His Eminence the religious authority (marjaʿ) Grand Ayatollah Sayed Muhammad Taqi al-Modarresi (may his shadow endure).
There is no doubt that the human being's knowledge of himself is a key to knowing the supreme truths that surround him. For the human being—despite his small size—represents a great and vast world, and he is charged with knowing himself, just as he is charged with knowing his Lord. For it has been reported from the Prophet (s): “Whoever knows himself has known his Lord.”
The greatest problems arise in the human being when he becomes estranged from himself, even though his self is the nearest thing to him; yet despite that, he pays it no attention. He sees everything, but he forgets himself, as our Lord, Almighty, says: “forget Allah, so He makes them forget their own souls. It is they who are the transgressors.” (Qurʾan 59:19) He forgets himself through being drawn to the material appearances around him, such as wealth, desires and power, but in return he loses himself.
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If we do not benefit from the talks delivered during the nights of the month of Ramadan, especially on the Nights of Qadr, and if we do not take from them a provision that will benefit us on the Day of Return, then we will be losers, because our state will be like the state of a person who dies of thirst while standing alongside a sweet, limpid river.
We are now in the direst need of taking provision, as He, Majestic and Exalted, says: “And take provision, for indeed the best provision is Godwariness.” (Qurʾan 2:197).
For before us lies a long, protracted journey through a barren land in which there is neither water nor pasture, and on it we are in pressing need of taking provision. There is no doubt that the Night of Qadr is the greatest of the nights in which we can provide ourselves with Godwariness, knowledge and understanding in order to change ourselves.
Unfortunately, the vast majority of people live in a state of absence from themselves, and from the energies, talents and abilities that Allah, the Exalted, has deposited within them. In what follows I will try to shed light on this important aspect, by opening a window; so let us try to look through it, so that we may be able to comprehend and go far into the horizons of knowledge.
The Necessity of the Human Being's Knowing His Worth
This window, which I want to open before you—dear reader—is so that you may know yourself, and know that Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, has created what is greater in terms of bodily hugeness, such as the elephant, the whale and others; yet these animals, despite their hugeness and awesomeness, will turn to dust on the Day of Resurrection, without there being any reckoning or record before them, and without entering a Paradise or coming to a Fire.
As for the human being, his condition is different. He comes into this world to live its bitterness and to suffer worries and problems, as the Exalted says: “O man! You are labouring toward your Lord laboriously, and you will encounter Him.” (Qurʾan 84:6), and as He says: “certainly We created man in travail.” (Qurʾan 90:4) Then, after that, he descends into the arena of death, which reaches such a degree of hardship and difficulty that some people live its bitterness and its painful memory until the Day of Resurrection.
Aspects of the Punishment of the Day of Resurrection
After death comes the stage of the Barzakh, and it is said that some people live in this stage for millions of years, either in punishment or in bliss; then they live fifty thousand years on the Day of Resurrection; then they abide forever in the fire of Hell—if they are among the evildoers—this fire which the human imagination cannot conceive. It has come in some narrations that the chain in which the criminal is bound in Hell has a length reaching the cubit of the angels, and there are other narrations that state explicitly that if a single link of it were placed on the mountains of the earth, they would melt from its heat.
In this regard I have read a hadith about His saying, Mighty is the Speaker: “an escalating punishment” (ʿadhāban ṣaʿadan) (Qurʾan 72:17), that the escalating (ṣaʿad) punishment means that in the fire of Hell there is a mountain which the unbeliever is ordered to climb while shuffling in shackles, and that there are hills of scorpions, snakes and fires, and the unbelieving person must ascend these hills—bearing in mind that the orders cannot be disobeyed—and this unbeliever keeps ascending until his ascent takes forty years for him to reach the summit; and when he reaches it, they throw him to the foot of the mountain so that he ascends anew, and he remains in this state forever and ever!
This, then, is one aspect of the punishment on the Day of Resurrection, and of its different varieties which the mind can hardly conceive. All of that indicates that you—O human being—have been created for a great matter, and that you should not look at yourself with a look of contempt and belittlement. For your destiny will be either the lasting punishment or the eternal, everlasting bliss.
