Written transcript of the lecture
The Meshkat-e Noor teachings series🌼🔆🌼Scaling the Heights of the Divine Attributes🌼🔆🌼
🌹🔅☘️ بِسْمِ اللَّهِ الرَّحْمنِ الرَّحيمِ ☘️🔅🌹
🔅🌹 “The Blessed Month’s Favor” “The Month of Change and Transformation” “The Blood of Ramadan” “Complete Withdrawal from All but God” “A Commentary on Supplication 44 of al-Sahifa al-Sajjadiyya” and … An Abstract with an Addendum 1403.12.16 Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903) 🌹🔅
🔅🌼Praise be to God for His month of Ramadan 🌼🔅
☘️🔆🌷 (1) الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي هَدَانَا لِحَمْدِهِ، وَ جَعَلَنَا مِنْ أَهْلِهِ لِنَكُونَ لِإِحْسَانِهِ مِنَ الشَّاكِرِينَ، وَ لِيَجْزِيَنَا عَلَى ذَلِكَ جَزَاءَ الْمُحْسِنِينَ (2) وَ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي حَبَانَا بِدِينِهِ، وَ اخْتَصَّنَا بِمِلَّتِهِ، وَ سَبَّلَنَا فِي سُبُلِ إِحْسَانِهِ لِنَسْلُكَهَا بِمَنِّهِ إِلَى رِضْوَانِهِ، حَمْداً يَتَقَبَّلُهُ مِنَّا، وَ يَرْضَى بِهِ عَنَّا (3) وَ الْحَمْدُ لِلَّهِ الَّذِي جَعَلَ مِنْ تِلْكَ السُّبُلِ شَهْرَهُ شَهْرَ رَمَضَانَ، شَهْرَ الصِّيَامِ، وَ شَهْرَ الْإِسْلَامِ، وَ شَهْرَ الطَّهُورِ، وَ شَهْرَ التَّمْحِيصِ، وَ شَهْرَ الْقِيَامِ الَّذِي أُنْزِلَ فِيهِ الْقُرْآنُ، هُدىً لِلنَّاسِ، وَ بَيِّناتٍ مِنَ الْهُدى وَ الْفُرْقانِ
🌹The month of Ramadan is the highway to God’s good pleasure.
🌹 The month of complete withdrawal from all but God;
🌹the month of Islam, of becoming whole and finding peace
🌹the month of purity, of release from all that is barren and from all but God
🌹the month of the purest essence, of becoming a flawless jewel
🌹the month of standing, of rising up and bringing about resurrection
🌹the month of the Qur’an …
🔅🌼 The sublime secret of the blessed month of Ramadan 🌼🔅
🌹What is it that, once a person is freed from it, brings them to the perfection of sincerity? To be freed not only from impurity, but even from purity! 🌹One must not stop before God’s signs, blessings, names, attributes, or words. Perfect sincerity in servitude requires passing beyond them all and scaling their heights, until one reaches perfect freedom and purity.
🌹That sublime secret is to journey along every path leading to God and through His names and attributes. The destination lies beyond the realities of the attributes: it is graduation in servitude to God, and the beginning of a pristine, peerless state.
🌹Yes, “ كَمَالُ الْإِخْلَاصِ لَهُ نَفْيُ الصِّفَاتِ عَنْه” is that sublime secret, the supreme message of God’s greatest messenger, the blessed month of Ramadan. In its truest sense, it is the perfection of sincerity in both the knowledge and practice of tawhid.
🔅🌼A blessed gathering, a blessed guest 🌼🔅
🌹United with the blessed month, we are ever blessed.
🌹The month of Ramadan is a blessing for us, and, with God, we too are a blessing for all.
🌹O God, make us a blessing for the blessed month, and for all Your creation. O God, make us Your blessing.
