The Oath: Satan’s Potent Weapon

🌼🔆🌼The Devil’s Most Delicious Food🌼🔆🌼

🔹Weekly Sessions on the Explanation and Interpretation of the Sahifa Sajjadiya (Supplication Twenty)
📅 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 discussed in the session:

🕯 Prayer and Supplication to God

O God, grant me a lifespan that I may devote every moment of it to obeying You. If I turn away from Your obedience, O God, then take my soul. O God, I cannot bear Your anger and wrath. O God, my life must add to the beauty of this creation, not add fuel to its fire. Be my helper; be my protector. O God, close every path of Satan and the self before me. Blind Satan and the self to me, deafen them to me, and silence them before me, so that they may not see me, hear me, speak to me, or invite me. Make me so steadfast upon the road of Your oneness that I hear no melody but Yours, perceive no one but You, know none but You, and hasten toward none but You.

👹 Satan and His Temptations

Indeed, Satan drains human beings in various ways. He seeks to profit from the harvest of a person’s being. Satan himself fattens the sinful person and wants human beings to grow fat on sin. At times, he milks such a person dry so that he can derive the greatest possible benefit from him—turning him toward polytheism and disbelief, and also using him against the very person for whose sake he was cast away from God’s presence, in order to prove that his oath was true.

🐍 Satan and His Instruments of Deception

We must beware: Satan has many different proboscises. A mosquito does not have merely seven proboscises; it has seventy, and even more. When a mosquito bites, it inserts seven needles into its victim. Each has a particular function. Some of these needles serve as levers. Certain needles widen the passage through the human skin. Another needle, like a sensor, locates a blood vessel rich in blood. Yet another injects substances that numb the area, while another draws out the blood. When Satan attacks a human being, he drives all his needles into that person. Each has its own function: they suck away faith and religion and empty the person of truth. Let us beware of Satan and his needles. Let us beware of every one of his deceptions. One of his deceptions is a false oath.

⚔️ Satan and the Weapon of Deception

When Satan wants to destroy a believer’s steadfastness, he makes use of this weapon. Through an oath, he charms a person, makes him submissive, and leads him into trouble. One of his oaths is his promise of immortality to human beings: the suggestion of immortality! He implants this suggestion with such gravity and such an oath that the person accepts his words and insinuations blindly and destroys himself. Indeed, Satan fattens his devotee, encourages him, emboldens him, and drives him to the utmost audacity in committing sin.

⚖️ Satan and His Multicoloured Weapons

Let us beware of Satan and his multicoloured weapons, all of which are intended to tame the hearts of human beings. One of these effective weapons is Satan’s oath. When an oath enters the picture, a person should be afraid. Whenever someone hears an oath, he must beware, for a great deception lies hidden behind it. Behind that oath, behind that pious appearance, lies tremendous harm. Behind that oath stands a great objective which the person swearing it seeks to achieve. If the person taking the oath is a liar, the person who accepts his words must be profoundly foolish to believe him. The ignorant accept the words of liars. Satan makes an oath of immortality to human beings as part of that great deception.

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

Satan tempted the two of them, Adam and Eve, so that all their coverings would be exposed, and what they had covered and kept hidden would become manifest to them. Your Lord did not forbid you from this tree except that you might become angels or join the immortals. Satan tempts by claiming that the reason for God’s prohibition was that He did not want Adam and Eve to become angels; as though He did not want them to become immortal and remain forever in Paradise. Did Adam not think? Did he not reason? That no one could be kinder or more compassionate than God?

🤔 Adam and Eve’s heedlessness

Did Adam and Eve not consider whether God might wish them harm? Why did they not reflect? Why did they become heedless? There is no doubt that they did. Was Satan God’s spokesman, that Adam and Eve fell into error? Did Adam not wonder why that person, that Iblis, was so intent on bringing Adam and Eve close to that tree? Did Adam not consider what benefit that oath-taking person might have in mind? Did Adam and Eve not accept the truthful Lord? Why did they not heed His prohibition?