Emancipation from the Fire
We must ask Allah, Majestic is His affair, to make us among the felicitous on the Night of Qadr, among those He emancipates from the Fire, and among those who win Paradise. For on that night we alight as guests of our Creator and Maker, so let us ask Him to bring us near and to honor us. For every guest there is hospitality, so let us call upon Him, the Exalted, to make our hospitality Paradise—and Allah is certainly Generous—so perhaps He—through a single supplication—will bring about in your self a radical change and a comprehensive transformation. So let us all ask that of Allah, Majestic and Exalted, and let us pray for ourselves, for our brothers and for all the believing men and women, for a good end and salvation from the Fire; this Fire which some narrations have described as having a bottom so far away that some are thrown into it and their fall takes seventy autumns until they reach its bottom!
Paradise: Blessings beyond Counting
If we look closely at the blessings of Allah, the Exalted, which He has prepared for the human being in Paradise, from the angle of knowing the human being, the extent of Allah's honoring of him, and the reason for his creation, we will discover that the blessings of Paradise are many, beyond all limit of counting. Among the most important of these blessings is (eternity). For in Paradise the human being is not seized by fear of annihilation, owing to the absence of the factors of annihilation such as illness and calamities.. Likewise, in Paradise there are eternal blessings that cannot be counted.
The believing human being will possess in Paradise tremendous capacities and energies: he possesses a land of his own, and a spacious house of hospitality in which he can host all the people of Paradise at a table in a single day.
Will Determines Our Destiny
So through this window we must know our worth. This Paradise and that Fire—we enter neither of them except by our will. For Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, has given us the key to Paradise, just as He has given us the key to the Fire, and it is easy for the human being—if he wishes—to cast himself into the fires when he abandons himself. For the door of the Fire is open to the unbelieving human being, as He, Mighty is the Speaker, says: “Certainly We have winnowed out for hell many of the jinn and humans” (Qurʾan 7:179).
From here the human being knows his worth, and this worth lies in his will and his volition. For by them he chooses Paradise, with the eternal blessings in it, or the Fire, with the kinds of punishment that fill it. Through this window we must come to know ourselves; and the human being only knows his self through its end, and through the destiny to which it will come.
Here we arrive at the basic subject, which is answering the question that asks: What is the human being? If you do not know yourself, you will become covetous, anxious when ill touches you, and grudging when good touches you, as He, Glorified and Exalted is He, pointed out in the decisive text of His Noble Book.
That is, the human being turns into a simple, naive creature that cares only about satisfying his bodily instincts and this life that he lives; so he basically forgets his great issues and his distant future, because in this state he will cut himself down and make himself small. Add to that the fact that Satan too strives to push him to that, so he distracts him and makes his thinking focused on partial, trivial, marginal matters that possess no value whatsoever.
This, whereas Allah, Majestic and Exalted, wants the human being to look far toward the horizons and to reach the level of humanity; and the choice lies in the human being's hand: to reach this lofty summit, or to fall into that abyss.
Between Delegation and Compulsion
In this domain the human being has gone two ways that are contradictory in appearance, yet both lead him to belittle and despise himself. The first school is the school of delegation (tafwīḍ), which says that Allah, Blessed and Exalted is He, has no will over the human being: He has left him to his own affairs, and created him in vain and to no purpose, so He neither recompenses him, nor holds him to account, nor punishes him. So Allah—exalted is He above what they describe—is neutral in the battle between good and evil, and has left the world to be ruled by the law of the jungle. This is the theory of delegation, which despises the human being and lowers his standing, because in this case the human being will not find anyone in whom to put his trust, or to whom to resort, when he faces social, cultural and media pressures and the various problems of life. And it is well known that whoever does not put his trust in Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, quickly collapses.
As for the second theory, it says that the human being has nothing of the matter in his hand; everything is tied to Allah, and the human being does not determine anything for himself. It is strange that some exegetes interpret the Qurʾan in the light of this theory (the theory of compulsion, jabr), and we ask such people: If the human being is deprived of will, then why does he decide, why does he will, and why does he strive and move?