🌷🔆 عَلِيِّ بْنِ أَبِي طَالِبٍ ع قَالَ: إِنَّ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ص خَطَبَنَا ذَاتَ يَوْمٍ فَقَالَ أَيُّهَا النَّاسُ إِنَّهُ قَدْ أَقْبَلَ إِلَيْكُمْ شَهْرُ اللَّهِ بِالْبَرَكَةِ وَ الرَّحْمَةِ وَ الْمَغْفِرَةِ شَهْرٌ هُوَ عِنْدَ اللَّهِ أَفْضَلُ الشُّهُورِ وَ أَيَّامُهُ أَفْضَلُ الْأَيَّامِ وَ لَيَالِيهِ أَفْضَلُ اللَّيَالِي وَ سَاعَاتُهُ أَفْضَلُ السَّاعَاتِ هُوَ شَهْرٌ دُعِيتُمْ فِيهِ إِلَى ضِيَافَةِ اللَّهِ وَ جُعِلْتُمْ فِيهِ مِنْ أَهْلِ كَرَامَةِ اللَّهِ أَنْفَاسُكُمْ فِيهِ تَسْبِيحٌ وَ نَوْمُكُمْ فِيهِ عِبَادَةٌ وَ عَمَلُكُمْ فِيهِ مَقْبُولٌ وَ دُعَاؤُكُمْ فِيهِ مُسْتَجَابٌ فَاسْأَلُوا اللَّهَ رَبَّكُمْ بِنِيَّاتٍ صَادِقَةٍ وَ قُلُوبٍ طَاهِرَةٍ أَنْ يُوَفِّقَكُمْ لِصِيَامِهِ وَ تِلَاوَةِ كِتَابِه[1]
🌷🔆
🔅🌼 The blessed month’s favor 🌼🔅
🌹The blessed month has come to welcome us; it has turned toward us. How fortunate we are!
🌹God’s month has turned toward God’s servant; this favor is both particular and universal.
🌹When God’s month turns toward God’s servant, everything—the whole of creation—will turn toward that servant.
🌹 With the month of God, the Qur’an too turns toward humanity in all its realities.
🌹 We are held in the three special embraces of the blessed month: the embrace of blessing, mercy and forgiveness.
🌹 What is the sum of blessing, mercy and forgiveness? No one can calculate it.
🌹 Where are the treasure seekers, ready to explore the mines of the blessed month?
🌹 The divine banquet is something beyond “God’s blessing, mercy and forgiveness”; in truth, these are the advance refreshments offered before the feast of God.
🌹 What is this banquet of God made of—or is it made of something that is not a thing at all? It has no equal!
🌹 The blessed month of Ramadan is the greatest stroke of good fortune to come humanity’s way!
🌹 Every feature of Ramadan’s spiritual landscape is pure and transcendent goodness. Brick by brick, wall by wall, house by house, this city is made of the finest jewels.
🌹 Ramadan’s breath carries the fragrance of the celestial ones; its every breath is a glorification of God. If even the breath is like this, what color and character must love, affection, sincerity, intimate prayer and noble virtues take on? A person becomes a land flourishing with remembrance—or, better still, a city flourishing with love.
🔅🌼 Not for a moment can one bear to be parted from Ramadan 🌼🔅
🌷🔆 عَنِ ابْنِ مَسْعُودٍ أَنَّهُ سَمِعَ رَسُولَ اللَّهِ ص يَقُولُ وَ قَدْ أَهْلَّ رَمَضَانَ لَوْ يَعْلَمُ الْعِبَادُ مَا فِي رَمَضَانَ لَتَمَنَّتْ أَنْ يَكُونَ رَمَضَانُ سَنَةً … .[2]
The Messenger of God, peace and blessings be upon him and his family: If God’s servants knew what Ramadan holds, they would surely wish that Ramadan lasted a whole year.
🔅🌼 The blessed month of Ramadan holds a Qur’anic rank 🌼🔅
🌻🔆Al-Isra’: 82 وَ نُنَزِّلُ مِنَ الْقُرْآنِ ما هُوَ شِفاءٌ وَ رَحْمَةٌ لِلْمُؤْمِنينَ وَ لا يَزيدُ الظَّالِمينَ إِلاَّ خَساراً
🔆And We send down from the Qur’an that which is healing and mercy for the believers, but it only increases the wrongdoers in loss.
🌹For believers, the blessed month of Ramadan, like the Qur’an, is light, healing and mercy; for wrongdoers, it is loss.
🌹Whoever gains little from the blessed month of Ramadan will regret it—how much more those who gain nothing, and those who profane it.
🔅🌼 Eternal peace be upon the blessed month of Ramadan 🌼🔅
🌹Peace and blessings upon Muhammad and his family
🌹Peace upon the mountain, and the angels appointed to it
🌹Peace upon the mountain—Mount Uhud, Sinai—and upon the cave of Hira, the cave of Thawr, and every place of intimate prayer
🌹Peace upon the footsteps of God’s proof, peace upon the places touched by his blessed steps, peace upon the particles of air breathed out by him.
🔅🌼 Let us adorn one another 🌼🔅
🌹The blessed month adorns us
🌹And true believers adorn the blessed month.
