From the noble āyah s of the Qur'an and the noble hadīth s...

From the noble āyah s of the Qur'an and the noble hadīth s of the infallible Imāms ( s ) many disciplines can be discovered. But to count them all would need a complete scrutinizing research, which prolongs the discussion. It suffices us to mention only a few of them.

One of the important disciplines of isti'ādhah is “sincerity,” as Allah the Exalted, quotes Satan to have said: “ By your Might I will tempt them all, except Your sincere servants from among them.” [^3] This “sincerity,” as is clear from this noble āyah , is something higher than the practical sincerity, whether by the heart or by the limbs, because, it is in the objective case [in its Arabic form = mukhlasīn ]. Had it been for sincerity in action, it should have been in the nominative case.

Therefore, this sincerity is intended to denote the purification of the human personality with all the visible and invisible affairs, of whose emissions is the practical sincerity, although, at the beginning of the sulūk , this fact and divine grace would not easily take place except by difficult practical austerities, especially the cordial ones, which are its origin, as is referred to in the well-known hadīth : “The one who keeps being sincere to Allah for forty mornings, fountains of wisdom will flow from his heart to his tongue.”[^4] So, whoever could sincerely devote himself to Allah for forty mornings which is the period of fermenting [ takhmīr ] the clay [ tīnat ] of which Adam was created, and the connection between these two is well-known to the people of knowledge and of heart and dedicate his cordial and formal acts sincerely to Allah, his heart will become godly, and the godly heart produces nothing other than fountains of wisdom.

Then, his tongue, which is the greatest interpreter of the heart, will speak wisdom. So, at the beginning, sincerity of the act leads to the purification of the heart, and when the heart becomes purified, the lights of Majesty and Beauty which are deposited by divine fermentation [ takhmīr ] in the human clay are reflected in the mirror of the heart and become manifest there, and from the innermost of the heart they appear on the external body.

In short, the sincerity, which frees one from the satanic authority, is devoting the identity of the soul [ rūh ] and the innermost of the heart to Allah, the Exalted.