At the time of performance man does not keep the material...

At the time of performance man does not keep the material gains in view and the motives of this are deeply etched into his heart. He does this without paying attention to be an example or to show off. He does not do this for any sort of acclaim by the society.

But while doing something if someone does not ignore the material benefits, and he does it for gaining something in return from an individual or the society, then this is a type of give and take and one who does this is regarded as a trader. The second reply to this question is that sometimes a person loves something or someone to such an extent that except for this love he forgets everything. He even forgets himself and this type of person also forgets his personal gain.

It is the instance when man does not recognize anything except his beloved thing or person. He thinks nothing else except the pleasure of his beloved. He absolutely ignores the aspect of gain and recompense where something is taken in exchange of something else. His sacrifice reaches such a stage that at this time he also forgets his beloved and the aim of his sacrifice whose imagination imparts comfort to his body and soul.

The reason for this is that leave alone the physical and spiritual pleasures, he does not even see or recognize himself in this condition. It is the stage which is sometimes called the stage of annihilation. Many of our leaders were having this type of condition with regard to the Being of Allah. And this same condition used to cause them to worship Him for Him only. And they used to seek His proximity and had imaginable devotion for Him as His being is pinnacle of perfection.

They used to lay down their lives for His pleasure. A tradition narrated from Commander of the faithful Hazrat Ali (a.s.) regarding worship, probably indicates this: O my Lord! I do not worship You for the fear of Hell or for desire of Paradise. I worship You because I find You are deserving of worship. The best example of devotion was Ali (a.s.) himself and he used to be so much engrossed in prayers that he did not feel any pain when an arrow was extracted from his feet.

Such a person cannot think of his gain or loss at the time of worshipping Allah. Because when he sees he sees Allah and whatever he does he does it not for his personal gain, he does it for the Lord. Previous…