🌹Can I become an adornment to the countenance of God’s friends?!
🔅🌼 Ramadan’s lifeblood flows from the vein of the soul 🌼🔅
🌹The effect of Ramadan on body, heart and soul
🌹The blood of the Night of Decree is the blood of one who serves as God’s vicegerent.
🌹Weigh the effect of a drop of blood, the effect of an intimate prayer, the effect of a blessing upon the Prophet, and the effect of a fast, complete in its measure and sincerity
🔅🌼 A fast that slays 🌼🔅
🌹The blessed month of Ramadan is pure, unqualified profit.
🌹Fasting belongs uniquely to the One without equal; it has a special reward, bestowed without intermediary. Without an intermediary means a reward one cannot imagine, one unknown to the senses, as though it had never been created; a direct divine will will immerse the recipient in a reward beyond measure.
🌹Whoever cuts themselves off from everything will have their reward cut off from everything other than Him.
🌹Fasting belongs to Him, and the one who fasts belongs to Him too. Its reward is His alone; it is not of the kind found among His creatures.
🌹What if God Himself were to become our reward!
🌷🔆 يَا نَعِيمِي وَ جَنَّتِي وَ يَا دُنْيَايَ وَ آخِرَتِي[3]
🌷🔆 يَا أَمَلِي وَ بُغْيَتِي وَ يَا سُؤْلِي وَ مُنْيَتِي[4]
🌹What an immense secret lies at the heart of the blessed month! Who can attain that secret? Does it mean passing beyond every veil? It is a gateway to liberation and transcendence.
🌹Fasting silences the soul’s dominion: it strips the soul of its authority and command, disarming it and depriving it of power. If the soul has grown brazen, if it has run wild, fasting teaches it discipline.
🌹Fasting takes away the appetites of the lower nature, and its appetite grows greater: it comes to yearn for the delights of the intellect and the celestial realm.
🌹Fasting kindles the light of the heart, clears away its dust, and makes it pure and radiant.
🌹It washes the limbs and organs, making them clean and pure. Their purity is the sign of their connection to the pure world and the highest celestial realm; the purity of body and heart is the sign of freedom from defilement and impurity. Through purification, what rises from within a person becomes more fragrant than perfume and sweeter than honey.
🌹Fasting rebuilds what has fallen into ruin; it raises up the edifice of the human being in its true form.
🌹Fasting is the most beautiful expression of gratitude in action—steadfast, firmly rooted, and continuous.
🌹Fasting deepens the desire and eagerness to care for the poor.
🌹Fasting softens and tenderizes the heart; it stirs supplication, humility, and tears.
🌹Fasting brings the signs of servitude to God into view.
🌹Fasting curbs the boldness to indulge in what is disapproved.
🌹Fasting dims the vices and brings virtues into sharper relief.
🌹The benefits of fasting are beyond count.
🌷🔆وَ قَالَ رَسُولُ اللَّهِ ص قَالَ تَعَالَى الصَّوْمُ لِي وَ أَنَا أَجْزِي بِهِ وَ الصَّوْمُ يُمِيتُ مُرَادَ النَّفْسِ وَ شَهْوَةَ الطَّبْعِ وَ فِيهِ صَفَاءُ الْقَلْبِ وَ طَهَارَةُ الْجَوَارِحِ وَ عِمَارَةُ الظَّاهِرِ وَ الْبَاطِنِ وَ الشُّكْرُ عَلَى النِّعَمِ وَ الْإِحْسَانُ إِلَى الْفُقَرَاءِ وَ زِيَادَةُ التَّضَرُّعِ وَ الْخُشُوعِ وَ الْبُكَاءِ وَ حَبْلُ الِالْتِجَاءِ إِلَى اللَّهِ تَعَالَى وَ سَبَبُ انْكِسَارِ الْهِمَّةِ وَ تَخْفِيفِ السَّيِّئَاتِ وَ تَضْعِيفِ الْحَسَنَاتِ وَ فِيهِ مِنَ الْفَوَائِدِ مَا لَا يُحْصَى وَ كَفَى بِمَا ذَكَرْنَاهُ مِنْهُ لِمَنْ عَقَلَهُ وَ وُفِّقَ لِاسْتِعْمَالِهِ إِنْ شَاءَ اللَّهُ تَعَالَى[5]
🔆The Messenger of God said that the Most High has declared: “Fasting is for Me, and I Myself am its reward, and I shall grant its reward.” Fasting puts to death the desires of the ego and the appetites of the lower nature. It polishes the mirror of the heart, purifies the limbs and organs, and brings both the outward and inward self to flourishing. It makes a person grateful for the blessings of the Most High Lord, creates the means to support those in need and show kindness to the poor, and awakens humility and reverence in the heart, along with tears and earnest supplication. It is the one means of turning to and seeking refuge in God, the All-Merciful. It also brings detachment from and turning away from created things, directing a person’s attention away from everything except the path of truth. It leads to an increase in good deeds and acts of virtue, and a corresponding decrease in wrongful and unworthy acts that undermine well-being, spirituality, and happiness. The benefits of fasting are countless; what has been mentioned here will suffice for people of reason and understanding who have been granted the grace to perform this important act of worship.
