It is you who are in need of Allah...
It is you who are in need of Allah, and Allah is He who is the Self-Sufficient, the Praised One.” [^3] As concerning the wordings of the recitation being a reference to the Unity of Action, we shall explain that in details when we come to comment on the blessed sūrah of al-Hamd , inshā' Allāh (Allah willing).
Chapter 2: On The Disciplines Of The Qiyām These [disciplines] are such that the sālik is to consider himself present in the Presence [ mahdar ] of Allah, and regard the world as His Presence, and himself one of the audience at that gathering, standing before Allah, trying to convey the Greatness of the Present and the Presence to his heart, letting it understand the importance and the significance of supplicating to Allah, the Exalted, and, by thinking and contemplating, before starting the Salat , to prepare the heart to understand the importance of the situation, obliging it to humbleness, submission, calmness, fear, hope, humility and modesty till the end of the Salat .
He is to stipulate that his heart should be keen on observing these affairs, and think about the great holy men and guides, and about their moods and how their conducts with the Master of the kings were, so as to learn a lesson from the Imāms of guidance and imitate them as his models, not being satisfied with just knowing the names of the infallible Imāms, the date of their birthday, death day, the length of their honorable lives and similar details, which are of little advantage.
Actually, he is to go through their biography and godly conducts, in order to find out the method of their worship and how their journey to Allah was carried out, and how their gnostic stations, which can be inferred from their miraculous speeches, were. It is much regretted that we are negligent, intoxicated by nature, empty self-conceited and the stooges of the vile Satan in all matters, without there being any sign of our getting up from our deep sleep and endless forgetfulness.
We get so little benefit from the positions and the knowledge of the Imāms of guidance (' a ) that it is negligible, satisfying ourselves with the outer appearance of their lives, completely disregarding the objectives for which the prophets have been sent, and, actually, we are covered by the proverb: “To take a swelling for a fleshy.”[^4] We shall, therefore, relate some of the relevant narratives, so that some of the believing brethren may have a remembrance.