ভূমিকা

Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Inner Secrets of The Path Final Word of Advice and Instruction ** ** We have also promised to add a word of advice to the spiritual travelers on their way to the Lord of the Worlds. This concerns the qualities that they must adopt in order to reach their goal and arrive at their Beloved, to join and: aide with Him after their annihilation.

When your mind is fixed on the angelic realm (malakut), busy in its duty of remembrance, a remembrance which issues from humility and submission, when this reflective aware­ness is subtle and lets the body consume less food and lets the passions and desires die, when it is prepared to remain awake at night in humility and submission before the majesty of the Lord, with sincere devotion and good intention, then it is not long before the flashes of light and delicious moments of recog­nition and understanding occur.

Your soul attains perfection when it returns to its original sublime state, according to the individual capacity of each person. Thus the soul divests itself of all illusion and refines itself with the subtlety of its own secret by means of spiritual exercises aimed at a purification of the outer and inner from all obscurity and impurity. In this way your soul must seize authority over the body ‑ and not vice versa.

The perfection of the soul lies in its relationship with the body and it is achieved by way of absolute justice, by a combi­nation of wisdom, courage and chastity; and each one of these qualities must lie between the two bounds of excess and negli­gence.

This middle path is itself a quality of excellence bounded as it must be on either side by two baser qualities: thus the first (wisdom) lies between foolishness and cunning, the second (cour­age) between cowardliness and impetuousness and the third (chastity) between covetousness and discouragement. Up to this point we have been considering the principles or root qualities.

As for the branches of wisdom, they are astuteness, eloquence, sound opinion, prudence and resolution, truthfulness, trustworthiness, mercy, modesty, earnestness, faithfulness and humility; the branches of chastity are contentment, generosity, patience, forbearance, open‑heartedness, concealment of the sec­ret and trust; the branches of courage are endeavor, power, firmness and constancy, determination, vitality, bravery and ambition.

It is thus by adoption of these qualities that one attains to a completion of perfection.