💀 Satanic sorcery and his deceptions

When suggestion, provocation and temptation are added to the salt of desire, Satan’s great sorcery reveals itself. It casts a person into heedlessness. Adam was never meant to listen to Satan’s words and allow himself to be tempted. Why had he not closed his ears to Satan’s speech? Why had he not kept God’s word alive in his heart? Why did Adam take the path to immortality from Satan? Did he attain immortality? Yes, he attained immortality—but the immortality of disgrace! To this day, that stain of shame remains recorded on the foreheads of Adam and Eve for all eternity. Were we not supposed to seek no counsel from the cowardly, greedy, grasping, deceitful enemy? Why did we listen to him? Why do we give him our ears and the attention of our hearts, give him our very lives, give him everything we possess—even though we know he is lying—and still accept what he says?

🌿 Satan’s temptation and the tree of immortality

Satan tempted Adam and said: “Shall I guide you to the tree of immortality and a kingdom that never grows old? Would you like me to lead you to the tree of immortality and imperishable dominion?” Do these temptations not still reach our ears? We find ourselves yearning for immortality. It is as though a human being could attain immortality by turning to sin. The greedy person goes toward forbidden trees and embraces them in the hope of becoming immortal, but in the end is disgraced, and that shame remains on his forehead forever.

🔥 Satan’s deception and his flattering offers

Yes, Satan knows how to tempt human beings, fatten them up, bring them into his service and increase his capital. Satan is not content with a small investment; he wants to enlarge it. That is why he fattens people up with his temptations. Let us beware of falling for Satan’s flattering offers. When Satan offers a person something sweet, that person should be afraid. When he presents the cup of poison, one should flee. One should be afraid when Satan smiles at one, opens before one the cup of his flattering offers, and spreads his sweets upon the table. One must fear Satan’s delicious fare. One must be terrified and flee. Behind Satan’s smiles lie everlasting tears, which reveal themselves only in the long run.

🏰 Deception through the illusion of immortality

Satan deceives a person so thoroughly that, inwardly, he imagines that the few steps he has climbed mean he is moving toward immortality. A person is so thoroughly deceived that he imagines that, when he raises a tower, he has accomplished this by his own efforts. He imagines that he is moving toward immortality, but in reality he has fallen into deception.

🏛 Satan’s deceptions in building palaces

The Noble Hūd said to the people of ʿĀd: “Do you set up signs on every high place out of vanity? Do you raise lofty structures and make pointless displays? Do you build palaces, imagining that you will live in them forever?” Let us be on our guard. Let us watch over our own state and condition. 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 eternity in this very world. They seek eternity amid the glitter of this perishable abode.

🌍 Humanity’s heedlessness and the delusion 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 adorn their structures with glitter, the stronger their sense of immortality becomes. This is why those deceived by Satan can never have their fill of accumulating wealth: they imagine that amassing riches is a path to immortality. They do not realize that they are only adding to their burden, casting themselves face-first into the dust and sinking deeper into corruption. Making this world seem eternal and making lowliness seem exalted are among Satan’s most effective deceptions for gaining mastery over humanity. Satan makes the low seem high and true heights seem 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, ever thirsty, loses itself in that very mirage.

🍂 Satan’s food industry and seductive pleasures

Let us take care not to become part of Satan’s food industry or his defence industry. Let us be careful not to compete in this false alleyway of immortality.

🍽 Satan’s most delectable food

Let us take care not to turn ourselves into Satan’s most delectable food. Who is Satan’s richest source of milk? Who is his greatest and most versatile meal? The fattest morsel for Iblīs, his most delicious food, his strongest vitamin and most exhilarating medicine? Nothing is more satisfying to Satan than this: associating partners with God. Nothing is more delectable to him than shirk.

⚖️ God’s boundaries and the path of non-innate philosophies

Whoever follows the path of shirk gives Satan hope that his oath will be fulfilled. No boundary should be set for God: no boundary of being, of essence, of name or of attribute. God must be known in His oneness and absolute unity; God must be worshipped through God Himself, not through anything other than God. If we seek rational proofs, if we seek philosophy, we must seek the truth at philosophy’s heart. Philosophy, that seemingly rational path, is a tool for formulating general principles and solving the riddles of existence. But only philosophy grounded in innate reason is worthy of approval. Philosophy grounded in non-innate consciousness destroys the human being.

💡 Intellectual crises and innate philosophy

The common standard in intellectual crises is the innate crisis. If people proceed by that standard, they will find a shared language. But if each person follows their own consciousness, countless false paths will open up. Thus innate crises can offer a way out of the riddles of existence. Beyond that, every non-innate proof and every form of non-innate consciousness fashioned by people themselves will in fact be intellectual rubbish, added to the world’s rubbish heap—a heap so full of refuse that humanity will perish within it.

