The Sacred Month of Reverence

🌼🔆🌼The Way of Love for Ali🌼🔆🌼

🔹 The twenty-third night of the blessed month of Ramadan, the Night of Decree
📅 Date: 1404/01/04 — 23 Ramadan 1446
✨ Session: Meshkat-e Noor
🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei
📝 Some of the topics discussed in the session:

🌌 Laylat al-Madhi: If I have doubts about the Night of Decree, I have no doubt about You

The twenty-third night of the blessed month of Ramadan… Laylat al-Madhi.
O God, is this the Night of Decree?
Or were the nights before it the Night of Decree?
Or will the nights to come be the Night of Decree?

O God, our Lord…
Even if we are unsure whether tonight is Laylat al-Qadr,
we have no doubt that You are God.

I do not know whether tonight is the Night of Decree,
but I know that You, my God, are the One who forgives me.
I know I may not live to witness the Night of Decree,
but, my God, You are always aware of me.

Even if I fail to be mindful of You,
You are always mindful of me.

O God, I am not afraid of missing the Night of Decree;
I am afraid that the sweet remembrance of You may leave my heart.
But even if the remembrance of You departs from me,
You will not be far from me.
You are closer to me than my jugular vein…

---

💫 Certainty in God’s nearness: I have no doubt that You will welcome me

O God, even if I have doubts about Laylat al-Qadr,
I have no doubt about Your oneness, Your generosity, or Your power to purify.

I know
that by Your will, Your grace, Your pardon and forgiveness, You will purify my deeds.

O God, tonight I want to draw near to You…
But I know this too:
Whenever I seek to draw near to You, You will not turn me away.
You will welcome me and draw me close to Yourself.

---

🙏 Unceasing response: You are even grateful for my good deeds

I know, O God,
that whenever I ask You for something, You answer me.
I know that if I perform a righteous deed, You are grateful.

---

🕯 I am Your runaway servant; save me by helping me master my appetites

So, O God, be my helper and support.
Help me.
Draw me near to Yourself.

O God,
seize me by the forelock.
I am that runaway servant.
If You let me go, I will run away again.
If You do not hold me, I will stray from You again.

Take me by the forelock,
and join me to the place where Your pleasure lies.

O God,
You have made this month blessed.
You have ennobled it with its many sacred observances.

The sacred observances of this blessed month of Ramadan show that it is a noble and exalted month.
Through its fasting, this month reminded me:
the greatest barriers between me and my Beloved are my appetite and my desire.

If I can master my appetite and desire,
every obstacle to servitude will be removed.

You have granted me the chance to experience what it is to overcome my lower self’s cravings,
to control my appetite and desires,
so that I may behold You,
reach You,
and draw near to You.

We know this:
Whatever we focus on becomes our prison.

If we focus on appetite and desire, we become their prisoners.
And when our focus is freed from these two giants,
the way to Allah opens before us.

Fasting will not last forever.
A time will come when fasting itself will be forbidden,
just as breaking the fast is forbidden today.

If I do not partake of the divine effusions,
I will be punished.

---

🏵 Fasting: The Blessed Sign of Poverty and Complete Detachment

Fasting is the practical sign of God-consciousness.
Fasting is meant to bring me to blessed poverty: to be poor in relation to all but God, and to attain poverty before God.
I must sever myself from all but God,
so that through this blessed poverty I may enter the presence of Allah, the Exalted,
and attain complete detachment—complete detachment unto God.

In this month, the poor are God’s guests.
Those who are truly poor are poor in heart.
That is, they have emptied their hearts of all they possess. They have parted from themselves.

They have become poor through poverty itself.
They have embraced absolute poverty within themselves and become joined to God, the Self-Sufficient, the Praiseworthy.

This is blessed poverty: the grace of complete detachment.
To sever oneself entirely from all but God is to reach His threshold.

This is the complete negation of attributes.
We must pass beyond every veil—
whether the veil of the Names or of the divine Attributes.
Until we transcend our “selves,”
we will not reach God.

---

🌙 From Sha‘ban to Ramadan: From Detachment to Union

When we were in Sha‘ban, did we not recite:
الهی هب لی کمال الانقطاع الیک…
What does it mean?
It means: I wish to part from everything other than God, so that I may reach Him.

