Sujood as a Condition of the Heart

All outward religious rituals are symbolic acts that point to an inner intuitive understanding that leads to a change in the heart. The act of prostration in sujood is an acknowledgment of the Creator’s sovereignty over every aspect of our lives. It is acknowledging Allah as the only Being we worship, the One we place in the center of our lives. The One we submit to as the only Truth, the only One who has the power to give and the power to take away, because all things come from Allah alone, and to Him all things will return. It is in the lowest position when we allow Allah to be in His rightful position as Master over our servanthood.

To understand why sujood must be a condition of the heart, and not just a physical act of prostration, one must learn why ritual is important to religion, and what its purpose is to the believer. Ritual has been a characteristic of religion since religion’s early onset among primitive peoples and is still prevalent among modern religions. According to Robert Bellah (author of Religion in Human Evolution), religion progresses through five stages which he terms, primitive, archaic, historical, early modern and modern. The purpose of ritual in each stage of religion’s evolution adapts to the changing internal concepts of spiritual understanding. Bellah discussing the change of ritual from archaic to historical as seen in Islam:

“For Muhammad the kafir is not, as we usually translate, the “unbeliever” but rather the ungrateful man who is careless of the divine compassion. For him, only Islam, willing submission to the will of God, can bring salvation. The identity diffusion characteristic of both primitive and archaic religions is radically challenged by the historic religious symbolization, which leads for the first time to a clearly structured conception of the self. Devaluation of the empirical world and the empirical self highlights the conception of a responsible self, a core self or a true self, deeper than the flux of everyday experience, facing a reality over against itself, a reality which has a consistency belied by the fluctuations of mere sensory impressions. Primitive [humans] can only accept the world in its manifold givenness [ritual is acting out daily life]. Archaic [humans] can through sacrifice fulfill his religious obligations and attain peace with the gods [sacrificial rituals]. But the historic religions promise [humans] for the first time that [they] can understand the fundamental structure of reality and through salvation participate actively in it” [symbolic ritual act which must be internalized to transform self]. (Robert N. Bellah, Religious Evolution, American Sociological Review, Vol 29, No3 (June 1964), pp. 358–374).

The purpose of salah in Islam is to promote submission to Allah by self-discipline in prayer, to praise Him, to make the Ka’ba a symbol of Allah being the center of the Ummah or Islamic community, to provide a ritualistic tradition which uniformly identifies those members of Islam to establish group identity, and to establish an outward physical manifestation as a symbolic act for the internal transformation of the self. However, to be transformed, we must understand the position of sujood within in our hearts, and honor Him constantly by submitting to His will.

Dom Sylvester Houedard, writing on Ibn ‘Arabi, discusses the intuitive understanding that stems from the heart, and not from the rational aspect of our minds, “The heart of mind” (apex mentis) is also where future touches past, so that again no smallest gap can enter between the two, and we, at any dimensionless instant of our life, are necessarily aware that we cannot say, ‘I am’ but only ‘I become.’” The intuitive understanding of our position in relation to our Creator, the Lord of the Worlds, enables spiritual growth fostered by humility. We are becoming, and the only “I am” is Allah.

In looking at the development of rituals in religions, one must begin with how a religion is established, and the underlying factors which causes it to grow and bring in converts. First, Allah calls a new Prophet, or Messenger to provide deeper understanding to move people out of their state of spiritual stagnation. The Prophet obtains followers, but then certain conditions must be established in order for the religion to grow. Lenn Evan Goodman, writing in the notes (Religious Philosophy) of his translation of Ibn Tufayl’s, Hayy Ibn Yaqzan, succinctly explains the process of new a religion,

“Thus revelation and tradition, indissolubly linked, have replaced reason as answers to the questions, ‘How is religious knowledge attainable? By what faculty can we know God? A new variety of religion has been generated. It is the particularization of revelation by confining its legitimacy to a historically specific set of traditions that yields a second answer to the philosopher’s question ‘For whom does religion exist?’ The new form of religion, since it has decried the activity of reason in religion and elevated the role of revelation is forced to become evangelical in its appeal: an evangel is the good news, the true report of a revelation. It addresses the multitude, the crowd in the market place, for its message is too charged with excitement to be phrased in the measured tones of the lectern. It may seem a strange juxtaposition, but there is a deep community of spirit between the learned Reinhold Niebuhr who puts revelation in place of reason and Billy Graham, who says ‘I can’t prove there’s a God; you’ve just go to believe…’ This is mass religion. It depends on reason only as far as the minimal requirements of communication demand; for the rest, it relies on emotion.