🔅🌼Lighten your burden through fasting 🌼🔅
🌷🔆فَإِنَّ الْغَايَةَ أَمَامَكُمْ وَ إِنَّ وَرَاءَكُمُ السَّاعَةَ تَحْدُوكُمْ تَخَفَّفُوا تَلْحَقُوا فَإِنَّمَا يُنْتَظَرُ بِأَوَّلِكُمْ آخِرُكُم[6]
🔆 Surely, the end lies before you, and the Resurrection is at your back, continually driving you forward. Lighten your load so that you may arrive! For the people who came before have been held back, so that those who remain may reach their destination!
🔅🌼 Make your soul lean 🌼🔅
🌷🔆أَسْهِرُوا عُيُونَكُمْ وَ أَضْمِرُوا بُطُونَكُمْ وَ اسْتَعْمِلُوا أَقْدَامَكُمْ وَ أَنْفِقُوا أَمْوَالَكُمْ وَ خُذُوا مِنْ أَجْسَادِكُمْ فَجُودُوا بِهَا عَلَى أَنْفُسِكُمْ وَ لَا تَبْخَلُوا بِهَا عَنْهَا فَقَدْ قَالَ اللَّهُ سُبْحَانَهُ- إِنْ تَنْصُرُوا اللَّهَ يَنْصُرْكُمْ وَ يُثَبِّتْ أَقْدامَكُم[7]
🔆Seize the opportunity and strive before life’s constraints close in on you; free your neck from the burden of responsibility before the doors of release are shut to you. Keep your eyes awake in the depths of night, make your bellies lean, put your feet to work, give away your wealth, and take from your body and add to your soul and spirit. Do not be miserly in this effort. God, the Exalted, has said: «If you help God, He will help you and make your steps firm»
🌹Human existence needs tending, renewal, and reflection. How long will you forget yourself? Come to your senses and turn to God; serve yourself through your God.
🌹Let the markets of the ego and this world languish, so that the market of spirituality and servitude may thrive.
🌹A human being is either a menagerie or a garden of angels. Through fasting, make your soul a paradise for the heavenly beings.
🌹A human being is a garden of noble virtues.
🌹The heedless person races headlong toward the mirages of prosperity, pleasure, delight, and immortality! Where are you running without God?
🌻🔆An-Nur: 39 وَ الَّذينَ كَفَرُوا أَعْمالُهُمْ كَسَرابٍ بِقيعَةٍ يَحْسَبُهُ الظَّمْآنُ ماءً حَتَّى إِذا جاءَهُ لَمْ يَجِدْهُ شَيْئاً وَ وَجَدَ اللَّهَ عِنْدَهُ فَوَفَّاهُ حِسابَهُ وَ اللَّهُ سَريعُ الْحِسابِ
🔆As for those who disbelieve, their deeds are like a mirage in a barren desert, which a thirsty person takes for water from afar. But when he reaches it, he finds nothing there, and finds God there, who settles his account in full. God is swift in reckoning!
🔅🌼 The City of Islam 🌼🔅
🌹The month of Ramadan is the supreme banner of servitude to God, the month that strengthens the foundations of Islam, its permanent showcase, the emergence of its truth and the manifestation of its grandeur. It is the month of building and renewing Islam, of renewing one’s Muslim faith and renewing and strengthening Islam.
🌻🔆Al-Baqarah: 131 إِذْ قالَ لَهُ رَبُّهُ أَسْلِمْ قالَ أَسْلَمْتُ لِرَبِّ الْعالَمينَ
🔆When his Lord said to him, “Submit!” he answered his Lord’s command wholeheartedly and said, “I have submitted to the Lord of all worlds.”