In Sha‘ban, I strove to attain this grace,
so that in His blessed month I might reach absolute, blessed union.

Blessed are those who have attained this station.

In this month, we are God’s guests.
This self of mine is God’s guest.
My limbs and organs are God’s guests.
Every particle of my being is God’s guest.

May not even a particle of my being deprive my whole self of this invitation.
The earth and the heavens, every particle and every galaxy, are God’s guests…

But blessed are those hungry and thirsty ones who partake fully of this feast.
Those who say:
“My Lord, I hunger for Your love! I hunger for Your love, and I can never be sated!”
“I sit at Your table; the more I eat, the hungrier I grow, and the more my longing increases.”
O God, I thirst for Your love.

---

🔥 Wa ‘atasha: The Love of God Never Sates

I burn with thirst for Your love… I cannot be quenched.
I cry, “Wa ‘atasha!” and will not give up until I reach complete quenching.

Blessed are those who have left behind and severed themselves from everything other than God,
and have come to serve Him.

Is this not the night of Laylat al-Qadr?
Is Laylat al-Qadr not the blessed likeness of Fatimah al-Zahra?

The very Fatimah who said:
“The joy of serving my Lord leaves me no room for any other need.”
“I am so immersed in the joy of worship that I have forgotten my needs.
I have no need but to behold Your gracious countenance…

O God! My need is to be able to behold Your gracious countenance.
The master of masters… the master, Baqiyyat Allah al-A‘zam—may my soul be his sacrifice.

---

🕊 Beholding the Gracious Countenance: The Utmost Longing of Detachment

Whoever beholds Your gracious countenance has, in truth, reached You.
O my Lord, bring me to Your gracious countenance…

O God, let us taste the joy of complete detachment unto You…

---

📿 Hunger of the Belly: The Key to Heavenly Wisdom

O Ahmad! Any servant who makes his belly hungry and restrains his tongue—I will teach him wisdom, even if he is an unbeliever.
Whoever they may be, believer or unbeliever,
if they make their belly hungry, I will grant them wisdom.

But…
wisdom becomes a burden upon the soul of the unbeliever.
For wisdom benefits only the believer.

The unbeliever, too, may receive gifts of grace,
but those very gifts will become proof against him.

But for every believer who keeps their stomach hungry:
I will turn their hunger into radiant wisdom,
into proof, healing and mercy.

They will come to know what they did not know.
They will see what they did not see.

Their first act of seeing
will be to recognise the flaws in their own soul,
so they may be freed from concern with the flaws of others.

I will teach them the subtle nuances of knowledge,
and kinds of knowledge that never occur to anyone.
Allah will make them aware of these very kinds of knowledge, until Satan can no longer find a way into their heart.
Satan will be driven away from them…

---

🔕 Fasting Without Restraint of the Tongue; Prayer Without Recitation

O Ahmad! No act of worship is dearer to Me than silence and fasting.

Whoever fasts but does not keep their tongue in check
is like someone who stands in prayer but recites no prayer.

Woe to the fasting person whose only share is hunger and thirst…

Blessed are those whose
bodies,
stomachs
and souls—all fast.

---

✨ Laylat al-Qadr: The Night the Dead Return from the Grave

I will grant him the reward of standing in prayer,
but not the reward given to devout worshippers.

It is Laylat al-Qadr, the Night of Opportunities.
It is as though Almighty God
has once again given us a golden opportunity…

Imagine yourself as one who has died,
lying in the earth, beneath the grave’s covering;
all is over.

But suddenly,
Allah grants you another chance
to return to this world.

It is Laylat al-Qadr: a night of renewal, a night of beginning anew.

A year is one complete revolution of the universe.
We see only the earth’s revolution around the sun,
but what lies beneath it?
That we pass by the Throne of God and His highest realm.

In this one year, a person can traverse the whole universe
and reach God’s good pleasure.

Laylat al-Qadr is like the Realm of ذرّ.
Like Yawm al-Alast—the day we made our covenant with God.

Tonight, we renew that covenant.
We wish to begin growing once more in our servitude to God.

