Adab as-Salat: The Disciplines of the Prayer Second Revised Edition

State Of The Musallī During Utterance Of The Salām, And The Condition For The Salām To Be Truthful

Know that when the sālik comes out of the state of sujūd, whose secret is “annihilation,” and comes to himself, and into a state of wakefulness and attentiveness, returning from the state of being absent from the world to the state of being present, he offers his salām (peace) to the beings the salām of the one who has come back from a journey, from an occultation. So, as he returns he sends peace upon the noble Prophet, because after returning from unity [wahdat] to multiplicity [kathrat], the first manifestation will be that of the truth of guardianship: “We are the first preceding ones”[^1]

Thereafter, he will pay attention to the essences [a'yān] of other beings, distinctly and collectively.

The one who has not kept away, in the salāt, from the creatures [khalq] and has not become a traveler to Allah, to him the salām has no meaning and is nothing but a chattering of the tongue. So, the cordial discipline of the salām depends on the discipline of the salāt as a whole. If in this salāt, which is the truth of the mi'rāj, there was no ascension, and he did not come out of the house of the soul, he would actually have no salām.

Furthermore, if in this journey there was safety from the intrusions of Satan and the evil-commanding soul, and, if the heart had no ailment during this real mi'rāj, his salām would be truthful; if not, he would have no salām. Yes, the salām upon the Prophet (s) is, therefore, a salām with truthfulness, because, in this ascending journey, in this travel to Allah, in both ascending and descending, he enjoys peace, and, along his journey, he is free from the conducts [tasarrufāt] of other than the Haqq (Allah), to which we have referred in our commentary on the sūrah of al-Qadr.

[^1]: Bihār al-Anwār, vol. 15, p. 15: “We are the first and we are the last;” Muslim's Sahīh, vol. 2, p. 585; Al-Bukhārī's Sahīh, vol. 1, p. 36: “We are the last and we are the preceding ones.”