🌹From the prophets’ renewal of Islam to the renewal of Islam among their communities: if God’s messengers need to renew their Islam, how much more do we need to? Water must not stand still; it must bubble and surge. On the path of servitude to God, standing still is absolutely forbidden.
🔅🌼 The City of Purity 🌼🔅
🌹Ramadan is the month of months, a pure and cleansing month, a month of purity and purification; it is the month of becoming a servant of the Purifier, a servant of the Pure.
🌼Ali Saei (Abdullah Meshkat) 110.141(903)🌼
🔅🌼 A learner’s perspective on “The Sublime Secret of the Blessed Month of Ramadan” 🌼🔅
🌻🔆The Sublime Secret of the Blessed Month of Ramadan🔆🌻
🌼🔆🌼Scaling the Peaks of Virtue🌼🔆🌼
🔹 Weekly sessions on the commentary and interpretation of the Sahifa Sajjadiyya
📅 Date: 1403/12/16 — 5 Ramadan 1446
✨ Session: Meshkat-e Noor
🎤 Speaker: Master Ali Saei
📝 Some topics discussed in the session:
### Ramadan: An unparalleled highway to divine good pleasure 🌙
O blessed month of Ramadan!
You are one of the unrivalled highways leading to the “good pleasure of God”!
“The City of God” is the city that carries us at the greatest speed, along the swiftest route, to “meeting the Exalted رضا”!
It raises us to the heights of “God’s good pleasure”!
Indeed, blessed Ramadan is the “ladder of God”!
The loftiest ladder leading to God!
It carries us to the “Garden of Divine Good Pleasure”!
It is “The City of God”!
It is “The City of Ramadan”!
And Ramadan is one of the names of God!
One of His most mysterious names!
But who is it that knows “Ramadan”?
Who knows who—or what—Ramadan is?
—
### Ramadan: the City of Fasting, a city closed to all but God 🏙
“The month of Ramadan” is “The City of God”!
It is a city!
It is “the City of Fasting”!
It is “a city of abstinence”!
Abstaining from all but God!
It is “a city of closure”!
Closed to all but God!
“The City of God” has come so that we may close down!
So that we may shut things down!
So that every marketplace devoted to anything but God may fall silent and grind to a halt!
“The City of God” has come to set our course straight, away from every false path and toward the way of “God’s good pleasure”!
Blessed Ramadan has come so that we may become flowers!
So that we may turn clay into flowers!
So that we may become pure!
So that we may be freed from every defilement and impurity!
So that we may be liberated from all that is foul!
Until sweetness and nectar flow from a person’s very being, they should question themselves!
The journey is not over yet!
They have not reached their destination!
They have not attained perfect sincerity!
When light wells up from within a person, when nothing but beauty shines forth from them…
then they have arrived!
Then they have become “Ramadan-like”!
Blessed Ramadan has come to help us understand that we must be “freed”—
that we must become sincere!
But what must we be freed from?
The “disliked things”?
Ah, no!
Not only the disliked things, but every “praised thing” as well!
We must move beyond them all!
We must pass beyond all that God has made praiseworthy, and leap into the “Garden of God’s Good Pleasure”!
—
### Ramadan’s way is God’s way: the hidden secret of this month 🛤
This is the way of Ramadan!
The way of God!
A way toward God!
Here is a new secret!
The undiscovered secret of the blessed month of Ramadan!
We must pass through all of God’s blessings!
We must not stop at “God’s signs”!
God’s signs are guides—
guides to set us on our way, until we reach our destination!
If we have gone astray, we must set ourselves right!
If we were to sum up “the essence of the blessed month of Ramadan” in a single phrase, it would be:
“کمالُ الإخلاصِ لَهُ نَفْیُ الصِّفاتِ عَنْهُ”
Let us consider these words, the destination of divine unity, from two perspectives:
✅ We must attain “theoretical tawhid”!
✅ We must also attain “practical tawhid”!
But how?
A profound secret lies hidden in these words of our Master!
It means passing beyond all that is “attributes”!
It means passing beyond all that is “signs”!
It means conquering every peak of “God’s attributes”!
Conquering every peak of “God’s signs”!
And when these peaks have been conquered…
There is our destination!
We have arrived!
—
### The true meaning of “إنا لله و إنا إلیه راجعون” 🔄
“إِنَّا لِلَّهِ وَإِنَّا إِلَيْهِ رَاجِعُونَ” finds its meaning there!
It means traversing all of “سُبُلٌ إِلَى اللَّهِ”!