The person I am now is not my true self.
I should have grown.
My limbs and organs should have flourished.
But I gave them neither water nor seed.

I left them thirsty and hungry.

Every one of God’s signs in the universe must be watered.
Every part of me—
my eyes, ears, heart and tongue—is a sign of God;
each must be watered and brought to life through His remembrance.

---

🌌 Laylat al-Qadr: Commander of the Nights, the Night the Banner of the Unseen Is Raised

Our limbs and organs must be set in motion,
so they may reach their perfection and reveal themselves.

Laylat al-Qadr is the commander of the nights, their sovereign.
Do not let us be deprived of its grace.

On this night, Gabriel descends with a company of angels and the Holy Spirit,
bearing a banner…

and plants it atop the Kaaba.
Of Gabriel’s six hundred wings, only two are spread tonight.

Gabriel visits every believer
and says “Amen” to their prayers.

Be attentive: return his greeting when he greets you.

When he embraces the believers,
they embrace him in return…

---

🌌 Laylat al-Qadr: The Soul’s Yalda, a Night of Rising and Prayer

Laylat al-Qadr is a night of leaping, of surging, of breaking forth.
The Night of Decree is the soul’s Yalda.
It is our Mount Sinai.
Our Cave of Hira.

A time for intimate prayer.
A time to arrive.
A time of transformation.

For many believers, this night is the Cave of Hira.
But for someone like me,
it is the whale of Jonah.
I am trapped in darkness.

Now is the time to emerge from that darkness.
A time for examination and healing.
A time to be born, to take flight, and to attain sincerity.

---

🪬 The Night of Breaking Idols: Measuring Love for Ali

Laylat al-Qadr is a night for breaking idols.

The idol of the belly must be broken,
the idol of desire must be broken,
the idol of this world must be broken.

Everything other than God must be shattered.
Nothing but the remembrance of God should remain in the heart.

We are to entrust this heart to its rightful owner.
Is this heart not God’s sanctuary?

It is Laylat al-Qadr, the night of our master Ali.
A night of reckoning.
We must put ourselves to the test.

Among the angels, the noblest in God’s sight
is the one who loves the Commander of the Faithful most.

The nobility of human beings, too, is measured by the depth of their love for Ali.
The finest measure of a person’s nobility is love for Ali.

---

📏 Ali and the Measure of Love: A Blind Heart Cannot Love

Let us take stock of ourselves.
Let us measure the love for Ali within our hearts.

Ali is the measure.
Do you know Ali?

If you do not,
yet say you love him,
then you are lying.

Without knowledge, neither recognition nor love is possible.

Can a blind person fall in love with a beautiful face?
Can a blind heart love Ali?

Describe Ali, and I will know how deeply you love him.

Have you passed through the Gate of God?
Have you reached God’s Proof?
Do you know that love itself is knowledge?

Without knowledge, without recognition, love is impossible.
Love is forbidden to the ignorant.

By God,
the ignorant cannot love.

The lover carries the beloved’s image in the heart,
and that image is forever revealed within.

The memory of the beloved takes hold of the lover’s very soul.

And now I will reveal the highest sign of love for Ali:

By God, tawhid, tawhid, tawhid—
that is the highest sign of love for Ali al-Murtada.

---

🖼 Ali’s Image in the Shi‘i Heart: God’s Imprint on the Heart’s Veil

In the hearts of those who love our master,
an image, a likeness of each and every one of the pure Imams, is engraved.
Among them is the blessed image of our master Ali ibn Abi Talib.

Because of their intense longing for their master,
an image of Ali adorns their gaze in every heaven.

In the heart of every single Shi‘i,
the beautiful image of the pure Imams is imprinted.
Ali’s beautiful image caresses our hearts.

The more open the heart, the clearer the image.
The purer the heart, the more luminous its reflection.
The purer the heart, the more deeply one will taste that image.

Indeed, images of the Imams are etched in our hearts.
By God, He Himself has painted them there.

💖 The measure of love: a mirror of reason and knowledge

The measure of this love is the measure of our knowledge.
It is the measure of our reason.

The deeper our knowledge, the more radiant our reason.
God’s grace will abound all the more in this love, in this sublime adornment.

