanding, countless false paths will emerge. Thus, innate crises can offer salvation in resolving the riddles of existence. Apart from this, every argument and every understanding that is not grounded in human nature, but fashioned by the self, will in truth be intellectual refuse added to the world’s rubbish heap—a heap already so full of refuse that humanity will perish within it.

### 🐝 Innate Reason and True Knowledge

Only innate reason can save us. The bee’s reason is knowledge: only reason can gather the honey of knowledge. Non-rational understanding—that is, understanding not rooted in human nature—is like a fly that may flutter from flower to flower and feed on their nectar, but, by God, that nectar will never become honey. It will not only fail to become the beneficial honey of knowledge; ignorance will grow from that very nectar, adding to humanity’s ignorance.

### 🌪 Feeding on Ignorance and Satan

What happens if a person feeds on Satan? If reason that is not rooted in human nature feeds on knowledge, that knowledge will deepen humanity’s darkness. But what catastrophe would follow if humanity fed directly on ignorance? What fate awaits a child nursed by Satan? Whoever confides in Satan and the ego is condemned to an everlasting anguish. That anguish will never let go of them; it will destroy them. 

### 🌫 Avoiding Shirk and Limiting God

Let us take care not to approach shirk. We must not confine God within the space of our thought, reason and vision. Let us not ask at what stage or in what realm God resides. To speak of His essence is to try to limit His infinite essence. We must not set any boundary for God: not a spatial, temporal or existential one. If we take existence to be the first and last boundary, we have imposed a limit on Him. If we associate God with this existence, we have praised Him as subject to that same limitation. 

### ✨ A Reality Beyond Existence

Existence is the product of His will. Beyond existence lies thingness, the product of His volition. Beyond volition lies His knowledge. And beyond knowledge? We do not know. There is no path or alley by which we might find our way there. 

### 🌌 Asking What Came Before Existence

What is there before existence? There is no “existence” before existence. Then what is there? Before existence, there was no “whatness” for us to ask what it was. 

### 🌀 Whatness-less and the Limitless Reality

What is this whatness-less state? There is no “what” there at all for us to ask what it is! Existence, and all that falls within its bounds, must not limit God—not by the boundary of greatness, for He is the greatest of the great, nor by the boundary of subtlety, for He is the subtlest of the subtle.

🌼 Knowing God’s Infinitude

God cannot be described in these terms. We console ourselves; we have permission to speak, lest we fall into the anguish of negation. After every definition, after every act of praise, we must say *Allāhu akbar*. After praising God for His subtlety, we should say: 

“O God, You are the subtlest of the subtle; Your subtlety cannot describe You. You are the One who brought grace to its fullness. O God, I praised You for Your greatness, yet You brought greatness itself to its fullness. You are beyond all these descriptions, greater than them all.” 

🌱 The Greatest of the Great… Though we say You are greater, You are greater still than that greatness. Why, then, am I so helpless? 

The limit of negation is an alley we must pass through. Reality lies beyond it. As I struggled to crawl forward in my knowledge of God, I passed beyond the limits of anthropomorphism and negation. My task is simply to keep striving until I reach the other side of that alley. 

I can find no word, for there is no word by which He can be described. I must bring all these words to an end. When the letters are exhausted, only then will I discover that it is He who brings these descriptions into being. It is then that I understand that I, the one who describes, am in truth His will and His act.

When I reach that point, He, through His successive acts of will, will bring me to myself and draw me out of myself. Then I will attain the understanding I seek: the certainty that He cannot be grasped through knowledge. In that moment, I will see that every beauty and every pleasure was a sign pointing toward Him. To reach the destination, I must pass beyond them all—beyond pleasure, beauty, and outward appearances. 

🍃 Freedom from Constraints

As long as I remain trapped beneath my own feet, I will not arrive. Only through Him can I reach the destination. Once I understand this, the work is done. 

His will transcends every other will. Existence has come into being through His existence beyond existence. I must free myself from all these constraints and escape the Devil’s snare and web. To be caught in them is to have fallen to the lowest depths. Then everything about us will be debased. 

🌸 If nothing tastes sweet to us except the delusions of the lowest realm, we have been ensnared. Just as a beetle delights in filth, a person who takes pleasure in disobeying God is caught in a trap. 

🌿 The Struggle Against Satan

Let us not fatten Satan with our vices. Instead, let us torment him with our noble qualities—starve him of water and food. When we adorn ourselves with virtue, Satan will find no nourishment in our souls, and he will perish. 

If we equip ourselves with every element of good character and become a garden of God, Satan will have no way left to feed on us. He will no longer be able to breathe and will be seized by death. 

Therefore, we must cultivate every moral quality within ourselves and broaden the terrain of our ethical life. 

🍀 Let us assess our moral standing by surveying the full range of ethics. Look over the list of virtues and see where we fall short. Even a few moral qualities in which we score poorly can become veils. We imagine ourselves beautiful, but in truth we are hidden beneath a covering of false beauty. 

🌻 Someone who is good in only a few moral qualities may find that those very qualities become a source of pride and a veil.

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

[1] Al-Kāfī (Islamic edition), vol. 1, p. 138Kulaynī, Islamic Book House, Tehran, fourth edition, 1407 AH.