On the General Secret of Orientation

The appearance of orientation consists of two aspects:

One is (turning to) the forefront, which is turning the face from all dispersed sides.

The other is psychological, and it is the orientation of the face towards the Ka'bah, which is the ummul qura (the Mother of the Towns) and the center of the extension of the earth.

This appearance has an inside, and the inside has a secret, or rather, secrets. The people of the invisible secrets distract the interior or the spirit from dispersed directions [jihat] of the multiplicities of the invisible and visible, and direct the secret of the spirit towards being attached to the One. They regard all the multiplicities as vanished in the secret of the "Collective Oneness" [ahadiyat-i jam]. When this spiritual secret settles in the heart, the Haqq (Allah) appears in the heart as the Greatest Name, which is the state of the "Union of the Names" [jam '-i asma'i], and the multiplicities of the Names are vanished and disappear in the Greatest Name, and the heart is directed, in this instance, to the Greatest Name. And when it comes out from inside the heart to the outer visibility, the plan for annihilating [fina] (all) other (than Allah) is to turn away from the east and west of the visible world, and the plan of the orientation towards the Union [hadrat-i jam] is the orientation towards the center of the extended earth, which is Allah's hand in the earth.

As regards the traveller to Allah, who travels from the outside to the inside, and advances from the overt to the covert, he is to use this formal orientation towards the center of the earthly blessings, and discarding other diverse orientations, as a means for the cordial moods, and never to be satisfied with the meaningless appearance. He is to divert the heart -which is the focus of Allah's attention -from the different and diverse directions, which are real idols, directing it towards the qiblah of the truth, which is the origin of the origins of the blessings of the heavens and the earth, and doing away with the custom of other [ghair] and otherness [ghairiyat] so as to get to the secret of: ﴾I have turned my face toward Him Who originated the heavens and the earth﴿¹ to some extent, and to have in his heart an example of the manifestations and gleams of the invisible world of the (Divine) Names, so that the diverse directions and the different multiplicities may be burnt away by the divine gleam. Allah, the Exalted, would help him, and the small and big idols in the inmost corner of the heart may be destroyed by the hand of (His) guardianship. However, this is an endless story, so let me drop it and go by.

* Book: Adabus Salat "The Disciplines of the Prayer". By: Imam Khomeini.

1- Surah al-An'am: 79.