Our master Ali is the prince of hearts; just as he is the Commander of the Faithful, he is the commander of faith.

Ali dwells in hearts.
God has placed Ali in the heart of every believer.
A believer cannot be separated from Ali.

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👑 Ali, king of heaven and earth

All that is in heaven and earth acknowledges Ali as its king.
The faithful know him as their king, and know that whoever outstrips Ali or falls behind him is an unbeliever.

By God’s command, the inhabitants of the seven heavens call Ali “Commander of the Faithful.”

Yet Ali, that exalted and boundless being, has not yet fully unveiled himself.

And until Ali is unveiled, this world of being will not be brought to its close.

Alas for blind eyes and closed hearts that cannot see our master…

A little of our master’s virtues has been revealed to creation,
yet many cannot even bear that little.

What would happen if that immense power were unveiled?

When we gaze at the sky,
we see billions of years into the past.
The stars we see belong to billions of years ago.

So when do we behold our master?
Which dimension of his celestial being do we behold?

Blessed are those who see,
and immerse themselves in the waves of his gnosis.

---

📖 Nahj al-Balagha: a window onto the love of Ali

The world of being will witness Ali’s raptures and revelations—
how he gathers the whole universe into his embrace.

One must love Ali.
How could one not love him?

Whoever is distant from Nahj al-Balagha is distant from love for him.
They are distant from Ali’s path of ethics, deeds, intentions, worship, grace, miracles, and courage;
they are distant from Ali.

---

✨ True monotheism speaks the language of love for Ali

Let me offer an example,
so we may understand how close we are to our master.

If we turn to his words
but do not understand them, we should question our love for our master.

The highest expression of love for Ali is monotheism.
Our master’s words on divine unity prove the sincerity of our love for him.

Consider this brief saying of our master:
He was asked, “What is divine unity?”
He replied:
“Divine unity is not to imagine Him.”

He was asked, “What is justice?”
He replied:
“Justice is not to accuse God.”

Do not say, “Why?”
“Why did You give me less?”
“Why do I lack comfort?”
“Why am I less beautiful?”

This is how our master explains divine unity:
Divine unity means: do not imagine God!

And what profound meaning this holds…
I understand that I do not understand.
I fear I may fail in my love for our master.
I fear I may fail to grasp humanity’s masterpiece of knowledge.

The perfection of knowledge is the perfection of reason.

Whoever reasons is a person of knowledge.
But what is delusion?

Delusion is reaching conclusions by means that are not rational.
Compared with reason, delusion is but a speck.

The Master did not say, “Do not reason about God,”
but rather:
“Do not imagine God!”

Why?
Because reason never attempts to comprehend God’s essence.
If it did, it would not be reason; it would be ignorance.

Reason knows its place;
it does not speak beyond its measure;
it admits that it is incapable of knowing the Divine Essence.

That is why he said:
Do not imagine Him.

Those enslaved by ignorance imagine;
those freed from ignorance have attained reason.

And reason is a light that springs from divine oneness…

🔮 Delusion, reason’s prison; a heart without reason cannot witness

Can the heart attain direct spiritual vision? No, it cannot.

If reason is absent from the heart, that heart cannot attain such vision.
Knowledge by direct vision is a form of rational knowledge.
Reason is sovereign over the heart.

So we have understood:
Whoever imagines God makes Him as small as their own imagination.
They place Allah, the Everlasting, within the confines of their imagination—God forbid.

---

🕊 Hadiths on divine oneness: keys to the locks of our primordial nature

The beauty of the Master’s words is beyond description.
This much is enough by way of explaining them:
Glory be to Him who is not confined,
who cannot be described,
who has no likeness,
and who is the All-Hearing, the All-Seeing.

Whatever the imagination can contain, He is other than that.
He resembles nothing, and nothing resembles Him.

Why speak of divine oneness on the Night of Decree?
If not of divine oneness, what should I speak?

If my understanding of divine oneness is incomplete, to which God am I offering which prayer?

The hadiths on divine oneness must be read with our primordial nature.
We have forgotten the keys to our primordial nature.
The lock of that nature can be opened only by the mysteries of divine oneness.