Now mass religion, like rational religion, claims universality; and doesn’t the claim seem more justified, for mass religion preaches to a high and low, rich and poor, wise and foolish? There is no intellectual elite here, no ignoring of the needs and passions of the people. The evangelist brings his tidings to all [people] of good will. Yet because allowing choice among revelations will only restore rational religion, tradition has been introduced, and precisely because the ‘needs’ and passions of the people are not ignored but fed by the emotional appeals of the evangelist that tradition will be particular, not universal. Through a lens of ethnic identity, through common bonds of history, through common needs and common passions, and even through religious tradition itself, the people will become this people, the Chosen People, God’s children, the People of the Only true Way, the Children of Light. If a prophet discovers the force behind the drive to peoplehood, how can he avoid calling that force to the service of God? Just as traditions single-out peoples, evangelists have a way of particularizing traditions, popularizing them…Muhammad brings a Qur’an to the Arabs, Moses brings a Torah for Israel…Group worship in the sacred language of the common revelation, common laws, common feasts and pilgrimages — the particularisms of time and place — common rituals — the elaborate panoply of ‘organized religion’ is build into a great edifice that all but obscures the original kinship chalk-line above which it rose — the cult has grown into a culture. The original ethnic appeal has come full circle, now it is peoplehood that is seen in terms of religion” (pp. 34–36).

A beginning religion must have at its core a significantly strong cohesiveness to be effective, so a common tradition with rituals which identifies its people as members of a tribe of believers propels the new religion into the future and allows it to expand around the world. It is important to note here, that Goodman states what began as ethnic identity moves from the concept of “us” as an ethnic tribe to a “peoplehood,” which is growth of spiritual maturity exemplified by not “us” separate from “others” based upon ethnic identity, but the deeper understanding of Allah’s will that in His Kingdom are no dividing lines of race or religion, there are no walls, that are all are called into His presence of Light, and are only known by the light filled condition of their hearts. His will calls us to see clearly the concept of love not clouded by our egos.

Salah: ‘Heart of the Mind’ understanding

The first thing a Muslim speaks in salah is “God is great!” Next, to begin the first rakah is, “O Allah, how perfect You are and praise be to You. Blessed is Your name, and exalted is Your majesty. There is no God but You.” And then, “I seek shelter in Allah from the rejected Satan.” Then the tasmiyah is spoken at the beginning of every rakah, “In the name of Allah, the most Gracious, the most Merciful.” However, before praying salah a Muslim must perform Wudu, which is a ritual cleaning.

The ritual cleaning is to express outwardly what should have already happened in a Muslim’s heart before beginning salah. Before approaching the great throne of God, our hearts must be cleansed from sin in order for our hearts to seek Him in all sincerity and love. This was a physical manifestation during the Hebrew temple times, when the most innermost part of the temple where God’s Shekhinah resided could only be approached once a year, by one of the priestly tribe of Levi. The responsibility of this priest was to devote themselves to keeping their hearts pure and clean in order to approach close to the presence of God. Later, when this priestly position became corrupt, and the positions were sold to the highest bidder, a rope would need to be tied to the priest because if his heart was not pure, he would not survive being in the presence of the Shekinah and his dead body would be pulled out by the attached rope.

The beginning of salah confirms God’s sovereignty, and asks protection from the attacks of Satan. And then, acknowledging God as most Gracious (or Beneficient) and most Merciful creates an important understanding of His forgiveness of our sins which is entirely dependent upon His grace — we are not the author of our own salvation. It is then, going into sujood, and requesting forgiveness do we fully understand our human lives, and any possibility of eternal life are entirely subjected to His Will.

The incredible symbol of bowing and prostration when understood by a willing heart enables us to understand our extreme humility before the Great Almighty God. A transformation of the heart allows us to fully love God, and then love our fellow humans because humility expresses the true mindset of a servant. When we believe ourselves to be better than others because of those things which are external like wealth, power and status, we are not understanding the concept of humility. The Prophet Muhammad (SAW) taught, “The best among you is the one that is the most pious.” Approaching Allah and others with pride causes your salah to fall at your feet, and not rise to Allah with the lovely perfume of a pure heart.

Parable of The Beautiful Gift

Once, a King invited all the lowly commoners of a village to present themselves before him. Of course, all were expected to bring a gift to honor the King’s sovereignty. One of the villagers attempted to please the King by wrapping his gift so beautifully and artfully that it was a sight to behold. For you see, this villager, with meticulous care had wrapped the gift so carefully that every fold was perfect, every color coordinated, and every bow perfect in its hand made symmetry. When it was the servant’s turn to lay his gift at the King’s feet, everyone exclaimed over its beauty expecting the most wonderful offering to be inside. However, after the King carefully unwrapped and delightfully opened the box, he found nothing inside. Because of the beauty of the outside of the box, the King thought the inside would hold the most meaningful gift of all the villagers.

This is the spiritual risk of the outward trappings of our religions, including ritual. Satan can tempt a person to believe that because they commit to following all the traditions of their religions, they are not in danger of falling off the Straight Path and being led astray. A Muslim can perform salah every day, five times a day, but as some Muslims believe, this does not guarantee you entrance into Paradise, nor does just simply speaking the arabic words without the correct condition of the heart forgives your sins. How many times have we seen on social media, “just say this word, or that word, this prayer or that prayer, so many times, and all your sins will be forgiven.” Salah is not a magical formula for salvation. When you don’t allow your heart to be transformed, the ritual of salah just becomes a beautifully decorated box with nothing meaningful inside of it.