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Shiavault - a Vault of Shia Islamic Books Adab as-Salat: The Disciplines of the Prayer Second Revised Edition Chapter 11: On Curing The Wandering Imagination Concerning Showing an Effective Cure for the Treatment of the Wandering and Escaping Imagination that Brings about the Presence of Heart Know that each one of the inner and outer powers of the soul can be educated and taught by way of practicing a particular austerity.

For example, human eye is unable to gaze at a point or at an intense light, such as the disk of the sun, for a long time, without blinking. But if a man educates his eye, such as that which is done by some of the people of false asceticism for certain purposes, he can look into the sun for several hours without blinking or getting tired. Similarly, he can gaze at a certain point for hours without any movement.

This is also true of the other faculties, like stopping breathing, which, as they say, is seen among the people of false asceticism, as there are some who can stop breathing for an extraordinary period. Of the faculties that can be educated are the faculties of imagination and fancy. Before educating them, they are like two ever-jumpy and restless birds flying from a branch to another, and from one thing to another.

If one tries to watch them for a single minute, he will see their many successive movements of very slight and far-fetched connections. Many think that to control the bird of imagination and tame it is out of the limits of possibilities, and falls within the realm of the common impossibilities. But, as a matter of fact, it is not so.

With hardship, practice and time-taking education, it can be tamed, and the bird of imagination can be put under one's control and will be such that it can be confined for several hours and for a certain purpose, according to one's will. The principal way of taming it is to act to its contrary. That is, at the time of the Salat one is to prepare himself to control the imagination during the Salat and confine it to action, and, as soon as it tries to slip out of his hand, to recapture it.

One should carefully watch it in all the actions, recitations, invocations, etc. of the Salat , observing it so as not to be obstinate. At the beginning, this seems to be a difficult task. But after a while of strict practice and treatment, it will certainly become tame and obedient.