When every path has been travelled…
When every path has reached its end…
Then it is over!
“We have arrived”!
“We have arrived” at “what lies beyond the attributes”!
“We have arrived” at “what lies beyond servitude to God”!
And here, our servitude to God is made manifest!
Here, at last, is the moment for “meeting the Beloved”!
“کمالُ الإخلاصِ لَهُ”
Perhaps this was a secret we had never before discovered!
—
### Ramadan’s blessing and mercy: a gift that endures in our souls 🎁
What is the “blessing” of Ramadan?
What makes the blessed month of Ramadan “blessed”?
It is that in every moment, at every turn, this month bestows on us its incomparable graces!
This month makes us among the “people of divine generosity”!
The month of God has turned toward God’s servants!
And through Ramadan, we remain ever immersed in blessing and blessedness!
The blessed month came bearing “blessing,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness”!
But not to take them away…
Rather, it has “brought them” to us!
It has brought “blessing,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness”!
So that they may take root in our souls!
And God Most High does not take back His gifts!
Those blessings, those mercies, those acts of forgiveness must grow within us!
They must blossom!
### Ramadan and the blessed human being: blessing one another 🌙✨
The blessed month and the blessed human being are each a blessing to the other!
The servant to the month, and the month to the servant!
We should all be a blessing to one another!
Human beings should become “the secret of God’s blessing” in the world of existence!
If only we knew the “grace and sanctity” of this blessed month!
If only we could come to know “Ramadan,” to know the “blessed month of Ramadan”!
اللهم عرّفْنی نفسک…
اللهم عرّفْنی نام مقدس رمضانت…
اللهم عرّفْنی حرمت ماه مبارکت…
O God, make known to me all that I need!
If only we knew the greatness of this blessed month!
And if only, from the depths of our hearts, we wished that the whole year were Ramadan!
—
### Wishing for a year that is all Ramadan! 🌟
If God’s servants knew what lies within the “month of Ramadan”…
They would wish for the whole year to be Ramadan!
This blessed month has “turned toward us”!
It has “turned toward us”!
We sat waiting to sight the new moon…
But before we could look for it, the blessed month had already looked for us!
It saw us!
It called us!
God’s servants!
—
### What is the sum of blessing, mercy, and forgiveness? 🕊
Do we know what “blessing,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness” add up to?
What, truly, is their sum?
When “blessing” is blended with “God’s mercy,” and both are woven into the human soul through “God’s forgiveness”…
What a commotion they stir!
Where do they not carry a person!
The blessed month of Ramadan has turned toward us!
It has come to welcome us!
With its “three embraces”…
✅ The embrace of blessing
✅ The embrace of mercy
✅ The embrace of forgiveness
The blessed month is God’s servants’ “greatest stroke of fortune”!
Who could deny the good fortune of those
who have the “blessed month of Ramadan” among them?
Everyone is fortunate!
Everyone is blessed with good fortune!
—
### Where Are the Treasure Seekers? 💎
Where are the treasure seekers
who would discover “the majesty of the blessed month”?
What does this blessed month not contain, that they could fail to find?
Every grain of it…
Every brick…
Every wall…
Every room…
Every chamber…
Every mansion…
Every last part of it is made of “priceless, peerless jewels”!
Its days… its nights… its hours… its moments…
Its sleep… its waking… its every breath…
Every one of them is extraordinary!
This is the very “month” that has invited us to “God’s banquet”!
But what is a banquet, if not “blessing,” “mercy,” and “forgiveness”?
These are only God’s “appetisers” and “opening courses”
before the main feast!
But what could God’s “blessing” possibly lack?
Hasn’t God’s “mercy” embraced everything?
Whoever attains God’s “forgiveness” hasn’t attained everything, have they?
So what could be left?
After all this comes “God’s banquet”!
But who gets to sit at this table?
“The one who is worthy of God’s generosity!”
—
### Ramadan’s Peerless Reward: Why Does God Himself Bestow It? ✨
What is this “banquet” made of?
Or is it made of no thing at all?
It is beyond compare!
For God Himself has said:
*“I Myself will reward it!”*
But don’t all the rewards in this world come from God?
Then why is the reward of the “blessed month” reserved for Him alone?
There is a mystery hidden here!
A mystery we will touch upon…
If, in this blessed month, every breath of ours is “praise of God”…
what will our spiritual state become?
What form will “love and devotion to God” take?
