As long as they are engaged in worldly matters...

As long as they are engaged in worldly matters, they live hugging their beloved, and when the time of the Salat arrives, the heart feels a kind of vacancy and sticks to its beloved, as if the takbīrat ul-ihrām (the first Allāhu akbar uttered aloud at the start of the Salat ) is the key to the shop, or the remover of the curtain between it and its beloved.

So, he comes to himself only when he has just uttered the taslīm (the finishing words of the Salat ), whereas he had paid no attention to the Salat itself, and during it he had been engaged in thinking of this world.

That is why our Salat s for forty or fifty years have no result whatsoever in our hearts except darkness and impurity, and what should have been a cause for ascension to the proximity of Allah's presence and a means of becoming familiar with His sanctity, has, on the contrary, driven us out of His proximity and taken us miles away from ascending to be familiar with His presence.

Had our Salat a smell of servitude, its result would have been modesty and humility, not self-conceitedness, ostentation, arrogance and pride, each one of which can possibly be a separate cause of man's misfortune and perdition. In short, when one's heart becomes mixed with the love of this world, with no objective or aim except building it up and developing it, this love will inevitably prevent the heart from being vacant and present in the presence of Allah.

This deadly disease and ruinous corruption can be cured by useful knowledge and good deed. The useful knowledge suitable for this ailment is to think of the fruits and outcomes of curing it, and compare them with the harmful and destructive consequences resulting from it. In my commentaries on the Forty Hadiths in this respect I have explained this topic in details as was possible.

Here I will suffice myself with explaining some Hadiths of the infallible (' a ): In Al-Kāfī , Abū 'Abdullāh (as-Sādiq) (' a ) is quoted to have said: “The origin of every sin is the love of this world.”[^3] Other Hadiths on this subject, though in different wordings, are plenty.[^4] Yet, this noble hadīth is quite enough for the wakeful man, and it is enough for this big and pernicious sin to be the source of all sins and the root and basement of all corruptions.

By a little contemplation it can be realized that almost all moral and practical corruptions are the fruits of this vile tree.