🐝 Innate reason and true knowledge

Only innate reason can save us. The honeybee’s reason is knowledge. Only reason can gather the honey of knowledge. Non-rational consciousness—that is, non-innate consciousness—is like a fly: however often it flits from flower to flower, it may feed on their nectar, but, by God, that nectar will never become honey. Not only will it fail to become the nourishing honey of knowledge; the very nectar of knowledge will instead breed more ignorance and add to humanity’s ignorance.

🌪 Feeding on ignorance and Satan

What happens if a human being feeds on Satan? If a mind estranged from its innate nature feeds on knowledge, that knowledge only deepens humanity’s darkness. But what catastrophe unfolds if a human being feeds directly on ignorance? What fate awaits a suckling infant who becomes satanic? Whoever confides in Satan and the self is condemned to an eternal heartache. That heartache will never let go of them; it will destroy them.

🌫 Avoiding Shirk and Limiting God

Let us take care not to draw near to shirk. We must not confine God within the bounds of our thought, reason or perception. Let us not ask at what stage or in what realm God resides. To speak of His essence is to try to circumscribe His infinite essence. We must not set any boundary for God: not spatial, not temporal, not existential. If we treat existence as the first and final boundary, we have imposed a limit on Him. If we associate God with this existence, we have praised Him as though He were 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 is His knowledge. And beyond knowledge? We do not know. There is no road or alley by which we might find our way there.

🌌 Asking What Came Before Existence

What came before existence? In fact, there is no “existence” before existence. So what is there? Before existence, there was no “what” for us to ask what it was.

🌀 Beyond Whatness: The Unlimited Reality

What is this beyond-whatness? There is no “what” at all to ask what it is! Neither existence nor anything within its bounds should be allowed to limit God—not by the bounds of greatness, for He is the greatest of the great, nor by the bounds of subtlety, for He is the most subtle of the subtle.

🌼 Knowing God’s Infinity
God cannot be described in these terms. We reassure ourselves that we have permission to do so, lest we fall into the distress of negating all attributes. After every definition, every act of praise, we must say الله‌اکبر. After praising God for His subtlety, we must say:
“O God, You are the very subtlety of subtlety; You cannot be described by Your subtlety. You are the One who brought grace to its fullest expression. O God, I praised You for Your greatness, but You have brought greatness to its fullest expression. You are beyond—and greater than—all these descriptions.”

🌱 The Greatest of the Great… Even when we say You are greater, You are greater still than that very greatness. So why am I left so helpless?
The limit of negation is a path 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 likening Him to creation and negating His attributes. My task is simply to strive to reach the other side.

I can find no word, because there is no word by which He can be described. I must exhaust every word. Only when the letters run out will I discover that it is He who brings these descriptions into being. In that moment I will 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 back to myself and draw me out of myself. Then I will attain the knowledge I seek, the certainty that makes me understand He cannot be apprehended through knowledge. In that moment I will see that all beauty and delight were signposts pointing toward Him. We must leave them all behind—the pleasure, the beauty, the outward forms—to reach our destination.

🍃 Breaking Free of Constraints
As long as I remain trapped beneath my own feet, I will never arrive. Only through Him Himself can I reach the destination. Once I understand this, my task is done.
His will is beyond every will. Existence has come into being through His transcendent being. I must free myself from all these constraints and escape Satan’s trap and web. To be caught in Satan’s trap and web is to have fallen to the lowest depths. Then everything about us will be base.

🌸 If nothing but the delusions of our lower self tastes sweet to us, we are in trouble. Just as a beetle delights in filth, so a person who takes pleasure in disobeying God is trapped.

🌿 The Battle Against Satan
Let us not nourish Satan with our noble qualities. Rather, let us use those very qualities to torment him—to leave him thirsty and starving. When we adorn ourselves with noble qualities, Satan will find no sustenance in our souls, and he will perish.

If we equip ourselves with every element of virtue and become a garden of God, Satan will have no way to feed on us. He will no longer be able to breathe and will meet his death.
So we must cultivate every virtue within ourselves and broaden the landscape of our moral character.

🍀 Let us assess our moral standing by taking stock of the full range of virtues. Look over the list of moral qualities and see where we fall short. Even if only a few virtues are poorly developed, they can become veils. We imagine that we are beautiful, when 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 virtues become a source of pride and a veil.