—
### Ramadan: Turning the Human Being into a Land of Remembrance and Love 🌿
In this month, a person is suddenly transformed into a “land flourishing with remembrance”!
They reach the “realm of love”!
But what can we do to attain “lofty graces” and “God’s special banquet”?
How can we make sure we don’t fall short, but receive the full measure of its blessings?
How can we partake of “God’s entire feast” all at once?
There is only one way:
“Take refuge in the Host Himself!”
We are guests of that “Host” who alone can make us capable!
Only He can enable us to partake of “all the blessings on His exalted table”!
—
### The key to partaking of God’s table 🔑
Yes, “this is the key”!
“When I turned to God for help…”
✅ With sincere intentions…
✅ With pure hearts…
Then God grants us success!
What is the sign of it?
✅ “I come to a halt in God”!
✅ I attain “the fast of God”!
✅ I embrace the Quran!
And this is the clearest sign that I have “succeeded”!
How beautifully the blessed month of Ramadan resembles the “Quran”!
It is the month of the “Quran”!
—
### True believers: healed by Ramadan and the Quran 📖
Only the “believers” benefit from this month!
Those who are truly “believers”!
Not those who merely “resemble believers,” while their hearts are like those of “hypocrites”!
“True believers” are those healed by the Quran and the blessed month of Ramadan!
But the “wrongdoers” gain nothing from this month but loss!
The “blessed month” brings them nothing but loss!
Woe to those who are “heedless”!
And all the more so to those who are “profane”!
This month has “turned toward us”!
And in turning toward us, “all of existence” has revealed itself to us!
The “Glorious Word of God” has “shown itself to us”!
So our “eternal greetings” to the “blessed month of Ramadan”!
To its “Night of Decree”!
And to the “Quran” revealed in this month!
And to the “blessed being” through whom alone the Night of Decree and the month of Ramadan have meaning!
—
### Ramadan’s blood flowing through our veins 🩸
Yes, the blessed month of Ramadan has arrived!
So that “Ramadan’s blood” may flow through our veins!
But what happens when “the blood of a pure human being” is transfused into our veins?
We are transformed!
So when “the month of Ramadan,” with all “its majesty and grandeur,” flows through our souls…
What state should we be in?
How should we fulfill “this month’s due”?
We must attain “knowledge” of it!
Without such knowledge, how can we travel “the path of God’s good pleasure”?
—
### Ramadan: the month of seeking forgiveness, reflection and oneness 🌙
It is the “Month of God”!
It is the “month of God”!
The “month of beauty”!
The “month of seeking forgiveness and proclaiming God’s oneness”!
This month, more than ever, we should say “لا اله الا الله”!
The “light of divine oneness” should blaze forth from our hearts!
It is the “month of proclaiming Allahu Akbar”!
“الله اکبر مِنْ أنْ یُوصَف”!
The “month of glorifying and praising God”!
The “month of love”!
This month, we should raise our voices in “a song of love for God”!
“The month of declaring His glory and transcendence”!
The “springtime of the poor”!
We should visit the poor!
We should comfort them with kindness!
We should honor “the neighbors of God’s blessings”!
We should be “good neighbors” to God’s blessings!
✅ Every “blessing from God” deserves to be honored!
✅ God’s blessing of “knowledge”!
✅ God’s blessing of “jurisprudence”!
✅ God’s blessing of “the Quran”!
✅ God’s blessing of “the Prophet’s Household”!
We should be “grateful” for every one of these blessings!
—
### Ramadan: A Month for Keeping Ties with Fellow Believers and Feeding the Poor 🤝🍽
It is the “month of keeping ties with fellow believers”!
The “month of feeding the poor and needy”!
The “month of breaking the fast”!
The “month of breaking the fasts of those who fast”!
The “month of liberation”!
If we are not “set free” this month…
when will we taste the sweetness of freedom?
—
### The Matchless Secret of Fasting and Its Divine Reward 🔑
“Fasting is for Me, and I Myself shall reward it!”
The harder I try to grasp what this means…
the more confounded I become!
“Fasting” belongs exclusively to “God’s incomparable Essence”!
And its “reward,” too, belongs only to “His Essence”!
But what does that mean?
✅ Does it mean a “direct reward” unlike any other?
✅ Does it mean that “no one can guess” what the reward for fasting in blessed Ramadan will be?
It is as though God has fashioned this “reward” so that the “human being” cannot comprehend it!
God’s direct will will engulf the one who fasts!
Whoever cuts themself off from “everything”…
will receive a reward unlike “anything”!
