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"Allah and His angels send blessings on the Prophet ﷺ: O ye that believe! Send ye blessings on him ﷺ, and salute him ﷺ with all respect."
"When Muhammad ﷺ sends Salawat upon the believers, it indicates his prayer for their welfare, blessing and salvation."
To send blessings upon the Prophet ﷺ is to receive blessings from him ﷺ. It is the process of manifestation of blessings and purification of the soul through connecting our hearts with his ﷺ.
The Prophet ﷺ said "Verily, I have many names. I am the Effacer (al-Mahi) through whom God effaces unbelief, I am the Gatherer (al-Hashir) at whose feet the people will be gathered, and I am the Last Prophet (al-Akhir) after whom there are no more."
It is said that on the Day of Judgement, on the Throne of God itself will God seat Muhammad ﷺ, alluded to in the Qur'anic verse “It may be that thy Lord will raise thee to a praised estate” (17:79). Thus he rises to the reality of the Ahmad, his highest manifestation. The Throne of God, as explained by the metaphysicians of the Path, is the True Kaaba. It is the seat of consciousness. It is the Heart, so for Muhammad ﷺ to be seated upon the Throne means that his essential reality has existential significance with respect to the reality of our own Being. He ﷺ is seated on our own Hearts. His ﷺ essence is stamped on our Hearts and on creation itself.
I asked: "O Messenger of Allah, when were you [first] a Prophet?" He ﷺ replied: "When Allah created the earth ‘Then turned He to the Heaven and fashioned it as seven Heavens’ [2:29], and created the Throne. He wrote on the leg of the Throne: "Muhammad the Messenger of Allah is the Seal of Prophets" . Then Allah created the Garden in which He made Adam and Hawwa' dwell, and He wrote my name on the gates, its tree-leaves, its domes and tents, at a time when Adam was still between the spirit and the body..."
And this reality is mentioned by Imam 'Ali كرم الله وجهه when he says "the human being is a small universe, and the universe is a large human being" and "you think you are a small entity [microcosm], but within you is enfolded the entire Universe [macrocosm]" The understanding is that this pertains to the Universal Intellect, the First Being (al-awal al-aql) created by God with His 'two hands', which are represented in the male Principle of Power and the female Principle of Knowledge.
The Insan al-Kamil is the Universe awakened through the modality of the self from which emerges the Perfected Man. This reality is epitomized in the Prophet ﷺ.
The Prophet ﷺ, described as The Book, contains this Universal Knowledge, and thus possesses the qualities of perfect clarity and conduct, and the perfect performance of good deeds. Such a being is one who necessarily is a Universal Teacher, a World Teacher, and thus he ﷺ was known as the one who trains and leads all to Enlightenment, both human and heavenly beings, and guides to safety and salvation, for he ﷺ is also known as al-Shafi (the Intercessor). Standing without equal as the world-honored one, as the Unexcelled Worthy, Divine Love permeates and illuminates his ﷺ Being.
The salawat is an invitation to the Holy Prophet ﷺ to enter your Heart thereby sanctifying it with his worship of Allah. It is thus a type of consecratory act that has initiatic significance. It is an initiation onto the path of metaphysics and into the inner circles of the Prophetic Tradition.
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