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🧠 Whatever the imagination can contain is not God

Whatever the imagination can contain, He is other than that.
He resembles nothing.
Imaginations cannot grasp Him;
He encompasses all imaginations.

He is beyond the mind’s conception,
and beyond the fancy of imagination.
For imagination is always limited.

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🕯 Beyond the senses and all states: God cannot be known

Imaginations cannot reach Him and confine Him,
or assign Him a measure.

Even the keenest intellects
cannot imagine Him or fashion an image of Him.

He is not apprehended by the senses, as though He could be sensed;
He cannot be touched by hands.

He does not assume a state.
Circumstances and conditions do not change Him.
The passing of night and day does not wear Him down.

Light and darkness
do not alter Him.

He cannot be described in terms of things,
limbs,
organs,
accidents or dimensions.
🗣 When the Master speaks, the world is transformed

---

The Master is sovereign over words.

When the Master speaks,

the very conditions of our existence are transformed.
The Master says:

If you knew what I know…

If you knew what is hidden from you, and what I know while you do not,
you would:
set out into the wilderness,
weep over your deeds,
and beat your faces and chests.

You would flee from the wealth you have gathered close to yourselves.
You would appoint no one to look after it.
You would attend only to yourselves,
not to others.

Why?
Because you would understand what you had done to yourselves,
what loss you had incurred…

---

🕳 The Secrets of the Master and What Keeps Him from Speaking

The Master says:
By Allah! If I wished, I could tell each person of their coming and going,
of their beginning and end, and of every aspect of their affairs.

But I do not speak.
Why?
I fear that you will disbelieve concerning my relationship to the Messenger of Allah.

You do not understand that I am the gate of knowledge,
and he is the city of knowledge.

You cannot bear what I have to say.
You forget that the Messenger of Allah is the city of knowledge.

Alas for me: I have become an obstacle to the Master’s knowledge.

Alas for these two groups:

1. the spiteful enemy, who will not let Ali’s virtues be known.
   They silence anyone who speaks of Ali’s virtues.
2. And the zealous devotee, ignorant and given to excess,
   who raises the Master to the station of divinity.

Because of these two afflictions, the Master does not speak.

Yet he says:
I will speak…
I will share the secrets I hold in my heart
with trusted intimates.

And who are these intimates?
Those entrusted with the Master’s secrets…
What do they know,
that we do not…?

Alas for the spiteful enemy and the ignorant devotee…
who have wronged us.

And yet…
if we are among the trusted intimates,
the Master himself will seek us out
and pour his secrets into our hearts.

🕊 Ali Testifies to His Own Truthfulness: Taught by God

By God!

Allah raised me up in truth.
By the One who raised His Messenger in truth, distinguished him above His creation and chose him,
I speak no word unless he has taught it to me.

The places where the doomed will perish and the saved will find deliverance,
and all that concerns me, he has made known to me.

Whatever is to befall me, he has whispered into my ear.
He has imparted his knowledge to me.

By Allah! Whatever I urge you to do, I am the first to do myself.
And whatever I forbid, I am the first to abstain from.

---

⚔️ The Wronged Master: A Curse from a Wounded Heart

The wronged Master conceals his knowledge,
lest it make weak hearts even more ignorant.

It was as the Messenger of Allah said:

“O Ali, were I not afraid that a group among my community
would do to you what they did to Jesus son of Mary,
I would say that wherever you passed,
people would carry away the dust from your footsteps to seek healing.”

Yet that same Master was so aggrieved that he uttered a curse.

How did he curse them?

He said:
I long for a separation to be set between me and you.
May Ali be taken away from you.

Has Ali not been taken away from us?

Whoever is estranged from his Nahj al-Balagha is estranged from Ali.
Such a person is caught in Ali’s curse.

They must seek forgiveness,
so that once again the Most High Lord
may join this bond of union.

---

🌸 Companionship with the Virtuous; Union with the People of Guidance

O God, join me with those who are more worthy than I am.
Those whose thoughts are blessed.

That is, I will join those who are:

• blessed and endowed with clear insight,
• possessed of gracious forbearance and profound patience,
• truth-speakers who renounce oppression,
• foremost in following the path of guidance,
• who advanced swiftly along the clear path,
• attained everlasting felicity,
• and found a life of true contentment.