Moderation and Balance between Good and Evil
When this human being loses the sense of his mastery over himself, and of his possession
of its reins, he will in truth lose everything.
The narrations have emphasized that there are thirty-three angels, and the same number of devils, surrounding the human being's heart, and between them is the human being's will. So there is—then—a moderation and a balance between the two forces, and the will performs the role of choosing one of the two sides.
Satan approaches you to justify to you surrender, indulgence and continuing on the path of sins; he justifies your reality to you and suggests to you that it is the best reality, and so he prevents you from making use of the blessed month of Ramadan, so that you enter it and leave it without adding any good conduct to your conduct, and without setting about changing your corrupt reality.
We must—at the least—give up one of our sins, or change one of the bad habits to which we have become accustomed and replace it with a good habit; and let us try in this noble month to plant in ourselves the love of the Qurʾan, of prayer and of devotion..
A Prescribed Prayer
It has been narrated in this regard that the companions of the Prophet (s), in the first ten years of the descent of the revelation, used to stand vigil at night in application of His saying, the Exalted: “O you wrapped up in your mantle! Stand vigil through the night, except for a little [of it], a half, or reduce a little from that or add to it, and recite the Quran in a measured tone.” (Qurʾan 73:1–4), and so they would stand vigil at night and immerse themselves in worship, feeling that this prayer was prescribed for them. Because of the difficulty of the prayer and the overpowering of drowsiness, they (r) used to tie themselves with ropes to trees or to the walls of their houses so as not to fall to the ground from excessive fatigue and drowsiness, and they would remain in this state until morning.
So let us try to accustom ourselves in this virtuous month to performing the night prayer, and to reading the Noble Qurʾan and loving it, and let us beware lest the blessed month of Ramadan come upon us and then pass from us without anything in our souls having changed. For Satan entices us to continue in the reality in which we live, whereas the human being must overcome this obstacle; for as soon as he acknowledges within himself that he is capable of change and of reaching perfection, this acknowledgment will turn his life upside down and place him on the path of ascent to perfection. For the horizons of perfection have no end, and the Night of Qadr consolidates this aspect in souls, for it is a night of peace, as the Exalted said: “It is peaceful until the rising of the dawn.” (salāmun hiya) (Qurʾan 97:5), and peace means that Satan is shackled on this night, and that your will is free and your heart clean and pure.
The Program of Change on the Night of Qadr
On this night a divine and spiritual orientation arises in the human being, which he must make use of, and in which he must resolve upon comprehensive change. For Allah, Glorified and Exalted is He, grants us the opportunity, but some do not make use of it, whereas they should seize it and draw, from now, a picture of their new future, and lay down a program for their coming life.
This program is found in the supplications, especially in the Supplication of Abu Hamza al-Thumali, at the end of which we find an integrated program for the human being's life. In this noble supplication we read phrases such as: “O Allah, single me out from You with the special favor of Your remembrance, and do not let anything by which I seek nearness in the hours of the night and at the ends of the day be for show, nor for repute, nor out of arrogance, nor out of insolence, and make me among those who are humble before You. O Allah, grant me abundance in provision, security in the homeland, delight of the eye in family, wealth and children, continuance in Your blessings upon me, health in the body, strength in the frame and soundness in religion, and employ me in obedience to You and obedience to Your Messenger Muhammad (s), forever, for as long as You let me live...”.
So this, then, is a program of life and a set of aspirations, and these are true life and true happiness. So let us place this program before us, and ask Allah, Almighty, earnestly to grant us success in applying it on the Night of Qadr. For Allah inevitably answers the supplication that issues from a sincere heart and a soul untainted by showing off, and He has guaranteed us this answer in the decisive text of His Noble Book when He said: “When My servants ask you about Me, [tell them that] I am indeed nearmost. I answer the supplicant’s call when he calls Me. So let them respond to Me, and let them have faith in Me” (Qurʾan 2:186)
If this promise issues from Allah—and He is the Just, the Truthful, the Perfect—then it will be like glad tidings that He conveys to the truthful believers who have resolved to change their souls and have carried this out by making use of the spiritual occasions to purify themselves and cleanse them of bad residues, especially on the Night of Qadr.
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