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Chapter IV: Secrets of Prayer

prayer just like a statue. Some used to remain in Ruku like a motionless stone, so mush so that birds sat on his head. The Prophet said : Pray as if it is your farewell prayer, having in mind fear and shame owing to defects in prayers and fear that your prayer may not be accepted and that it may be thrown on your face with your express and secret sins. There is in Hadis that when a man stands in prayer, God lifts up the screen between Him and His servant and faces him. The angels climb upon his two shouldes and pray in horizon along with him and says 'Ameen' along with his invocation. They spread virtues over the scalp of his head from above the horizon. A proclaimer proclaims: If this invoker had known to whom he is invoking, he .
would not have looked to and fro. The doors of heaven are opened up for a praying man and God takes pride before His angels for the praying man. So the doors of heaven are opened up for him and the face of God comes before his face. In other words, his Kashf is opened. There is written in the Torah : O son of Adam don't be baffled to stand up before Me in prayer in weeping state, because then I come near your mind and you also see My light unseen. He said: The softness, weeping and victory which a praying man feels in his mind, bespeak of the advent of God in his mind. When His nearness is not the nearness of space, there is no meaning of it except the nearness of mercy, guidance and removal of evils.

God says : Those believers got salvation who fear God in their prayers. Then He praised them with their speciality of prayer. It is connected with God fear. Then he described the qualities of those who got salvation through prayer, as God says :
Those who guard their prayers, Then He says : They will inherit the garden of Ferdous. They will abide therein. If tongue is moved with inattention, can this reward be achieved ? The praying one will inherit the gardens, they will directly see divine light and they will enjoy the happiness of nearness.

STORIES OF THE PRAYERS OF GOD-FEARING MEN

Know, O dear readers, that God-fear is the result of real faith and belief. He who has keen given it, fears God in and out of prayer, when he remains alone and even at the time of calls of nature, because he who fears God knows it well that He knows the condition of mind and his sins and faults. Fear grows in the

148 THE BOOK OF WORSHIP Vol-I

Source: Imam Al-Ghazali, Ihya Ulum al-Din (Revival of the Islamic Sciences)
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