When you have completed the prayer, remember God, standing and sitting and on your sides. Know that the prayer is secret whispering between God and the servant. In this secret whisper- ing, there is both need and joy. Today there is need, tomorrow joy; today suffering, tomorrow the treasure; today a heavy burden, tomorrow repose and ease [56:89]; today toil and work, tomorrow pleasure and the bazaar; today bowing and prostrating, tomorrow finding and witnessing. Part of the eminence of the prayer is that the Exalted Lord has mentioned it 102 times in the Qur'an and given it thirteen names: prayer, devotion, Qur'an, glorification, book, remembrance, bowing, prostration, praise, asking forgiveness, declaring greatness, beautiful deeds, and subsistent things. MuṣṬafā said, “The prayer is the miʿrāj of the person of faith.” He said, “The prayer is God's banquet in the earth.” The ulama of the past have said, “The prayer is the throne of the desirers, the pleasure of the recognizers, the means of approach of the sinners, and the scented garden of the renunciants.” They have also said, “The person performing the prayer has received seven generous bestow- als: guidance, sufficiency, expiation, mercy, proximity, degree, and forgiveness.” The first step in associationism is not to say the prayers, for the Exalted Lord will say, “'What brought you into Saqar?' They will say, 'We were not of those who said the prayers'” [74:42-43]. And He placed the name faith in the prayer, where He says, “But God would never leave your faith,” that is, your prayer, “to waste” [2:143]. He promises daily provision with prayer, where He says, “And command thy folk to the prayer, and be thou patient therein. We ask thee for no provi- sion. We shall provide for thee” [20:132]. The number of obligatory prayers came as five in conformity with the roots of the Shari'ite rules. Concerning the roots of the Shari'ite rules MuṣṬafā said, “The submission is built on five.” The roots of the obligatory prayers are five prayers in one day and night. In other words, when the servant performs these five prayers with their stipulations and at their times, the Exalted Lord will give him the reward of all the roots of the Shari'ite rules. The guises of the prayer are four: standing, bowing, prostrating, and sitting. The wisdom in this is that the existent things in their entirety have four shapes. Some are straight in the guise of standers, namely the trees. Some have the guise of bowers with their heads turned down, namely the beasts. Some have the guise of prostrators with their faces placed on the earth, namely the crawling things. Some sit on the earth like sitters, namely grass and plants. It is as if the Exalted Lord said, “O servant with faith! In serving Us, bring forth these four guises-standing, bowing, prostrating, and sitting-so that you may find the reward of all the creatures' glorifications.” Then He commanded some of these prayers to be two cycles, like the morning prayer, and some three cycles, like the evening prayer, and some four, like the noon, afternoon, and night prayers. This is because the servant is two sorts, spirit and body. Of the two-part prayer, one is the …
