ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Adab as-Salat: The Disciplines of the Prayer Second Revised Edition Section Four: The Discipline Of Reverence One of the important disciplines of reciting the Divine Book, shared by the gnostic and the common man, and which brings about good results causing luminosity for the heart and the interior life, is to regard it with “reverence”, which depends on realizing its greatness and majesty.

This, however, is actually out of the scope of explanation and beyond the human capacity, because understanding the greatness of a thing depends on understanding its truth, while the truth of the Divine Holy Qur'an, before being sent down to the stages [ manāzil ] of creation and before undergoing practical modes [ atwār ], is of the affairs [ shu'ūn ] of His Essence and of the facts of Knowledge in His Unity [ hadrat-i wāhidiyyat ] .

It is the truth of a “Self-Speech” [ kalām-i nafs ] , which is the “Essential Argument” [ muqāri'at-i dhātiyyah ] in His Names. This truth appears to no one, neither by means of formal sciences or cordial knowledge nor by unseen disclosure, except through complete divine revelation to the blessed person of the Final Prophet ( s ), in the intimacy of qāba qawsayn [at the distance of two bows' length], or even in the secret privacy of aw adnā [or nearer].

The hand of hope of the human species is short of that, except, that of the sincere of Allah's friends who, according to the spiritual lights and the divine facts, share in the spirituality of the Prophet's sacred essence and, through their complete subordination, they vanished in him.

They receive the disclosing knowledge by inheriting it from him, and the truth of the Qur'an may be reflected in their hearts, with the same luminosity and perfection with which it appeared in the heart of that great personality, without its descending to [mundane] stations and taking [mundane] forms. That Qur'an is without change and alteration, and it is of the book of divine revelation.

The one capable of carrying this Qur'an is the noble person of the absolute friend of Allah, 'Alī ibn Abi Tālib (' a ). Others cannot take this fact in, unless it descends from the station of ghayb [the invisible] to the station of visibility and takes the seen form, wearing the apparel of mundane words and letters.