Ethics and Spirituality

The daily routine of a monotheistic and sincere servant of God should include asking God for certainty and well-being. The Sermon of the Pious and Imam Ali’s letter to Imam Hasan (AS) in Nahj al-Balagha offer the best guidance on the duties of servitude throughout the day and night. One who attains certainty is to be envied, not pitied.

In particular mystical states, mystics and those who attain a high degree of knowledge and certainty may experience time in different ways, and may undergo experiences that transcend time and are difficult to describe. Knowledge itself occupies a station beyond the timeless.

Wisdom is the key to attaining a transcendent, creative mind. Until the celestial intellect awakens, heavenly creativity cannot take flight. Certainty is the force that brings genius to fruition. The proposed remedy is a wise outlook and a path grounded in certainty—one that awakens inner intelligence and allows its effects to emerge in thought and action.

Specialising in the Qur’an and the Ahl al-Bayt is possible only through a distinctive, intimate engagement with these two weighty trusts and by entering the realm of their allusions and subtleties. It requires intellectual, spiritual and rational striving, together with the utmost purity and self-discipline. Certainty through the mysteries of wisdom means being able to use wisdom to order and govern one’s being, and to reach the source of realities.

In this supplication, suspicion, like weakness of faith, concerns one’s devotion to God and must not be allowed to take hold of a person. It leaves no room for reconciliation with one’s beloved. Such mistrust stands in the way of peace and harmony between a person and God.

Divine religion is like a tree whose root is certainty, and certainty itself is a manifestation of a special divine light. This light is expressed in a particular way at each stage of servitude to God, bringing joy. Certainty has a distinct station at each stage of Islam, faith, and God-consciousness.