✅ It is not of the kind found in blessings!
✅ It is not of the kind found in names!
✅ It is not of the kind found in attributes!
So who is it that becomes “one who fasts for God”?
Blessed is the one who fasts for God, whose every limb and faculty—outward and inward—is fasting!
It is as though this fasting person passes through every “veil”!
Reaches the “final station”!
Conquers the “peaks of the attributes”!
And apprehends “what lies beyond the attributes”!
Then discovers the taste of “unmediated recompense”!
Or perhaps it is not a matter of “taste” at all!
—
### The Fasting Person Is God’s Special Guest 🏆
Yes, “fasting” belongs to “Him” alone!
The “one who fasts,” too, is His alone!
And “recompense” belongs exclusively to Him!
He will accept no “servant” to attend to the one who fasts for Him!
“God Himself” will be the host!
This is the very “secret” Imam Sajjad (AS) has taught us!
The “secret” we must “attain”!
—
### Fasting: The Death of Self-Will and the Sovereignty of God 🏹
“Fasting” “kills” “the self’s cravings”!
It takes “rule” away from “the self’s cravings”!
“Fasting” puts “the self’s cravings” “to sleep”!
It takes the “reins of command” from the self!
✅ It overthrows that “self-appointed ruler”!
✅ It breaks the “self’s bully”!
✅ It “tames” “the self’s rabid dog”!
Yes, “fasting” softens “the rebellious”!
—
### Fasting: The Death of Bodily Appetite and the Awakening of Spiritual Appetite ✨
“Fasting” kills “the body’s appetites”!
It takes “appetite” away from “the body”!
Why should “human nature” crave what will drag “a person down into ruin”?
✅ We must follow the path of “servitude to God” with “the appetite of reason”!
✅ “Human nature” must stand behind “the qibla of reason”!
✅ So that it may “crave” what “God desires”!
✅ It must desire what “God” desires!
✅ “Appetite” must become a “spiritual appetite”!
✅ “Appetite” must become an “appetite for divine pleasure”!
—
### Fasting: The Clarity of the Heart and the Purity of the Limbs 💎
“Fasting in the blessed month of Ramadan” brings “clarity” to the “heart”!
It “illuminates” “the human heart”!
It sweeps away “its dust”!
It makes it “clear”!
It “washes” “the limbs and faculties”!
It makes them “pure” and “clean”!
✅ But “purity of the limbs and faculties” is a “secret”!
Why does so much “impurity” arise from “human beings”?
Humanity should make the “world of existence” fragrant!
But why does a person become “impure” themselves?
Why do they dislike “their own smell”?
Why does their outward appearance need washing?
Where does this “impurity” come from?
Let us set aside the “inner impurities” for now!
But fasting has come to “purify the limbs and organs”!
By God, if they are “purified”…
no impurity will ever come forth from a person again!
✅ The blessed month has come so that we may be freed from “impurities”!
✅ So that we may be rid of “all that is impure”!
✅ So that “light” may shine forth from us!
✅ So that “wholesome honey,” sweeter than honey, may flow from us!
—
🎥 Watch the full talk at the link below:
🔗 Jame Jan website
🌍 jamejan.com
🟠 Jame Jan Eitaa channel
🌼Ali Saei (Abdollah Meshkat) 110.141(903)🌼
[1] The Virtues of the Three Months; p. 77Ibn Babawayh, Davari Bookshop—Qom, first edition, 1396 AH.
[2]The Virtues of the Three Months; p. 140 Ibn Babawayh, Davari Bookshop—Qom, first edition, 1396 AH.
[3] Bihār al-Anwār (Beirut edition), vol. 91, p. 148Majlisi, Dar Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi—Beirut, second edition, 1403 AH.
[4] Bihār al-Anwār (Beirut edition), vol. 91, p. 142Majlisi, Dar Ihya al-Turath al-Arabi—Beirut, second edition, 1403 AH.
[5] Miṣbāḥ al-Sharīʿa; p. 135Attributed to Jaʿfar ibn Muḥammad, al-Aʿlami—Beirut, first edition, 1400 AH.
[6] Nahj al-Balāgha (Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ edition); p. 62Sharif al-Radi, Muhammad ibn Husayn, Hijrat—Qom, first edition, 1414 AH.
[7] Nahj al-Balāgha (Ṣubḥī Ṣāliḥ edition); p. 267Sharif al-Radi, Muhammad ibn Husayn, Hijrat—Qom, first edition, 1414 AH.
